The Case Against Hillary Clinton [Hardcover]

Peggy Noonan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 2000

As the long, scandal-ridden trial of the Clinton years comes to an end--and as the first lady mounts her own campaign for independent political office--it is time for a summation. What is the legacy of Clintonism? What is there in Hillary Clinton's background, talents, or record of achievement that qualifies her to represent New York in the U.S. Senate? And, most important, what will happen if Hillary should win this fall? Where will her ambition lead her next?

Peggy Noonan, one of our most astute political observers and a speechwriter for the Reagan White House, argues in this passionate and compelling book that everyone in the United States--not just New Yorkers--must look closely at Hillary and the implications of her Senate bid. The Case Against Hillary Clinton offers an eye-opening assessment of the scandals, and failures of the Clinton years, from Whitewater to health care to the Filegate and Travelgate affairs--casting a revealing light on the first lady's motives and behavior. It poses searching questions about the difference between the citizens of New York and the Clintons of Arkansas; between public service and lip service; between the whole truth and the shameless parade of evasion and spin the first couple has marshaled throughout their White House years. And finally, in these pages Noonan calls on us to consider the climate of deception and disgrace the Clintons have left in their wake--weakening our nation's moral standing and damaging our political process in ways that will take years to heal.

Never before has the character of a first lady been so integral to the fate of a presidential administration and no writer before Peggy Noonan has had the courage to offer so uncompromising an estimation of Hillary Clinton as the one contained in this book. The Case Against Hillary Clinton takes the measure of the woman, the candidate, the striving politician--and offers a convincing argument that her calculated bid for power will be the first truly important election of the new millennium.

I thought, seven years ago, that the Clintons might turn out to be inspiring. They had guts, came from nowhere, were bright and hard-driving; he was educated, credentialed, a political moderate but not a boring one; she appeared to be something new and interesting, a modern woman who operated with confidence in all the circles of the world.... Hillary could have been a strong and encouraging presence, maybe continuing to work in the world as a lawyer, as Cherie Blair has in Great Britain--a judge, working mother, and "first lady" who is everywhere a figure of respect.

What a presidency this would have been. What a legacy they would have left .

What did the Clintons do with their two administrations? They left behind a country more damaged, more removed from its old, rough idealism; a country whose children live in a coarser and more dangerous place; a country whose political life has been distorted and lowered.... And for this reason, for all of these reasons, Clintonism should not be allowed to continue.

And if it is not to continue, the next great battle may prove to be the decisive one, and that is the battle of New York.

-- From The Case Against Hillary Clinton

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At the beginning of this slim polemic, Peggy Noonan states that she does not hate the first lady, she merely has contempt for her, and in The Case Against Hillary Clinton she explains precisely why. Noonan's objections to Hillary Clinton and her husband ("to understand her you have to understand him") are based both on ideology and style--Noonan considers the Clintons to be self-involved know-it-alls who "stand for one thing: maximum and uninterrupted power for the Clintons." "They have made the American political landscape a lower and lesser thing," she writes. "They have stopped good things from happening, and have allowed bad things to occur; when caught they have covered up and dissembled." Noonan describes Hillary's bid for a Senate seat in a state not her own as "a thing of utter and breathtaking gall." She further dismisses Mrs. Clinton's ability to lead at all, citing the botched health-care initiative, Filegate, Travelgate, and chronic lying by both of the Clintons as evidence. Perhaps Noonan's most persuasive argument against Hillary is that, although she has been in a position to do much good, she has accomplished little on her own: "I am often frustrated with her because she could do some real good, and at a crucial time, and doesn't.... I can't think of a single time in seven years that she jeopardized her position with her base to make progress for her country."

A speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who chronicled her own White House experiences in the book What I Saw at the Revolution, Noonan exercises plenty of creative license in these pages, mostly effectively by inventing dialogue, events, and inner thoughts that serve to illustrate Mrs. Clinton's motives and character as Noonan sees them. And the author notes, as have others, that Mrs. Clinton's Senate race is likely just a first step on the road to the White House: "So New York is the battle that may decide the war. This Senate bid has huge implications, not only for New York State but for the nation," she writes. In all, a persuasive case elegantly presented. --Linda Killian

From Publishers Weekly

Seasoned conservative political commentator Noonan (What I Saw at the Revolution, etc.) joins the anti-Hillary literary feeding frenzy with this scathing biographical essay. Addressing herself to the voting population of New York State, Noonan rails against "Clintonism"--which she defines as the using of any tactic to achieve a political goal, including "misleading constituents on serious and crucial issues," "evading responsibility for governmental mistakes," "smearing opponents and critics" and "lying"--as she begs New Yorkers not to elect the First Lady as their senator. But the book's unusually urgent purpose isn't the only thing that makes Noonan's text irregular: mirroring, in some ways, the controversial methods Edmund Morris employed in Dutch (his recent biography of Reagan, Noonan's former boss), Noonan mixes her thoroughly researched, nonfictive prose with confusingly presented fictional passages: invented internal monologues, "transcriptions" of speeches Hillary never made and the like. Noonan's rant occasionally falls flat, too--especially as she strains to make what are essentially ideological differences seem like commonsense, apolitical moral questions--and some of her most fiery points (such as her suggestion that the Clintons were the first politicians to distort the electoral process with spin and lies) ring hollow. Still, when she's not fictionalizing or psychologizing the First Lady, Noonan offers a searing analysis of what she sees as the emptiness of HRC's political platform and the mountain of questions about her past that remain unanswered. Relentlessly passionate and concise, Noonan--an extremely capable writer--lays out, in lively prose, the central complaints that New Yorkers will be hearing in the coming months from conservatives opposed to Mrs. Clinton's candidacy.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (March 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060393408
• ISBN-13: 978-0060393403
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (218 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,461,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

218 of 255 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of good points - but where was the editor?, March 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Case Against Hillary Clinton (Hardcover)

Peggy Noonan is a talented writer - clear, lucid, witty, always engaging. Her book offers ample insights into why Hillary Clinton and her husband will hopefully "just go away", rather than continue to inflict their special blend of arrogance, hypocrisy, and deceitfulness on the country.

Ms. Noonan's case could have benefited from stronger editing. I felt, for example, a hypothetical conversation snippet imagined at Hillary's future gravesite was regrettable and tasteless. More concerning - especially after Ms. Noonan wrote negatively (and accurately) about Edmund Morris fiction/non-fiction Ronald Reagan biography - was an extremely interesting portion of her book set at Michael Eisner's home; a scene which turns out, in the end, to be entirely made up by Ms Noonan. She describes how she wound up watching this (fictional) scene, as the friend of Eisner's housekeeper! I felt disappointed and manipulated after reading this fascinating scene to find out at its close that Ms. Noonan had imagined it entirely - including fictional quotes from Ted Turner, etc.

The whole thing left a bitter taste - much like Edmund Morris' fictional footnotes. I felt similarly concerned about Ms. Noonan's repeatedly telling us, sometimes with quotes, what the Clinton's were thinking during various scenes. Can we have a collective moratorium against fictional excursions set unannounced in in purportedly non-fiction, serious books? Ms. Noonan is a wonderful speech writer - I feel she may have succumbed to the temptation to write Hillary a good speech here and have some fun in the process - but she could have done this and made her point far better by just saying "Here is the kind of courageous speech I would love to hear from Hillary but never will."

Clearly the case against Ms. Clinton is strong enough that one doesn't have to rely on fiction - the unembellished truth about the Clintons is scarey enough.

Despite my reservation about the long fictional scene. and and a number of comments about Hillary's appearance and the like which seemed to me to be unnecessary and a touch mean-spirited, I certainly support Ms. Noonan's basic contention that Hillary Clinton should never be Senator from New York or any other state, and join her in wishing the Clinton's a long, un-event-filled. retirement somewhere where they will do the least damage to the country and the people around them.

102 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful polemic on Clintonism, March 21, 2000

By 

Edward M. Lopez (Harrisburg, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Case Against Hillary Clinton (Hardcover)

The subject and target of Peggy Noonan's new book The Case Against Hillary Clinton is not so much Hillary Clinton, but rather Clintonism, the corrupt and cynical philosophy of politics as a means for obtaining and maintaining power that has damaged and divided the country over the past seven years.

Ms. Noonan admits that the book is a polemic written by someone who is very much one of the "Other People" and not "My People" in Hillary Clinton's Manichean ethos. As a polemic, The Case Against Hillary Clinton more closely resembles Christopher Hitchens' No One Left to Lie To than it does Barbara Olson's unflattering biography of Mrs. Clinton. Peggy Noonan does not have the temperament of Hitchens, whose contempt for William Jefferson Clinton literally drips from each page as he punctuates his points with stinging epithets. One gets the impression that she treated this book as a necessary duty. She takes no joy in examining and explaining these joyless and empty narcissists who are unable to live without the adulation and attention of others. In another context, we might feel sympathy for them, but not when they play out their private issues on the world's stage and at the nation's expense.

The Case Against Hillary Clinton makes a convincing case why the people of New York should NOT elect Mrs. Clinton as their Senator. She shows that Mrs. Clinton possesses above-average intelligence, below-average character, and virtually no accomplishments of her own. The only substantive venture for which she was given responsibility, the misguided and health care task force, ended in political disaster, which directly led to Republican control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Prior to that, Mrs. Clinton was a partner in a politically-connected law firm in a state where her husband was attorney general then governor. She brought two of her partners from the Rose Law Firm to Washington, D.C., one ended up committing suicide and the other committing felonies.

Ms. Noonan skillfully argues that a person of such low character and meager accomplishments as Hillary, who has no connection whatsoever to New York State, would seek to be its senator is a mind-boggling display of mad Boomer narcissism. That she has a good chance to win speaks volumes to the moral decline of the character of the nation under Mr. & Mrs. Clinton's stewardship.

Mrs. Clinton's dubious achievements are strikingly at odds with her inflated opinion of herself. Ms. Noonan contrasts the Clintons' extreme arrogance, sense of entitlement and moral superiority with the humility of great men like Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. Mrs. Clinton's candidacy is significant because it foretells an ominous thought: that, unlike other presidents who gracefully left the world's stage and pursued quiet dignified lives -- witness for example Jimmy Carter -- the Clintons will have to be dragged kicking and screaming from the limelights and the attention they crave.

I only gave the book 4 stars out of 5 because it covers little new ground. As a polemic, it falls short of the rhetorical brilliance (and excesses) of Hitchens' prose. It touches on a number of themes, which have been developed more fully by other authors. Finally, Ms. Noonan could not resist the temptation to include an Edmund Morris-like incident, which fooled me badly and illustrates the opportunities squandered by people who wanted the power of the Presidency not to achieve great things but to be big people.

68 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank God for the Truth, March 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Case Against Hillary Clinton (Hardcover)

Noonan has done a wonderful job of describing what most of us have come to know over the last seven years. I thank God that someone has put into words what Clintonism and its founders have done to this country. This is a must read for anyone who wants the unvarnished truth about Hillary Clinton, and without the left-leaning filtering that the media usually performs when it comes to the Clintons.