The Truth About Hillary

Quote of the day:
“The concept of service has little political currency in Washington. Everybody is fair game, simply for being on the other side. Humiliating one’s prey, not merely defeating one’s foes, is central to the process. The press is hardly an impartial referee; rather, it is often caught up in a blundered game of chase.”
--Sidney Blumenthal, “The New Yorker,” August 16, 1993.

I’ve been reading Carl Bernstein’s very good book “A Woman in Charge.” It’s an unauthorized biography of Hillary Clinton. Neither she nor Bill would be interviewed for the book.

Virtually all the books about Clinton that have been published in the last ten years are either outright supporting her or are thinly-disguised hatchet jobs (especially “The Truth About Hillary Clinton,” which is anything but).

I was concerned that Bernstein’s book would fall on one side or the other. And I was relieved to find that his treatment is very even-handed.

This book is not speculative nor a polemic. It is very detailed reporting, by one of America’s legendary political reporters.

It’s clear that Bernstein interviewed hundreds of people and did painstaking research. “A Woman in Charge” is exhaustive in describing Hillary’s personal and political past. There are 50 pages of notes and sources at the back of the book.

In reading about the years when Bill was president, I was struck by the amount of vitriol and negative attention both of them had to deal with from the day they moved into the White House.

They brought some of this on themselves, of course. But what is apparent from this book is the way-out-of-proportion gargantuan negative reaction to them, which they had to deal with in some form just about all the time.

The portrait that is painted of Hillary Clinton is of a flawed, ambitious, very talented and growing person with extraordinarily worthy goals.