American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power

311 Pages·2004·2.11 MB·English

by  Christopher Andersen

AMERICAN
EVITA
Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power
Christopher Andersen

For my family

I don’t quit.
I keep going.
—Hillary Rodham Clinton

PREFACE
S
he is, quite simply, the most famous, most controversial, most
complex, most loved-hated-admired-reviled woman—per-
haps person—in America. And, whether she fulfills her life’s ambi-
tion or not, she can already lay claim to being the first woman ever
considered a serious contender for the presidency.
Yet most of what we know about Hillary Rodham Clinton is
strictly seen in the context of her marriage to the forty-second
President. Indeed, they were the ultimate power couple—he the
drawling, fatally charismatic Bubba with Falstaffian appetites, she
the brilliant lawyer and consummate political strategist who put her
own dreams of high office on hold to focus on capturing the Oval
Office for her husband. When it came to her husband’s philander-
ing, Hillary had always been willing not just to look the other way,
but to go on the offensive—as she did when news of Bill’s affair
with Gennifer Flowers threatened to derail Clinton’s 1992 presi-
dential campaign. “I’m not,” she famously told CBS’s 60 Minutes at
the time, “some Tammy Wynette, standin’ by her man.”