The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Biography - Hardcover

Milton, Joyce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688155014 ISBN 13: 9780688155018

Publisher: William Morrow, 1999

Synopsis

In 1998, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the most admired woman in America while also becoming the most visibly wronged wife in the world. Standing by her husband, President Bill Clinton, as she and the nation learned the truth behind the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the First Lady assumed two roles--dutiful spouse and passionate defense attorney--which she had played on numerous occasions during the course of their tumultuous yet politically unified relationship.

Now esteemed biographer and journalist Joyce Milton examines this formidable, fascinating woman, giving probing insight into the First Lady's character, her values and her career. In The First Partner, Milton goes behind the scenes at the Clinton White House and explores the First Lady's involvement in Travelgate, Filegate, the Health Care Task Force fiasco and fund-raising for the 1996 presidential campaign, showing how these controversies grew out of the tensions in her political partnership with Bill Clinton. Milton also describes how Mrs. Clinton's defensive reactions to her husband's chronic infidelities have often misfired and have sometimes enabled his bad behavior. She examines the differing psychologies of the President and First Lady, yet shows that when faced with political accusations, they take a similar approach of telling only as much of the truth as is necessary--a reaction that has increasingly gotten them into trouble.

Meticulously reported and researched, The First Partner offers keen new understanding of this complex woman who has infuriated and confounded as many people as she has inspired.

About this title

About the Author

Joyce Milton is the author of Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin and several other books. She is also the coauthor of The Rosenberg File. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

A biography of the First Lady that evaluatesmostly negativelyher performance as lawyer, politician, policy wonk, presidential advisor, as well as loyal and ambitious spouse. As Milton (Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin, 1996, etc.) sees her, Hillary Rodham Clinton is a shapeshifter, ``rewriting the rules to suit whatever role [she] happens to be playing at the moment.'' Reworking generally familiar material, Milton takes hard-working and competitive Hillary through her Illinois elementary school and Girl Scout troop, high school and Wellesley College. Her commencement speech at Wellesley put her into the national spotlight for the first time (in a Life nagazine article about that year's ``best and brightest''); at Yale Law school, Hillary met Bill Clinton, who would keep her in the spotlight. A good part of the book is devoted to the Clintons' life in Arkansas, sullied by Bill's philandering, Hillary's penchant for insulting the people of Arkansas, the growing complexities of what became the Whitewater financial scandal (described in confusing technicality), and their combined talent for blaming other people for mistakes. The basis of the Hubbell/Foster/MacDougal relationships are laid out as well. Once in the White House, according to the author, Hillary's demand to be a working First Lady and her general posture that people should accept what was best for them (by her standards) led to the health care fiasco, among other early disasters. Following the 1996 election, Hillary shifted her interest to the international scene, already planning for her postWhite House years. It's uncertain, says the author, how the humiliation of the Lewinsky scandal will affect those plans or the Clintons' marriage, which has already survived so much. Throughout, the author questions Hillary's ethics, judgment, intelligence and abilities, and her manners. It is time for the pendulum to return to center regarding Hillaryshe deserves neither her present sainted status nor her earlier Wicked Witch of the White House characterizationbut this story, complex and detailed as it is, is more spiteful than informative. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Milton may not intend her biography as a hatchet job, but it will be a lot more popular with the "vast right-wing conspiracy" than among those urging Hillary Clinton to run for a New York Senate seat. As in her Charlie Chaplin biography (Tramp, 1996), Milton is more interested in dishing dirt than in understanding her subject; here, she adopts a "gotcha" tone, whether the issue is Clinton's alleged bossiness in high school or her Arkansas real-estate deals. Although Milton's introduction opens by asserting that, in 1992, "I felt I could identify with Hillary Rodham Clinton," it closes with attacks on her subject's brainpower ("She is not a clear thinker, perhaps because she trusts her intellectual rationalizations a lot more than she trusts her emotions") and attitudes (she's "a victim of that great delusion of the 1960s--namely, that it's possible to continually reinvent oneself, rewriting the rules to suit whatever role one happens to be playing at the moment"). Milton has a right to these opinions, but they make her a questionable choice as biographer. With several other Hillary Rodham Clinton biographies due later this year, purchase only if demand is anticipated. Mary Carroll

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688155014
• ISBN 13: 9780688155018
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 435