Hillary Clinton - First Woman to Bid for the White House
(Reproduced below is a column published soon after Hillary’s book “Living History” was brought out in 2003. As predicted, she has already bid for the While House and emerged as a leading candidate. It may be of interest to those who haven’t read the book))
Having read the 528-page tome of Hillary Clinton’s memoirs of her eight years (1992-2000) in the White House, the inescapable impression I gained was that this cleverly crafted book is an important launching pad for her bid to re-enter the White House in her own right in the 2008 elections.
She has emphatically denied in interviews with the Times magazine and with Barbara Walters of ABC that she would be a Presidential candidate in 2008. “Absolutely not” she proclaimed to both. But then, she had as emphatically refuted earlier the suggestion that she should run for the Senate from New York. She was dared to compete by numerous well-wishers, she contends, and she eventually accepted the challenge.
Her husband, President Clinton, she says in the book, “recognizing that I had a chance to move beyond the derivative role of political spouse and test my political wings, encouraged me to forge ahead.” The intensity of her campaign against Rudolph Giuliani and then against Rick Lazo betrayed her long-term planning and deep desire to capture the crucial New York seat in the Senate despite being labeled a carpetbagger and a transplant to New York.
She will let the possibility of her candidature –the first women in history- sink into the minds of the voters and gain roots there till 2008 when she will reluctantly accept the pressures of her party peers as she did for the New York seat.
The book reveals the reach and strength of her political wings and antennae. Although she entered the White House in her derivative capacity, her education, experience, discipline and intensity of focus had cut her out for a leadership role in her own right. The East Wing of the House that accommodated her office soon came to be called “Hillaryland”.
The book is full of her encomiums on Bill Clinton. But, the fact of the matter is that she had been leading him even during their courtship period. As a lawyer in Arkansas she was making much more than the salary of her Governor husband.
Bill Clinton, a highly cerebral person, a self-made man, a Rhode Scholar, a thoughtful, enterprising person, was by no means henpecked. But, he fully realized the talents of his wife. Credit goes to him for not trying to suppress her. The marriage would have otherwise foundered. Hillary, an equally talented and cerebral person, was no patsy either. The unique combination of the two took them to the highest position in the world.
Their fiscal aberrations, the whitewater episode, the commodity trading scandal in which she made a quick $100,000, the Travelgate, the Filegate, the Troopersgate et al might not be without basis but they were magnified out of proportion by the opposition. No wonder the Independent Council, Kenneth Starr, could not come up with a foolproof case for Clinton’s impeachment. His investigations, however, led him to another truth and reality -Bill Clinton’s serial philandering throughout his career- his illicit liaison in particular with Monica Lewinsky. The case submitted to the Senate hinged mainly on the Lewinsky episode.
Copies of Hillary’s book sold like hot cakes –600,000 in the very first week- chiefly because people expected to read her version of the titillating sex scandals. But, she has dealt with the episodes of Paula Jones, Jennifer Flowers in a highly cursory manner. While Miss Flowers, for instance, claimed that she had had a 12-year affair with Bill, Hillary was satisfied when her husband told her “ it wasn’t true”.
Stories about Clinton’s sexual dalliance are summarily mentioned, discussed and dismissed. No one expected her to wallow in these stories but she touches them so lightly as if they had no role in her life. Her bitter critics have called the book “Killing History” and “Lying History”.
During the Monica Lewinsky mess too, when her legal adviser, Robert Bennett, informed her that something about the affair might be true, she retorted: “My husband may have his faults, but he has never lied to me.”
She writes subsequently: “I believe what my husband did was morally wrong. So was lying to me and misleading the American people about it. I also know his failing was not a betrayal of his country”…. “This was the most devastating, shocking and hurtful experience of my life.”
Hillary viewed subsequently the Lewinsky scandal as “a vast right wing conspiracy”. She has now presented the affair in her book as a personal foible of her husband causing a deep sense of hurt and betrayal to her but no harm to the nation.
A clever, calculating women, a sharp politician, she did not perhaps want him to go down and with him her own future prospects. She had to keep her marriage intact in the interest of her family as much as to keep nurturing her political ambitions. Could she have become a Senator if in a passionate move she had sought the dissolution of her marriage?
She had also to consider the fallout on both her husband and her beloved daughter. Hers was a sane and a far-sighted decision.
She has since becoming a Senator cultivated several prominent Republican leaders to soften their opposition to her candidature for the White House. She has established political ties with the most right-wing Republican member of the congress who had been at the center of her husband’s impeachment in 1998-99.
The book is a superb exercise in public relations. Literally thousands of names of persons who matter have been mentioned in the book and with respect and affection. The chapter at the end of the book acknowledging the contributions of various persons gives literally hundreds of names. Perhaps there is hardly any other book wherein credit is given to so many persons.
She has devoted considerable space in the book to her foreign travels because, as she puts it “I believe that the people and places are important, and what I learned from them is part of who I am.” Also this establishes her credentials as an experienced and knowledgeable person in foreign affairs to lead the sole super power of the world.
Her inquisitive mind kept absorbing information as she went from country to country. She has not faltered in recording her observations. She has allotted almost six pages to the description of what she saw in Pakistan during her March 1995 visit. Her interest throughout her foreign travels was on social welfare activities, social justice, status and progress of women and on education particularly of girls.
The book overflows with love, affection and respect for her daughter, her husband, her father, mother and mother-in-law. Her father in particular evoked in her intense feelings of gratitude for raising her as a confident and self-reliant person. Her description of his last days and demise are highly moving.
Hillary Clinton emerges from the pages of this book as a woman whose steely resolve and sharp intelligence proved the bedrock of her husband’s presidency and whose courage when he let her down impressed women everywhere. Her wisdom in keeping her marriage intact earned her laurels at home and abroad.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
