Perspective

1,000 pages later, I think I finally know Hillary

By REVIEW BY STEVE WEINBERG Special to the Times
Published June 17, 2007

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.

Hillary 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 the biography by Carl Bernstein, I know Hillary the way I might know an older, brainy sister. After reading the biography by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., I feel like I know about Hillary 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. I know; I've done it.

From the selfish perspective of an author, it is a nightmare when a competing book arrives at stores simultaneously with your own. The books will inevitably end up reviewed together. Nobody will earn as much money.

For a reader, though, competing biographies can increase knowledge exponentially. Those who can find time to duplicate my marathon will learn much more about Hillary Clinton from reading both books than from reading one or the other.

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 a U.S. senator must go elsewhere. That elsewhere could be Gerth and 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, 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.

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 good 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. Too many biographers reduce their subjects' motivation to something thematic, such as greed or altruism or sex drive.

Bernstein is also skillful at dealing with rumors. Lots of biographers handle rumors in a maybe, maybe not manner that leaves readers baffled. Bernstein uses the evidence to draw plausible conclusions. For example, he explains why rumors about Clinton's lesbianism are almost certainly false.

The chapter about Clinton at Wellesley is filled with evidence that she was already a leader, a woman people followed because of her brains, hard work and charisma. After Hillary meets Bill Clinton at Yale Law School, however, the biography changes, as it must. Her life is no longer just about her, it is about them.

Bernstein demonstrates how Hillary and Bill formed a mutually advantageous partnership. They knew, against odds that must have seemed ridiculous to everybody else, that together they would reach the White House.

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 nearly defies understanding, because the womanizing made electability so much harder than it needed to be. Bernstein, through his skillful interviewing of individuals who observed the Clintons up close, helps make sense of the situation.

Neither book showered breaking news upon my brain. Still, I found Bernstein's section about Bill's romance during the late 1980s with business executive Marilyn Jo Jenkins astounding. According to Bernstein's sources, who seem reliable, Bill would have divorced Hillary to live with Jenkins. Hillary would not accept a divorce offer, however, partly because of her devotion to rearing daughter Chelsea in a two-parent family.

Jenkins does not surface in the index to the excellent Bill Clinton biography by David Maraniss, published 12 years ago, nor in the Gerth-Van Natta index.

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, I can say for certain that I do not know.

Steve Weinberg is a biographer in Columbia, Mo.

The books

A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton

By Carl Bernstein

Knopf, 628 pages, $27.95

Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton

By Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.

Little, Brown, 438 pages, $29.99

[Last modified June 16, 2007, 21:53:42]