Hillary should have written her story, not history

Old joke: Bill and Hillary Clinton are on a road trip. They stop by a gas station and the attendant begins to chat with Hillary. When they start driving again, Bill asks Hillary, "Who was that?" She answers, "Oh, a guy I used to date." He then says cockily, "Well, aren’t you glad you married me instead of him?" She then declares, "Oh, he’d probably be president of the United States if I had married him."

In many ways, Hillary Rodham Clinton was a polarizer: you either loved her or hated her. She was portrayed by the conservative Republicans as a militant feminist who was a "co-president," an unelected power behind the throne. Her fans saw her as a maverick, a pioneer who redefined the role of the First Lady in an era of sweeping changes for women. Many also saw her as an enigma – a strong, independent woman who stood by her man and forgave him when he admitted to infidelity.

Most people who buy her book Living History will probably want to head straight to Hillary’s account of the Monica Lewinsky affair, as even the book’s publishers chose to pounce on that aspect of the story. Well, if you are looking for the same salacious, juicy tone that the Kenneth Starr report had, you won’t find it in this book.

In fact, most of the book has a detached air about it. Even when she writes of her early life, Hillary’s writing comes off as wooden and remote. One can’t help but wonder if Hillary would have benefited from an editor who could have polished and in a way, "humanized" her writing. There is no denying that she is an intelligent, articulate woman. She has the ability to express herself succinctly and forcefully, a skill that came in handy in writing addresses and keynote speeches. However, an autobiography cannot read like a speech. It must throb with the complexity and humanity of a life.

There are parts of the book that are genuinely moving. Hillary’s dad suffers a debilitating stroke in the first few months of Bill’s first term, and as pressure mounts for her to come up with a health care plan, she and her mother have to decide whether or not to take her father off life support. She describes the nurses who cared for her father as "living saints" and when her father does die, and she muses on her relationship with him, her adoration comes through her sadness.

Her trip to India in March 1995, her first extended overseas trip without her husband, also had a very touching scene. A young student, Anasuya Sengupta, wrote a poem to honor Hillary’s visit and the poem was so truthful and eloquent that Hillary used the poem in her speech on women’s rights at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The poem was called "Silence":

Too many women
In too many countries
Speak the same language
Of Silence . . .
We seek only to give words
To those who cannot speak
(too many women
in too many countries)
I seek only to forget
The sorrows of my grandmother’s
Silence.

The reading of this poem created a watershed in press coverage of Hillary. The US Press Corps and the Indian public were both so moved that the First Lady of the United States would quote a young Indian schoolgirl that they began to see Hillary as a true advocate of women’s and children’s rights, rather than just a woman who preferred not to bake cookies and "stand by her man like Tammy Wynette."

Many of her accounts of her travels read like episodes of Oprah’s Remember Your Spirit segment. When she meets Nelson Mandela, she writes of his tribute to his jailers at his own inauguration and quotes him as saying, "If I didn’t leave behind my bitterness and anger, I knew that I would still be a prisoner." But one longs for more details. Again, more humanity. One of her main themes in her advocacy is the "humanization of politics." The same battlecry could be used for her writing.

It was interesting to read of her friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. One of the first things she did as First Lady was to seek the advice of the most iconic of First Ladies. Here she writes how a fan becomes a friend. An interesting anecdote: "The first thing I noticed about her apartment was that it was overflowing with books. . . She is the only person I’ve met who literally decorated her apartment with books–and pulled it off. I’ve tried to duplicate the effect I saw in Jackie’s apartment and her Martha’s Vineyard home with all the books Bill and I own. Predictably, ours never look quite as elegant." There are more stories of summers with the Kennedys at Martha’s Vineyard. And she reprints verbatim the note John Kennedy Jr. wrote them after Jackie died, in which John expresses gratitude and pays the ultimate compliment. John jr. wrote: "Your presidency was so much like my father’s." Knowing that Bill Clinton repeatedly claimed that John F. Kennedy was his inspiration for entering politics, it was the ultimate in diplomacy for John Jr. to have written that.

Admittedly, Hillary has led a fascinating life. So one reads on, if only to get a firsthand account of historic world events. Her musings on the disparity of life of Pakistani women, where one meets a Benazir Bhutto, who studied at Harvard and Oxford but there are still thousands who still live in purdah, that is who must remain indoors unless their husbands tell them they can leave, are a thoughtful ponderance of women’s rights. She has met royalty and world leaders, and as she had a most ordinary life growing up, she is not jaded about meeting celebrities. The book would have been a much much better read if Hillary was more concerned with truly writing HER story, rather than history.

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Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton is available at Powerbooks.