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Empty heart of Hillary
Evening Standard (U.K.) ^ | 06/23/03 | Barbara Amiel

Posted on 06/23/2003 12:25:02 PM PDT by Pokey78

The Hillary Clinton phenomenon is a mystery to me. She bounds from calamity to scandal only to emerge ever stronger. Elected Senator for New York State in 2000, she is now mooted as a presidential candidate. Her memoir, Living History, with its emphasis on her years in the White House, will be heavily promoted when she arrives here in Britain next week.

In fact, it is not a book at all but her business plan for gaining the highest office in the contemporary world. For those of us who find her speeches and writing disingenuous and full of cant, the book's unstated agenda makes her career trajectory doubly depressing.

It is as if we are living in the wrong world when a country as great as America can produce someone with so limited a mental landscape and yet - given Mrs Clinton's career record - entitled to some genuine expectation of landing that top job.

Her book is set in " Hillaryland", a place full of loyal, wonderful people - five pages of whom she thanks. It is the ambience here that enables her to want both to "wring the neck" of her adulterous husband and dedicate her book to him. When her life gets tough, Hillary Clinton has "healing times". She also "sobs" a lot.

She is surrounded by " wonderful, loyal staff and friends." She wants to "relieve the anguish of working people" and treat "her adversaries in life and politics with decency".

Wherever she looks there is a problem; when she tackles it, her message "resonates" and quite often "becomes a manifesto for women all over the world".

Mrs Clinton did not get an $8 million advance, however, to write only of high-minded matters. Her publishers expected her to give a bit on what really went on between her and her philandering husband as they careened through the Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky affairs - Kathleen Willey doesn't even rate a mention. Soapopera aficionados might also have hoped for a few more names of Clinton conquests.

As one of his close acquaintances who had wilted through the sexually frugal years of the Reagan and Bush Sr presidencies predicted happily to me after Clinton's election: "There's going to be a lot of pussy in Washington again."

Hillary's response to questions about her husband's infidelity shows the reticence of a vestal virgin. Such issues, she tells us, are in a "zone of privacy". The one interesting point she could make is never discussed: namely, that people have known from the first days of arranged marriages that continued sexual attraction and fidelity should not be the exclusive plank on which a marriage is built; that the Clintons developed some sort of arrangement or understanding as early as the 1970s that has allowed this partnership to function very well.

Given that Clinton's alleged womanising had been headline news for months, it is impossible to swallow Hillary's version that she knew nothing of these matters, she believed them to be the lies of his political enemies.

Hillary's great talent is to turn all to her advantage. It is not her fault that she has a husband who so publicly breaks his marriage vows but few people could make that into political capital, even in an age that so loves victims and survivors.

Everything, from her unearthly ability to make money in the fiendishly difficult commodities market to the nearly two-year-long inexplicable disappearance of her documents subpoenaed in the so-called "Travelgate" affair to her utter mishandling of health-care reform - the one official job she held under the Clinton presidency - seems only to have catapulted her ahead.

In America (unlike Europe), Bill Clinton has become a faded, almost pathetic figure. His wife seems to have drained the aura and power from him. How does she do it?

One can see that she is one of those interesting human beings who are more attractive when older than younger. This is not simply due to the advice of couturiers, fashion editors and dermatologists, though I dare say it has a lot to do with their skill and her ambitions.

The Hillary Clinton who ran for Senator had her hair blown dry every day without fail. Once elected she stopped that double-quick and reverted, rather winningly, to her frowsy look.

Napoleon used to say, when choosing a general for promotion, "Is he lucky?" Hillary is. It was "luck" that she ran against a helpless, inexperienced candidate in NY after Mayor Giuliani had to pull out of the race due to cancer.

People are swayed and impressed by a lucky person's success, though in assessing actual ability, luck and success may not be the best indicators.

On television or at a podium, Mrs Clinton is a winner. She can amass dozens of information points and link them together persuasively.

She cannot explain or justify her ideas a millimetre below that façade of surface knowledge, but she is rarely if ever asked to do so. Her notions are a mixture of half-digested, semi-socialist nonsense leavened with goody-goodness. Women need more rights. Children need more love - and legislation.

After spending time in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Eritrea, Hillary writes that "No issue is more critical in Africa than stopping the ongoing conflicts - tribal, religious and national."

Few people writing about so unhappy a continent would dare pen quite so pedestrian a conclusion.

IN the end, one wonders what sort of a life does Hillary really have? She has been a fine mother but her daughter is now of age. She and her husband appear to pretty much go their own ways. In person, the attractive, animated face of this woman with the splendid laugh has a pair of dead calculating eyes.

One almost hopes that they conceal a clever Machiavellian mind, that behind this book and its author is a shrewd political operator and that underneath the political clichés there is a much more interesting person.

Surely, one thinks, in the privacy of her bedroom or talking to her closest friends, there is something more to her than she ever reveals? Can it be that one can achieve so much with nothing much more in her head than this?

One almost longs for a malevolent intelligence, but having said that, you turn the page and get the sinking feeling that maybe there just isn't anything else.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: livinghistory
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1 posted on 06/23/2003 12:25:02 PM PDT by Pokey78
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To: Pokey78
Just think - this is what we will see if the BEAST gets elected in 2008!!! God forbid!!! Role Reversal! AHHHHHH!!

2 posted on 06/23/2003 12:30:55 PM PDT by areafiftyone (The U.N. needs a good Flush!)
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To: Pokey78
"...dead, calculating eyes."
3 posted on 06/23/2003 12:32:02 PM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: Pokey78
This whole business started with Andy Warhol. Sheer celebrity, without accomplishment or wisdom, seems enough to turn on this decadent postmodern generation. As this article briefly notes, the Europeans are even more vulnerable to the disease than we are.
4 posted on 06/23/2003 12:34:53 PM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Pokey78
"Her memoir, Living History, with its emphasis on her years in the White House, will be heavily promoted when she arrives here in Britain next week."

Could Hillary be positioning herself to run for Primeminister of Britian?

5 posted on 06/23/2003 12:36:47 PM PDT by Destructor
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To: Pokey78
It is as if we are living in the wrong world when a country as great as America can produce someone with so limited a mental landscape and yet - given Mrs Clinton's career record - entitled to some genuine expectation of landing that top job.

Right on the money. Thankfully, voters in all 50 states will have a say in whether she has the top job.

6 posted on 06/23/2003 12:38:10 PM PDT by Faith
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To: Pokey78
In fact, it is not a book at all but her business plan
for gaining the highest office in the contemporary world.


7 posted on 06/23/2003 12:39:30 PM PDT by Slyfox
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To: Pokey78
She achieved nothing.......she was given everything by our elite media.
8 posted on 06/23/2003 12:44:30 PM PDT by OldFriend (Liberal bias in the media????)
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To: Pokey78
Jack Wheeler give the oldest Clinton joke dating back to when Hillary and Slick were students in Yale:

Question: How did Hillary and Bill first meet?

Answer: They were both dating the same girl.


As my sainted mother use to say, "There's many a true word in a joke."

The dykes will be out turning the air blue trying to get Hitlery elected.
9 posted on 06/23/2003 12:45:06 PM PDT by Zorrito
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To: Pokey78
It's called Teflon. John Gotti, dubbed as the Teflon Don, thought he had it for a while. Teflon has been sprayed all over both amoral Clintoons. They're riding high right now. But like the late Gotti, the Clintoons will have their judgment day. The teflon needs to start cracking.
10 posted on 06/23/2003 12:53:18 PM PDT by lilylangtree
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To: Pokey78
She wants to "relieve the anguish of working people" and treat "her adversaries in life and politics with decency".

Like Billy Dale?

ML/NJ

11 posted on 06/23/2003 12:53:44 PM PDT by ml/nj
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To: Pokey78
In person, the attractive, animated face of this woman

Who is he talking about???? Hitlery is about as attractive as a baboon's behind.

12 posted on 06/23/2003 12:55:01 PM PDT by zip
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To: Pokey78
It's no mystery why Hillary is regarded as a viable political entity. She's the ideal leftist-feminist woman radical feminists, who control much of what goes on in the very left Democratic Party, have been scheming and plotting for many years. I would bet that many average women will vote for her not knowing a thing she stands for except for her vague platitudes about caring for women, minorities, and children. Bill just wanted to be prez and would adopt any program or say anything to further those aims. Hillary will do likewise , but her hidden agenda is a far-left scheme to transform what is the political center much further to the left.
And millions of ignorant, unhappy people will gladly elect her. The Clintons capitalize and thrive on misery. And that is surely what a Hillary Clinton presidency will bring to the U.S.
13 posted on 06/23/2003 12:55:54 PM PDT by driftless ( For life-long happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
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To: Pokey78
I don't believe anyone knows what is in another's heart. That level of arrogant presumptiousness does not make a compelling case against Mrs. Clinton. The only thing available for legitimate critique are her public actions, her advocacy.

What's in her heart is off limits for speculation.
14 posted on 06/23/2003 12:58:47 PM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Pokey78
As usual, Barbara Amiel does a fine analysis.

Some posters are somewhat cavalier in their attitude toward Her Heinous. This is a big mistake

This is an extremely malevolent and dangerous person. What we have to do is at every opportunity reveal her true colors. That this psychopath has a chance at the White House is very chilling.

Go over her past, especially her Black Panther days, with the most thoroughness. There is a lot of grist for the mill here. Play hardball.

15 posted on 06/23/2003 1:07:53 PM PDT by americanSoul (Better to die on your feet, than live on your knees. Live Free or Die. I should be in New Hampshire.)
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To: Lorianne
What's in her heart is off limits for speculation.

Um, no. She opened herself to speculation with her book, despite the "zone of privacy" BS.

16 posted on 06/23/2003 1:08:33 PM PDT by Grenada
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To: OldFriend
She achieved nothing.......she was given everything by our elite media.

You forgot the $100k she was given in the cattles futures trading ...

You forgot the $$ she was given in Whitewater and Madison S&L failure.

17 posted on 06/23/2003 1:10:16 PM PDT by cinFLA
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To: Grenada
I agree she screwed up there. But I still contend no one can say what is in someone's else's heart or that it is "empty" whether they write a book or not.

18 posted on 06/23/2003 1:14:38 PM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Pokey78
It is as if we are living in the wrong world when a country as great as America can produce someone with so limited a mental landscape and yet - given Mrs Clinton's career record - entitled to some genuine expectation of landing that top job.

Uncle Joe Stalin's initial adversaries underestimated him, too.

One almost hopes that they conceal a clever Machiavellian mind, that behind this book and its author is a shrewd political operator and that underneath the political clichés there is a much more interesting person.

=======================

Blake says her book will portray a Stalin who was cruel, cunning, and an extraordinary actor, who "set up the stages for his public scenes, a man who personally masterminded virtually every detail of the great purge trials, including the tortures, confessions, and executions of the victims.

19 posted on 06/23/2003 1:29:24 PM PDT by an amused spectator
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To: Lorianne
As I tell my children, I can only base my judgement of your future intentions on your past behavior. IMO, her past behavior has shown her to be a malevolent, dis-ingenuios, deceitful person. Her continued place on the stage of American politics does not bode well for the future of our country.
20 posted on 06/23/2003 1:38:35 PM PDT by Turbo Pig
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