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Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton
She is one of the most influential and recognizable figures in our country, perhaps the single most divisive individual in our political landscape. She is the subject of both hagiography and vitriolic smear jobs. But although dozens of books have been written about her, none of them have come close to uncovering the real Hillary-- personal, political, in all her complications. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta bring us the first comprehensive portrait of the most fascinating and controversial woman in American politics. Drawing upon documents and sources that no other reporters have ever accessed, Gerth and Van Natta will forever change the way you think about Hillary.
438 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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385 people want to read
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March 1, 2014
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."
September 19, 2016
I’m stating upfront in this review that I am voting for Hillary in November. Clearly, if I had my druthers, I would prefer to be voting for Bernie Sanders, but that’s obviously not going to happen. While I like some of the third party candidates, I will not vote a third party because voting for third parties, in this country, is throwing a vote away. It will also help only in increasing the chances of Donald Trump taking the presidency, and that can never happen.
I could be like millions of others and state why I am NOT voting for Trump instead of why I AM voting for Hillary, but the reasons for not voting for Trump are, in my opinion, obvious.
There are plenty of good reasons to vote FOR Hillary; however, they may not seem so obvious. The reason Hillary may not seem like an obvious candidate to many is due to several factors: outright sexism; a media that allows idiotic voices to be given equal measure to intelligent voices; and some admittedly bone-headed moves made by Hillary herself.
In a fair, even-handed examination of the woman and the candidate, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.’s book “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton” conclude that Hillary is a highly intelligent and powerful woman whose biggest obstacle in life is often herself.
Published in 2007, “Her Way” only covers her life until her first attempt at running for president. Needless to say, it is missing the vital years as Secretary of State during the Obama Administration. There is, unfortunately, no mention of Benghazi or email scandals. Those missing years are of major importance, but they are unfortunately meant for another book.
Gerth/Natta paint a pretty good picture of Hillary as a strong but seriously flawed candidate, one who probably shouldn’t have had to face a tough battle for Democratic nomination against a young, untested African-American Senator with a weird name but nevertheless did, which was extremely telling.
Hillary is a complicated figure, to say the least. She has been viciously labelled “liar” by people who seem to forget that she works in a city full of people notorious for lying. She has faced angry mobs screaming for her imprisonment and/or public hanging for crimes that have never been adequately articulated. She (and her husband) have been plagued with scandal after scandal, most of which, to be fair, have been brought upon by themselves.
Of course, even through all this, she manages to (as the saying goes) keep calm and carry on.
This is, according to Gerth/Natta, due to a refusal on Hillary’s part to never show fear or weakness: “Through every tweak in her public image, through the dozens of physical and political makeovers, Hillary herself has been the meticulous architect of her persona. As a result, she is perhaps the most closely observed politician in America---and also the most enigmatic. (p. 7)”
Hillary is the epitome of Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” feminist philosophy: she is where she is due to the fact that she has probably had to work doubly hard to reach the same level as her male counterparts. She has had to fight for opportunities that were simply handed to some of her male counterparts.
Unfortunately, women like Hillary face the sexist double standard that men who strive for power are ambitious go-getters while women who strive for power are cold, heartless bitches. And probably lesbians.
The thick skin that Hillary has developed over the decades has, unfortunately, left her with a public image that is less-than-flattering. It has also left a very real impression that rather than own up to and apologize for mistakes, she has a tendency to blame others.
Gerth/Natta write that “some of Hillary’s biggest mistakes began as rather inconsequential errors in judgment and exaggerations. When they were seized on by her critics, Hillary followed---and continues to follow---the same pattern: She dug in because she feared that admitting a mistake would arm her enemies and undermine her carefully cultivated image as an extremely bright person who yearns only to do good for her fellow citizens. (p.7)”
It is ironic and upsetting that she and Trump share this trait. Whereas Trump’s motivation for not making apologies seems to be narcissism, Hillary’s motivation probably stems more from fear.
Of course, Hillary is an extremely bright person, and she has a track record of doing good for her fellow citizens, but she has also made some huge mistakes and bad decisions in her life. Haven’t we all?
Hillary hasn’t quite figured out that a simple “I’m sorry” goes a long way in ameliorating hurt feelings and those who feel wronged. It may have saved her plenty of hassles and nightmares regarding the scandals that have plagued her and her husband over the years, starting with the one involving a plot of land, a blank check, and a man named Jim McDougal.
Much has been already been investigated, rehashed, and written about the Whitewater scandal, the Clintons’ bad decision to invest in a real estate deal that quickly lost money and a friendship between Jim McDougal---the brains behind the deal---and Jim’s wife, Susan.
Needless to say, Whitewater tainted the Clintons for years afterward, long before Bill decided to run for president.
Indeed, the vicious charges of “liar” hurled against Hillary aren’t new. They start as far back as 1996, when New York Times columnist William Safire called her a “congenital liar” in a column regarding Whitewater.
In case you lived under a rock during the mid-‘90s, Whitewater was the name given to a 230-acre plot of undeveloped land in the Ozarks that were bought by the Clintons and the McDougals via the Whitewater Development Corporation in 1979, a corporation created by both couples specifically for the purchase of the land. At this time Bill was Arkansas Attorney General. Hillary was working as an associate at the Rose Law Firm. The goal was to supplement their income by selling off lots for development of summer homes. Unfortunately, the lots never sold, partly due to the economy and partly due to Jim McDougal’s mishandling of money. McDougal bought a bank in 1980, renaming it Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. He hired Hillary as the bank’s attorney. State investigators pegged McDougal as an incompetent banker at best, a scam artist at worst. Due to their connections, the Clintons were roped into the investigation. While the Clintons lost money on the deal, it was nowhere near as much lost by the McDougals.
Safire’s column described what he saw as a major discrepancy between Hillary’s law firm billing records for Madison Guaranty and her assertions that the work she did for the Arkansas savings and loan was minimal at best. He also believed that she didn’t come clean about her commodities trades.
In July 1995, the Independent Counsel investigating the Whitewater issue interviewed Hillary under oath. Interviewer Hickman Ewing Jr. had interviewed a small group of staffers and came to the conclusion that “Hillary had lied, but wasn’t sure whether it was to protect her billing irregularities or to hide criminal conduct. (p. 164)”
There were some discrepancies in the records, as the Clintons’ legal defense team found after its own investigation of the billing records. As Gerth/Natta explain, “while thy publicly maintained that the billing records exonerated Hillary, demonstrating she had done nothing wrong, privately some members of her legal team reached a more nuanced view: the bills did demonstrate small-time padding, but it was a practice knowingly tolerated by McDougal, the man who hired Hillary. (p. 165)”
Hillary could have easily admitted that she either “cooked the books”, which would have been a crime, or that she simply didn’t do the work for which she was billed, which would have made her look incompetent. She chose to not admit anything, so the question still lingers today.
That Hillary lied about her part in Whitewater is probably not in dispute. It’s whether she lied to hide wrong-doing or to protect her reputation that has been the issue. Sadly, despite the fact that she has never been indicted on any charges, this is a theme that would pop up several times in her life.
Bill and Hillary, the couple, have, from the beginning, always been more than the sum of their parts. They were the Clintons, a force to be reckoned with, ever since they caught each other’s eyes across the room in the Yale Library.
Many people close to the Clintons knew about the “twenty-year project”, a plan that involved Bill’s becoming governor of Arkansas and eventually eight years as president of the U.S. It also entailed Hillary’s eventual rise within the political sphere and her goal of becoming president for another eight years.
It is remarkable that the plan has succeeded this far, but, then, Hillary is a remarkable woman. Even her opponents can’t dispute that.
Hillary was one of 29 female graduates out of a class of 178 at Yale Law School in 1973.
At that time, women only made up roughly 7 percent of law school graduates nationwide. The percentage of practicing lawyers who were women at that time was only around 3 percent. (p. 77)
That Hillary is a feminist success story is a given. Feminists come in many shapes and sizes, however, and while Hillary’s success has paved the way for other women within the legal profession, she is arguably not “radical” or “militant” about it, despite what Rush Limbaugh or his fellow misogynistic conservative pundits might say.
The other side of Hillary is the fact that she is also a loving wife and mother, a fact that often gets lost in this public perception of her as “frigid” or compassionless.
Having Bill as a husband can’t be easy. His reputation as a philanderer and an adulterer followed him like a wet piece of toilet paper stuck on his shoe from before his Arkansas governorship. Many women would have dumped his ass years ago for the shit he pulled, and, indeed, many women have criticized Hillary for staying with him.
It’s easy to pass judgment on her, saying that she stuck with him only for political reasons, for the residual sense of power as the First Lady. It’s easy to imagine that she was a “cold fish” in the bedroom, which is the reason Bill strayed in the first place. But all of this is unfair and cruel speculation.
The truth is, Hillary and Bill have stuck together, and they have a beautiful and intelligent daughter as a result. No relationship is perfect, and the Clintons would certainly never admit to having a perfect one, but it’s rare when two people find each other, and it’s even rarer when the two people can positively feed on each other as symbiotically as Bill and Hillary have.
When Bill became President in 1992, it was clear from the start that Hillary would not be a “traditional” First Lady.
President Clinton created the President’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform five days after his inauguration. It would be chaired by Hillary. The goal was to confront and implement solutions to fix the crisis facing health care, a crisis that included the fact that 37 million Americans did not have health insurance, nor could they afford insurance given the rising costs of insurance.
According to one initial poll, 64 percent supported Hillary’s appointment, 26 percent did not.
There was a hierarchy within the Clinton White House, and anyone joining the Clinton team was told immediately about the hierarchy, as explained by Chief of Staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty. He explained that, at the top was a box which included “the President, the Vice President and the First Lady. All three of them sign off on big decisions. You’ll just have to get used to it. (p. 123)”
This hierarchy, by the way, did not sit well with the Vice-President.
Hillary and Veep Al Gore historically did not have a good relationship from the get-go. Hillary felt that Gore had too much influence on her husband, while Gore felt that Hillary was too involved in the president’s decision-making process.
Still, the hierarchy worked, and Hillary assumed roles that previous First Ladies never would have thought possible.
The 20-year program was going strong, but it didn’t take long for scandals to strike again to try and derail it.
Many of the Clintons’ friends that had worked with them in Arkansas followed them to Washington. Vincent Foster, a friend and co-worker of Hillary’s during her tenure at the Rose Law Firm, became the Deputy White House Counsel, a high-stress job that Foster---who suffered from depression and anxiety---soon found to be overwhelming.
On July 20, 1992, Foster’s body was found in Fort Marcy Park. A gun was found in his hand, which had gunshot residue, indicating that he had fired the gun. Foster’s death was ruled a clear-cut suicide by two separate investigative teams. Despite that, conspiracy theories still lingered---some that implicated Hillary as the actual murderer.
As Gerth/Natta write, “The attacks against Hillary were extremely personal. Some of them had a basis in policy and politics, but others went well below the belt. Hillary initially accepted such assaults as part of the territory, but there was no precedent for them, both because the relatively new phenomenon of twenty-four-hour cable news created a new arena for mudslinging and because there had never been someone like Hillary in the White House before. (p. 131)”
Dick Morris was Bill Clinton’s secret weapon. A political strategist, Morris was to the Clinton Administration what Karl Rove was to the Bush Administration. He was a significant member of Clinton’s inner circle until later getting the boot for a scandal involving a prostitute (one which, surprisingly, didn’t involve Bill).
When a poll gauging the president’s popularity showed that roughly 30 percent viewed Clinton as “weak”, Morris audaciously told Clinton that “his weakness was Hillary. (p. 146)”
Morris added, “Your strengths feed on each other. But people don’t get it. They think either she’s wearing the pants or you’re wearing the pants. (p.147)”
By 1994, Hillary’s approval ratings had dropped from 56 percent to 44 percent within a year. It was a historically low rating for a First Lady: “Most Americans---62 percent in one poll---said they did not want Hillary involved in policymaking, though they approved of her performance as First Lady. This suggested strongly that a majority of Americans expected Hillary to stay within the boundaries of the traditional role of First Lady and not meddle in the official business of the country. That would not be possible---she was too smart, too strong, and too proud for that, and her husband trusted her judgment on most things---but some adaptation was, and Hillary found herself edged toward the sidelines. (p. 138)”
In March 1995, Hillary began a five-country tour advocating for women’s rights around the globe.
In what amounts to a horrible example of cosmic irony, while Hillary was touring the world speaking about female empowerment and bringing oppressed women out from under the tyranny of men, her husband was receiving 20-minute blow jobs from an intern that was his daughter’s age.
The polls were right about Bill being weak, but Morris was dead-wrong about his weakness. Bill’s weakness was his penis.
In 1998, Clinton confessed to the American people (after privately confessing to Hillary) that he did, indeed, have an “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky. He added that it was “wrong”, and he apologized.
If Bill had ended his statement there, things may have been different, and the world may have had a better view of him. Unfortunately, Bill had to get in an underhanded attack against Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Bill blamed Starr for disrupting the government and the eyes of the world for a tawdry investigation. For the most part, it seemed that Hillary was in agreement with her husband.
Never mind that Bill did, actually, commit perjury. Never mind that Bill did actually stick his dick in the mouth of a girl twenty years younger than him.
No, this was all Starr’s fault and the Right-wing conspiracy against the Clintons.
Sadly, this was in keeping with the Clintons’ reactions to messes that they often created for themselves.
The Clintons had a tendency toward knee-jerk response to media attacks: “Their conviction that the press assumed the worst led them in some cases to hunker down and not put out all the facts. (p. 123)”
As First Lady, as Senator, as Secretary of State, and now as presidential candidate, Hillary hasn’t changed her m.o.: “When good things happened, they happened because of Bill and Hillary. When bad things happened, Hillary often found the fault in others. (p. 141)”
In 2000 Hillary ran and won a Senate seat for New York.
Hillary quickly gained a reputation for having what one Senate ethics expert called a “we can do what we need to” attitude. (p.225)
Not filing required forms, only filing some forms, or filing forms extremely belatedly became a norm for her: “Her failure to file reports... demonstrates something that has long complicated the political and professional careers of Hillary Clinton: an underlying sense that the rules of the game are up to her. (p. 225)”
With only a year as Senator under her belt, Sept. 11, 2001 happened. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were, according to her, an “attack on America” and required swift punishment for the terrorists who coordinated them.
She was definitely more hawkish than many of her fellow Democrats, echoing the Bush Administration’s view that countries harboring terrorists would be viewed as enemies.
Prior to 9/11, Hillary was vocal about her negative views about the Bush Administration and the efforts of the new presidency to undermine and destroy the policies that her husband had set in place, as well as well-established policies and protections that had been built up for decades to protect the middle class, women, and the environment. But then 9/11 had happened, and she stood by her president. At least, at first.
Hillary has never commented on whether she actually read the National Intelligence Estimate, the ninety-page classified report on the U.S. intelligence community’s judgment about Iraq’s WMD given to the Senate ten days before the vote to go to war.
Gerth/Natta write, “The question of whether Hillary took the time to read the NIE is critically important. Unlike the abridged and sanitized summary, the longer, classified version of the Intelligence estimate contained numerous caveats and dissents on Iraq’s weapons and capabilities, making it sound less certain that the country posed a legitimate threat to the United States. (p.244)”
Hillary voted for war. In her explanation for voting for it, she said that it was due to the evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Had she actually read the NIE, she would have learned that “[i]n fact, the classified reports concluded that not only was Iraq not allied with Al Qaeda, but that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were rivals who harbored feelings of deep mistrust and enmity toward each other. (p.246)”
For years, journalists have tried to get Hillary to admit her mistake in the 2002 vote to go to war with Iraq. To this day, she has never admitted that it was a mistake. The closest she has ever come is to say that her vote “turned out be a terrible decision for everyone” and that “those of us in the Congress” made “a lot of mistakes.” (p.303)”
Not exactly a mea culpa.
I could be like millions of others and state why I am NOT voting for Trump instead of why I AM voting for Hillary, but the reasons for not voting for Trump are, in my opinion, obvious.
There are plenty of good reasons to vote FOR Hillary; however, they may not seem so obvious. The reason Hillary may not seem like an obvious candidate to many is due to several factors: outright sexism; a media that allows idiotic voices to be given equal measure to intelligent voices; and some admittedly bone-headed moves made by Hillary herself.
In a fair, even-handed examination of the woman and the candidate, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.’s book “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton” conclude that Hillary is a highly intelligent and powerful woman whose biggest obstacle in life is often herself.
Published in 2007, “Her Way” only covers her life until her first attempt at running for president. Needless to say, it is missing the vital years as Secretary of State during the Obama Administration. There is, unfortunately, no mention of Benghazi or email scandals. Those missing years are of major importance, but they are unfortunately meant for another book.
Gerth/Natta paint a pretty good picture of Hillary as a strong but seriously flawed candidate, one who probably shouldn’t have had to face a tough battle for Democratic nomination against a young, untested African-American Senator with a weird name but nevertheless did, which was extremely telling.
Hillary is a complicated figure, to say the least. She has been viciously labelled “liar” by people who seem to forget that she works in a city full of people notorious for lying. She has faced angry mobs screaming for her imprisonment and/or public hanging for crimes that have never been adequately articulated. She (and her husband) have been plagued with scandal after scandal, most of which, to be fair, have been brought upon by themselves.
Of course, even through all this, she manages to (as the saying goes) keep calm and carry on.
This is, according to Gerth/Natta, due to a refusal on Hillary’s part to never show fear or weakness: “Through every tweak in her public image, through the dozens of physical and political makeovers, Hillary herself has been the meticulous architect of her persona. As a result, she is perhaps the most closely observed politician in America---and also the most enigmatic. (p. 7)”
Hillary is the epitome of Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” feminist philosophy: she is where she is due to the fact that she has probably had to work doubly hard to reach the same level as her male counterparts. She has had to fight for opportunities that were simply handed to some of her male counterparts.
Unfortunately, women like Hillary face the sexist double standard that men who strive for power are ambitious go-getters while women who strive for power are cold, heartless bitches. And probably lesbians.
The thick skin that Hillary has developed over the decades has, unfortunately, left her with a public image that is less-than-flattering. It has also left a very real impression that rather than own up to and apologize for mistakes, she has a tendency to blame others.
Gerth/Natta write that “some of Hillary’s biggest mistakes began as rather inconsequential errors in judgment and exaggerations. When they were seized on by her critics, Hillary followed---and continues to follow---the same pattern: She dug in because she feared that admitting a mistake would arm her enemies and undermine her carefully cultivated image as an extremely bright person who yearns only to do good for her fellow citizens. (p.7)”
It is ironic and upsetting that she and Trump share this trait. Whereas Trump’s motivation for not making apologies seems to be narcissism, Hillary’s motivation probably stems more from fear.
Of course, Hillary is an extremely bright person, and she has a track record of doing good for her fellow citizens, but she has also made some huge mistakes and bad decisions in her life. Haven’t we all?
Hillary hasn’t quite figured out that a simple “I’m sorry” goes a long way in ameliorating hurt feelings and those who feel wronged. It may have saved her plenty of hassles and nightmares regarding the scandals that have plagued her and her husband over the years, starting with the one involving a plot of land, a blank check, and a man named Jim McDougal.
Much has been already been investigated, rehashed, and written about the Whitewater scandal, the Clintons’ bad decision to invest in a real estate deal that quickly lost money and a friendship between Jim McDougal---the brains behind the deal---and Jim’s wife, Susan.
Needless to say, Whitewater tainted the Clintons for years afterward, long before Bill decided to run for president.
Indeed, the vicious charges of “liar” hurled against Hillary aren’t new. They start as far back as 1996, when New York Times columnist William Safire called her a “congenital liar” in a column regarding Whitewater.
In case you lived under a rock during the mid-‘90s, Whitewater was the name given to a 230-acre plot of undeveloped land in the Ozarks that were bought by the Clintons and the McDougals via the Whitewater Development Corporation in 1979, a corporation created by both couples specifically for the purchase of the land. At this time Bill was Arkansas Attorney General. Hillary was working as an associate at the Rose Law Firm. The goal was to supplement their income by selling off lots for development of summer homes. Unfortunately, the lots never sold, partly due to the economy and partly due to Jim McDougal’s mishandling of money. McDougal bought a bank in 1980, renaming it Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. He hired Hillary as the bank’s attorney. State investigators pegged McDougal as an incompetent banker at best, a scam artist at worst. Due to their connections, the Clintons were roped into the investigation. While the Clintons lost money on the deal, it was nowhere near as much lost by the McDougals.
Safire’s column described what he saw as a major discrepancy between Hillary’s law firm billing records for Madison Guaranty and her assertions that the work she did for the Arkansas savings and loan was minimal at best. He also believed that she didn’t come clean about her commodities trades.
In July 1995, the Independent Counsel investigating the Whitewater issue interviewed Hillary under oath. Interviewer Hickman Ewing Jr. had interviewed a small group of staffers and came to the conclusion that “Hillary had lied, but wasn’t sure whether it was to protect her billing irregularities or to hide criminal conduct. (p. 164)”
There were some discrepancies in the records, as the Clintons’ legal defense team found after its own investigation of the billing records. As Gerth/Natta explain, “while thy publicly maintained that the billing records exonerated Hillary, demonstrating she had done nothing wrong, privately some members of her legal team reached a more nuanced view: the bills did demonstrate small-time padding, but it was a practice knowingly tolerated by McDougal, the man who hired Hillary. (p. 165)”
Hillary could have easily admitted that she either “cooked the books”, which would have been a crime, or that she simply didn’t do the work for which she was billed, which would have made her look incompetent. She chose to not admit anything, so the question still lingers today.
That Hillary lied about her part in Whitewater is probably not in dispute. It’s whether she lied to hide wrong-doing or to protect her reputation that has been the issue. Sadly, despite the fact that she has never been indicted on any charges, this is a theme that would pop up several times in her life.
Bill and Hillary, the couple, have, from the beginning, always been more than the sum of their parts. They were the Clintons, a force to be reckoned with, ever since they caught each other’s eyes across the room in the Yale Library.
Many people close to the Clintons knew about the “twenty-year project”, a plan that involved Bill’s becoming governor of Arkansas and eventually eight years as president of the U.S. It also entailed Hillary’s eventual rise within the political sphere and her goal of becoming president for another eight years.
It is remarkable that the plan has succeeded this far, but, then, Hillary is a remarkable woman. Even her opponents can’t dispute that.
Hillary was one of 29 female graduates out of a class of 178 at Yale Law School in 1973.
At that time, women only made up roughly 7 percent of law school graduates nationwide. The percentage of practicing lawyers who were women at that time was only around 3 percent. (p. 77)
That Hillary is a feminist success story is a given. Feminists come in many shapes and sizes, however, and while Hillary’s success has paved the way for other women within the legal profession, she is arguably not “radical” or “militant” about it, despite what Rush Limbaugh or his fellow misogynistic conservative pundits might say.
The other side of Hillary is the fact that she is also a loving wife and mother, a fact that often gets lost in this public perception of her as “frigid” or compassionless.
Having Bill as a husband can’t be easy. His reputation as a philanderer and an adulterer followed him like a wet piece of toilet paper stuck on his shoe from before his Arkansas governorship. Many women would have dumped his ass years ago for the shit he pulled, and, indeed, many women have criticized Hillary for staying with him.
It’s easy to pass judgment on her, saying that she stuck with him only for political reasons, for the residual sense of power as the First Lady. It’s easy to imagine that she was a “cold fish” in the bedroom, which is the reason Bill strayed in the first place. But all of this is unfair and cruel speculation.
The truth is, Hillary and Bill have stuck together, and they have a beautiful and intelligent daughter as a result. No relationship is perfect, and the Clintons would certainly never admit to having a perfect one, but it’s rare when two people find each other, and it’s even rarer when the two people can positively feed on each other as symbiotically as Bill and Hillary have.
When Bill became President in 1992, it was clear from the start that Hillary would not be a “traditional” First Lady.
President Clinton created the President’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform five days after his inauguration. It would be chaired by Hillary. The goal was to confront and implement solutions to fix the crisis facing health care, a crisis that included the fact that 37 million Americans did not have health insurance, nor could they afford insurance given the rising costs of insurance.
According to one initial poll, 64 percent supported Hillary’s appointment, 26 percent did not.
There was a hierarchy within the Clinton White House, and anyone joining the Clinton team was told immediately about the hierarchy, as explained by Chief of Staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty. He explained that, at the top was a box which included “the President, the Vice President and the First Lady. All three of them sign off on big decisions. You’ll just have to get used to it. (p. 123)”
This hierarchy, by the way, did not sit well with the Vice-President.
Hillary and Veep Al Gore historically did not have a good relationship from the get-go. Hillary felt that Gore had too much influence on her husband, while Gore felt that Hillary was too involved in the president’s decision-making process.
Still, the hierarchy worked, and Hillary assumed roles that previous First Ladies never would have thought possible.
The 20-year program was going strong, but it didn’t take long for scandals to strike again to try and derail it.
Many of the Clintons’ friends that had worked with them in Arkansas followed them to Washington. Vincent Foster, a friend and co-worker of Hillary’s during her tenure at the Rose Law Firm, became the Deputy White House Counsel, a high-stress job that Foster---who suffered from depression and anxiety---soon found to be overwhelming.
On July 20, 1992, Foster’s body was found in Fort Marcy Park. A gun was found in his hand, which had gunshot residue, indicating that he had fired the gun. Foster’s death was ruled a clear-cut suicide by two separate investigative teams. Despite that, conspiracy theories still lingered---some that implicated Hillary as the actual murderer.
As Gerth/Natta write, “The attacks against Hillary were extremely personal. Some of them had a basis in policy and politics, but others went well below the belt. Hillary initially accepted such assaults as part of the territory, but there was no precedent for them, both because the relatively new phenomenon of twenty-four-hour cable news created a new arena for mudslinging and because there had never been someone like Hillary in the White House before. (p. 131)”
Dick Morris was Bill Clinton’s secret weapon. A political strategist, Morris was to the Clinton Administration what Karl Rove was to the Bush Administration. He was a significant member of Clinton’s inner circle until later getting the boot for a scandal involving a prostitute (one which, surprisingly, didn’t involve Bill).
When a poll gauging the president’s popularity showed that roughly 30 percent viewed Clinton as “weak”, Morris audaciously told Clinton that “his weakness was Hillary. (p. 146)”
Morris added, “Your strengths feed on each other. But people don’t get it. They think either she’s wearing the pants or you’re wearing the pants. (p.147)”
By 1994, Hillary’s approval ratings had dropped from 56 percent to 44 percent within a year. It was a historically low rating for a First Lady: “Most Americans---62 percent in one poll---said they did not want Hillary involved in policymaking, though they approved of her performance as First Lady. This suggested strongly that a majority of Americans expected Hillary to stay within the boundaries of the traditional role of First Lady and not meddle in the official business of the country. That would not be possible---she was too smart, too strong, and too proud for that, and her husband trusted her judgment on most things---but some adaptation was, and Hillary found herself edged toward the sidelines. (p. 138)”
In March 1995, Hillary began a five-country tour advocating for women’s rights around the globe.
In what amounts to a horrible example of cosmic irony, while Hillary was touring the world speaking about female empowerment and bringing oppressed women out from under the tyranny of men, her husband was receiving 20-minute blow jobs from an intern that was his daughter’s age.
The polls were right about Bill being weak, but Morris was dead-wrong about his weakness. Bill’s weakness was his penis.
In 1998, Clinton confessed to the American people (after privately confessing to Hillary) that he did, indeed, have an “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky. He added that it was “wrong”, and he apologized.
If Bill had ended his statement there, things may have been different, and the world may have had a better view of him. Unfortunately, Bill had to get in an underhanded attack against Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Bill blamed Starr for disrupting the government and the eyes of the world for a tawdry investigation. For the most part, it seemed that Hillary was in agreement with her husband.
Never mind that Bill did, actually, commit perjury. Never mind that Bill did actually stick his dick in the mouth of a girl twenty years younger than him.
No, this was all Starr’s fault and the Right-wing conspiracy against the Clintons.
Sadly, this was in keeping with the Clintons’ reactions to messes that they often created for themselves.
The Clintons had a tendency toward knee-jerk response to media attacks: “Their conviction that the press assumed the worst led them in some cases to hunker down and not put out all the facts. (p. 123)”
As First Lady, as Senator, as Secretary of State, and now as presidential candidate, Hillary hasn’t changed her m.o.: “When good things happened, they happened because of Bill and Hillary. When bad things happened, Hillary often found the fault in others. (p. 141)”
In 2000 Hillary ran and won a Senate seat for New York.
Hillary quickly gained a reputation for having what one Senate ethics expert called a “we can do what we need to” attitude. (p.225)
Not filing required forms, only filing some forms, or filing forms extremely belatedly became a norm for her: “Her failure to file reports... demonstrates something that has long complicated the political and professional careers of Hillary Clinton: an underlying sense that the rules of the game are up to her. (p. 225)”
With only a year as Senator under her belt, Sept. 11, 2001 happened. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were, according to her, an “attack on America” and required swift punishment for the terrorists who coordinated them.
She was definitely more hawkish than many of her fellow Democrats, echoing the Bush Administration’s view that countries harboring terrorists would be viewed as enemies.
Prior to 9/11, Hillary was vocal about her negative views about the Bush Administration and the efforts of the new presidency to undermine and destroy the policies that her husband had set in place, as well as well-established policies and protections that had been built up for decades to protect the middle class, women, and the environment. But then 9/11 had happened, and she stood by her president. At least, at first.
Hillary has never commented on whether she actually read the National Intelligence Estimate, the ninety-page classified report on the U.S. intelligence community’s judgment about Iraq’s WMD given to the Senate ten days before the vote to go to war.
Gerth/Natta write, “The question of whether Hillary took the time to read the NIE is critically important. Unlike the abridged and sanitized summary, the longer, classified version of the Intelligence estimate contained numerous caveats and dissents on Iraq’s weapons and capabilities, making it sound less certain that the country posed a legitimate threat to the United States. (p.244)”
Hillary voted for war. In her explanation for voting for it, she said that it was due to the evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Had she actually read the NIE, she would have learned that “[i]n fact, the classified reports concluded that not only was Iraq not allied with Al Qaeda, but that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were rivals who harbored feelings of deep mistrust and enmity toward each other. (p.246)”
For years, journalists have tried to get Hillary to admit her mistake in the 2002 vote to go to war with Iraq. To this day, she has never admitted that it was a mistake. The closest she has ever come is to say that her vote “turned out be a terrible decision for everyone” and that “those of us in the Congress” made “a lot of mistakes.” (p.303)”
Not exactly a mea culpa.
February 16, 2014
Just not good. I am not a HRC fan, but this book's attempt to present itself as a "neutral" examination of her career was just silly. The tone of the book is bitchy (and the writing is grindingly bad). The book was pretty obviously an effort to derail her presidential ambitions in 2008. Now that she is reappearing as the potential candidate of the Democratic party in 2016, I am interested in reading about her. This book did very little to answer questions about Mrs. Clinton's fitness to be President of the United States. Hopefully someone will take a pass at writing a decent biography between now and the election.
December 4, 2012
.... Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, an unauthorized biography by Jeff Gerth and John Van Natta Jr., both investigative reporters for the New York Times. As is so often the case, I'm a late-comer to the book, which was published in 2008, before the results of that year's presidential election were known---before, even, Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee. It is still widely assumed in many quarters that Hillary is a show-in for the presidency.
Old news, then. Still, an interesting read that hindsight makes not much less interesting. I'm hardly surprised that the Clintons declined to give the book their cooperation, let alone their blessing. The picture of Hillary that emerges is not exactly flattering. On the one hand, the authors allow a certain grudging admiration for her personal courage in the face of many adversities, and for her unwavering persistence. On the other, they make much of her sometimes ruthless ambition, her willingness to set the wayward habits of her husband aside in order to pursue what the authors believe to be the couple's ultimate, long-standing goal: a dual presidency, first Bill, then Hillary. They describe her as mendacious, dissembling, and ready to discard old friendships while demanding nothing less than total loyalty to herself. The "Billary" team comes across, in this book, as extraordinarily driving and effective, but greedy for power and intolerant of opposition.
Admittedly lacking the authors' investigative resources, I do not quite share the harsh judgment that is barely disguised beneath a veneer of objective reportage--but which feels, at times, quite personal. The qualities they describe are those that are needed in a leader in a world as complex and fraught with dangers as our own. The Machiavellian traits that both Clintons share may be distasteful and may well seem unethical in the lives of those of us who do not relish or aspire to power; without them, who could rise to important political office and the ability to effect change? Our current president is surely one of the smartest political operatives we have known in recent history. Had he not been, he would never have defeated the smartest of his opponents, Hillary; who also, not incidentally, enjoyed the backing of her Bill, a man of enormously impressive political skills.
In other words, I like and respect Hillary much more than the authors of this biography seem to do. I have the added advantage, of course, of having watched her admirable performance on the world stage as Secretary of State. She has proved herself a skilled and tireless diplomat, and a tough one when that quality is required. No matter that her support for Bill through the worst of times may have been rooted in her own ambition, it's admirable, too, that the couple have managed to persist in their mutual support and, seemingly, a loyalty that has been sorely tested. Now I read in a New Yorker column by David Remnick that "Hillary is running" for the Democratic nomination in 2016. I hope she does. I would love to see a woman in the White House as something other than First Lady and Hillary, it seems to me, is more than qualified. I hope that, after so much turmoil and so much fierce deployment of energy in her life of service, she finds the stamina for yet another onerous task. From the perspective of the present moment, there is no one I would rather support.
Old news, then. Still, an interesting read that hindsight makes not much less interesting. I'm hardly surprised that the Clintons declined to give the book their cooperation, let alone their blessing. The picture of Hillary that emerges is not exactly flattering. On the one hand, the authors allow a certain grudging admiration for her personal courage in the face of many adversities, and for her unwavering persistence. On the other, they make much of her sometimes ruthless ambition, her willingness to set the wayward habits of her husband aside in order to pursue what the authors believe to be the couple's ultimate, long-standing goal: a dual presidency, first Bill, then Hillary. They describe her as mendacious, dissembling, and ready to discard old friendships while demanding nothing less than total loyalty to herself. The "Billary" team comes across, in this book, as extraordinarily driving and effective, but greedy for power and intolerant of opposition.
Admittedly lacking the authors' investigative resources, I do not quite share the harsh judgment that is barely disguised beneath a veneer of objective reportage--but which feels, at times, quite personal. The qualities they describe are those that are needed in a leader in a world as complex and fraught with dangers as our own. The Machiavellian traits that both Clintons share may be distasteful and may well seem unethical in the lives of those of us who do not relish or aspire to power; without them, who could rise to important political office and the ability to effect change? Our current president is surely one of the smartest political operatives we have known in recent history. Had he not been, he would never have defeated the smartest of his opponents, Hillary; who also, not incidentally, enjoyed the backing of her Bill, a man of enormously impressive political skills.
In other words, I like and respect Hillary much more than the authors of this biography seem to do. I have the added advantage, of course, of having watched her admirable performance on the world stage as Secretary of State. She has proved herself a skilled and tireless diplomat, and a tough one when that quality is required. No matter that her support for Bill through the worst of times may have been rooted in her own ambition, it's admirable, too, that the couple have managed to persist in their mutual support and, seemingly, a loyalty that has been sorely tested. Now I read in a New Yorker column by David Remnick that "Hillary is running" for the Democratic nomination in 2016. I hope she does. I would love to see a woman in the White House as something other than First Lady and Hillary, it seems to me, is more than qualified. I hope that, after so much turmoil and so much fierce deployment of energy in her life of service, she finds the stamina for yet another onerous task. From the perspective of the present moment, there is no one I would rather support.
March 25, 2015
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.
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.
May 12, 2016
Conflicted. It's the only name I can give for how I felt throughout the entire reading of this book. A neutral portrayal of a complex woman. At once an incredibly intelligent and effective political actor in her own right, and yet questionable in terms of the ethics or integrity of her methods. I constantly found myself empathizing with Hillary Clinton on one page only to be dissapointed with her on the next. In an election where the success of the Republican candidate threatens to unravel the tenuous progressive gains achieved in our society over the last 50+ years, how do I choose between idealism and practicality?
July 5, 2015
Thought-provoking
2015 has seen a re-emergence of Hillory's drive for the presidency. Of all candidates she is supremely qualified, but she is also very guarded. I hope she can find a way to open herself more to people in general, changing the view that she is cold and unfeeling. This book provides a snapshot of her political developments, but I'm not convinced that the view presented is not slanted.
2015 has seen a re-emergence of Hillory's drive for the presidency. Of all candidates she is supremely qualified, but she is also very guarded. I hope she can find a way to open herself more to people in general, changing the view that she is cold and unfeeling. This book provides a snapshot of her political developments, but I'm not convinced that the view presented is not slanted.
October 30, 2007
My girlfriend presented this book to me, and I shrugged my shoulders and declared that I am not interested in Hillary Clinton. That would have ended the matter except that there was nothing at all good on television and I had made the mistake of separating myself from my current read. Thus, I soon began reading. This is a real page turner!
First off, this book is written by investigative reporters, not someone with an ax to grind or a political outlook to defend or castigate. This point became clear early on.
Second, I realized within moments of picking the book up that I did not know much about Hillary Clinton. This book is a detailed summary of her life, and since it is presented without bias, I knew I could believe what I was reading. Although I am not a citizen of "Hillaryland", as her army of supporters call themselves, I learned many details about her that I did not know. I now feel that I at least know more about her than the average voter.
On the other hand, perhaps because the book is not biased, I an still an undecided voter. At least I can say that I no longer fear the Presidency of Hillary Clinton. Still, it would be nice to give another family besides Clinton/Bush a chance at the Oval office.
This book is a great choice for anyone who wants to learn the facts about Hillary Clinton's life from the pens of writers who make no attempt to sway your vote.
First off, this book is written by investigative reporters, not someone with an ax to grind or a political outlook to defend or castigate. This point became clear early on.
Second, I realized within moments of picking the book up that I did not know much about Hillary Clinton. This book is a detailed summary of her life, and since it is presented without bias, I knew I could believe what I was reading. Although I am not a citizen of "Hillaryland", as her army of supporters call themselves, I learned many details about her that I did not know. I now feel that I at least know more about her than the average voter.
On the other hand, perhaps because the book is not biased, I an still an undecided voter. At least I can say that I no longer fear the Presidency of Hillary Clinton. Still, it would be nice to give another family besides Clinton/Bush a chance at the Oval office.
This book is a great choice for anyone who wants to learn the facts about Hillary Clinton's life from the pens of writers who make no attempt to sway your vote.
January 24, 2008
A friend who is also struggling with which Democrat to support for presidential nomination gave me this book. As for all books of this type, it refelcts the biases of the authors. As journalists, they do not like Hiulklary's secretiveness. Confirms that she is very smart, hard working, committed and capable of getting things done. Casts doubt for me on teamwork and transparancy. Of course it is so sad that there does not appear to be anyone in US political arena at this elvel who are clearly above some of the sins attributed to Hillary - will we wever be able to elect people who can do what is best for the nation and the world without having to consider their own image and "spin" on everything?
I have still not decided - sigh!
I have still not decided - sigh!
August 17, 2013
Hillary Clinton is a fascinating person and reading about her was very interesting. My only problems with this book were that a lot of it is not devoted to Hillary herself but to her image and that it isn't until the last few pages that the authors really give a balanced view of Hillary. Before that, it's rather negative and everything is explained as a calculated response by Hillary to get the presidency. Though the book makes a real effort to be factual, in those two points the authors' bias do shine through. And I would have liked to read more about her personal life. For instance, her daughter Chelsea was only mentioned about a dozen times. I'd think having and raising a daughter would have somewhat more of an influence on someone's life than that. Overall, very interesting, but I don't think this will be the last thing I read about Hillary.
July 30, 2008
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!!
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!!
July 17, 2012
It was interesting to read about Hilliary, parts of it got long and tiresome, but overall interesting. She has made some mistakes along the way and has not always chosen the higher path (which is no different then the rest of us) but she is a hard worker and very intelligent. The book did me help me to understand why she did not leave Bill when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky in the White House. I was fascinated to learn that Eleanor Roosevelt is her hero and how she depends on her faith. It also helped me to see a different side to Bill Clinton.
February 21, 2008
A decent read. As someone who frequently criticizes Senator Clinton, I actually slightly changed my opinion of her after reading this biography. Although she is corrupt, power-hungry and said to be difficult to work for, she is a woman of great accomplishment.
Overall, I felt this was a rather fair portrait of Mrs. Clinton. There are several negative books about her, but this one definitely highlighted her accomplishments along with the scandals.
Overall, I felt this was a rather fair portrait of Mrs. Clinton. There are several negative books about her, but this one definitely highlighted her accomplishments along with the scandals.
April 19, 2015
A breezy bio of Hillary Clinton, written by investigative journalists without access to Clinton or her inner circle, which leads to A LOT of quotations from her memoir. Much of it is written as an attempt to serve as a corrective against Clinton's own telling of her story. In some ways this is good, but it leads to a lot of fact-checking and nit-picking that doesn't always seem worth it. Good for an overview of Clinton's career up until the 2008 election, but that's about it.
September 17, 2010
Like the woman, the autobiography is a little bit stiff at times and very "political" in the content revealed. Yet it also gave suprising insights into her thoughts and emotions outside of the political arena. I listened to this on cassette and was surprised when my then 10 year old daughter listened along.
March 24, 2015
Admittedly this book was published prior to 2008, so it's out of date, but I'd been hoping for a bit more insight into who she was.
The early stuff of her growing up and meeting Bill was interesting, but after the move to Arkansas, it became rehash of previously published reports and and nothing incredibly insightful.
The early stuff of her growing up and meeting Bill was interesting, but after the move to Arkansas, it became rehash of previously published reports and and nothing incredibly insightful.
August 10, 2015
Do I feel as though I know more about Hilary Clinton? Yes. Do I understand her? No. For any person to get anywhere in politics, it seems to me that a very strong ego is a necessity, and that comes through with her insistence that her name be attached to legislation, her twenty year plan with her husband, and her staying with him as he womanizes.
August 1, 2016
I found this book a fairly objective look at Hillary Clinton. Granted, she is not perfect and has some character flaws (who doesn't?). But it's also an interesting look at how a modern woman of the Boomer generation perceives how women are treated in this country and how they respond. Good reading and well worth your time before the election.
December 29, 2016
I found this to be a fair, critical assessment of HRC. It confirmed for me that she has always stoked a genuine passion for civil rights and social justice, but also a hyperfocus on "winning" the long game in politics that has led to many mistakes and a too-guarded public image, ultimately creating a flawed presidential candidate that the American public disliked and distrusted.
Read
August 12, 2007I started this book but couldn't quite get into it before it was due back to the library. Being that I truly admire Hillary and am all for her in 2008, I will keep this on my list of books to read and hopefully come back to it one day.
August 10, 2008
Ouch! This unauthorized biography focusing on the aspirations of Hillary Clinton attempts to present itself as neutral toward Hillary. Painfully cruel w/each paragraph's attempt to make her look cold, calculating and insincere.Not worth the read.
Read
October 8, 2009You read of her early formative years and how she was already closely involved in politics during her high school years. You read about how she met Clinton and I was amazed at how similar both of them are wrt to their political ambitions and interests and intellect. I enjoyed reading it.
April 5, 2012
Interesting to understand her drive and ambition and understand her reasoning for not abandoning her husband after his well documented affair. A bit drawn out with the processes involved in his attempted impeachment
October 2, 2014
Overall, I found this book enlightening and valuable. It put many events into perspective and filled in the blanks. There were segments that seemed to be dominated by one author in style and tone. Nevertheless, I recommend it.
December 3, 2007
Seemed to be a fairly unbiased perspective on Hillary Clinton.
December 14, 2008
I am learning about the woman who I admire most,who,I know could do great things if she was president.
February 3, 2009
I read this hoping it would help me like her. In the end I decided she couldn't write and fudged the hard bits and the book was not a good reflection of her personality.
June 10, 2009
If you are into Hillary Clinton I found this book quite interesting I definitely found it easy to read and learned a lot of things about her.
Want to read
January 5, 2010I haven't started this yet - however I was intrigued to read her story. Wonder when I'll get round to reading it though!
June 27, 2010
Despite the controversies, this is one utterly remarkable individual of strength, ambition and determination. What an extraordinary life.
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