Hillary Clinton: ‘America’s first warrior lady’

This Week’s Winner

Gabriel Hidalgo Bordado is now on his second term as vice mayor of Naga City in Bicol.   He continues to support such projects as “Libro Para sa Futuro” (Books for the Future) and Quality Universal Elementary/Secondary Education in Naga (QUEEN), aimed at improving the public school system in Naga. Neck-deep in  politics, he nonetheless finds time to read books and to write articles for national publications in order  “to maintain his sanity.”

Life is full of ironies. And Hillary Rodham Clinton has had her ample share.Born and raised in a strait-laced, middle-class Chicago family steeped in Methodist traditions and dominated by an abusive father, Hillary nevertheless became the poster girl of the nascent women’s liberation (later to be known as feminist) movement of the late 1960s. With her friends and admirers predicting her meteoric rise in the national political firmament, Hillary fell in love with Bill Clinton and uncharacteristically decided to forego her ambition and live with him in the backwaters of Arkansas. During the 1992 elections, she fired up her husband’s presidential bid, anchoring her campaign on morality and ethical issues — the very same ones that would hound her in her eight-year tenure in the White House as first lady.

Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (who along with Bob Woodward chronicled the rise and fall of Richard Nixon), highlights all these and more in a 628-page biography A Woman In Charge (Hutchison, 2007). It can be a useful tool in deciphering and making sense of the current acts and sound bites of arguably one of the world’s most exciting politicians.

For most of us, Hillary looms larger than life. She alternately commands awe or dread, respect or contempt, and even adoration or outright derision — depending on your political inclinations. This book, however, cuts her down to size, allowing us ordinary mortals to appreciate her humanity and foibles along with her capacity for redemption.

As usual, Bernstein crafts very compelling reportage, peppered with facts and figures drawn from both primary and secondary sources, including comprehensive interviews with people closely identified with  Hillary and Bill. In the process, it provides the reader with an intimate yet objective view of the life and times of the three- term senator and former first lady who could very well be the first woman president of the United States of America — unless ironies again get in the way!

We begin to empathize with Hillary as Bernstein unfolds the story of her life from multiple vantage points. Now we know that she is a normal human being after all and not a virtual demigod as projected by her spin masters. Neither is she a modern-day Lady Macbeth as portrayed by her legions of detractors. The gamut of emotions she had to go through (and will most probably go through again) finds resonance in our pent-up feelings.

America’s First Warrior First Lady

Bernstein, observing Hillary’s behavior at the White House, describes her as somebody “in a battle zone, operating with ease, intelligence and calm.” He then declares her “as America’s first warrior first lady,” albeit essaying an elaborate explicatory note.

“Hillary is neither the demon of the right’s perception, nor a feminist saint, nor is she particularly emblematic of her time — perhaps more old-fashioned than modern. Hers is a story of strength and vulnerability, a woman’s story. She is an intelligent woman endowed with energy, enthusiasm, humor, tempestuousness, inner strength, spontaneity in private, lethal (almost) powers of retribution, real-life lines that come from deep wounds and the language skills of a sailor (and of a minister), all evidence of her passion — which, down deep, is perhaps her most enduring and even endearing trait.” 

Bernstein thus expertly tempers the “warrior” image, acutely aware of the impossibility of capturing the complexity of Hillary’s personality in just one well-woven phrase or epithet. 

She can also be self-deprecating and witty, occasionally using these traits to devastating effects in her love-hate relationship with the media. Hillary was once quoted as saying “Mama always told me that the White House is like a box of chocolates. It’s pretty on the outside, but inside there’s lots of nuts!”

A Woman In Every Sense Of The Word

Some quarters vilify Hillary as being “cold as steel,” even intimating that she may have some trouble with her sexuality. But Bernstein debunks the innuendoes, propounding instead that she is a woman in every sense of the word. And based on unimpeachable (pun unintended) documents and information, she had normal heterosexual relations, particularly during her college days at Wellesley and Yale.

“Hillary’s exploration during her Wellesley years was focused just as intensely on men as it was on politics. She liked them. Geoff Shields, who had grown up in a much wealthier Chicago suburb… was her first serious boyfriend (or, as Wellesley women were taught to say, beau),” Bernstein writes, citing love notes written by Hillary herself.

Bernstein contends that except for the Monica Lewinsky affair, which led to the impeachment of husband Bill, most of the blunders in the first term of the Clinton administration, particularly the ill-fated universal health care system, could be attributed to Hillary. The lady, however, learned her lessons in due time and these served her in good stead in the Senate, where she would stand out as a feisty and intelligent legislator deftly dealing with contentious issues concerning women, children and social welfare, among others.

Irony Of Ironies

Bernstein, however, expresses disappointment over a “disconnect between her convictions and words and her actions.” But he nonetheless claims that Hillary “still has time to prove her case, to effectuate those things that make her special, not fear them or  camouflage them.”

Whether the lady senator still has time on her side is, at this stage, a matter of conjecture. Of course, she has relentlessly  worked for gender equality, having “thrived in the sky’s-the-limit freedom for women” during her younger days. With no less than Martin Luther King Jr. as her inspiration, she also has devoted a large part of her life trying to help improve the lot of African-Americans. It certainly would be the irony of ironies if the female and African-American voters would abandon the “warrior lady” in her quest for the ultimate prize — the US presidency — if she loses the primaries to an audacious and charismatic dreamer named Barack Obama.

Hillary, however, can always find comfort in the thought that she is not alone as she grapples with life’s ironies. In fact, we may well consider her as one of us.