Fortress Hillary.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Hillary Clinton - Brief article

As for Hillary Clinton, there is of course much to admire. But what has troubled me the most since her arrival at the White House is her hostility to the press and what it means. (The best account I've seen of Hillary's problems with the press is in Sally Bedell Smith's For Love of Politics.) It was Hillary who ordered the door to the press room shut to cut off reporters' access to the rest of the West Wing. It was Hillary who, in the winter of 1993 and 1994, exploited Bill's guilt over Troo-pergate to refuse to give the Whitewater papers to the press, although virtually the entire White House staff urged her to do so. And it is Hillary who has displayed a disdain for holding press conferences second only to George W. Bush's.

By contrast, Franklin Roosevelt, the...