About book Her Way: The Hopes And Ambitions Of Hillary Rodham Clinton (2007)
I know someone, a very liberal Democrat, who refused to consider Hillary Clinton for president in 2008. "Not another Clinton," she moaned. "Haven't we had enough of the Clintons? It just seems like they've been around...forever!" Shortly after, she went to work at the State Department. And became a big fan of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.This book was published in 2007, while Hillary and Barack and all the other Dems were duking it out in the primaries and caucuses.There was a lot here that was old information for me, given that I've read a biography of Bill, a book about Bill's impeachment, a book about Whitewater, and a book about the Clintons' attempt to get healthcare reform passed. So when the authors detail how Hillary is a political opportunist who will attempt to control and craft any narrative to fit her political needs, I will yawn.The book I read on Whitewater is called Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater. It is very critical of Jeff Gerth's (co-author of this book) New York Times reporting on Whitewater. Go on over and read my review of it. If you can find a copy of it, read "Fools for Scandal." It was a book completely ignored by everyone outside of Arkansas, apparently. The Whitewater investigation was a tremendous to-do about nothing.Although the book is on balance more negative than positive toward Clinton, I didn't get the feeling that either author has a personal animus against her. They're just mainstream reporters. Gerth had done a lot of Whitewater reporting in the 90s, so a book on Hillary would be right in his wheelhouse. As with most mainstream media elites, you get the sense they don't really care who wins. They're almost completely cynical about the political process, so who ends up in office is a matter of trivial importance. "They are different from you and me," a famous writer once wrote, about a slightly different (but not that different) group of people.What I learned: 1. Hillary most likely padded her Rose Law Firm bills. Under the leadership of Webb Hubbell, who did it himself, this was par for the course at the firm. She didn't pad them by all that much, but this seems the most likely explanation, rather than that there was actual malfeasance on her part related to the real estate transactions themselves that she worked on, that she did not want her billing records released to the public. That she may have padded her bills is not stated as fact, but it was strongly suspected by the federal investigators who examined everything related to the Rose Law Firm, Whitewater, Casa Grande, and Jim McDougal. Padding one's bills is in fact a common practice at law firms. This doesn't make it right. But it is done. Hillary would have felt pressure to pad her bills because she was the primary breadwinner in the family; Bill's government salary was quite small. Also Hillary, with a small child to raise, wasn't working as many hours as the other attorneys.2. Hillary probably fell afoul of Senate ethics rules, but wasn't called on it, for bringing advisers on staff and not filing the proper paperwork for them.3. When Hillary renovated her D.C. home, she did not choose the most energy-efficient boiler or air conditioning units, in spite of having adopted energy efficiency and climate change as a pet issue.There's a chapter on Google and Youtube which just takes up space. Too much time is spent on Bill's draft dodging, which doesn't have much to do with Hillary except as she was involved in damage control and crafting narratives to present to the press.At least the authors don't try to argue that the Clintons have some kind of phony marriage, an "arrangement." This book and others I've read are very convincing on the point that the love between the Clintons is real, that the loyalty between them is a bond that most likely will never be broken. This is a deep and complex marriage: it's a business partnership, a political partnership, a parenting partnership, a friendship, and a romantic partnership. The distress Bill Clinton felt at the nadir of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, when he wasn't sure if Hillary was going to stay in the marriage, was real."Hillary had paid close attention to how the right wing had shaped the image of Al Gore," the authors note. Only the right wing? So it wasn't Maureen Dowd who decided Gore was "so feminized that he's practically lactating"? It wasn't Chris Matthews who repeatedly explained that he liked to call Gore "the bathtub ring"? It wasn't Arianna Huffington who despaired over the number of buttons on Gore's suit jackets? It wasn't mainstream media reporters for the New York Times and the Washington Post who made up the stories about Love Canal and Gore claiming he invented the internet and Gore being brought up in a luxury hotel? All that was the right wing?But I digress.A final disturbing note: the book had eight copyeditors (all of them thanked by name in the acknowledgements) but this couldn't prevent several misspellings of "Barack" as "Barak."
So far this is a really impressive read---I feel more moved by Hillary now. She reminds me of my mother (same feminist glasses in the old photos). Way to go mom!!The critical, detached stance of this book makes it possible to not doubt the positive qualities of Hillary. I'm very moved.Now that I've finished, I would say this is a good perspective on Hillary---objective enough to be balanced. Quite a look at what can happen to idealism when someone tries to live within this system of political leadership. Public service takes a lot out of a person!!
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In the first part of this month I read an Op Ed piece by Jeff Gerth about Hillary Clinton having her own email server, rather than using the government one that a Secretary of State would be expected to use. Jeff Gerth is no stranger to executive-branch scandals. He covered Whitewater when he was a reporter for the New York Times, and his co-author, Don Van Natta Jr., is an investigative journalist for the Times who did quite a bit of reporting about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.Her Way was written in 2007 when Hillary Clinton was starting her first run for president. Curious about what was written eight years ago caused me to check out the book from the library.After so many years on the national stage, Hillary Clinton is still a bafflement. She generates such a wide range of feelings. Maybe that is the reason so many journalist can't stop writing about her. From the moment Hillary arrived at Yale Law School in 1969, she was a campus celebrity: her graduation speech at Wellesley College had earned her a photograph in Life magazine; she was fielding invitations to speak before the League of Women Voters and to appear on national TV. Everyone assumed she had a bright future in politics. Yet Hillary Rodham tied her fate to Bill Clinton. Some believe that if she hadn't married him she would have already been president.She has endured a great deal of public attack and media-promoted humiliation. Few have had to sit alongside their spouse on national television while he confesses adultery with a woman nearly the same age as his daughter. But she also has legions of fans and usually, according to the Gallup poll, on those years that Oprah doesn't have the honor, is the most admired woman in America.The authors cover all the scandals in an even handed way, but this is the stuff, ultimately, of magazine and news articles, not a 438-page biography. And after reading this book, Hillary Clinton is still a bafflement, and this book probably won't change anyone's sense of what kind of president Hillary might be.
—Ken Ransom
