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Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House

Publisher: Regnery Publishing • 2004 • 256 pages
Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House

How about reading a 2008 campaign book? That’s what R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and Mark Davis have given us in the splendidly entertaining Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery, 231 pp., $27.95). Tyrrell’s credentials as a Clintonologist are unparalleled—as editor of The American Spectator, he studied and investigated both Bill and Hillary in minute detail throughout the eight years of the Clinton presidency—and in this new volume he builds the case against Hillary with a passion reminiscent of the Churchill of The Gathering Storm.

“This is a book about an ambitious, power-hungry woman,” begins the book’s first paragraph, which goes on to describe Hillary as a “deep-dyed radical” reminiscent of the late Madame Mao. “I see no diabolism in Madame Hillary,” writes Tyrrell, “but I do see a Coat and Tie Radical—a phantasm who takes on the shape of respectability.” In her first three and a half years of dogged effort in the U.S. Senate, she has seen her stature as a Democratic-party powerhouse continue to grow steadily. Hillary is now chairman of the Democratic Steering and Coordination Committee, which the author characterizes as “one of the most powerful jobs in the Senate Democratic leadership,” running “the sweet spot . . . where the wish lists of big money, liberal interest groups . . . get a say on the Democrats’ internal policy agenda.”

Tyrrell is second to none in his willingness—and his ability—to mount a scathing assault on Hillary and all her works. But he offers, as well, some wise words of caution and restraint: “Hatred is not only bad for the soul. It also clouds judgment and causes one to waste a campaign throwing useless haymakers. It is important to record Hillary’s life record and share it with the receptive public. But …it will not be good enough to beat Hillary because she deserves to lose. Her opponent will have to deserve to win.” These are the words of a man who holds to higher ideals than mere victory—and therein lies much of the force of Bob Tyrrell’s fine book.

Book Review from The National Review, by Michael Potemra

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