She did it her way...
by Harry Reynolds
[ bookreviews ]
Jeff Garth and Don Van Natta have labored hard to produce Her Way, their portrait of a cold, severe, dominating, power-obsessed Hillary Clinton. In a note posted at the beginning of the book, they complain that Hillary is reachable only through her loyal intermediaries who are fearful of retribution by her should they speak to the authors. The authors apparently believe that, had Hillary been deranged enough to speak to them, they would have laid even more before us. Nevertheless, those self-flagellants who read Her Way from beginning to end, however small their number, will be grateful to the authors for their 483 pages of plain, reportorial prose, untouched by literary merit, colorless like the Hillary they repeatedly describe, the text as lively as a baggage receipt. To all others, take caution: do not read the book while seated in a rocking chair before an open fire. After a hundred or so pages, you may reach the tipping point and end up as an index number in the Surrogate's Court.
Hillary is born in 1947 on page 14 and in eight pages enters Wellesley where, as if genetically programmed, she becomes a whirlwind of political activity, president of the student government and, as senior student speaker at her 1969 commencement, gains national attention by turning, without forewarning, upon the invited speaker, hapless US Senator Edward Brooke, calling him to account for his failure to speak on Vietnam and civil rights.
Yale Law School follows in 1969. Hillary develops an all-consuming interest in children's rights, falls in love with fellow student Bill Clinton in 1970 and lives with him in 1971. Graduating in 1973, she becomes - at 26 - one of 43 staffers of the House Nixon impeachment inquiry. She joins Bill in Arkansas in 1974 where, in their mid-20s, they enter, say the authors, into "a secret pact of ambition to capture the presidency for Bill" and "to do whatever it took to win election and defeat their opponents. Bill would be the project's public face, of course. And Hillary would serve as the enterprise's behind the scenes manager and enforcer". They are married in October, 1974, by a Reverend Nixon, proof, perhaps, of God's dark sense of humor.
Reaching into the trash basket of history, the authors call on stage names mercifully now only cardboard pop-ups in memory: Jim McDougal, White River, Madison Guaranty, Rose Law Firm, righteous Kenneth Starr, smiling Monica Lewinsky and her historically famous semen-stained dress, Hillary's billing records, Paula Jones, the tragic suicide of Vincent Foster, the masked right wing conspiracy, humble Bill and his White House fly act, and, most of all, those justice-loving people who, if it meant only their holding of a spike in place, were enfevered to bring the judgment of God down upon the Clintons. Looking back, few can recall the why of it all. Many, indeed, today may wonder in a free moment over their lack of compassion for the Clintons as they were tracked, trapped, and tormented.
Transfixed by the Clinton's 1974 "secret pact" to gain the presidency, the authors excitedly report that in 1993 the Clintons planned two terms for Bill and, later, two for Hillary. For proof they offer purported statements of Leon Panetta and Taylor Branch. Panetta, Bill's former presidential chief of staff, has issued no statement in support, while Branch, a much respected historian and author, denounced their story as "preposterous". (Michael Tomasky, Can we Know her?, NY Rev. Books, July 19, 2007, pp 14, 15) Rare the reader who does not laugh at the authors' boasting of their alleged "discovery" of a "secret pact" the rumors of which had long travelled the rounds of Washington. (Jennifer Senior, NY Times Book Review, July 15, 2007, 8, 9)
Following the book's publication, Van Natta said "...we don't make any judgment that it's a bad thing or a good thing. We simply report this. This is news." (MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, June 12, 2007 edition.) Their "news", however, is that Bonnie and Clyde have been planning a long time to come to town and strongarm anyone barring their way into the White House.
Her Way accelerates with details of Kenneth Starr's unyielding pursuit, Hillary's incredible power over national policy issues, her disastrous handling of her health care plan, Bill's outrageous pretence of ignorance of the Rwanda genocide (erroneously measured by the authors as "a few weeks" instead of three months), and the Clinton's low-bred fund raising activities (Want a White House cup of coffee for big bucks, or do you have bigger bucks for a sleep over in Lincoln's bedroom?). Particularly revealing is Hillary's back stage manoeuvering for a New York Senate seat while a simple, good hearted America saw her only as the icon of a grieving, loyal wife, defending a repentant husband caught in his adulteries and perjuries, to say nothing of his wholesale, boldface lying to the entire nation. There is mordant humor to be found in the failed impeachment proceedings, the Starr Report's overly detailed descriptions of Bill's sexual conduct, that must have made the Clintons run for cover, followed surprisingly by the public's warm-hearted support of Bill and the public's acknowledgment that Hillary, after all, actually had human feelings. Still, Bill hardly looked attractive leaving office after dealing with the substantial risk of a federal indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice, to say nothing of his issuance of 140 scandal tainted pardons as he fleetfooted it down the White House steps.
It was a good point in Her Way to turn the camera on Hillary in the Senate where she has sat supported by both her staff and her unequalled personal political organization, oiled and fired 24/7 to win her the presidency. Here are areas of interest to the uninformed reader, areas that disclose fault lines in Hillary's character. The authors succeed in revealing her deadpan skill for marketing her history of major mistakes with a certain fondness for tempering discretion with deceit. For example, they zero in on her reckless failure to read the entire National Intelligence Estimate that made war against Iraq less lawful than Bush claimed. They point to her adoption of Bush's false claim of an Al Quaeda-Iraq relationship and its tie to 9/11. She was so anxious to show her capacity for military leadership that she didn't do the due diligence required for dealing with the one decision that she considered the most important in her life.
She appeared before the Council of Foreign Relations mouthing Bush-like statements but, as the war turned about and the prospect of the presidency began to whet her appetite, she mischaracterized the intelligence available to her in the National Intelligence Estimate and, the authors argue, twisted the meaning of the war resolution in order to blame Bush for having misled her to support the war he planned. Howevermuch Her Way fails as a biographical work of literature, it hits its target here, for a weakness to dodge truth instead of admitting major error is fatal to any candidate for the presidency. It leads people to live daily in the light of false dawns, a curse no nation deserves.
