Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House
By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. with Mark W. Davis 
Regnery Publishing
HC, 256 pg. US$27.95
ISBN: 0-8952-6067-0 

Madame Hillary's long march

By Bernard Chapin
web posted March 8, 2004

In response to a comment in our textbook stating that women
remain the second sex in our society, I said to the class, "Well, in
2008, I wouldn't be surprised if a woman became president."
The students agreed with me and a few mentioned Hillary
Clinton's name aloud. Another student, the lone conservative
present, emailed me the next day and asked why I would make
such a statement. "Because it's true," I answered.

Most conservatives are completely baffled by the Hillarymania of
today's liberals. A recent poll illustrates that she remains a highly
polarizing figure among the American electorate. Should she run
in 2008, the right will have no trouble turning out its base as 48
per cent of the population hold an unfavorable view of her. Her
road to victory will be formidable, but the Clintons have
encountered numerous challenges over the years and emerged
victorious time after time. It is undoubtedly for this reason that R.
Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (with Mark Davis) decided to write Madame
Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House.

Their account is a brief political history of the woman who could
be queen. It is also an attempt to warn us of what may happen
should she seize power. This biography gazes into the future and
is terrified by what may be.

The "Madame" in the title refers to China's Madame Mao who
was known as "the white boned demon." Tyrrell does not accuse
Hillary Clinton of being a demon but does believe that the
respectable person presented to us by her PR department does
not in fact exist. Senator Clinton is a "Coat and Tie Radical" who
has never forgotten or disowned the revolutionary ideas of the
1960s. Society exists for her and her kind to reconfigure.

As the allusion to Madame Mao may have informed you, this
book is not an objective account of Hillary's life. It is written
from the perspective of a warrior in the Clinton Wars and there
is nothing equivocal in its narration.

As Editor in Chief of The American Spectator, R. Emmett
Tyrrell's experiences with the Clintons were legion and none of
them produced pleasure. He recounts a story when he ran
across Bill in the Jockey Club. He decided to ask him a
question. The former President responded with annoyance and a
very pathetic temper tantrum. Yet Tyrrell notes that it was
Hillary's cold stare, as opposed to Mr. Clinton's babyish whines,
that truly unnerved him.

When I saw that the work was produced with the help of Mark
Davis, a former White House speechwriter, I was concerned
that it may have been ghostwritten. Those familiar with Tyrrell's
writing style will immediately know that such fears are
unfounded. The American Spectator's Editor has a highly unique
writing style which is very difficult to imitate. Based on the
book's rare word usage and wit, readers will have no doubt that
Tyrrell was its principal author.

Madame Hillary will not appeal to anyone on the left or
moderates in general as there is little diplomatic or uncertain
about its tone. Tyrrell has seen all he needs to see from the
former first lady and, while he admits that she has made great
strides in her political skills, he fears for all of our futures should
she become president.

"Madame Hillary would, in her wildest dreams, undoubtedly
relish a presidency that was an unending left-wing rampage, a
national Cambodian re-education camp for anyone caught
wearing an Adam Smith necktie or scarf. Such ‘extremists are
the enemy, after all, composing the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
that must be scotched if Clintonian America is to be saved. She
would install an all-woman Cabinet to thumb her nose at the
patriarchy…With Hillary now making all the appointments, why
not have a Cabinet full of short-haired harridans and crypto-
Marxists from assorted left-wing hothouses?"

For most of the public, the "real" Hillary Clinton remains a
mystery. Tyrrell describes the role of Senator as being her day
job, but that actually she and her husband function as the de
facto leaders of the Democratic Party. They are behind a great
many national decisions and a great many acts of mischief. Yet,
when one views Hillary from a distance, the truth is phantasmal
and the sum of her parts produces not a person but an enigma:

"Hillary Rodham Clinton is a feminist who averts her eye from
the foulest treatment of women, a once-youthful and tireless
investigator of Watergate whose war room surpasses the
maddest schemes of the White House Plumbers, the scourge of
the establishment who herself works the system for petty gain,
long after she has obtained great wealth."

She is one of the most important people on our planet and
Tyrrell believes this outcome is not due to chance. He depicts
her as an individual consumed by ambition and a lust for power.
Her personality is colored by an overwhelming need to control
others. She is a "self-promoting dynamo" and a "self-regarding
existentialist." What steps she takes (and over whom) are
irrelevant. The ends always justify the means. The author asks
Dick Morris about her private life and he relays that she doesn't
have one. Hillary is an example of a life whose essence is to
make the most of the political opportunities that are encountered.
 
Madame Hillary describes the personalities of both Bill and
Hillary in great detail and what chiefly emerges are their
qualitative differences. The 42nd President, after 1994, was
willing to triangulate on all issues provided they won him the
support of the electorate. The 44th President will not be so
malleable.

Tyrrell portrays Hillary as being a ideologue who remains heavily
influenced by the works of perma-radicals like Saul Alinsky.
Hillary's rule will be devout and unyielding, and, according to the
authors, her minions will accomplish sizable societal change from
their second and third tier jobs in the shadows.

Unlike other books, this one offers up possible solutions for the
problems it discusses. The last chapter is entitled, "How to
Defeat Hillary" and suggests ways to overcome her candidacy.
Tyrrell offers a six point program for bringing down the
Democrats' Trojan Horse. Two of the propositions involve
reminding voters of her advocacy of Hillarycare which meant the
possible socialization of 14 per cent of the economy and also
that we should blame her for the current wave of judicial activism
that is making a farce of our republic (see the state of
Massachusetts).
 
Madame Hillary is a well-written work and a general good use
of one's time, yet it is by no means a comprehensive history of
the junior Senator from New York. If that's what the reader is
looking for I'd recommend Barbara Olson's Hell to Pay instead.
Although, as far as producing entertainment and arguments for
the conservative faithful, there are few better or more timely
offerings available than this strident book by Emmett Tyrrell.

Bernard Chapin is a writer living in Chicago. He can be reached
at bchapafl@hotmail.com.

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