I thought the book reading public (that's YOU, goodreads member) would be able to evaluate this book like it was a book. Instead most reviews I see here are actually votes. Hillary is winning the popular vote here, like she did out there, but is that what really matters? How much did it matter out there?
If you look over my previous books, you'll see I'd read people like [a:Thomas Frank|30845|Thomas Frank|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1223572187p2/30845.jpg] and (worse!) [a:Doug Henwood|185601|Doug Henwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1504802550p2/185601.jpg]. People who read those probably wouldn't read the book under discussion, but I did. What happened? (title reference intentional) First, I read Henry Louis Gates in the NewYorker "Hating Hillary" which gave me a certain sympathy for the woman. I figured she was out of politics now and so, maybe she would be willing to risk saying some things she couldn't admit to earlier when she needed votes. I wanted to understand who she was and, now I think I do, at least more than I did before.
I'd voted for Hillary of course. I wasn't happy about it, but I did. Let me explain a bit. I was disappointed in Obama. I'd also read his book, [b:Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance|88061|Dreams from My Father A Story of Race and Inheritance|Barack Obama|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1352340675s/88061.jpg|86032]. That man knew how to write! And he knew how to think and to feel. He was an actual author (something we goodreads members value.) Hillary was not. Her previous books were written by a village. That's not necessarily a bad thing in a potential president, but it means you won't see her authentic voice. I was hoping for more this time around.
Obama is difficult to dislike. He has a natural charm that Hillary lacks. Still, I had my hopes dashed when we didn't get sufficient change. He let the same people in charge when the economy crashed run the recovery. He didn't push for more radical health care reform when it could have actually happened. He didn't close Guantanamo (he blamed congress). He couldn't extract us from wars. Hillary doesn't criticize Obama at all on these fronts, though, at the same time, she tries to make it sound like she would have actually created serious change. I don't find that convincing. Maybe just being a woman president is serious enough. She doesn't criticize Bill either, but more on this later.
Most "facts" aren't things we directly observe. We get them from trusted others. These others are in turn validated by OTHER trusted others. This is sometimes called a "web of trust." When the country is relatively united (such as back when America was "great") , fewer fact are in dispute, but at the same time, "out groups" are unable to present their point of view. There's no linguistic/conceptual room for them.
Trust is based on various things including consistency with other beliefs and the language in which a source of information presents itself. This last is what makes it disturbing when a good writer like Obama lets Wall streeters continue to run the economy. Some one who talks like he does is someone you want to believe. For me, that is. I can see that someone who talks like Donald Trump is heard as speaking the truth by people with limited education who don't trust "elites." These people don't care that Trump is a billionaire. What they like is that he is an anti-intellectual. These are people who hear reasoned argument as some kind of trick-- e.g. something a dishonest lawyer might put in a contract to screw you over. If you speak fancy, you must be hiding something. They see a country in which people with educations (e.g. speak grammatically) get better jobs. That would not be as much of a problem if they could get a job sufficient to support their families, but in the current economy, that has become less and less the case.
The way Larry Summers (former Harvard president and politically connected rich person) put it, "One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated." In a pure meritocracy, those with insufficient merit should starve to death. There are two ways to disagree with that. One is to add in some socialism. The other is the Trump way: your merit is being miscalculated by crooked elites and foreigners. It's no surprise that voters found these arguments attractive.
(In a review of a book by Hillary, I have wasted a lot of space on this Trump person. I can understand why the media gave him so much coverage.)
The "facts" say that employment rates have recovered from the crash. The economy is doing fine, but most of the money isn't going to those who were suffering. It's going to those who caused the problem (or, more accurately, to their "class"). The only indication that Hillary knows this is she says that there is a wealth inequality problem and that she wants to do something about that. Bernie didn't hear her say this and coopt her issue. He has been concerned about this for years before he became a presidential candidate. I was surprised when he announced his candidacy. Everyone "knew" Hillary would run for president long before (but to hear her tell it, she only just decided to run right before she announced it.)
Hillary does things methodically. I could make a pun about her being a Methodist if I were that kind of person (evidently I am). I mean she believes in working within the system (one in which she knows how to get things done) and in running a campaign they way it has always been done. You could call that science, if you like. Sticking to what's tried and true. The first chapters of the book is how she felt, having followed the rules against an opponent who didn't know or for that matter, care about the rules, and losing. She admits that she hadn't realized that things had changed and required a less traditional approach, but I don't think she really knows the extent of that change even now. She can say that she learned from Bernie that big ideas can be more important than wonky details at times, but she still takes him to task for being light on those details. She clearly doesn't like that the rules were changed while she wasn't looking. She clearly feels it's unfair.
She talks about her confrontation with Black Lives Matters activists. She understands their anger and frustration but doesn't understand that when she pressed them for "solutions" they hadn't had it all worked out. They were stuck on her admitting her (and Bill's) complicity with the current situation. She doesn't see why they couldn't move past that like a competent politician would. Isn't the goal to fix the situation? Here she was wanting to help and they were more interested in blaming her and reliving the past. Well, in the past, they had been betrayed and she was, they believed, one of the betrayers. How could they trust her now? She couldn't understand why anyone might mistrust her.
I do trust she's being truthful in this book. But I think she doesn't see things that I and the BLM activists can see. The Civil Rights movement didn't happen because people worked within the system. The system betrayed them. They got angry. If they then said OK, the system would betray them again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Reasonableness just wasn't going to cut it.
We were at a similar point in history now. A little tinkering of the system didn't look like it would suffice. Pretending it would was a distraction. She didn't understand why BLM didn't know she was on their side. OK, she was rich and white and received large sums for speaking at Goldman Sachs. She says no one could find evidence that her relationship with the banks led to wrongdoing, but that's not the point. She's not trying to win a lawsuit but to gain trust.
She defends Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform policies. She defends his prison programs. She says Bill had to compromise to accomplish what he got done but I ask, maybe accomplishing nothing would have been better. What did he get for those compromises? Her former boss, Marian Wright Edelman, whom she quotes several times told her Welfare Reform was a huge mistake so she can't argue that no one had informed her. (She even quotes Ms. Edelman telling her this.) She continues to defend these betrayals as necessary compromises. I believe she sees them that way, but she never makes it clear what the compromises were supposed to achieve.
She is good when she discusses feminism, possibly because she has direct experiences as a victim of sexism. This might have been the best part of the book. She knows about concepts that aren't fully mainstream such as intersectionality and emotional labor. (Even my spellcheck doesn't know about intersectionality.) She understands how sexism can exist in the world but be invisible to so many of its participants, but she can't seem to translate that unseen quality to other isms--even those she acknowledges exist (for which she deserves credit). When Black Lives Matter wants her to see she's part of the problem, she doesn't get it. She refuses to get it even as she understands conceptually how from where she sits, it might be as invisible to her as sexism is to others.
Does Obama defend his policies by saying "I'm better than Bush?" It's a given that he's better. Similarly, her pointing out that she's better than Trump isn't indicating some singular achievement. When she points it out too often, it has the opposite effect.
Why does she want to be president? She is incredulous that anyone would ask her why "as if she is hiding something." She says she wants to be president because she wants to do good. As John Lennon says, we all want to change the world. I believe her, but actually she IS hiding things. She hides them from herself. Politicians aren't famous for their self-knowledge. By necessity, they are more focused outward. But she has a staff--a village--which could help her out here. It's not merely, as she says, that she considers what she wants to say before she says things. It's HOW she considers them. In the book she talks about the causes she is passionate about--e.g. gun control. But when speaking about these issues extemporaneously, her passion has to be inferred rather than felt. It's not argument but feeling the voters are looking for.
[a:Doug Henwood|185601|Doug Henwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1504802550p2/185601.jpg]
She thinks she has the skills to do good. She has some of them, but maybe being president isn't the best way to use them. Maybe the best way is to support some candidate with a better chance of getting elected. Yes, I know she won the popular vote, but not beating Trump isn't just ordinary failure. Trump is such a bad candidate that it requires a lot to lose to him.
And yes, I also know women are always the ones who are asked to support some other (e.g. male) candidate. I'm thinking here of Bernie who, when losing the primary, supported her candidacy. Bernie came out of nowhere and she was surprised how he caught on with the voters. It's not because he was offering 0 minute abs instead of the more realistic 8 minute abs as she says in the book. And, yes, sexism contributed to the opposition to her candidacy. But Bernie caught on in part because he wasn't playing it safe. There's nothing safe about saying you're a socialist. When people feel powerless, they need the lack of caution of a revolutionary. Trump, in his narcissism, wasn't cautious because he feels invulnerable and because he lacked the competence to be cautious in a "fools rush in" way, and people found even THAT compelling. It's not a time to do a little tinkering. The problems look bigger than that. Trump understood this and tried to make them appear bigger still.
She says she takes responsibility for her role in losing, but she is doing this the way a boss takes responsibility, as if she takes responsibility because it's her job to do so. "The buck stops here." I don't believe she sees the blindnesses and lack of self-knowledge part of her responsibility -- rather, merely the strategy errors which in themselves might not have made a sufficient difference.
Robert Reich, a Bernie supporter, said the Hillary is the best candidate for the system we have now. What happened is that Hillary doesn't have the vantage point to see that the system we have now isn't working for too many people. Maybe it has to be that way and the best we can expect is a little tweaking. Maybe she is the best such tweaker. She says she doesn't know why people don't believe she will effect serious change. After reading her book, I could tell her why.
