Review of "Living History" by Hillary Rodham Clinton

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"Living History" by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Reviewed by Valerie Hawkins

Similar to the sentiment expressed in the July 2 Joe Bob's America column, "Hillary's Magnum Opus," once I began this 562-page memoir by Hillary Rodham Clinton, former First Lady and current Senator from New York, I came to feel that I'd *always* been reading it. My nightmare was that I would awaken and find that my bookmark had been moved back one hundred pages--because another hundred pages had been mysteriously added in the dead of night. Agh!!

It's not that what Senator Clinton has to say isn't interesting. She quickly establishes her identity and her time in the opening chapters. She comes from a solid Midwest family that lived a fairly quiet existence. She is virtually untouched by the world until the turbulent times of the 1960s, which lead her to question and challenge that identity and those times. She comes to move away from the Republican roots of her family and on to the Democratic Party values she now embraces. Clinton zooms along, from her newsmaking speech as the first student speaker at a Wellesley College graduation in 1969, to her meeting with and eventual marriage to Yale Law School classmate and future Arkansas Attorney General, Arkansas Governor, and U.S. President, William Jefferson Clinton.

It was no secret that Senator Clinton was paid an $8 million advance to write this book, and that it was to focus mainly on her eighty--I mean *eight* years--as First Lady in the White House. But at over 500 pages, it's hard not to wonder if there was a dollars-per-word minimum requirement in the contract. In lots of ways, as a woman and as an American, I was fascinated by the dozens of trips to dozens of countries that Clinton made, speaking out and encouraging various cultures worldwide to value their female citizens of all ages, insisting on schooling for girls and financing for women's independent businesses. Her personal encounters with dozens of leaders and their spouses helped these people and their nations come alive for me in a way that none of the 24-hour news cable channels or weekly newsmagazines ever have.

Also evident is the gentle naivete that belies all of her (and, some would say, her husband's) work: an unwavering belief that the way things have always been run not only isn't good enough but also can be changed. This belief did pave the way to successful welfare reform. But it could not disentangle the snarl of health care reform. In leading the latter project, Clinton made herself perhaps the most visible and politically active First Lady ever--or should that be most visible political target? It's hard to remember a time when Clinton was in her husband's shadow, if she ever was. But as much work as she took on in the White House, it seems America was most happy with her when she was performing the more conventional role as mother to daughter Chelsea.

The book inadvertently poses the question of what might have happened if Clinton had paid more attention to her other more conventional role as wife. Certainly President Clinton is wholly responsible for his own actions and his admitted infidelity with intern Monica Lewinsky and its consequences. But the months prior to the impeachment and attempted removal from office show a flurry of trips and extended visits overseas, where Senator Clinton was home for only days at a time. I'll be surprised if President Clinton's own upcoming book doesn't at least hint at the fact of his wife's many long absences.

Joe Bob likened this tome to a speech, but I'll go one step further. As Clinton is a lawyer by trade, I'd say "Living History" is the testimony about her life and activities that she wished she could have given to the federal government during the Whitewater investigation. Clinton clearly establishes who the innocent and guilty parties are, and what everybody had to gain by prolonging this smoke-and-mirrors case, including tying in the Paula Jones civil suit. She makes good use of the books already published about the investigation, especially former adversary David Brock's "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," in which he admits exaggerating and fabricating stories that put the Clintons in the worst possible light.

Hopefully, the book--and its runaway success, which prompted at least one conservative analyst, Tucker Carlson, to eat his disparaging words and, as he promised, his shoe (well, a cake in the shape of his shoe)--has been therapeutic for Clinton and allowed her to more fully move ahead to the challenges of being a new member of the U.S. Congress. She makes no mention of any future political aspirations--she presents her decision to run for senator as more responding to a dare than anything else--but it's hard to foresee an American political future in which she will not figure prominently. Four stars.