From the Post's big front-page story on the Hillary books today:
Howard Wolfson, a campaign spokesman, pointed to previous reports on some of the elements in the books to make the point that there was nothing new. "The news here is that it took three reporters nearly a decade to find no news," he said. He added: "Two overwhelming Senate victories in the toughest media market in the country demonstrated that voters have put these issues behind them."
Had these books reported incontrovertable proof that Hillary is actually a space alien, the response from Wolfson would be pretty much the same. "This is old news... voter have gotten past this... they're much less concerned that she's from Nebulon-IV than who is going to ensure they get the health care they need."So what are the new charges? The one that stands out to me the most is:
"Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., reports that during her husband's 1992 campaign, a team she oversaw hired a private investigator to undermine Gennifer Flowers "until she is destroyed." Flowers had said publicly that she had an affair with Bill Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas.
See, after the Monica mess, Hillary was the recipient of enormous amounts of public sympathy. It fueled her 2000 Senate run - "justice for a woman done wrong!"
After a story like this, those who hate her will see confirmation of their views. Those who love her will, as her Senate spokesman does in the story, dismiss it as "trash for cash" or "cash for rehash." (Attack the motives, particularly with a rhyming phrase and you'll never have to respond to the substance of the charges.)
But those Democratic primary voters who were iffy on her, who wondered if she could win a general election... well, they may dread the Republican candidate turning every discussion of the Patriot Act and respecting people's constitutional rights into a discussion of why the Democratic nominee hires private investigators to "destroy people."
Part 2:
Hmmm. I wonder what prosecutors think of this mentality...
Mark Fabiani, who as White House special counsel played a key role in defending the Clintons, said she was "so tortured by the way she's been treated that she would do anything to get out of the situation. . . . And if that involved not being fully forthcoming, she herself would say, 'I have a reason for not being forthcoming.' " Her logic, he said, was: "If we do this, they're going to do this to me. If we say this, then they're going to say this. You know, [expletive] 'em, let's just not do that."
Didn't Martha Stewart get nailed on obstruction of justice for not being forthcoming with investigators? How is this different, exactly? Wouldn't Martha Stewart and just about every other subject of an investigation believe that they're being treated unfairly? Does this mean it's okay for them to not be forthcoming, too?
Part 3:
The Hillary books, continued...
The women who also figured in Bill Clinton's life in Arkansas make a return appearance in the book, most notably Marilyn Jo Jenkins, a power company executive he fell in love with and almost left his wife over, according to Bernstein. Jenkins has been linked to Clinton before — she was spirited into the governor's mansion at 5:15 a.m. for a final, furtive meeting with him the day he left for Washington to assume the presidency — but Bernstein's account makes clear her pivotal role.
Bill Clinton wanted to divorce his wife to be with Jenkins in 1989, Bernstein reports, but Hillary Clinton refused. "There are worse things than infidelity," she told Betsey Wright, the governor's chief of staff. The crisis frayed Wright's relationship with Bill Clinton too, and she told Bernstein that she arranged for the two of them, Wright and Clinton, to see a therapist together.
Man... you hear a story like that, and you just want to keep a safe distance from that marriage. How many guys need "couples therapy" with their chief of staff?
In a lot of these cases, staying together for the sake of the child is the honorable course of action, putting the best interests of others ahead of your own. But one can't help but wonder whether Hillary would have been better off without him at some point...