Experimental Blog #53

Comments on "Living History" - by Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Where the lights are brilliant the shades run deep" and "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind" are two aphorisms, the first one of unknown origin, the second one biblical, that could apply to Hilliray Rodham Clinton.
Hillary Rodham's first political activism was as a "fearless and stupid," she says, 13 year old volunteering for a Republican Party investigation for vote fraud in the 1960 election. She knocked on doors, alone, in a poor South Side Chicago neighborhood, and in one day, or less, uncovered at least a dozen apparently fraudulent voter registrations.
However, Hillary Rodham was "obviously" born to be, not a Republican, even a liberal one, but a very partisan Democrat, which she easily became when she met William Jefferson Clinton in 1970 at about 23 years of age.
Among other things, Hillary's book succeeds in making Bill Clinton a forgivable and likable human being, a naturally very sympathetic and charming man, who was, perhaps, beguiled and seduced by almost unlimited audulation and power to the point of losing his "better judgement," at times; actually a very common occurence. "Birds of feather flock together" is another aphorism that seems very appropriate to describe Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Many of Hillary's finest moments and speeches occur when she is working and speaking for children's and women's causes. It seems safe to say that Hillary Rodham Clinton was likely the most visible, influential, and controversial American First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. She makes people think, and how can she do that without being controversial, or even offensive, at times.
However, Hillary shows her most narrow-minded and intransigent side near the end of this book when she expresses her views on the outcome of the stalled election of the year 2000. Here she seems most clearly incapable or unwilling to understand other people's different points of view.
How would she react to the opinion that Richard Nixon was, and so far remains, arguably the most significant and critical American President since Franklin Roosevelt, in spite of having acquired very early in his career the nickname "tricky Dick," and his several public "poor Richard" performances?
In the modern scientific age we may no longer be punished for our "sins," but we are all punished for our "stupidity", and it all turns out to be more or less the same in the long run.
Now, after having been a United States Senator from New York for 8 years, Hillary Rodham Clinton is our American Secretary of State. Her career continues, and she will surely write another book, or books, in the years ahead.