NYT Book Review: "A Woman in Charge," by Carl Bernstein; Kakutani: "little new in this volume"

[DeepModem Mom]

Today’s Managing Partner in Team Clinton & Clinton
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: June 5, 2007


(Gaspar Tringale)
Carl Bernstein

Given all the sobering things that have happened since the turn of the millennium — from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to the war in Iraq to the Bush administration’s efforts to expand executive power and curtail civil liberties — the sex and real estate follies of the Clinton White House now feel as if they belong to an era long ago and far, far away. Indeed, Carl Bernstein’s new biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton often feels like a very long, very slow acid flashback to the 1990s, rehashing and reexamining, in minute detail, matters like Monica, Whitewater, bimbo eruptions and the state of the Clintons’ marriage.

Mr. Bernstein has written a serious, energetically researched and largely fluent book, but there is little new in this volume: its disclosures amount mainly to embroiderings on already well-known aspects of the Clintons’ lives.

Mr. Bernstein’s overall take on Mrs. Clinton (that her “experiential openness” gave her a “capacity for personal growth and change” embodied by her decision to run for the United States Senate in New York in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal) is remarkably similar to the conclusions drawn by Gail Sheehy in her 1999 book, “Hillary’s Choice, ” while his observations on the dynamic between Mrs. Clinton and her husband — that he was the charmer, she was the disciplinarian — echo remarks made hundreds of times before by reporters as well as former administration insiders like George Stephanopoulos, David Gergen and Dick Morris.

Unlike the other new Hillary book — “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton” by Jeff Gerth, a former reporter at The New York Times, and Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at the newspaper — this volume does not really appraise Mrs. Clinton’s record as a senator from New York and sheds no new light on her stance on the Iraq war or her current campaign for the White House....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/books/review/05kaku.html