Last Gasp on Hillary

OK, so I'm a slow reader. But geez, at over 550 pages, Carl Bernstein's book on Hillary, A Woman in Charge, was quite the tome.

So just as Hillary's thinking has evolved from Goldwater Girl to campus radical to rad First Lady to conventional senator, so has mine. She had a political awakening at college and made a bold speech at college graduation putting her in Life magazine as a future leader. But most of her public leadership has been a disappointment. Health care? Vote to authorize war on Iraq? Who is Hillary? I feel no closer to understanding her than I started. The Bernstein book doesn't help a whole lot on analysis. Although he does call her current White House bid soulless. I guess that's my problem, too. Shouldn't this woman of substance have something a little more substantive to say, beyond the safe political pap?

But this conventional woman is doing something that defies tradition. She's giving us an opportunity to elect the first woman president. And that's pretty radical.