WITH THE RELEASE this week of “Living History,” it is worth noting that this title is not Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first foray into children’s literature. In 1996, came her blockbuster smash, “It Takes A Village,” in which she condescended to parents as if they were children , by preaching the healing power of making sock puppets with teeth-grinding chapters like “An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Intensive Care.” I’d share more, but it would take a village to hold me down and make me read the rest of it. Then in 1998–Impeachment Year–Hillary took a break from hiding her head in the sand on the Lewinsky affair, and fired a shot across her critics’ bow with “Dear Socks, Dear Buddy–Kids’ Letters to the First Pets.” To the unsophisticated reader, it might have appeared like more avoidance therapy. In actuality, it was a clever long-term political strategy. Locate people who will be of voting age in 2008 and who think that Labrador retrievers can read their letters. They’ll believe anything. It was some of Hillary’s ghostwriters’ best work: “Socks and Buddy follow in the paw prints of many distinguished pets at the White House.” Doggone great read, Hill.
In keeping with the children’s theme, “Living History”–or as the gals in my Hillary reading circle call it, “Living Herstory”–is Hillary’s first scratch’n’sniff book. Let me explain. Take a claim in this book, almost any claim, scratch it hard enough and it smells like BS. There’s Hillary the Faux Populist telling us how back in Arkansas, she loved going to “sale barns and barbecue joints” and Razorbacks football games where she would “call the hogs.” Yeah, uh-huh. There’s Hillary the Paranoid, who, after the furniture had been suspiciously moved around in the White House, worried about Rush Limbaugh, who had left a message in the Lincoln Bedroom right before the Clintons moved in, saying “I was here first, and I’ll be back.” (Security, it turns out, had swept the room for bugging devices.)
