Living History Hillary Radham Clinton
Finish the biography and found it to be an honest account of the Clinton Administration though the eyes of the First Lady, Hillary Radham Clinton. She worked hard to present a factual account of her life up to being elected Senator of New York without moving into a form of dialect that could have easily been full of vitriol for the way certain men and institutions treated her and her family. She only went so far as to say that Starr had an ego that had him thinking that he was bigger than the Constitution of the United States. Newt was also treated kindly in that she only commented on his moral double standard and many mistakes. The fact that they and the right wing smear machine got away with circumventing the law to slow down and discredit the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party would have made most people livid with rage with the desire to get revenge by any means possible including calling these men all kinds of accurate names starting with slim and ending in the form of excrement after it has hit the ground. But what you also get from this memoir is that enemies can become friends with continued dialog and changing times. The moral being: Don't burn your bridges by calling people names they deserve because in the future they may change for the better. She has remarkable capacity to control her anger and forgive (at the writing of this book she still had not forgiven some of the chief mud slingers) and that is what makes her a good leader.
The second impression I came away with is Ms. Clinton's dedication to equality for women and protecting women and child in the United States and around the world. Her stories about how she came to the themes in a lot of her speeches culminated in the wonderful story about a young woman's poem where she talked about the silencing of women's voices. Silence allows bullies and autocrats to keep hurting and oppressing others. I have to give Ms. Clinton my admiration for giving a voice to all of the women and children around the world. She is quite adamant in saying that she didn't or couldn't have done it alone, but she was a powerful symbol and therefore voice for change in these areas. I agree with her that a society and government only moves forward and becomes stronger when everyone has a voice in their government and society.
Another realization I had while reading this book was that I had an inaccurate impression of Hillary Rodham Clinton which was directly a result of a joke I heard often on a message board of conservative posters. The joke implied that Bill Clinton would not have become president without his marrying Hillary (as told by the first person narrative perceptive of Hillary Clinton). This implied that Hillary was the driving force behind Bill's successes which I guess played into the threat she presented as the ball-busting nagging wife who forces her husband to run for President to ensure he can give her the lifestyle she wanted (this was the aim of those posters who would feel very comfortable in the Mad Men world) as well as making Bill look weak. What I got from the memoir was that Bill would have been President with or without Hillary, but that Hillary found her voice and direction while partnering with Bill on his quest to reach a place where he can help the most people in the shortest time. It was good to hear about their partnership and how Bill and her Methodist background influenced their choices in life. And it was a lesson for me that whisper campaigns are powerful. Just one joke can change peoples perception and trigger their prejudice against someone. Hillary does briefly touch on this at the end of the book when she talks about the New York Senate race.
My final impression is that there was not enough about reforms that were demolished or rolled back by the Republicans and Bush jr after they stole the election. I remember telling a colleague that the Clinton Administration represented the decade of the women, but after 2000, all that optimism disappeared and we had 10 years of fear and terror with crazies in the government predicting a distopic future and passing legislation to prepare for people to live in that future. We had politicians and corporations preparing us for the distopic future of terror and scarcity by telling us to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting in preparation for an unspecified attack at an unspecified location in the US (2003) and that white corn (2007) and rice (2008) were scarce in the world (I still have 5 lbs of rice in my pantry from 2008 - the perfect storm of scary news reports, costco, and hunger). Other than the infantile-ly name Homeland security and the inaccurately named Patriot Act, which rolled back civil rights for all, just what other Clinton and pre-Clinton protections did Bush jr and the Republicans roll-back, destroy, weaken? I would like to hear how far backward we moved in those 10 years before we came to our senses and elected another Democrat. I expect that this may be too painful for some to write about as they would be writing about how their life's work was destroyed by small minded people bent on the acquisition of power, control and money, but I hope someday someone summaries how protections for women and children changed from 1980-2012.
