Madame Hillary’s Long March

March 2, 2004

In response to a comment in our textbook stating that women remain the second sex in our society, I said to the class, “Well, in 2008, I wouldn’t be surprised if a woman became president.” The students agreed with me and a few mentioned Hillary Clinton’s name aloud. Another student, the lone conservative present, emailed me the next day and asked why I would make such a statement. “Because it’s true,” I answered.

Most conservatives are completely baffled by the Hillarymania of today’s liberals. A recent poll illustrates that she remains a highly polarizing figure among the American electorate. Should she run in 2008, the right will have no trouble turning out its base as 48% of the population hold an unfavorable view of her. Her road to victory will be formidable, but the Clintons have encountered numerous challenges over the years and emerged victorious time after time. It is undoubtedly for this reason that R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (with Mark Davis) decided to write Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House.

Their account is a brief political history of the woman who could be queen. It is also an attempt to warn us of what may happen should she seize power. This biography gazes into the future and is terrified by what may be.

The “Madame” in the title refers to China’s Madame Mao who was known as “the white boned demon.” Tyrrell does not accuse Hillary Clinton of being a demon but does believe that the respectable person presented to us by her PR department does not in fact exist. Senator Clinton is a “Coat and Tie Radical” who has never forgotten or disowned the revolutionary ideas of the 1960’s. Society exists for her and her kind to reconfigure.

As the allusion to Madame Mao may have informed you, this book is not an objective account of Hillary’s life. It is written from the perspective of a warrior in the Clinton Wars and there is nothing equivocal in its narration.

As Editor in Chief of The American Spectator, R. Emmett Tyrrell’s experiences with the Clintons were legion and none of them produced pleasure. He recounts a story when he ran across Bill in the Jockey Club. He decided to ask him a question. The former President responded with annoyance and a very pathetic temper tantrum. Yet Tyrrell notes that it was Hillary’s cold stare, as opposed to Mr. Clinton’s babyish whines, that truly unnerved him.

When I saw that the work was produced with the help of Mark Davis, a former White House speechwriter, I was concerned that it may have been ghostwritten. Those familiar with Tyrrell’s writing style will immediately know that such fears are unfounded. The American Spectator’s Editor has a highly unique writing style which is very difficult to imitate. Based on the book’s rare word usage and wit, readers will have no doubt that Tyrrell was its principal author.

Madame Hillary will not appeal to anyone on the left or moderates in general as there is little diplomatic or uncertain about its tone. Tyrrell has seen all he needs to see from the former first lady and, while he admits that she has made great strides in her political skills, he fears for all of our futures should she become president.

“Madame Hillary would, in her wildest dreams, undoubtedly relish a presidency that was an unending left-wing rampage, a national Cambodian re-education camp for anyone caught wearing an Adam Smith necktie or scarf. Such ‘extremists are the enemy, after all, composing the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy that must be scotched if Clintonian America is to be saved. She would install an all-woman Cabinet to thumb her nose at the patriarchy…With Hillary now making all the appointments, why not have a Cabinet full of short-haired harridans and crypto-Marxists from assorted left-wing hothouses?”

For most of the public, the “real” Hillary Clinton remains a mystery. Tyrrell describes the role of Senator as being her day job, but that actually she and her husband function as the de facto leaders of the Democratic Party. They are behind a great many national decisions and a great many acts of mischief. Yet, when one views Hillary from a distance, the truth is phantasmal and the sum of her parts produces not a person but an enigma:

“Hillary Rodham Clinton is a feminist who averts her eye from the foulest treatment of women, a once-youthful and tireless investigator of Watergate whose war room surpasses the maddest schemes of the White House Plumbers, the scourge of the establishment who herself works the system for petty gain, long after she has obtained great wealth.”

She is one of the most important people on our planet and Tyrrell believes this outcome is not due to chance. He depicts her as an individual consumed by ambition and a lust for power. Her personality is colored by an overwhelming need to control others. She is a “self-promoting dynamo” and a “self-regarding existentialist.” What steps she takes (and over whom) are irrelevant. The ends always justify the means. The author asks Dick Morris about her private life and he relays that she doesn’t have one. Hillary is an example of a life whose essence is to make the most of the political opportunities that are encountered.

Madame Hillary describes the personalities of both Bill and Hillary in great detail and what chiefly emerges are their qualitative differences. The 42^nd President, after 1994, was willing to triangulate on all issues provided they won him the support of the electorate. The 44^th President will not be so malleable.

Tyrrell portrays Hillary as being a ideologue who remains heavily influenced by the works of perma-radicals like Saul Alinsky. Hillary’s rule will be devout and unyielding, and, according to the authors, her minions will accomplish sizable societal change from their second and third tier jobs in the shadows.

Unlike other books, this one offers up possible solutions for the problems it discusses. The last chapter is entitled, “How to Defeat Hillary” and suggests ways to overcome her candidacy. Tyrrell offers a six point program for bringing down the Democrats’ Trojan Horse. Two of the propositions involve reminding voters of her advocacy of Hillarycare which meant the possible socialization of 14% of the economy and also that we should blame her for the current wave of judicial activism that is making a farce of our republic (see the state of Massachusetts).

Madame Hillary is a well-written work and a general good use of one’s time, yet it is by no means a comprehensive history of the junior Senator from New York. If that’s what the reader is looking for I’d recommend Barbara Olson’s Hell to Pay instead. Although, as far as producing entertainment and arguments for the conservative faithful, there are few better or more timely offerings available than this strident book by Emmett Tyrrell.

Bernard Chapin