So Ed Klein comes out with a torrid Hillary-bashing book, chock full of personal anecdotes, juicy gossip and accusations, pretty much guaranteed to destroy Hillary Clinton's carefully-crafted political persona. Don't expect to see me dancing in the streets waving a copy, though. I'm not buying it -- literally or figuratively. Something about it just smells fishy.
Many of the accusations in The Truth About Hillary seem too deeply personal to be called anything but personal destruction: she's a lesbian, Chelsea was conceived by rape, and so on. It's distasteful tabloid fodder at best, even if it all turns out to be true. As much as I don't want Hillary Clinton holding any sort of office whatsoever, I don't believe ripping her personal life apart in public is the way to defeat her. I'll continue to base my opposition on her Marxist background and destructive political agenda, thanks.
If nothing else, we've seen how personal attacks often backfire on the attackers, as happened when Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for Governor of California. When opponents exposed him as having groped women on movie sets, the backlash actually increased his support. The constant negative attacks on President Bush probably didn't help John Kerry's 2004 Presidential campaign as much as the George Soros/MoveOn.org "BushisHitlerandhelookslikeachimp!" crowd hoped, if at all. But exposing someone as a victim of rape? That's incredibly low, in my opinion, even if -- especially if -- the story's true. And what has Chelsea done to merit that sort of cruel attention? If we believed that using Dick Cheney's daughter to attack him was wrong, then we have to believe the same applies to Chelsea Clinton.
So who would stoop that low? According to the Drudge Report, Hillary's people already have that figured out. "This is the right wing attack machine on crack!" a "top Hillary source" reportedly said. Hillary Clinton was, after all, the person who invented the myth of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to explain why her husband was being accused of philandering with an intern in the White House... which turned out to be true. But is Ed Klein a likely member of the VRWC?
Edward Klein was editor-in-chief of New York Times Magazine for eleven years, and has also been the foreign editor of Newsweek. Neither publication is known as a vehicle for Clinton-bashing or Democrat-baiting... quite the opposite. While some might think this impressive resume lends credibility to his hit book, it raises some important questions. Where was all this information during the eleven years he helmed NYT Magazine, and why did he suddenly decide to put it all together now? How come no other person has ever even hinted at these accusations -- not even political advisor Dick Morris, who knew the Clintons about as well as anyone ever did, and even accused Clinton of physically attacking him?
I'm inclined to believe that this book is a carefully-crafted plant, designed to inoculate Hillary against real negative campaigning. It's coming out far enough ahead of her 2006 Senate re-election campaign for most of the buzz to fade by the time the run begins. Mark my words: within the next year, some major accusation in the book will suddenly become a big media sensation, and then be proven false, discrediting the entire book. Perhaps Klein himself will "out" his own source for the accusation as a fraud, or claim he was misled by a right-wing enemy of Hillary (but refuse to name names). Not only will any Clinton opponents who used information from the book against her be discredited along with it, but any further negative information about Hillary Clinton during her 2008 Presidential campaign will be greeted with, "yeah, it's just like that Klein book."
If you do buy the book, I suggest you check the sourcing for yourself before repeating any of Klein's claims. Maybe someone should list them, and take bets on which accusation will be the one "revealed" as a lie.
