Rewriting History: a review Dick Morris’s Review of Hillary Clinton’s Living History

This is part of my project to review books written by or about the current Presidential candidates.

So far, I’ve heard an abridged edition of Woman in Charge by Bernstein, Citizen McCain by Drew (which focuses on his role in campaign finance reform), Audacity of Hope by Obama (not ghostwritten). I am currently reading Dreams from my Father by Obama and am through the first part (about one third of the way through).

Some time ago, I read Living History (HRC’s ghostwritten autobiography). Yes, I knew that this was written, in part, to set her up for her eventual presidential run. I knew that part of it was fluff, and I’ll confess that I enjoyed some of the fluff, such as the following:

(page 97)

Once when she (Chelsea) was about four and someone asked her (what her dad did) she replied “My daddy talks on the telephone, drinks coffee and makes ‘peaches”

But the book was far from all fluff; she did talk some about her failure to get health care reform passed, her international trips and her Senate campaign. She also discussed some of the work she did in Arkansas; her legal cases and her work on health care reform and on education reform.

She did have some specific and surprising things to say (page 232)

…I was suprised to encounter more than one Congressman who didn’t know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, both federally funded health insurance programs…

So overall, I thought (and still think) that the book is worth reading (I bought my copy at a library sale and paid all of $1.00)

But at the same time, I knew that she was putting the best possible light on things and trying to make herself “more likable”.

Well, Dick Morris decided that Living History was “Hillary Lite” and decided to write his own book, which is called Rewriting History. So, I bought a copy from a used book store and devoured it in less than a week; it is short and an easy read.

One caveat: Dick Morris was employed by the Clintons for some of Bill’s governor’s races and for political advising during his presidency; he also saw himself as Bill Clinton’s “liaison toward Republican members of Congress”. Morris was let go when he was caught with a hooker and had let the hooker listen in on his conversations with Bill Clinton.

So, I’d recommend reading Dick Morris’ work as you would take the stories told by someone’s ex spouse.

Also, Morris does make a few factual errors and is inconsistent in spots; I found this critique to be fair and accurate. In fact, at times, it appears that Rewriting History was a rush job.

Nevertheless, it is interesting reading and some of what he talks about is indeed appearing in HRC’s current campaign.

What the book is not: RH is not your cheap “hit job”; there are no fantasies about HRC having lesbian lovers, killing Vince Foster, being a part of a drug smuggling ring, etc. People who want such trash need to look elsewhere.

The book doesn’t unilaterally condemn HRC either, for example on pages 1-2 he says:

Some of what Hillary conceals is not dark, only unseen. Not sinister, just covered up, protected from our gaze. Parts of it, although not always flattering, would be quite acceptable if she were to expose it to full public view.

In fact it frequently praises her:

page 7:

Hillary Clinton is a highly focused, hard working, and effective advocate for women and children.

page 8:

[...] Hillary is certainly bright and book-smart…

page 9:

Hillary, in turn, has many strengths that Bill himself lacks [...]

No one has any difficulty identifying Hillary’s signature cause: the needs of women, children and the Democratic Party base. Hillary has a fierce faith in the justice of her own convictions. She is moved by a commendable desire to spare other children the pain her own mother suffered as a child of an irresponsible teenager without the skills or desire to nurture her child. She is passionate about these issues because they are a part of her. She owns them.[...] Her agenda has a moral tone that Bill’s lacks.

He also praises some of her accomplishments; on pages 108-113 he talks about her role on reforming the Arkansas Educational system:

It was Hillary who came up with the idea of a commission that would travel around the state holding hearings and bringing attention to the low quality of Arkansas schools. The commission, which she would lead, would then recommend fundamental reforms [...] Hillary realized that voters-and the state legislature-would be less grudging about raising teacher salaries if they felt educational standards were rising.

(page 109)

Later Morris goes on to say (page 110)

…Hillary did a fantastic job working to reform the state’s backward education system

and later talked about “Hillary’s foresight and courage in her efforts to reform schools” (page 112).

Morris also talks bout HRC’s political abilities as a trusted adviser to Bill Clinton: on page 96-97, he recounts HRC trying to talk WJC into sticking with the messages that voters would believe. WJC wanted to remind the voters in the 1994 elections that he had done “big things” (job creation, cutting the deficit by one third) but she tried to tell him that voters would believe the smaller, more specific accomplishments:

“Bill”, Hillary concurred, “of course you’ve done those things. But nobody believes that you have. Go with the messages they will believe.” It was a familiar scene: Hillary trying to beat some sense into Bill, despite his head-in-the-clouds, prideful refusal to embrace reality.

Also, Morris doesn’t discount that HRC has the potential to be a good president; in fact he thinks that it is possible for her to “grow” in the way that Bobby Kennedy grew into presidential material. But he also thinks it is likely that she might be a Richard Nixon type president too.

So, the first conclusion is that the book is not a hit job.

So what is the book and why was it written?

Mr. Morris wants the reader to know that the Hillary Clinton presented in Living History is, at best, an incomplete view, and at worst, a fraudulent view. He claims that HRC has attempted to construct an artificial “HILLARY brand” (he uses all upper case) to hoodwink the voters. The HILLARY construct is someone who does everything with some higher purpose in mind, never throws elbows or attempts to intimidates, never does things for expediency or even for a mundane reason (see page 43). Also, HILLARY is someone who is entirely comfortable with the traditional mother/wife role while excelling in her “outside the home” job; she bills herself as some sort of “superwoman” (see 45-47).

Morris also seems intent on tackling another idea: the idea that, as President, HRC would be something like WJC.

So Morris sets out to deconstruct these misconceptions; he writes on page 8:

She lacks his instincts, his empathy, his political savvy, his creativity, his subtlety, his antennae, his ostensible earnestness. Bill Clinton is flexible, charming, charismatic and solicitous; Hillary, to put it mildly, is not …she lacks his creativity and intellect. Hillary is robotic, where Bill is as human as they get. He is spontaneous; she is packaged. Hillary is a memorizer, sometimes a plodder, where her husband wanders, ponders, prowls, explores, weights options and circles around a problem, she moves straight ahead. Where Bill loves nothing more than to dance lightly over his policy options, never getting nailed to a firm position until it is the perfect one, she promotes her chosen policies and programs with dogmatic assertiveness. [...]

He can be friends with anyone. She keeps a mental enemies list. He’s a natural. She’s not.

When reading this, I can’t help but be reminded of what Nigel Hamilton said about the two of them at Yale Law School (Bill Clinton: An American Journey, Great Expectations). On page 252, he recounts how a fellow classmate pointed out that HRC made her A’s by doing the usual “good student” things: showing up for all classes, and reading the assigned work, making outlines and studying hard. WJC would go to some of the classes, read some of the assigned work, but then read outside related work, and fuse together a mix of related stuff and the course stuff. He was far more creative and imaginative.

Anyway, in short, HRC would be more partisan, less creative, but more focused than WJC was. She would also be more vindictive, unless, according to Morris, she were to grow in the same way that Bobby Kennedy did. They would use advisers in different ways; HRC would pick fiercely loyal ones (think Hillaryland) whereas Bill thought of his advisers as liaisons to the various groups that he had to get along with. (page 101).

Morris then proceeds to deconstruct the HILLARY construction. He talks about her as a politician, policy wonk, with a knack for hard nosed politics, an ideologue (at heart, a liberal but willing to move as far to the right as she has to in order to remain politically viable), a “material girl” (not really greedy in the sense that she wants to pile up huge amounts of wealth, but rather very much of a “hey, because of my rank, I am entitled to these perks”, even to the point of trying to get petty perks at the expense of her reputation (e. g., taking stuff from the White House, accepting gifts prior to being sworn in as a Senator, accepting house financing that others weren’t able to get) (176-184 (the gifts) and 237-239 (the house)) and as “an inquisitor” (someone who actually hired private detectives to dig up dirt on those who accused WJC of sexual misconduct (199-207)

Morris also describes her Senate campaign (one of the best parts of the book; he details the mistakes that her opponent, Rick Lazio, made during the campaign).

There is much more in the book; another interesting part is his discussion of the various well known WJC scandals. Morris points out that much of the problems stemmed from HRC’s stonewalling the investigation of relatively minor problems (e. g., Whitewater).

Morris also points out that HRC’s playing the unaware cuckolded wife is a sham; she had to have known much of what WJC was doing at the time. In fact, her recently released First Lady Records show that she was in the White House at the very same time when WJC was engaging in his sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinski.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was home in the White House on at least seven days when her husband had sexual encounters there with intern Monica Lewinsky, according to Sen. Clinton’s schedule, released Wednesday among 11,000 pages of papers from her years as first lady.

The words of the schedules are dry, but they take on emotional weight when coupled with revelations about the sex scandal that eventually came to light. A year later, the schedules show her pressing ahead and showing her face at public events as revelations about the scandal upended her life and threatened Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Conclusion: Of course, HRC’s dishonest recounting of rather mundane matters in order to self aggrandize (see bottom of page 40 where she makes up an incident in order get victims of racial discrimination to identify wither her) are troubling, but they are nothing new for a politician.

Update Here is a recent example of that. HRC claimed that her “First Lady” visit to Bosnia involved danger; she described braving sniper fire at the airport on a fortified Air Force Base. Oh yes, a singer, a comedian and her teenage daughter were with her at the time!

Indeed, the candidate herself said:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
–Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.

Sort of like Owen Wilson in that movie where he was the pilot and gets shot down in Bosnia, except where cybaby Owen Wilson was just looking for a way home like some kind of pantywaist, Hillary Clinton was facing mortal danger to deliver international peace and stability, and probably had a big old fat cigar clenched in her teeth while doing it.

But the facts tell a different story:

But now comes pesky Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post to once again raise questions about that Jerry Bruckheimer-esque, Delta Force-like derring-do in Bosnia in 1996:

As a reporter who visited Bosnia soon after the December 1995 Dayton Peace agreement, I can attest that the physical risks were minimal during this period, particularly at a heavily fortified U.S. Air Force base, such as Tuzla. Contrary to the claims of Hillary Clinton and former Army secretary Togo West, Bosnia was not “too dangerous” a place for President Clinton to visit in early 1996….

Had Hillary Clinton’s plane come “under sniper fire” in March 1996, we would certainly have heard about it long before now. Numerous reporters, including the Washington Post’s John Pomfret, covered her trip. A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the First Lady. “As a former AP wire service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened,” said Pomfret.

According to Pomfret, the Tuzla airport was “one of the safest places in Bosnia” in March 1996, and “firmly under the control of Big Red One,” the 1st Infantry Division.

Words, Michael Dobbs, just words!

Her is her at that Airport at that time:

with the following caption:

Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An eight-year-old Moslem girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, above, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss.

So, Morris’s point about her embellishing what she has done is well founded.

Also, her refusal to accept responsibility for her own shortcomings (which we have seen during this latest campaign) is even more troubling (58-60).

However, some of the stuff in this book shows that she has some real talent, and that she has the potential to grow. Whether she does grow (like Bobby Kennedy) or does not grow (and end up like Richard Nixon) remains to be seen.

I’d like to conclude this report with two oddities:

1. Morris said that HRC’s primary experience with WJC is with the “managing of the campaign” end. So why was her own campaign so poorly run?
2. Morris didn’t talk much about HRC’s faith (perhaps this is where the good-evil stuff comes from). I don’t think that this is a widely known aspect of her, and this doesn’t fit the HILLARY image.

I will say that supporters and foes alike can read this book and get something out of it. But supporters will be angry with much of it as will foes. Perhaps that might be one reason this book is so readily available at a discount?

Bonus

Some of Dick Morris

Note: he was a bit wrong about the New Hampshire result.

Oooh, he was wrong about Ohio and Texas.