NEW YORK TIMES Book Review: …The book itself, however, turns out to be a subtle, finely calibrated work that provides a portrait of the former secretary of state and former first lady as a heavy-duty policy wonk. Compared with her 2003 memoir, “Living History” — which tended to lapse into glib, stump-speechlike pronouncements and reactive efforts to blame assorted enemies for her and her husband’s travails — “Hard Choices” is a statesmanlike document intended to attest to Mrs. Clinton’s wide-ranging experience on national security and on foreign policy. There is little news in the book. And unlike former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’s rawly candid memoir “Duty,” this volume is very much the work of someone who is keeping all her political options open — and who would like to be known not only for mastering the art of diplomacy, but also for having the policy chops to become chooser-in-chief.
“Hard Choices,” like Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, does not evince a grand, overarching foreign policy vision, as Henry A. Kissinger’s 1994 book “Diplomacy” did. Rather, Mrs. Clinton displays a pragmatic, case-by-case modus operandi. Some critics have argued that she played it safe as secretary of state, that she had no marquee achievements like a Middle East peace accord. And her new book (written with an assist from what she calls her “book team”) suggests that Mrs. Clinton’s main legacy lies in reorienting American foreign policy in a globalized, tech-savvy 21st century, and in helping restore the country’s image abroad in the wake of the Iraq war and the unilateralism of President George W. Bush’s administration.
One of the few things this book shares with “Living History” is its emphasis on Mrs. Clinton as someone capable of growth and change: an individual who says she learns from past mistakes like her 2002 vote to authorize military action in Iraq. (She “got it wrong,” she writes of that vote. “Plain and simple.”) “Hard Choices” seems meant to serve several purposes at once: to document Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state; to put her dysfunctional 2008 presidential campaign in the rearview mirror; to supplant memories of her tumultuous days as first lady (Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky) with images of her negotiating with leaders on the world stage; and to lift her above the partisan mudslinging of Washington… (more)
