Lorelie L. (artgal36) reviewed American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power on + 471 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Early on, relates Christopher Andersen in American Evita, Bill and Hillary Clinton created "The Plan"---an arrangement in which the Clintons would reverse roles once he was out of office and Mr. Clinton would help his wife reach her ultimate goal: the presidency. Now that Mrs. Clinton is a Senator from New York, the second part of The Plan is in effect, and regaining the White House is only part of it--if elected president, Mrs. Clinton would also, according to Andersen, work to get her husband installed as a Supreme Court Justice. It becomes clear over the course of this book that Mrs. Clinton was the guiding hand during her husband's two terms, including heading up the near-constant damage control required as a result of a string of scandals and her husband's reckless behavior. This was not done out of loyalty to her husband, Andersen stresses, but because she recognized that she needed to save him in order to further her own career later on. Though much of the information in this book has been printed before, Andersen does offer tantalizing new details about Mrs. Clinton's long-running affair with Vince Foster, the numerous pardons of criminals that were made in the final days of the Clinton administration in order to help Mrs. Clinton's Senate bid, her self-serving actions in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and her efforts to constantly upstage the 2004 Democratic nominees for president, particularly John Kerry. Part of the reason for doing this, Andersen maintains, is that she actually wants the Democrats to lose the presidential election in 2004 in order to better set the stage for her own run in 2008. One cannot read this book without being struck by the fact that nearly every move Mrs. Clinton has made over the past 30 years has been calculated, and in this regard American Evita is a fascinating depiction of "the most famous, most controversial, most complex, most loved-hated-admired-reviled woman---perhaps person---in America."
