Carl Bernstein’s stunning portrait of Hillary Rodham
Clinton shows us, as nothing else has, the true trajectory
of her life and career with its zigzag bursts of risks taken
and safety sought. Marshaling all the skills and energy that
propelled his history-making Pulitzer Prize reporting on
Watergate, Bernstein gives us the most detailed,
sophisticated, comprehensive, and revealing account we have
had of the complex human being and political meteor who has
already helped define one presidency and may well become,
herself, the woman in charge of another.
We see the
shaping of Hillary as a self-described “mind conservative
and heart liberal” —her ostensibly idyllic Midwestern
girlhood (her mother a nurturer, but her father a
disciplinarian, harsher than she has acknowledged); her
early development of deep religious feelings; her curiosity
fueled by dedicated teachers, by exposure to Martin Luther
King Jr., by the ferment of the sixties, and, above all, by
a desire to change the world. At Wellesley, we watch
Hillary, a Republican turned Democrat, thriving in the new
sky’s-the-limit freedom for women, already perceived as a
spokeswoman for her generation, her commencement speech
celebrated in Life magazine. And the book takes us to
Yale Law School as Hillary meets and falls in love with Bill
Clinton and cancels her dream to go her own way, to New York
or Washington, tying her fortune, instead, to his in
Arkansas.
Bernstein clarifies the often amazing
dynamic of their marriage, shows us the extent to which
Hillary has been instrumental in the triumphs and troubles
of Bill Clinton’s governorship and presidency, and sheds
light on her own political brilliance and her blind
spots—especially her suspicion and mishandling of the press
and her overt hostility to the opposition that clouded her
entry into the capital. He untangles her relationship to
Whitewater, Troopergate, and Travelgate. He leads us to
understand the failure of her health care
initiative.
In the emotional and political chaos of
the Lewinsky affair we see Hillary, despite her immense hurt
and anger, standing by her husband—evoking a rising wave of
sympathy from a public previously cool to her. It helps
carry her into the Senate, where she applies the political
lessons she has learned. It is now her time. As she
decides to run for president, her husband now her
valued aide, she has one more chance to fulfill her
ambition for herself—to change the world.
In his
preparation for A Woman in Charge, Bernstein
reexamined everything pertinent written about and by Hillary
Clinton. He interviewed some two hundred of her colleagues,
friends, and enemies and was allowed unique access to the
candid record of the 1992 presidential campaign kept by
Hillary’s best friend, Diane Blair.
He has given us a
book that enables us, at last, to address the questions
Americans are insistently—even obsessively—asking about
Hillary Clinton: What is her character? What is her
political philosophy? Who is she? What can we expect of her?
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