Madam President: Is America Ready to Send Hillary Clinton to the White House?

Recently I had a desire to review the life and career of Hillary Clinton. When faced with the subject, I found a lot of huge tomes, many biased one way or the other. What I really wanted was a long magazine-type piece that covered the basics without bogging down in anecdotes or analysis. Enter Suzanne Goldenberg's excellent "Madam President." It fit the bill on every level. This book gives the reader a clear history of the life and political career of Hillary Rodham Clinton, from her childhood in Illinois, to her years at Wellesley College and Yale Law, to her career-defining work on the Nixon impeachment briefs (how differently might her career have gone without that twist of fate?), to her more familiar years as First Lady of Arkansas and, later, the nation. Some of the freshest writing is about Clinton's years as Senator from New York, and how she redefined herself, working on small-scale economic issues. Clinton learned from the health care fiasco that grand gestures don't always go over well. Goldenberg doesn't shy away from psychoanalyzing her subject, but is remarkably even-handed in her approach. Hillary comes across as intelligent, driven, in love with her husband, devoted to her country... and yet lacking all the necessary skills to effectively serve the public. Despite her popularity and drive, Hillary is not a political heavyweight like her husband. The last third of the book returns to the main subject, Hillary's chances and potential as the first female president. Written before Barack Obama's ascendency, Goldenberg's analysis eerily foretells Clinton's downfall. Her war vote (which she never recanted), her cautious need to play the middle ground (after years of grief for being too partisan), and her lack of charisma and oratory skill all lead Goldenberg to conclude that HIllary won't probably be a very distinguished leader. She concludes by speculating that the country so badly needs change that it won't really matter. I enjoyed this book from start to finish. It is written in the crisp, readable style of a newspaper piece, is insightful without being labored, and manages to be both sympathetic and truthful about its subject.

Anybody who had read this book before the New Hampshire primary wouldn't have been at all surprised at the outcome. Nor would they have bought into the simplistic analysis that followed Clinton's victory. Goldenberg does a remarkable job of going beyond the caricatures and cliches that dominate most reporting about Hillary, and paints a fascinating, multi-layered portrait of her historic trajectory. The UK's Guardian newspaper has always been one of the best sources for fresh, reliable journalism about American politics. In keeping with this tradition, Goldenberg -- a long-time international reporter for the paper -- has produced a book head and shoulders above some of the other recent offerings about Clinton, filled with fresh insights and clues that have me believing she will be occupying the White House a year from now. Impeccably researched, but never boring, the book especially shines when it describes Hillary's first Senate campaign when she threw herself into the lion's den of Upstate New York -- an area so Republican it rejected native son, FDR -- and won over die-hard conservative voters who once saw her as the anti-Christ. As for the question posed in the title of the book, Goldenberg does a good job of examining the factors at play while just managing to avoid the potential pitfalls of political prognostication.