THE SEDUCTION OF HILLARY RODHAM

Author: David Brock
Publisher: Not available
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Features: No public figure in contemporary life has elicited more polarized reactions than Hillary Rodham Clinton. The first presidential spouse who pursued a major policy-making role, the beleaguered first lady has been a heroine and role model to her feminist allies—and to her conservative foes, a malevolent, power-mad shrew. Is she Bill Clinton's greatest asset, or his greatest liability? Now David Brock, America's most controversial journalist, has taken on the most controversial first lady in history, producing a boldly incisive yet surprisingly sensitive portrait. The Hillary Rodham who emerges from these pages is not just a fascinating and unofficial leader of an activist liberal cohort that was born in the social and civil unrest of the 1960s and has risen to the highest levels of American government. A political biography of the highest order, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham is the story of one strong-willed woman's struggle to maintain her personal and political integrity in the face of powerfully seductive forces: the allure of a religiously inspired progressive ideology that engendered easy certainties; the temptations of exercising unencumbered political power in a one-party state; and above all, the appeal of Bill Clinton, a charismatic, talented, but deeply flawed man who may have been both the best and worst thing that ever happened to Hillary Rodham. With unparalleled depth, Brock profiles Hillary's early mentors; delves into the Byzantine world of Arkansas politics; and describes in explicit detail what Hillary has done to ensure Bill's meteoric rise to the top of American politics. Along the way, Hillary comes to terms with the strain in her marriage and undergoes multiple makeovers for the sake of an unprecedented political partnership. She plays an extensive role in staffing the Clinton White House and shaping its agenda, but her vaunted healthcare initiative ends in spectacular collapse, and much of the still-brewing Whitewater scandal is laid at her door. Concluding that Hillary is neither the selfless and untarnished icon her allies would portray nor the scheming Lady MacBeth of conservative demonology, Brock illuminates the character and action of one of America's most poorly understood and unfairly maligned public figures.