By Judy Counts
Daily Composing Room staff

Widely recognized, along with fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, for his part in exposing the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal, Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein now takes a probing look into the shaping of another often-controversial political figure.

In this extensive volume, Bernstein covers much that is already known about Hillary Clinton. But with information gained through some 200 interviews with family, friends and acquaintances, he attempts to reveal the influences that shaped the senator’s forceful and outspoken personality.

Born in suburban Chicago in 1947, Clinton’s early social inclination was influenced most by her very strict Republican father, Hugh Rodham.

Volatile ’60s

The volatile racial and political climate of the 1960s was perhaps a bigger influence. When Hillary was in the 10th grade, the Rev. Don Jones became youth minister of her church, teaching his young charges that a Christian must have a belief in God as well as a social conscience.

In 1961, Jones took the group to hear and meet Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The young people were awestruck and Don Jones became a trusted friend and counselor whom Hillary frequently called upon for advice from that time on.

When Clinton entered Wellesley College in 1965, according to Bernstein, she was a “Barry Goldwater conservative.” By 1967, he continues, her college experiences and interactions led her to think of herself as an “agnostic intellectual liberal” and an “emotional conservative.” And though she was president of the college’s Young Republicans, worked as a summer intern for the party in Washington, and attended the Miami Republican convention as a volunteer for Nelson Rockefeller, Hillary had spent the spring of 1968 as a volunteer worker for Eugene McCarthy.

Democratic convention

The August 1968 Democratic convention was, of course, held in Chicago, a few weeks before Hillary was to return to Wellesley as a senior. She and a friend witnessed firsthand, the brutally violent anti-Vietnam war protests in Grant Park. Profoundly influenced by the experience, Hillary successfully urged the Wellesley administration to allow a student commencement speaker.

They chose her, and the text of her speech, in which she called for an immediate end to the war, was later printed in Life magazine, having been judged by editors to most represent the feelings of college students that year.

Hillary arrived at Yale Law School in 1970, amid much more campus unrest due largely to the escalating Vietnam War. She served a summer internship with Marian Wright Edelman’s Washington Research Project and began her passion for children’s rights. And she met a future president.

From that time, Bill Clinton became the major driving force in Hillary’s life. She went with him to Texas to work on the McGovern campaign. She spent time with him in Arkansas, even taking the Arkansas Bar Exam (she passed there, while failing the D.C. exam).

When the chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee on (Nixon’s) Impeachment called to offer Bill a position on the staff, he declined and, according to some reports, recommended Hillary for the job. She was indeed a member of the committee, an experience that proved invaluable in the Clinton impeachment proceedings.

Most of the book, probably understandably, recounts events from the Bill Clinton presidential years, through Hillary’s decision to make her own run for the White House. Much of the material is almost redundant, covering the widely publicized scandals that challenged the administration: the Flowers/Jones /Lewinsky allegations, Whitewater, the Madison Guaranty billings and “travelgate.”

That’s a lot to cover and Bernstein takes over 600 pages to do it. The book is well documented with 50 pages of notes, sources and bibliography. The author says he took seven years to write this book and there were times when it seemed as if it would take me at least that long to read it.

Not light reading

“A Woman in Charge” is not a book to take to the beach. At times, the narration seems more scholarly and intellectual than simply informative. Even the very bookish reader might want to keep a dictionary close by.

Overall, however, the book offers an interesting picture of the energetic, dynamic and extraordinary individual that is Hillary Clinton. It’s a must read for her supporters who will find much information to validate that support. Oddly enough — call it “politics as usual” — critics can probably use the same details to sustain their beliefs as well.

While this latest Bernstein effort may not gain the author another Pulitzer Prize, it likely will be an important reference for future historians. It is a complete study of modern politics and how today’s leaders are shaped and sold. Read it if you dare.

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