The Humanity of Hillary

(4 of 4)
She does admit to a disagreement with the President about asking for a special Whitewater prosecutor. She's against (wisely, as it happened). She describes the Whitewater silliness in far greater detail than she does health care, welfare reform or all those other things she cares about. There is real merit to her complaints about the linked and persistent Republican efforts to discredit her husband. But the Clintons were hardly blameless, and her case is damaged by oversimplification and opacity--her insistence on secrecy, her terrible choice of friends and business partners, her profits in the commodities market (another case of creative naivete), her husband's relentless fudging and lawyering of the truth. She doesn't mention the damage caused by his 1992 military-draft controversy, when Bill Clinton misled the press about receiving his induction papers--the first breach of faith in a disastrous relationship with the media. This is such a long book, and there are so few details. She seems in full flight from the anguish of those years.

"I have devoted considerable space in these pages to my foreign travels," she notes in the introduction. This is a staggering understatement. The only overseas problem that is not explored in these pages may be the deforestation caused by the printing of 1 million copies of Living History. Every other issue, especially those affecting poor women and children, is given long shrift. In a way, this is understandable. The overseas trips were Hillary's happiest times as First Lady. Every crowd was adoring; every stop promoted a worthy cause. Even the traveling press was friendly. She often traveled with Chelsea, and they were a joy to watch together. I was on the first of these jaunts, to South Asia, and I think we all left wondering why life couldn't be more like this in Washington. But Washington is too vital to be civil for very long.

And that is why I won't be surprised if she never runs for President. She must be aware that it would be a crazy, ugly campaign. And in the exceedingly unlikely event that she won, her victory would be easily attributable to her husband's genius--and she knows that the first woman President shouldn't be elected like that. No, the Senate seems a most suitable perch for her privacy and humanity. It is collegial and orderly, a place to grow older and blonder still.