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Lady in waiting: what Hillary really reveals in her new memoir

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2003 by Carl Sferrazza Anthony

LIVING HISTORY by Hillary Rodham Clinton Simon & Schuster, $28.00

THE WEEK PRIOR TO THE RELEASE of Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) memoir Living History was humorless Washington at its best. With their trademark tin ear for their own absurdity, cable punditocrats vied to see who could comment more definitively on a book that had not yet even been released--and thus, none of them could have read. Tucker Carlson, the conservative co-host on CNN's "Crossfire," even offered to "eat his shoes and tie" if Living History sells a million copies. (That the book sold 600,000 copies in its first week is apparently making Mr. Carlson a tad queasy.)

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Every First Lady since Betty Ford has published a memoir within four years of leaving the White House, a fact that doesn't dampen conjectures that Living History is positioning Hillary Clinton for a 2008 presidential run. Aha--it's a sly grab for power! As Chris Matthews and Christopher Hitches decided. Imagine what she would do? (Why, everyone might get health insurance!) But what would the comments be if she hadn't written the book? Aha! A sure sign that she's running! Clearly she wants to distance herself from the White House scandals!

It is of course unthinkable that Hillary Clinton may have actually revealed something of her true self in Living History. As someone who knows Hillary personally--as I do every other living First Lady--I believe she does. Living History is not only a pleasure to read--an articulate, well-written, and detail-rich account of the Clintons's historic time in the White House that will hold up as a solid work of autobiography for years to come; it is also a book that conveys, with surprising candor, a quiet conservatism at the heart of a woman who has spent years in public life being vilified for her liberalism.

Versed Lady

No previous First Lady assumed the position with a greater knowledge and interest in her predecessors than did Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet while she learned a lot of biographical facts about the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolley Madison, Nellie Taft, and Mamie Doud Eisenhower (who, like Hillary, insisted on always using her maiden name), her greatest mistake in her first months as First Lady was that she missed the important subtext: Use covert symbols and methods to impart influence, and you'll get away with more--and with less criticism--than if you honestly disclose it. Intellectually, Hillary Clinton may have recognized that a First Lady's "power is derivative." But even after a lengthy Ladyship-training session with Jackie Kennedy days after her husband's inauguration, she did not fully grasp how delicately this power must be exercised, and just how much America reveres the mystique of First Lady.

Whether a First Lady wants to get the welfare system restructured or ascertain if the President is sticking to his diet, her most significant power is access to the heart and mind of the most powerful person in the world. And as long as presidents have spouses, fear of that power will be there. Nancy Reagan didn't have to invent perestroika to earn the resentment of administration officials who opposed Reagan's friendship with Gorbachev--she just had to discuss its benefits with her husband. And it is not a phenomenon merely of our time. The editorials denouncing Abigail Adams's influence in the 1790s have the same ring of those denouncing Hillary Clinton in the 1990s.

Presidents and their wives have always been targeted by their political enemies. Witness the visceral hatred of Clinton by right-wing Jihadists, of Nixon by liberal revolutionaries, of Lincoln by rich states-rights Southerners, and of FDR by greedy Northern capitalists. But you'd have to add up all the dire partisan warnings about Eleanor Roosevelt (that she was part of a Red network), the innuendos about Edith Wilson (that she was running the country), the politically-motivated attacks on Nancy Reagan's entertaining style and White House renovation, the outraged mail campaigns against Betty Ford (protesting her support for Roe v. Wade and the ERA), the media exploitation of Jackie Kennedy's private life, the petty charges against Pat Nixon (that she "stole" state gifts of jewelry), and the outrageously boldface-lies published about Mary Lincoln (said to have been supplying Union Army plans to her Confederate kin) to even approach the unrelenting vituperation directed at Hillary Clinton. And yet she not only survived, but also came through it all strong enough to win election to the Senate. Unsurprisingly, she compares herself to tempered steel. By the second inaugural, says Clinton, she felt "harder at the edges but more durable, more flexible."

There are no shocking revelations in Living History like those in the memoirs of Hillary Clinton's predecessors. The very first published First Lady memoir--Nellie Taft's 1914 Recollection of Full Years--stunned the country with its description of Mrs. Taft's overt political ambitions. Clinton drops no bombshells in Living History, as Rosalynn Carter did in her memoirs--revealing her battle with her husband to take bolder actions during the Iranian hostage crisis--or Nancy Reagan did in My Turn, with its cutting assessments of James Baker, Ed Meese, and Ollie North.

Lady in waiting: what Hillary really reveals in her new memoir

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2003 by Carl Sferrazza Anthony

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