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
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