Volume 48, Number 6 · April 12, 2001
Excelsior!
By James Traub
Hillary's Turn: Inside Her Improbable, Victorious Senate Campaign
Michael Tomasky
Free Press, 309 pp., $25.00
Hillary Clinton must be throwing a fit. Here she is, a United States senator, rising up at last from the Grand Guignol of her husband's presidency, eager to be judged on her own merits—and she's pulled back down into the muck. She is, yet again, not 'Hillary,' but one half of 'the Clintons,' and the Clintons are getting it right between the eyes. The gradually unfurling narrative of the former president's pardons of well-connected crooks and swindlers has proved so revolting that even some of the Clintons' most ardent defenders have finally had it up to their keister. Bob Herbert, the New York Times columnist, recently described the Clintons as 'a terminally unethical and vulgar couple' who might well be 'led away in handcuffs someday,' and have in any case forfeited all rights to leadership. This is the kind of language one is accustomed to hearing from the Clinton-haters, like former Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan. Now you hear it from even the stoutest resisters. Clinton-fatigue has suddenly collapsed into Clinton-contempt.
Review, 3967 words
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