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Personal memoir or political biography?
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A promotional book for self-serving ends is M.S. NAGARAJAN's verdict on Hillary Clinton's Living History.
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FIRST things first, the vital reception statistics. The New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's 562-page memoir, Living History, has hit every bookstore. The publisher, Simon & Schuster, has paid her $4 millions already, of the promised $8 millions. The first print of this much-hyped memoir runs to one million copies, of which 200,000 were reported to have been sold on the first day of its release-an all time record for a non-fiction book — when the former first lady signed 1,000 first copies at Barnes & Nobles, New York. It tops the list of bestsellers in non-fiction. And there still lies the book-tour launch into the bargain.
Very nearly the first hundred pages are devoted to her parentage, schooling, courtship and marriage to Bill. Hillary comes of a strict and religious Methodist family. It was at the Yale Law School she met her prospective husband, Bill, tall, handsome who looked "more like a Viking than a Rhodes Scholar returning from two years at Oxford." Hillary and Bill were married in 1975 after five years of living together. Their only daughter Chelsea Victoria Clinton was born in 1980.
Their election campaign was one long piece of adventure marked by lots of negative campaigning, personal mudslinging and scurrilous remarks directed against them — not uncommon in Presidential elections where the stakes are high. Former President Nixon too joined the fray. The supermarket tabloids carried sensational stories and sexual innuendoes such as the Gennifer Flowers affair in which she claimed that he had fathered her kid during their 12-year relationship. Words, wrenched out of context from her TV interviews, sparked controversy and his political adversaries attacked her viciously and venomously, personally and relentlessly with a total disregard for propriety or decency. She was even called an insult to American motherhood.
The election campaign, however, proved a roaring success. Their slogan "Fail to plan, plan to fail", clicked. Bill won hands down, ascended the throne as the 42nd President. No wonder Hillary felt the thrill of the victory on the marrow of her bones. A new world of hope and fulfilment had opened up. All through the rough and tumble of public life, the two of them never lost sight of their parental obligations to Chelsea. Hillary's healthcare reforms did not meet with public favour as was evidenced in the midterm polls. For her women's rights are human rights and she is convinced that her involvement in women's issues around the world is her major contribution to social uplift.
In the chapter "Silence is not Spoken Here" she quotes from a poem presented to her by an undergraduate Anasuya Sengupta (a Rhodes Scholar, now living in Bangalore) during a luncheon session at Lady Shriram College, New Delhi. Too many women/In too many countries/Speak the same language/Of silence.
The most vivid memories she had of India were not of the Taj Mahal but of her visit to Gandhiji's Sabarmati ashram. "The deprivation,' she writes, "I had seen and the simplicity of his life reminded me of the excesses of mine."
Hillary is content that by the end of Bill's first term, their promises to the nation had been fulfilled. The nation's deficit had been cut by half, there was a remarkable boom in the economy, 10 million new jobs were created, tax cuts were sanctioned, healthcare coverage was given even for lay-off periods, not to speak of many other welfare schemes. Bill's re-election was a sure vindication of his policy of welfare schemes. The Americans ratified his leadership. At the end of the second term medical benefits and food stamps were given to low age earners, child poverty dropped by more than 25 per cent and with improved economy more than eight million people had crossed the poverty line. A strong economy and a clean environment were the watchwords.
One Paula Jones who claimed that she had met Bill in a hotel at Little Rock accused him of sexual harassment and filed a civil suit claiming $700,000 in damages. Bill's lawyers thought this suit would be dismissed summarily but the Supreme Court allowed the case to proceed. Bill had to be questioned under oath. Four days later, on January 21 Bill woke Hillary up to say that there were news reports that he had had an affair with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and that his behaviour was not improper. Hillary dismissed this as another tabloid story to malign her husband who could not be opposed politically by his detractors. It was yet another vilification campaign. At a press meet he even made a firm denial that he had sexual relations with Lewinsky. On the morning of August 15, 1998, fell the bombshell. Early in the morning Bill confessed to Hillary that he had had inappropriate intimate relationship with Lewinsky: what had happened between them was "brief and sporadic". Hillary was `dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged.' After this incident, during their sojourn at Martha's Vineyard, the only member who kept Bill's company was Buddy, their pet dog. Bill made a public confession of the affair with Lewinsky. Despite all this the opinion polls in his favour remained high. And then came the impeachment with the 445-page Starr report in which the word sex appears 581 times. The articles of the impeachment were referred to the full house for vote. Hillary was convinced that the impeachment itself was part of the political propaganda, which was meant to sabotage the President's agenda on the improvement programme and welfare reforms for the nation. Bill's coming out of the impeachment unscathed, the end of the Presidency, and Hillary's election as the New York Senator form the rest of this fascinating book.
The eight years at the White House were turbulent: on the political front every attempt was made to tarnish their image and undermine their reputation. They had to face one crisis after another. They faced them, she says, with guts and grace abounding. The Clinton home seems to be filled with overflowing cheer and laughter. The book too is filled with evocative, little family details like comic interludes in a Shakespeare play. Two mutually exclusive questions keep surfacing. (1) Are the Clintons still a loving couple? (2) Is it a marriage of convenience? The text answers the first in the affirmative and the subtext raises our doubts. As for the second, Hillary would have — should have — known in her wedlock that Bill was not a paragon of manly virtues when it came to women. The American press and public have no credence for Hillary's denial of any foreknowledge regarding Bill's infidelity in the past or his sexual liaison with Lewinsky. The conclusion one may draw is that Bill and Hillary are a power hungry couple staying (or simulating to stay) in what appears a practically strained marriage — all for the sake of striking a good deal, a political partnership. She is a widely travelled, disciplined woman, a formidable figure in public life committed to living her own life, listening to her own heart and not to anyone else's. May be her real target is the Presidency in 2008 though, as of now, she denies any such wish. A former First Lady to become the first woman President of the U.S.! To achieve it who could fill the role of a political advisor better than Bill? For the nonce, Living History serves her cause marvellously. A promotional book for self-serving ends! In her own words, the phrase that sums up her political philosophy is, "It's always about the future." What future has in store for her — or for anyone, for that matter — God knows!
Living History, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Simon & Schuster, $28.
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