The case against Hillary Clinton /

The former Reagan speechwriter takes her shots at the First Lady.

Seasoned conservative political commentator Noonan (What I Saw at the Revolution, etc.) joins the anti-Hillary literary feeding frenzy with this scathing biographical essay. Addressing herself to the voting population of New York State, Noonan rails against "Clintonism"--which she defines as the using of any tactic to achieve a political goal, including "misleading constituents on serious and crucial issues," "evading responsibility for governmental mistakes," "smearing opponents and critics" and "lying"--as she begs New Yorkers not to elect the First Lady as their senator. But the book's unusually urgent purpose isn't the only thing that makes Noonan's text irregular: mirroring, in some ways, the controversial methods Edmund Morris employed in Dutch (his recent biography of Reagan, Noonan's former boss), Noonan mixes her thoroughly researched, nonfictive prose with confusingly presented fictional passages: invented internal monologues, "transcriptions" of speeches Hillary never made and the like. Noonan's rant occasionally falls flat, too--especially as she strains to make what are essentially ideological differences seem like commonsense, apolitical moral questions--and some of her most fiery points (such as her suggestion that the Clintons were the first politicians to distort the electoral process with spin and lies) ring hollow. Still, when she's not fictionalizing or psychologizing the First Lady, Noonan offers a searing analysis of what she sees as the emptiness of HRC's political platform and the mountain of questions about her past that remain unanswered. Relentlessly passionate and concise, Noonan--an extremely capable writer--lays out, in lively prose, the central complaints that New Yorkers will be hearing in the coming months from conservatives opposed to Mrs. Clinton's candidacy. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Reagan, argues that Clinton's Senate campaign is simply the beginning of a long-term try for even more power, which must be stopped. To do that, Noonan sets out the problems she sees in Hillary's character, including a duplicitous nature, insincerity, and dishonesty. However, the author concentrates more on her own impressions and feelings than the facts leading to those conclusions (she even acknowledges, after rehashing the "Filegate" and "Travelgate" matters, that "nothing that I have written here is new," and the information about those events could be found in myriad sources). Noonan speculates at points on what Hillary was thinking, or why she did certain things. She also includes a strange 30-minute segment detailing a meeting of entertainment industry moguls at which Hillary spoke at length about moral responsibility, which Noonan was able to record surreptitiously; only at the end of the chapter does she reveal that this was simply her fantasy. Such lapses into speculation and the lack of new information, combined with reader Karesa McElheny's tendency toward coyness alternating with indignation, make this a lesser entry into the Hillary Clinton biography oeuvre. For purchase if requested. [With Clinton's election to the Senate, there will undoubtedly be requests.ÄEd.]ÄSally G. Waters, Stetson Coll. of Law, St. Petersburg, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.