On the day Hillary Clinton returned to Capitol Hill after losing the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, her staff donned sweatbands and gym shorts and staged a Ping-Pong tournament in her office to cheer her up. Frustrated at the way Barack Obama had left her in the technological dust, she turned herself into a digitally charged secretary of state, championing the use of Twitter for diplomacy and once telling a group of technology executives, "Use me like an app."
Though she appeared to glide above domestic politics at the State Department, she always kept one eye on the field, even following a dinner with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace with a phone call to a New York politician who had just won a tough race for Congress. She did not spill the beans to her husband about the planned raid on Osama bin Laden's compound; the former president found out about it from a late-night call from President Obama ("Hillary probably told you," the president said to a clueless Bill Clinton).
Those are among the best moments in HRC, an account of Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state by Jonathan Allen, formerly at Politico, and Amie Parnes, at the Washington newspaper The Hill. Books on contemporary political figures rarely have pinpoint timing, but this one does. Ms Clinton will publish a memoir of her years at State this June, a book that promises to be a carefully baked, heavily frosted and somewhat artificial-tasting cake. The fights about her tenure as the country's top diplomat have been raging for months and will only grow louder. The authors appear to enter just in time to deliver much-needed shots of new information about a figure who can seem at once overly familiar and permanently mysterious.
But they bring us only a short distance. Their Clinton is the stock version, Democratic edition: gracious in defeat and fearless in negotiation, almost perfectly in sync with Mr Obama, rarely making wrong bets despite choices of bewildering complexity. If not for the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, she might, in the authors' view, have had a nearly unblemished record. But the authors are so distracted by staff-on-staff relationships that sometimes Ms Clinton slips out of the frame entirely. Pity the reader who buys HRC wanting to know how her job as secretary of state altered her view of American power, and ends up instead reading about whether Thomas Donilon of the White House had "a little bit of a crush" on her.
Perhaps Ms Clinton was every bit as committed, tireless and sincere as they say, but it's not easy to trust their account since they don't appear to have spoken to anyone with much distance. One of the administration's biggest first-term diplomatic failures - its abortive attempt to force Israel's hand on settlements - is hardly mentioned. Did Ms Clinton, who had more experience than Mr Obama with Israeli politics, anticipate that his effort would backfire? Was she left out of the decision-making loop entirely, and if so, what does that say about her influence? Instead, the book has a stenographic quality. Even highly flattering quotations are printed without attribution: "She has something more driving her than just power," said some brave soul who was unwilling to be quoted by name. "She has a very strong moral compass that she leans into."
The authors are primarily political reporters, not foreign affairs experts, and probably their most persuasive accomplishment is to show, backed by impressive detail, the ways in which Ms Clinton never really abandoned domestic politics. It may be too much to say that she's been planning her next race since the moment the last one ended, but she hasn't neglected it either. In the summer of 2008, she conducted a "massive get-out-the-notes operation" to supporters, personally thanking not 500, not 1,000, but 16,000 people. She used her post at State to cultivate a fresh field of allies, from corporate leaders to Laura Bush. All of those news reports about just how many miles she was logging, the authors tell us, were part of a concerted public relations effort by Ms Clinton and her staff, who knew that voters admired her stamina.
Cast in the role of political spouse, Bill Clinton took on the classic contours of the job: in public, he was known for his good works, but in private he was a ruthless enforcer. Staff members wrote up an enemies list consisting of political figures who had endorsed Obama in the 2008 primaries, and the former president sought to pick them off one by one, often using his endorsement powers in Democratic primaries to try to ice the offenders and get their opponents into office. He wasn't just avenging his wife's loss in 2008, but clearing her way in 2016: "In case she is challenged in the primary, a lot of people, after this, are going to think long and hard about supporting her opponent," Gerry Connolly, a Democratic representative from Virginia, told the authors.
There is other tantalising material in the book, clues for reporters, and eventually historians, to follow up on. The authors hint that Ms Clinton does not have the clearest understanding of her public image. When she made her 2008 concession speech, aides had to persuade her to include what turned out to be its most memorable line, about putting "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling. "It wasn't about being a woman," she told aides, even though for many of her supporters, that's exactly what it was. Later, she seemed mystified when a video of her cutting loose on the dance floor at a diplomatic dinner in South Africa, looking uninhibited and joyful, went viral.
From where we stand now, two and a half years from the height of the 2016 presidential campaign, HRC may be most valuable as a guide to future messaging, an indication of what those closest to Hillary Clinton see as her strongest moments. You can almost hear Philippe Reines, Ms Clinton's crafty public relations aide, parceling out anecdotes: Let's give this one to the "HRC" authors, and save the grade-A stuff - the private conversations with the president, an inside-her-head account of the bin Laden raid - for her own book. Get used to the talking points, and know them for what they are: you will probably be hearing them quite a lot.
2014 The New York Times News Service
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Madame Secretary