THE CASE AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON.

• Author: Brock, David
• Position: Review

THE CASE AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON by Peggy Noonan Regan Books, $24.00

PEGGY NOONAN, A FORMER speechwriter for Reagan and Bush whose work frequently appears in The Wall Street Journal and Time, is often considered to represent the upper level of Republican thinking. But her latest effort, The Case Against Hillary Clinton, is an empty book that, if it has any effect at all, can only get Republicans into deeper trouble.

Following a perfunctory discussion of Hillary Clinton's failed health-care initiative, Noonan begins her next chapter by stating: "But I cannot think of a time when she showed herself to be a champion by gambling her political capital." Really? Though in one part of the book Noonan acknowledges Mrs. Clintons role as head of an education commission in Arkansas that won legislative approval and financing for sweeping school reforms, in another section Noonan launches this salvo: "She has not created one program. She has not passed one bill. She has not won one legislative victory." She refers obtusely to Filegate as One of the Great Unsolved Mysteries of the Clinton administration, even though the case has been solved with the Clintons exonerated even by the independent counsel.

Delivered without the faux scholarly apparatus accompanying other Hillary Clinton attack books, much of The Case Against Hillary Clinton is literally made up. Page after page is littered with imaginary dialogue and fantasies that belong in a 50-minute session--a 17-page Hollywood speech that Mrs. Clinton never delivered, a fake interview with Tom Brokaw after she loses the Senate race, a fictional scene in which movie producer Harvey Weinstein disrespectfully lights a cigarette in the First Lady's face, a moment when it dawns on Hillary as she flies into LaGuardia that she looks like the Statue of Liberty, a conversation between James Carville and Harold Ickes at Mrs. Clintons graveside, even a passage...