Hillary’s Poll Vault

It could have been otherwise. Clinton’s life and experiences could have provided all the raw material for a gripping, nuanced narrative. About a young girl’s journey from a newly middle-class household to political assertiveness made possible by sheer determination and demonstration of merit. In a rare, if bombastic, moment of weakness, she writes that while Bill Clinton talked of social change during his campaigns she embodied it. Certainly, many women around the world growing up in the ’60s seized the opportunities offered during that heady time of protest and equal rights movements to chart their own futures. Clinton was one of them. From a conservative Chicago suburb to a leading women’s college, on to Yale law school, and thence into politics — the trajectory could have helped her illumine her political profile and beliefs, as opposed to her husband’s. Late in the book, she speaks of wanting to move beyond the derivative role of a political spouse. In Living History, she had a chance to separate her identity from her presidential spouse’s, but she copped out.

Instead three themes run through the memoirs. One, that her life has been one long battle against bad hair days. From a fake ponytail to cover up a hairdresser’s mistake during her first days in high school, to admonitions from her staff about hairbands during Bill Clinton’s presidential bid, her experiments with her locks are dutifully recorded.

Two, that the right-wing establishment is scheming to get her. The sense of premonition in the early chapters is bewildering. When a college speech attracts accolades and, uh-oh, brickbats, she notes it is a preview of things to come. When she writes an article on “children under the law” for a university journal, it’s occasion for another aside: “who could have predicted” that during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential cam-

paign Republicans Marilyn Quayle and Pat Buchanan would brand her anti-family. On and on it goes, innocuous twists in a baby boomer’s hurried life being distorted.

Three, that she’s a great mother. The only thought that appears to break this reminiscing about a life full of unruly curls and conspiracy theories is the sight of Chelsea. Every few pages, she pauses to exclaim how poised, how independent her daughter has become.

The rest of the book is leavened with accounts of foreign travels as America’s first lady, who she met, what she said. There are no descriptive passages here to enthuse Paul Theroux fans!

Why has she done this? Why has Hillary Clinton given us a socialite’s diary instead of an account of an interesting person negotiating interesting times? Perhaps the answer lies in her future plans, in her conviction that her political foes are waiting to swoop in on any lapse and cast her as a heartless woman in pursuit of wealth and power. Clinton’s political career is still unfolding, in many quarters she is seen as the Democrats’ only hope of winning back the presidency. Her hesitancy to lay her cards on the table is, thus, understandable.

Maybe that is why instead of an honest memoir, what we have been presented with is the first draft of a political campaign.