BOOKS ON THE FORMER FIRST LADY AND CURRENT U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW YORK:
Living History
Her Way
A Woman In ChargeHer Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., who worked together as New York Times investigative reporters, is a 420-page unauthorized biography of Clinton published by Little, Brown and Company. While the Clintons and many of Hillary's friends, former aides, associates and colleagues declined to speak with the reporters, the two conducted more than 500 interviews and examined thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents. They also looked at Hillary's speeches, public statements, interviews and autobiography in an attempt to write a comprehensive portrait of her.
—Katie Rooney
A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein is a 640-page unauthorized biography of Clinton published by Alfred A. Knopf. Bernstein spent eight years researching and writing the book, interviewing more than 200 friends, colleagues and critics. He also gained exclusive access to the candid record of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign kept by Hillary's best friend, Diane Blair, who is now deceased.
—M.J.Stephey
Her Way
by Jeff Gerth and
Don Van Natta Jr. |
A Woman In Charge
by Carl Bernstein
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| Hillary’s Childhood | Characterizes Hillary's childhood as generally happy, saying she was raised "with every advantage in a pleasant, secure environment." Her father contributed to her thick skin and initially conservative ideology, while her mother leaned quietly Democratic and encouraged her to break gender barriers. "Hillary learned lessons about work and sportsmanship from the men in the family, but it was her mother who provided the most direct and intimate evidence of the importance of scholarship for girls at a time when few opportunities were available to them." (p. 14,16) | In her own book, Living History, Hillary said her childhood resembled Father Knows Best. But Bernstein portrays a much darker image of Hillary's father, Hugh Rodham, as a domineering, verbally abusive figure: "Life in the Rodham household resembled a kind of boot camp, presided over by a belittling, impossible-to-satisfy drill instructor." But, he adds, "the experience of standing up to her father also prepared her for the intellectual rough-and-tumble that honed Hillary and Bill Clinton's marital partnership, and helped inure her in the arena of political combat." (p. 15,16) |
| Hillary at Wellesley | Like most undergraduates, she toyed with various identities on campus — social reformer, intellectual, hippie or misanthrope. But it was as president of her class during her junior and senior years, the authors claim, that she found her true calling — and self. "Most of her classmates do not remember Hillary talking openly about running for public office someday — but she didn’t have to, because so many of them did it for her. She was a natural." (p. 30) | Though she experienced a rocky transformation from Goldwater girl to Democratic leader at Wellesley, Hillary remained an effective student body president, helping the campus avoid the violence typical of so many American colleges during that time: "The response of the women on campus to the explosions and turmoil outside was largely determined by the leadership of Hillary working with the college administration and her fellow students." (p. 52-53) |
| Hillary at Yale | As a leading figure of a law school class that was only 10% female, Hillary first showed signs of her ability to transcend her gender. It showed in other ways too, as when she first met Bill: "She stood up from behind her desk, walked over to her admirer, extended her hand for a shake, and said, 'If you’re going to keep looking at me, and I'm going to keep looking back, we might as well be introduced. I'm Hillary Rodham.'" (p. 14) | It was on Yale's law school campus that Hillary first met Bill, and Bernstein hints at an already dysfunctional dynamic between the newly formed couple: While Bill helped Hillary land on the Watergate impeachment committee staff shortly after graduation, "some fellow students thought Clinton's attraction to Hillary was calculated, that he was trading on her renown to advance his own stature on campus and beyond." (p. 82) |
| Marriage | Gerth and Van Natta claim before Hillary even married Bill (after turning him down several times) their relationship was mostly based on a secret, established political arrangement. "They agreed to embark on a political partnership with two staggering goals: revolutionize the Democratic Party and, at the same time, capture the presidency for Bill." (p. 53-54) |  Bernstein addresses the suspicion that Hillary and Bill's marriage is based on shared political ambition instead of love. "One friend ... thought they were caged in a marriage that they both deeply resented; the ultimate prize, the presidency, was so alluring, however, that it was worth suffering." (p. 311)
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| Religion | While Gerth and Van Natta don't touch on much of Hillary's religious influences, they do say one of her childhood pastors , Rev. Don Jones, played a small role in shaping her character. "Perhaps the greatest revelation Jones offered was that there were less fortunate people than Hillary and her friends in Park Ridge, and that America was experiencing the beginnings of a great disenchantment." (p. 20) | Bernstein's biography reveals a genuinely spiritual woman whose religious convictions often seemed self-righteous and even a bit bizarre: "She dabbled in New Age spiritualism, almost always carried with her an underlined and dog-eared book of celestial axioms, and welcomed into the White House Solarium a pair of feminist oracles who channeled her into Eleanor Roosevelt’s soul." (p. 10) |
| Motherhood | Before Chelsea headed to California to attend Stanford, the book says Hillary counted on her daughter for support during her White House days. "Throughout their time together in Washington, Hillary had always managed to make time for her daughter ... she had provided a sort of ballast amidst the scandals and attacks." (p. 168) |  While Chelsea sometimes appears to be a token child for the Clinton political machine, Bernstein reveals that Hillary would’ve preferred a larger family but suffered from a medical condition that impaired her fertility. Hillary once startled a TIME magazine reporter when, at the age of 49, she said that she and Bill were "hoping to have another child." (p. 154)
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| Hillary's Sexuality | The authors say Hillary was born with a masculine toughness and quote her mother in the first chapter saying, "Boys responded well to Hillary. She took charge, and they let her." One of Bill's ex-girlfriends Marla Crider said she came across a personal letter between Bill and Hillary. "The note talked about all of their future plans...political plans; that is the best way to put it," she said, adding that she found it "so unusual that there was no talk of a home, family and marriage." (p. 54) | Hillary was never known to be an overtly sexual person. Bernstein suggests she even tried to downplay her attractive features in college by wearing "coke-bottle glasses." But Bernstein quickly refutes suspicions of homosexuality: "One wonders if a malleable male politician, say Bill Clinton, a former overweight band boy, would be accused of having 'experimented' with being gay at Georgetown University, in the same manner as 'tough, inflexible' Hillary at Wellesley." (p. 47) |
| Hillary as First Lady | Hillary is presented as an unprecedented type of First Lady, who ambitiously and (for the most part) successfully engaged herself in the president’s decision making, despite the disapproval of the public and some members of Bill's staff. They write 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..." (p. 138) | While the Clinton campaign started off as "two-for-one" deal, Hillary's early fumblings — failing to pass a health care reform bill, mishandling the White House press corps and instigating Travelgate — caused her to leave the playing field, or at least be pushed to the sidelines: "As Bill and his aides developed a strategy for the 1996 presidential campaign, the phrase 'damaged goods' was frequently used in the White House to describe Hillary’s political utility and, sadly, more." (p. 459) |
| Hillary's Health Care Initiative | While Gerth and Van Natta say she "dazzled commentators" with her ideas and speeches, she just didn't understand how Congress worked and rubbed some members the wrong way by trying to bypass legislative rules. They found that, "This too was classic Hillary: brilliantly book smart, a fantastically quick study when it came to policy — but sometimes jagged when it came to practice." (p. 130) | Hillary's mishandling of the Administration’s healthcare reform bill was not for lack of preparation. But critics say she took on too much, refused compromise and ignored basic budgetary restrictions. Bernstein quotes Senator Bill Bradley, who says, "You don’t tell members of the Senate you are going to demonize them. It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy." (p. 304) |
| Whitewater | While they say it was an embarrassing mistake, the authors portray Hillary as mostly innocent in the famous Whitewater scandal and instead put the blame on Bill's political friend and Hillary's client Jim McDougal. (p. 67) | "In truth, the 'Whitewater' story became overblown almost from the moment the New York Times wrote about it ... in a series of articles and editorials that were increasingly long on innuendo, short on context, and in some important ways, unfair to the Clintons." (p. 349) |
| Hillary and Gore |  The authors say they were told, "The two ‘never had a good relationship’ and vied over access to Bill." They say the rivalry continued once the Clintons left the White House and recently spilled over into Hillary's presidential race when she took up Gore's token issue of global warming on the campaign trail. (p. 123)
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Bernstein describes a rivalry between the two politicians over access to and influence over Bill. The rift deepened when Gore plainly chose to distance himself from the Clintons in his 2000 presidential campaign: "Bill and Hillary both believed, as did many astute political analysts, that Gore's strategy had probably cost him the election." (p. 545) |
| Monica Lewinsky/Impeachment | The authors say Hillary's concerns were more about her political career than her marriage, and in the end she came out on top. "Indeed it gnawed at Hillary that her role as the silent, aggrieved wife had earned her record approval ratings and the affection of much of the country. And yet, as a politician, was she not supposed to make the most of it?" (p. 202) | While it exposed her husband's worst qualities, the entire Lewinsky scandal, despite its humiliating details, actually softened Hillary's public image: "Many saw her handling herself under the most difficult circumstances imaginable with dignity and fortitude," simultaneously nursing her wounds and salvaging her husband’s political career. (p. 528) |
| Other Legal Woes | Gerth and Van Natta say the way Hillary handled her legal issues — from Whitewater, to her billable hours as a lawyer to filing the correct paperwork for the experts on her staff as a senator – says something meaningful about her character. "Her failure to file reports on her fellows 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) | Bernstein includes several damning quotes that suggest Hillary believes herself to be above the law. However, he often dismisses the severity of her cover-ups, saying they were more likely to protect Hillary from embarrassment than jail time, "And it appeared to be true that, in the tax returns, there was no evidence that the Clintons had done anything illegal, only the extremely embarrassing revelation that Hillary had made a $100,000 killing on cattle futures, which led to her subsequent feeble attempts to explain her supposed expertise on the subject." (p. 355) |
| Hillary as a Senator |  Gerth and Van Natta portray Hillary as the queen bee of the Senate, poking into where a junior senator wouldn’t typically be allowed. They say Hillary excelled despite the doubt of others and quote another presidential contender, Sen. John McCain: "She came into the Senate under the most intensive scrutiny of any senator in recent history, probably since Teddy Kennedy [and] she has conducted herself very admirably." (p. 254)
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Bernstein praises Hillary for her work in the Senate, describing a smooth transition despite the surrounding media frenzy regarding her dual role as First Lady and Senator. “Hillary’s ability to adapt to new circumstances ... had almost never betrayed her. Its success was never more apparent than her first year on Capitol Hill. She approached almost every aspect of her job opposite the way she had in the White House ... She learned the ways of the Senate. She identified who her enemies were, or those of her husband, and waged a campaign to win them over, or at least neutralize them." (p. 546-547) |
| Sept. 11 | The authors say 9/11 presented Hillary with a unique dilemma, since she had to consider both how to defend her husband’s presidency but also show herself as "an energized street fighter for a shattered city" she represented. "Quickly separating herself from Bill's legacy was important and politically expedient. That weekend, more Americans in a poll blamed the Clinton administration than the Bush administration for the terrorist attacks." (p. 234-235) | Bernstein devotes just one paragraph to Hillary's reaction to 9/11, saying that "more than most senators, the 9/11 attacks radically altered Hillary's agenda." She, along with New York's senior senator Charles Schumer, became the city's most effective advocates for financial aid. Her previous political ties, most notably with Senator Robert Byrd, made her especially effective. (p. 548) |
| Iraq Vote | The authors are critical of Hillary's Iraq vote, saying she contradicts herself in speeches defending the vote and didn't seem to make an informed decision. "Hillary knew her vote, in many ways, amounted to a test of her ability to make life-or-death decisions, which is a direct responsibility of the commander in chief.... Yet if she did not bother to read the complete intelligence reports, then she did not do enough homework on the decision that she has called the most important of her life." (p. 247) | Bernstein defends Hillary's vote on the Iraq war by recalling her experience in Bosnia, where she had spoken with local soldiers about their view of American commitment: "That helped convince her that the United States military must continue to maintain secure borders and be engaged in some areas of historic conflict." Bernstein also suggests that Bill's decision not to invade Rwanda during the 1993 genocide weighed on Hillary's mind when she cast the vote in favor of war. (p. 461) |
| Hillary as a Presidential Candidate | The book describes her campaign so far as a balancing act — "the linkage between herself and her husband enhanced Hillary’s greatness, but in some ways it diminished her, too." While Gerth and Van Natta concede that Hillary has financial and name recognition advantages over her opponents, they don't think she's a shoo-in for the nomination. (p. 338-339) | Bernstein only mentions Hillary's presidential candidacy on the penultimate page of the book. "Increasingly, what Hillary serves up for public consumption, especially since setting her sights on the Senate and the presidency, is usually elaborately prepared or relatively soulless. This is a true shame." (p. 553) |
| In Conclusion | Gerth and Van Natta end their biography depicting Hillary in two conflicting lights: the first, as a warm, funny female candidate poised to make history and the second, a stubborn, thick-shelled candidate who is unwilling to acknowledge her mistakes. They quote Bill saying, "Tonight I feel more strongly than I did thirty-five years ago, when I told her that out of all the people in our generation, she's still the best," but go on to say that it's up to the American people to decide whether Bill is correct. (p. 345) | Bernstein's book ends on a surprisingly sympathetic, even encouraging note, as though he were preaching to a promising but wayward pupil: "Yet there is often a disconnect between her convictions and words, and her actions. This is where Hillary disappoints. But the jury remains out. She still has time to prove her case, to effectuate those things that make her special, not fear them or camouflage them. We would all be the better for it, because what lies within may have the potential to change the world, if only a little." (p. 554) |
