From the selfish perspective of an author, it is a nightmare when a competing book arrives at stores
simultaneously. The books will inevitably end up reviewed together and neither author will earn as
much money. For a reader, though, competing biographies can increase knowledge exponentially.
After a marathon reading session, I have consumed more than 1,000 pages about Hillary Rodham Clinton, courtesy of competing biographies by high-profile investigative reporters. Those who can find time to duplicate my marathon will learn lots more about Clinton from reading both books, rather than one or the other.
Clinton did not help the authors of either book. Yet I feel as if I know her now, finally. Or, to phrase it with more specificity, after reading “A Woman in Charge,” the biography by Carl Bernstein, I know Clinton the way I might know an older, brainy sister.
After reading, “Her Way,” the biography by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., I feel like I know about Clinton the way I might if my information came from the younger brother of her former boyfriend.
Either one of those outcomes is an accomplishment. Writing the life of a controversial person whose career is evolving and who refuses to cooperate is usually a biographer’s nightmare.
It turns out that Bernstein – investigative reporting icon and not-so-successful biographer in the past – has written one of the best unauthorized biographies I’ve ever read about a living person.
New York Times reporters Gerth and Van Natta have succeeded less spectacularly, but have written a biography worth reading.
The biggest objective difference is that Bernstein pretty much stops with the year 2000, so readers who want to learn about Clinton as U.S. senator must go elsewhere. That elsewhere could be Gerth-Van Natta; they devote nearly half their coverage to her Senate years.
The most vital subjective difference between the biographies is the skill of the overall portrayal. Bernstein masterfully explains Clinton as a complicated human being; Gerth and Van Natta, for the most part, fail to make her come alive on the printed page (in fairness to them, this is always a difficult mission). Bernstein has pieced together Clinton’s early life with more authority than is usually the case with biographers harking back to the high school years. Gerth and Van Natta treat her adolescence and young adulthood in less depth.
Insufferable father – or not?
One of the most striking differences between the books is the portrayal of Hillary’s father, Hugh Rodham. Gerth and Van Natta portray him as a good father and husband and suggest Hillary grew up in a serene environment. Bernstein, on the other hand, shows Rodham as “a sour, unfulfilled man whose children suffered his relentless, demeaning sarcasm and misanthropic inclination, endured his embarrassing parsimony, and silently accepted his humiliation and verbal abuse of their mother.”
Bernstein’s summation of Hillary as she leaves her family home in Park Ridge, Ill., and heads to Wellesley College is revealing, and also a harbinger:
“Almost all the essential elements – and contradictions – of her adult character could be glimpsed: the keen intelligence and ability to stretch it, the ambition and anger, the idealism and acceptance of humiliation, the messianism and sense of entitlement, the attraction to charismatic men and indifference to conventional feminine fashion, the seriousness of purpose and quickness to judgment, the puritan sensibility and surprising vulnerability, the chronic impatience and aversion to personal confrontation, the insistence on financial independence and belief in public service, the tenacious attempts at absolute control and, perhaps above all, the balm, beacon, and refuge of religion.”
The passage contains lots of characteristics, some of them seemingly contradictory. That is actually a strength of Bernstein’s biography. He does not treat Clinton in a reductionist manner. Bernstein is also skillful at dealing with rumors, using evidence to draw plausible conclusions. For example, he explains why rumors about Clinton’s lesbianism are almost certainly false.
After Hillary meets Bill Clinton at Yale Law School, the biography changes, as it must. Bernstein demonstrates how the Clintons formed a mutually advantageous partnership.
Why she stayed with Bill
Back then, the election of a woman president seemed out of the question. So Hillary labored to make Bill the electable politician, even as she realized that his extramarital affairs would never cease. Her willingness to back Bill despite his sex addiction to other women nearly defies understanding. Bernstein, through his skillful interviewing of individuals who observed the Clintons up close, helps make sense of the situation.
Neither book showers readers with breaking news. Still, Bernstein’s section about Bill’s romance during the late 1980s with business executive Marilyn Jo Jenkins was astounding. According to Bernstein’s sources, who seem reliable, Bill would have divorced Hillary to live with Jenkins. Hillary would not accept divorce, however, partly because of her devotion to rearing daughter Chelsea in a two-parent family.
Gerth and Van Natta show their skills as veteran investigative reporters when they dig into an arrangement between Cornell University and Clinton to provide Senate staffing that would help her with agricultural issues. They write that the addition of Lee Telega to her Senate staff, with financial assistance from the university, constituted an “apparent violation of Senate rules.”
Their account of Sen. Clinton is evenhanded – they found lots to criticize, lots to praise. How Gerth and Van Natta feel about Hillary as presidential candidate is difficult to discern, because their speculation emphasizes an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand approach. Bernstein enters that mode, too, when discussing how Hillary might perform in the White House.
So, is Hillary Clinton a good choice for president of the United States? After consuming more than 1,000 well-documented pages, all I can say for certain is that I do not know.
Steve Weinberg is a freelance writer in Columbia, MO.
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NONFICTION
A Woman in Charge
The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton
Carl Bernstein, $27.95
Her Way
The Hopes and Ambitions
of Hillary Rodham Clinton
Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., $29.99
