A Woman In Charge

Felicity Spector reviews Carl Bernstein's massive new biography of the woman who would be president.

A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, by Carl Bernstein. 640pp, Hutchinson £25.

Eight years to write, 640 pages, interviews with hundreds of friends and colleagues - and what do we have? A book that documents much but reveals very little that's new.

Carl Bernstein's massive work, A Woman In Charge, was originally supposed to be an authorised biography, with the co-operation of both Hillary and Bill. But for whatever reason, both pulled out, calling it "cash for rehash".

So here we have yet another unauthorised version, begging the question: what's the point? When both Clintons have written their own accounts of those times, does the world really need yet another?

"She is better than her own book," says Bernstein. "It is a great story." And certainly his isn't a bad book - indeed it's rather sympathetic, and emerges more or less on Hillary's side.

It's extraordinarily detailed, from Hillary's school days and college years through her early relationship with Bill, her pioneering legal work for children's rights, the governorship in Arkansas, and finally the White House years - which all in all makes for some heavy going.

Bernstein sets out to paint a portrait of a woman at once brilliant and controlling, aggressive, forward looking and highly ambitious, but also the victim of opprobrium she hardly deserved. A woman who, he claims, always had a "difficult relationship with the truth".

There are plenty of insights, of course: the revelations about her father (whose relationship with his family verged on the abusive), her determination to keep secret the details of her husband's affairs, the ways she managed to shield herself from the accusations, the lurid headlines and the grotesque intrusions into her privacy.

Eleanor Roosevelt became her imaginary friend, from whom she drew much inner strength. She would ask: 'How did you put up with this? How did you go on day to day, with all the attacks and criticisms hurled your way?"

There was also her bank of trusted advisors and staff - still known as Hillaryland - which enabled her to surround herself with people loyal to her cause, and her cause alone - a "protective recovery zone".

There are interesting comments on this most complex of marriages: the mutual respect from the very start; when Hillary hung onto her own surname; the commitment each had to the other's ambition; and the empty nest syndrome after Chelsea went off to Stanford which drew the couple closer together.

Sydney Blumenthal describes how the initial sex scandals only increased Hillary's determination to protect her family: this was still a political conspiracy to bring the Clinton presidency down rather than simply a private betrayal. "They were still working as a team," he says. "Without that, nothing was possible."

But it's the final chapters, in which Hillary emerges as a political figure in her own right, where things really get interesting: her decision to run for the Senate in New York, and how she defied expectations by winning the seat overwhelmingly; the new beginning as a local senator who already had a national constituency but who learned her job through listening.

She "didn't seek the limelight," Bernstein points out, "it came to her'. That Senate campaign is now the model for her bid for the White House in 2008, which is turning all the usual political conventions upside down.

But after all those 640 pages, do you emerge knowing more about Hillary Clinton, the person? A little, perhaps. She's someone who is slow to forgive, slow to forget, fiercely intelligent, highly ambitious, a true political activist - but an enigma, still. Read this if you want a comprehensive history of the Clinton years. But don't expect any headline-grabbing revelations.

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