Who Is Hillary Clinton?

One theory, which functions as a kind of cargo cult among some American liberals, is that behind the bland, smiling, exterior and the thick gauze of platitudes, crouches a fiery liberal feminist, ready, when she has finally amassed enough power – say in her second term as president --to spring forth and save the world.

If Carl Bernstein’s exhausting 600-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, accomplishes anything, it should be to euthanize this touching hope. Hillary Rodham Clinton was always a moderate, given to centrist, technocratic. In her lifetime, she has glided effortlessly from one side to another on key issues – the death penalty, for example, or entitlements for poor women and children – all the while maintaining the self-righteousness granted, supposedly, by her Methodist God.

In Bernstein’s account the mystery of Hillary is largely explained by her fraught relationship with Bill. She was pretty enough, but an awkward, wonky, young woman; he was a brilliant, ambitious, sexually magnetic stud; and in following him to Arkansas she seemed to have thrown her future as, say, a high-profile Washington public interest lawyer. “My friends and family thought I had lost my mind,” Bernstein quotes her as saying. He insists that theirs is, or sometimes was, a deep connection – sexual, intellectual and committed to their joint political “journey.”

But it was a relationship irreparably twisted by Bill’s compulsive priapism, which seems to have put the young Hillary into a permanent rage, but, perversely, also bound them ever more tightly together. In the unstable molecule we used to call “Billary,” he was the id and she was the super-ego, a role she clearly relished even as it poisoned her with resentment. As Bernstein argues, Bill dalliances only increased her power in the relationship, since, as a rising political star, he needed a smart, loyal wife to fend off the press and publicly stand by her man. When they entered the White House in 1993 on the heels of the Gennifer Flowers scandal, the outwardly forgiving Hillary was at the height of her power, eager to assume the “co-presidency.”

In Bernstein’s account, which strives nobly for fairness, Hillary’s early behavior as First Lady was stunningly arrogant. She disdained the press, alienated the White House staff, turned on her close friend Vince Foster (who responded by committing suicide) and appalled Al Gore by trying to claim the West Wing office suite traditionally reserved for the vice president. She demanded a cabinet position, and when that was over-ruled, insisted on leading Clinton’s efforts at health reform, despite the objections of Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala, who was no less a feminist than Hillary.

Hillary’s attempt to create a national health insurance system – which she will have to undertake a second time as a presidential candidate – was a disaster in every way. Procedurally, she screwed up by conducting the planning under conditions of extreme secrecy, not even bothering to reach out to potentially supportive members of Congress, never mind the usual populist trimming of few televised town meetings. What Bernstein omits is her out-of-hand dismissal of the kind of single-payer system the Canadians have, which led to a tortured 1300-page piece of legislation that almost no one could comprehend. The bottom line, unnoted by Bernstein, is that, despite the right’s charges of “socialized medicine,” her plan would have maintained the nation’s largest private insurance companies’ death grip on American health care.

Now it was Hillary’s to be the liability, rather than the super-ego, in the Billary team. Revelations about her involvement in an obscure land deal in Arkansas suggested a conflict of interest between her prior role as both first lady of that state and an attorney at Little Rock’s Rose law firm. The real scandal is that she had worked for Rose at all, which represented the notorious anti-labor firms Tyson Poultry and Wal-Mart, but Bernstein makes nothing of that.

Soon Hillary, facing the possibility of a criminal indictment, was undertaking to recreate herself in a softer, cuddlier, mode. She wrote a book called It Takes a Village, on the importance of children, notable only for its sappiness and the spurious claim that her own family of origin had been idyllic. She wore pink for a defensive press conference held in the White House’s Pink Library, where Bernstein politely describes her as “preternaturally calm,” though the impression– with her eyelids drooping and her voice slowed, was of over-medication.

Having failed with her own hard-won health portfolio, and besieged now by the press for her sleazy deals in Arkansas, Hillary began to flail – reaching out for help from New Age healer Marianne Williamson. Compared to the Bush era White House scandals, the Whitewater land deal was microscopic-- no one died or was tortured—and surely the “vast rightwing conspiracy” played a role in keeping it alive. But as Bernstein writes, what magnified it out of proportion was Hillary’s own pattern of “Jesuitical lying, evasion, and … stonewalling.” She was not in the habit of being wrong – that was Bill’s job – and admitting to wrong-doing was simply not in her repertoire.

It took Monica Lewinsky to restore Hillary’s upper hand within her marriage and, with it, her self-confidence. Apparently believing her husband’s protestations of innocence, she took over the management of his defense within the White House, and, disconcertingly, started exploring the possibility of running for the senate in New York State at the very same moment the already-elected senate was voting on Bill’s impeachment. But even in this time of extreme crisis – for her marriage as well as the presidency – she could not resist asserting to a family adviser that “My husband may have his faults, but he has never lied to me.” Bernstein, ever the gentleman, comments only that “that statement speaks for itself.”

Most of the lies Bernstein documents along the way are, in the scheme of things, inconsequential and well in the past. But Bernstein breaks off his biography somewhat abruptly after Hillary’s election to the Senate, where she distinguished herself by helping push through a statute forbidding flag-burning. For a current and far more disturbing bit of mendacity, we have to turn to the another new Hillary book, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. As a presidential candidate, Hillary has repeatedly and confusingly claimed that she did not vote to authorize the war in Iraq, only to give Bush the authority to pursue a war if he should decide to. What she doesn’t mention is that she voted against an amendment to the war resolution, proposed by Senator Carl Levin, that would have required the president to return to Congress for a war authorization if diplomatic efforts failed.

Worse, she has dodged the question of whether she ever actually read the full text of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which was offered as a causus belli despite its equivocations on the subject of Saddam Hussein’s purported WMD’s. “If she did not bother to read the complete intelligence reports,” Gerth and Van Natta observe, “then she did not do enough homework on the decision she has called the most important of her life. If she did read them, she chose to make statements to justify her vote for war that were not supported by the available intelligence.” Since the start of her candidacy, anti-war Democrats have implored her to admit that she made a mistake on Iraq, which she stubbornly, even childishly, refuses to do.

In the end, the question of who Hillary is seems almost a bit anthropomorphic. Surely she has loved, laughed and suffered in the usual human ways, but what we are left with is a sleek, well-funded, power-seeking machine encased in a gleaming carapace of self-righteousness. She’s already enjoyed considerable power, both as a Senator and a “co-president,” and in the ways that counted, she blew it. What Americans need most, after fifteen years of presidential crimes high and low, is to wash their hands of all the sleaze, blood, and other bodily fluids, and find themselves a president who is neither a Clinton nor a Bush.

This review was published in The Guardian, June 16.

Comments

[Justin K.]

At this point I think any one would be better then Bush. How ever I'm not voting for Hillary because I don't believe family members of former presidents should be new presidents. There's to much baggage.

[Solo]

I absolutely agree with Barbara's take on Hillary Clinton. Once upon a time I had high hopes that Bill & Hill would make a positive difference in the lives of hard working Americans of all classes.

Instead, we got another example of how power corrupts and we, as usual, paid the price.

It saddens me that after working and fighting for women's rights since the 60s, I won't be voting for her.

[Hattie]

This woman and her husband let us down in so many ways. Every time I feel inclined to give the Clintons a break, I will just re-read this piece.

[buena]

As usual, we have to vote for the lesser of two evils. If it's between Hillary and any of the republican bozos, she'll get my vote.

[realpc]

We are not going to have a socialist/ feminist/ pacifist /atheist president in the near future. Maybe not ever. I don't know why you expected Hillary to fit that description.

[lc2]

I agree with realpc!!!

I read a recent interview w/the directors of the documentary "Jesus Camp" in which they were asked what the role of the film is. They responded that it was to expose us coasters to the folks in the heartland ... as we're usually reminded every four years in an election. They noted that most people in hip liberal circles are as oblivious to the inclinations of everyday folks in DeKalb and Peoria as people in small towns are of life in the city.

Like it or not, Barbara, Hillary spans that divide quite nicely, in the same way that GW's ranch-hand act does. What, you thought the
~5o% of eligible voters were people were digging deeper than hair color/thickness, twang, and religious denomination? Think again.

[Hattie]

Oh yes, we hip liberal types just don't have a clue as to the nature of the "real" America. What an insult to Americans that kind of statement is.
So I don't know any snake handlers personally!
But how about that third tour of duty? The medical bills that can't be paid? Rich people taking over all the good places? Just a few of the complaints I've heard lately from some folks I know in Idaho.

[Kevin Carson]

We're totally screwed in the next election: Giuliani would be worse than Bush, and Hillary and McCain are both almost as bad. Obama is a self-serving opportunist whose substantive positions are limited to vague treacle about "Hope" (where have we heard THAT before?).

All this is assuming, of course, that Cheney doesn't attempt a Hail Mary by nuking Iran and having Junior declare a national emergency.

As for buena's lesser of two evils strategy, unfortunately the evil folks are fully aware of it and taking it into account. That's probably why the lesser evil seems to get more evil with every new election.

[Hattie]

Oh yes, we hip liberal types just don't have a clue as to the nature of the "real" America. What an insult to Americans that kind of statement is.
So I don't know any snake handlers personally!
But how about that third tour of duty? The medical bills that can't be paid? Rich people taking over all the good places? Just a few of the complaints I've heard lately from some folks I know in Idaho.

[lc2]

Hattie: I happen to be a coaster who prefers hip liberal circles myself. But I'm also lucky (and yes I do consider myself lucky) to have extended family that is deeply entrenched in God/Family/Country and happens to live in the South and Midwest. To deny that these are different worlds is to deny that the sky is blue, so I don't quite know what your issue is. Barbara illuminated the culture of working class folks that is ignored and denied by our media and middle-class-obsessed culture ... why deny that such ignorance about small town/Republican life is foreign to most coasters?

Yes, my life as an independent-bookstore-shopping, organic-lemonade-drinking, Green-Party-leaning person is as foreign to them as their Wal-Mart-shopping, Wednesday-night-Bible-study, American-flag-decorating-scheme-living room lives are to me.

Let's not pretend there's not an elephant in this room, shall we? As a southern boy, Bill Clinton straddled this cultural divide masterfully. For Hillary, it's a little tougher -- she doesn't have the automatic in of having been raised down South, for starters. Whether we like it or not, most elections are still popularity contests and are won or lost based on what seems most familiar, or which candidate the voter would rather have at a family reunion.

[buena]

Kevin, I agree with most of what you say, with the exception of the 2000 presidential "election." I don't think Al Gore was or is a bad choice; we finally had a decent candidate that year. Then came Nader, voter fraud, and Bush's appointment to the presidency by the Supreme Court. So much for democracy.

And with Dick "Strangelove" Cheney hoping to lob that hail Mary you mention, wondering who to vote for will cease to be an issue.

[Hattie]

lc2: where do you come up with this nonsense?
I think you're the one who needs to get around more, not me.

[Michael]

You are all missing the point. I fully understand the differences between southerners and mid-westerners, mainly because I've been both.

The POINT is that Hillary pretends to be whatever her latest constituency wants.

You can't GET more Socialist than Hillarys health care "plan". You also can't get more Neocon than her vote to invade Iraq or her statements about the death of Saddam Hussein. She is the epitome of what every commedian on earth deems a politician.

Let her senate voting record speak for itself. That will be plenty enough for most sanely thinking Americans on both sides of the political isle to reject this woman.

[Larry]

I ageee, we have had enough of the Clinton's and Bush's.

Hillary openly defended the war until 4 months before she announced her candidacy.

We have had enough of war and enough of Free Trade.

We need someone new.

[Fool on the Hill]

Kevin Carson has it right, spot-on, as they say. We're screwed. Hillary and Obama are both frauds, and about all we can expect from the DLC-led Dems. It's tragedy repeating itself as farce. Hillary won't be much, or any, better than Bush, as even Ted Koppel has allowed recently that she won't get us out of Iraq even if she serves 2 terms. She'll keep us quagmired there forever. It's Israel, stupid! It's not only Israel, but oh, yeah, it's Israel. She's joined at the hip with the Zionists. And no, I'm not idiotically "anti-Semitic."

[barbsright]

I agree that Kevin Carson got it 'spot on'. Buena did not. Her comment, on June 19, 2007, is the reason this country is in such a mess. Her comment, on June 20, 2007, that Ralph Nader had an effect on the 2000 campaign is laughable. As long as the Republicans controlled Florida with Gov. Jeb Bush, Gore would have had to get at least 3% points more of the vote to beat Bush. Nader did not come close to that amount of the vote. Florida was going to be G.W. Bushs' 'by hook or by crook'. Maybe Mayor Bloomberg will save the USA.

[John F.]

A couple of suggestions:

1. Perhaps we should focus on WHAT instead of WHO. That is, emphasize the 2008 platform now instead of at the convention. Make the campaign more about the platform than the face.

2. I'd suggest our best hope of getting access to power in Washington is through the House of Representatives. Focus more attention on our own Representatives on blogs, letters to the editor, etc. Call them, write them, hold them accountable.

[Margot A.]

"most elections are still popularity contests and are won or lost based on what seems most familiar, or which candidate the voter would rather have at a family reunion." This is SO true and the root of the problem. Is there anything we can DO about it?

[Evan H.]

Excellent piece.

[lc2]

John F,

I agree in principle, but principles are not exactly what gets people elected these days. We're not that far-removed from jr. high days and apparently it's wrong to acknowledge that here on this board.

My parents both hail from very small towns in the heartland and South (I'm talking about towns where the average house value is $32K) and I have a window into the cultures of those towns that the vast majority of people on the coasts do not have, including my spouse who grew up in a working class family here in the northeast. It's no fault of their own, any more than we should blame people for being unaware of the cultures of countries they've never visited. As far as I can tell, it might as well be a different country, much like work as a waitress/maid/Wal-Mart clerk barely resembles the work of office clerks or i.t. experts. And yes Hattie, I've done both. Recently.

.... or did I just imagine it that the majority of the Bush voters in the last election said they voted for him b'c of his shared "moral values"? To ignore the role of culture in national elections is just silly. It's an analysis of the situation, not an endorsement of it.

[buena]

1. What is the alternative to voting for the lesser of two evils?

2. Thomas Jefferson said "Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

That explains a lot.

[Wally Whiteman]

I see old Hattie mixing it up again with anyone with opposing viewpoints.

Woman, your act is so lame and tired.

When are you going to say something useful and constructive rather sparring with everyone ?

I know you need more commenters over at your crappy site, but why don't you earn them like eveyone else ? All you do is seek and throw darts. Pitiful.

Oh , that comment Cascadia made about Hillary at your site, just proves how much a blowhard she really is. I am glad you corrected such a foolish comment. Considers herself expert at US political issues now.

Not as smart as she thinks she is. Fun to watch you two though. Misery loves company.

[Hattie]

Dear Ms. Ehrenreich: could you please nuke this annoying troll? He is ruining several forums where I comment. He lives in the Toronto area and has something wrong with him.
Last comment here from me on him.

[Curly Earl]

Hattie you are such a poor sport. You cruise other's sites, like this one, and stir up all sorts of controversy and when someone questions your motives, they are labelled a troll ? Uh?

You pick fights purposely. You need to be the victor, regardless of what you are saying makes any sense or not, and when you are called out, like I have here, you claim foul.Give me a break. What a juvenile mentality.

I think YOU ruin several forums by your rants and your dart throwing and self proclaimed leftist superiority. When youlook at it this way, who invited you over anyway ?

[Perry]

Why on earth would you think that an obviously unsympathetic bio of Hillary would provide any insight into anything about her? Bernstein's book trashes her in ways she does not deserve and you are no better when you take his text as gospel and attempt to reason from it.