Clinton ponders what could have been

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/10/2017 (3215 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s difficult to understand why so many were of the opinion Hillary Clinton should not have written What Happened. As the scandal regarding Russian involvement in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign unravels, now is exactly the time for such a book.

This is an uneven book. Some parts act as an intimate memoir of her campaign as the first female nominee of a major party for president of the United States. Other parts are intensely personal and biographical, including glimpses into her childhood and youth, her marriage and her education.

Then there are the sections that dealt with what went wrong in the 2016 presidential election. Some of it is interesting and some of it is turgid.

Overall, it’s worth the read; some sections will stand as reference points as the Trump presidency marches on (or doesn’t) over the next few years.

To begin, the suggestion that Clinton refused to take any responsibility for her election loss is complete poppycock; apologies are littered throughout the book. In fact, the first half reads like an apology from Clinton to the many women she feels she disappointed.

She writes at length about the young women and girls she met on the campaign trail who were inspired by her candidacy and the feeling that she let them down: “I wish so badly that I had been able to take the oath of office and achieve that milestone for women.”

It’s as if the campaign was much more than just the desire to win for the Democrats, but to win for all women.

Clinton details the dilemma she and other women feel when dealing with conflict, with two key examples. The first is her description of Trump “looming” behind her during the second debate — this after the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged about groping women.

She had to decide: “[S]tay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up, you creep, get away from me…?’”

She chose the calm route, but wonders what would have happened if she had chosen to stand up to him. It’s a question women always ask themselves after they’ve faced a bully: “What would have happened if…?”

Her second key dilemma came during the “Commander in Chief Forum” on the deck of the USS Intrepid in which host Matt Lauer kept hitting Clinton with questions about her emails rather than asking questions about foreign policy. Again, Clinton wonders what would have happened if she had “pushed back.” Instead, she remained “polite, albeit exasperated, and played the political game as it used to be, not as it had become. That was the mistake.”

Trolls, Bots, Fake News and Real Russians will be the one chapter read and reread; it lays out Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the 2016 campaign. In short, it’s all about revenge.

Putin’s relationship with the U.S. under former president Barack Obama was not particularly friendly. Clinton viewed Putin as a threat and, as she says, the Trump team has been complicit in the election breach.

More details will certainly come to light as investigations continue. For those trying to figure out what happened — with the 2016 election, with fake news, Russia and Trump — this book provides interesting, if uneven, background. With full apology.

Shannon Sampert is an associate professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg. She has a photo of herself and Hillary Clinton in her office.