Author(s): William H. Chafe

Politics

In "Private Lives/Public Consequences" and in "Never Stop Running", his critically acclaimed biography of Allard Lowenstein, William H. Chafe has written powerfully about the relationship between personality and politics. "Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal" represents the culmination of this approach to political history. Having written widely on civil rights and women's history, Chafe brings the themes of all his scholarship together in this book about the Clintons' "co-presidency," two people committed to both sex and race equality. From the beginning, Chafe argues, the personal chemistry between the Clintons shaped definitively their political careers. She was instrumental in his triumphs as Arkansas governor and "saved" his presidential candidacy by standing with him during the Gennifer Flowers sex scandal. He responded by delegating presidential powers to her that no other First Lady had ever exercised. Often tempestuous, their relationship had as many lows as it did highs, but the trajectory of the Clintons' political lives can only be understood through the prism of their personal relationship.
Full of insights about health care, Kenneth Starr, and welfare reform, "Bill and Hillary" gives texture and depth to the Clintons' lives, including the extent to which the Lewinsky scandal finally freed Hillary to become a politician in her own right and return to the consensus reformer she had been in college and law school.