It takes a little voice

There is a story about Hillary Clinton, which, like all other apocryphal tales, has more than a little truth to it. It goes something like this: Hillary and her husband Bill were driving cross country in America, when they pull up at a gas station to refuel, and the gas attendant turns out to be an old flame of Hillary's when she was still Hillary Rodham.

Bill, unable to resist a jealous dig, tells Hillary of her good fortune in marrying him and not the attendant "" given their career trajectories. Without missing a beat, Hillary retorts, "If I'd married him, he would've been President of the United States."

When Bill Clinton took over as President of the United States, not only did America get its first baby boomer President, but also a First Lady who was a product of the women's liberation movement that had swept American campuses along with the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Hillary, a successful lawyer in her own right who still retained her maiden name, was her husband's closest advisor, and one who dressed like a blue stocking at that too.

Needless to say, America was shocked to see the twinset-wearing Hillary as Barbara Bush's successor. Edward Klein, the author of The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew, And How Far She'll Go To Become President reflects some of this jaw-dropping in his book.

What is inexplicable, however, is the same reaction to Hillary even after she adopts her husband's name, tames her wild curls with hair spray, and appropriately "stands by her man" during the whole Monica Lewinsky affair. Frankly, far from being an expose of Hillary Clinton's alleged double standards, this book appears to reveal the author's own confusion on whether he dislikes Hillary because she is a feminist or because she's not.

Hillary Clinton is not a person who inspires easy affection, but the book makes one feel a sneaking sympathy for the woman, blamed for nothing more than overweening ambition. In response to what is clearly a Brutus-like attack, Hillary Clinton's political masterstroke might just be a Mark Antony speech in heed of her own little voice.

The book suffers from a flaw typical to celebrity biographies nowadays. In the absence of any close associates of the subject having spoken to the author, he has had to make do with interviews with such worthies as hair dressers, assorted secretaries, aides and sundry temps. Offhand remarks, thus, are quoted authoritatively as reflections of Hillary's state of mind during the entire Monica Lewinsky affair.

Worse, the book makes puerile attempts at titillation through allusions to Hillary's sexually cold nature, even as it seeks to portray her as a "platonic lesbian".

When the author comes to the second part of the book, which is devoted to Hillary's New York bid for the Senate, you can't help but cheer for the former First Lady at having finally got rid of her troublemaker husband and grasped the spotlight for herself.

And yet, if the author had elaborated a bit more on the Clintons' ill-fated healthcare programme, or even the shady dealing before and after the Whitewater scam, he would have made a stronger case for what seems to be the main aim of this book: that Hillary Clinton should be kept as far away from the White House as possible.

The latest update on Hillary is that a former District Attorney from New York, Jeanine Pirro, seems to have thrown her hat in the ring for the Senate seat. American blog sites across the internet are full of the upcoming "cat fight". Pirro's main campaign strategy seems to be to paint Hillary Clinton as an outsider using the NY senate race as practice for the Democratic Presidential nomination race.

A note of advice for Ms Pirro: during the last Senate elections, the Republican candidate Rick Lazio alienated voters during a televised debate with his in-your-face aggression. Buy yourself a copy of Klein's book, if only to see how not to give your opponent what we in India call a "sympathy vote".

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THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY
WHAT SHE KNEW, WHEN SHE KNEW, AND HOW FAR SHE'LL GO TO BECOME PRESIDENT

Edward Klein
Sentinel, New York
Price: $17.95; Pages: 305