THE FIRST PARTNER: Hilary Rodham Clinton.

• Author: Williams, Marjorie
• Position: Review

THE FIRST PARTNER: Hilary Rodham Clinton by Joyce Milton William Morrow & Co., $27

A new biography is another example of how lucky the Clintons are in their enemies

Joyce Milton's biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton beats to market several others that were commissioned in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal. The book business, in finding Hillary Rodham Clinton an ever-more-interesting subject, has mirrored the feelings of the public at large, which rewards the first lady with rising approbation for every new evidence of her humiliation by her husband. The First Partner is of little help in boosting our understanding of this strange phenomenon. Mostly it's a further exhibit--as if any were needed!--of how lucky Bill and Hillary Clinton have been in their enemies.

The First Partner, the work of a right-wing writer, has the strange air of having been conceived and written about six years ago. It includes, of course, an account of last year's scandal; but mostly it's a book that woke up when Hillary first burst upon the scene and decided that America must be saved from the demons of centralized planning that Hillary was plotting to unleash upon the land. Even granting, for the sake of argument, Milton's contention that Hillary came to Washington hell-bent on pursuing an agenda more liberal than her husband's, it seems strange for Milton to care so much. For one thing, the first lady's biggest effort in the direction of federal gigantism, her health care reform plan, collapsed more than five years ago. And Milton's approach ignores the obvious point that, in neutering his own presidency for the sake of his dalliances in the Oval Office, Clinton necessarily neutered Hillary's supposed co-presidency, too, leaving her only the weird consolations of being the wronged wife.

Hillary Clinton can be criticized for many things--in particular, helping her husband embitter an entire year, perhaps an entire era, of our politics in the service of his perjuries. As soon as she decided to take the offensive on his behalf, she became socially, if not legally, as culpable as he for embroiling the country in his year-long deception. The question of how this smart, driven woman got herself there--especially, what story she has told herself about her life and her marriage--is indeed an interesting one.

And Milton essentially grasps this version of Hillary's sins. But the sins she seems most interested in are of a kind that seem anachronistic--both because we're now so...