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Jewish World Review Dec. 13, 1999 /4 Teves, 5760

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Is Hillary clueless?


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IS HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, candidate for the U.S. Senate, clueless?

This is the hard, relentless indictment presented in a new book on the first lady titled Hillary’s Choice.


By author Gail Sheehy's account, the woman now networking her merry way from the White House to the Capitol is blind to all that stands in her path.


The rap sheet of Clinton's oblivion never seems to end. She didn't know about Gennifer Flowers until the president told her last year. She didn't know about Monica Lewinsky, didn't know that Webb Hubbell was stealing from her law firm, never spotted that "hunted look" in the face of another Rose law firm pal, Vincent Foster.


Her politics have been equally clueless, according to Sheehy's record. The woman who invited us to celebrate her "listening tour" of New York this year seems to have spent the last seven with her ears, eyes and nose closed.


The woman who didn't notice that keeping her maiden name offended the conservative voters of Arkansas had a tin ear for the offense the middle class would take at a giant, Washington-controlled national health-care bureaucracy.


We see in Sheehy's book that such blissful ignorance by a first lady can prove anything but blissful for her presidential husband. It was she who brought those troubled boys from the Rose law firm into the West Wing.


It was Hillary Clinton, not Bill, who hired Bernard Nussbaum as the president's counsel, then shared the lawyer's maladroit handling of the Clintons' ethics disasters.


It was she who resisted giving Whitewater documents to the press until the president had no choice but to create the independent counsel's office that would become the mousetrap for his impeachment.


Perhaps as a preview of future such disasters, the author gives us Clinton's method-of-operation for warding off an unwanted crisis.


Purchasing this book
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In every case, her MO was first to guard herself from the truth. In the author's title phrase, "Hillary's choice was not to know what she knew."


Her second step was to destroy the source of the revelation. When her husband was defeated for re-election as Arkansas governor we saw her "eviscerate" the man whom voters had chosen to replace him. Rather than accept the reality of the Gennifer Flowers affair, her ambition was to "crucify" the woman.


This is the insistent Hillary Clinton story line, according to Sheehy. The woman now packing her bags for New York propels herself forward by refusing to see what she sees, refusing to let others see it: "You know that the president has denied these allegations on all counts, unequivocally."


Having deployed a Star Wars-like shield against the truth, she then launches her own rockets against the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and other off-stage culprits.


It's with this political weaponry that Hillary Rodham Clinton now moves to a new home in Chappaqua. Behind in the polls and facing a nasty, resourceful rival in New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, she'll need both her state-of-the-art armor and those ferocious rocket-launchers of hers. If she's as clueless as "Hillary's Choice" suggests, even these won't be enough.



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

12/08/99: Taking Buchananism to the streets
12/03/99: Why are we so obsessed with 'spin'?
12/01/99: Donald Trump, 'Sinatra of Steel'
11/29/99: Why AlGore will be our next president
11/23/99: After the fall
11/17/99: Our conveniently forgetful president
11/15/99: Next president: Male, WASP, self-selected
11/10/99: Backroom Bill
11/08/99: Please don't feed the 'pander bears'
11/03/99: Battle of the Bubba clones
11/01/99: Pat Buchanan, kamikaze candidate
10/27/99: The year of the woman... voter
10/25/99: The Curse of the Bubba
10/21/99: GOP gives Clinton his finest hour
10/18/99: Clinton's last hurrah
10/13/99: Rough seas for Capt. Ventura
10/11/99: Gore targets Bradley's strength
10/06/99: Bradley's got the right Rx
10/04/99: Buchanan, Churchill and Hitler
09/30/99: Who'll spin political gold in Golden State — Gore or Bradley?
09/27/99: Here's a millennial checklist for candidates
09/22/99: The biography battle
09/20/99: Buchanan's new book is a must-read
09/15/99: Don't rule out Beatty
09/13/99: The man with the sun on his face
09/08/99: W. vs. Jr. on dope and the draft
The FALN: Hillary's Willie Horton
08/26/99: Bill's guilt fuels Hill's race
08/25/99: The seemingly inexhaustible strength of America's free enterprise
08/23/99: GOP candidates are weak also-rans
08/16/99: Bubba on Bubba
08/11/99: Hillary's agonizing attempts to understand
08/09/99: With warm regards, Richard Nixon
08/04/99: Weicker: real third party is on the Left
08/02/99: Dubyah's last hangover
07/27/99: Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh; capitalism is gonna win

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