With new book out, Hillary Clinton will be hard to miss this week
Article by: DAN BALZ , Washington Post Updated: June 10, 2014 - 6:13 AM
The publicity over her latest book is worthy of a presidential campaign.
Since leaving her post as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, shown at a Philanthropy New York conference in May, has maintained a rigorous schedule of speeches and appearances.
Are you ready for Hillary? If not, this is a week to turn off the TV, put aside your morning paper, get off the Internet, never look at your Twitter feed, avoid Facebook and stay out of bookstores. Even then you probably won’t be able to avoid the former secretary of state/senator/first lady. On Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new book, “Hard Choices,” will be published amid a flurry of publicity worthy of, well, the opening of a major presidential campaign.
Her book is a methodical march through the challenges she encountered as the nation’s top diplomat. Beyond the diplomacy, it includes lighter moments and self-deprecating asides as she seeks to project both a deep understanding of the world and a warm, human side to her personality.
Compared with her book “Living History,” published in 2003, “Hard Choices” is a more interesting read, enriched not simply by her nearly million miles of international travel to 112 countries but more by her accounts of scores of conversations with world leaders as the administration grappled with one challenge after another. Through nearly 600 pages, she comes across less a visionary and more a practical-minded problem solver.
In Clinton’s description, virtually every foreign policy problem presents hard choices: the intractable Middle East, Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan; Libya; the Arab Spring and on and on. And if she believes that in most cases the administration tried to pursue the right course, there are enough chapters that end with issues unresolved or problems even worse today than at the beginning of the administration to raise questions about what should have been done instead.
“Hard Choices” is no tell-all by a former official looking to settle scores. She writes that she did not always agree with President Obama or others in what was originally described as a modern day “Team of Rivals.” “Some of those times you’ll read about in this book,” she writes, “but others will remain private to honor the code of confidentiality that should exist between a president and his secretary of State.”
The book is a careful document designed to preserve, perhaps burnish, future possibilities. The disagreements she outlines are described in collegial terms — although she does mention a “shouting match” with then-CIA Director Leon Panetta over a drone strike. In some cases, she suggests that she had differences with White House officials on policies that ultimately went awry. She says she had reservations, for example, about taking a hard-line stance with Israel over new settlements as Obama initially did.
She also addresses her possible candidacy with a teasing line. “Will I run for president in 2016?” she writes. “The answer is, I haven’t decided yet.” Yet the last few chapters shift from foreign policy to domestic issues with which a future president will have to deal. The book ends : “The time for another hard choice will come soon enough.” In fact, it’s difficult to find anyone with a Clinton connection who does not believe she will be a candidate.
The book opens at a low moment in her life, when she has lost the long nomination battle to Obama in June 2008. “Why on Earth was I lying on the back seat of a blue minivan with tinted windows?” she asks. She was on her way to a secret meeting with Obama, their first face-to-face encounter since the nomination had been decided. She said it was like “two awkward teenagers on a first date.”
She knew she was prepared to do what she could to help Obama win the presidency but wanted to raise “some unpleasant moments” from the primary contests, from charges of racism leveled against her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that she describes as “preposterous,” to moments of sexism.
Out of this meeting came other conversations that culminated in the offer to become secretary of state. Clinton says she was “floored” (although an adviser had earlier predicted it was coming) and turned Obama down. She continued to decline the offer until, she says, it was clear Obama would not take “no” for an answer.
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