Review: What Happened

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

“What Happened” - is it a question or an answer to a question? This is something that’s certainly affecting many millions of people in the country.

This book tries to layout Mrs. Clinton’s perspective of the answer.

Is it a good book? Mostly. If you are familiar with the tenure of Mrs. Clinton, a third of the book is a bit of a rehash of her political services. The rest of it can be separated into details about the campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s opinion on why she lost and what she will do in the future.

about the campaign

This is the part I’m most interested in. I wanted to read more about the campaign’s internal turmoil in dealing with the various bombshells that has happened in the 2016 campaign. Private server, DNC emails, Podesta emails, Access Hollywood tape, etc. On these topics, the book goes into just enough details about the people involved and their reactions. It’s not enough to fully satisfy my curiosity, but it’s probably as close as I will get to read about it.

why did she lose?

This is the more controversial part where Mrs. Clinton - after saying that she full accept that she is responsible for the loss - tries to details the reasons that contribute externally to her loss.

She gave an explanation on the severity of her emails controversy, with a detour into explaining the intricacies of assigning classifications. She place a large part of the blame squarely on James Comey’s last letter to Congress - several times. She detailed several times the imbalance of the new coverage of her emails vs her policies. Specifically, this blame was place quite strongly on NY Times. She tried to explain the gravity of Russian’s informational attacks. Much was said about voter suppression tactics in many areas of the country. Finally, she gave talking points about her perceived inadequacies but almost never spend much time analyzing her inadequacies.

Is the blame on James Comey credible? Yes, I think so. As anyone who was paying attention during the campaign, Comey’s letter to Congress was a thunderclap. It’s not inconceivable that it was responsible for a swing of a couple percentage points.

Media’s heavy handed coverage of her emails is also well reported and supported by much evidence.

to the future

She hasn’t said much about the future except for these:

• she will not run for elected office again
• she is creating a PAC with Howard Dean
• she will not be silent about issues she is passionate about

All good things. I don’t agree with her critics that she should just disappear after this loss.

In the end, this was a very honest book. You might not believe her 100%, but it’s easy to see this is not a typical political hagiography usually written to launch the next chapter of a politician’s ambition. It tries to explain the impact on the campaign from the bombshell events. It tries to talk about the campaign’s and Mrs. Clinton’s aspirations while at the same time clearly state the disappointment felt after Trump’s win. There isn’t much sugarcoating here.

The 2016 campaign will be analyzed to death by current and future political scientists and pundits. This is one of many books like it. It’s significant due to the author. It’s significant because the book doesn’t try to land Mrs. Clinton softly - the loss is real and it’s clearly felt. These all make it a book worth reading.

Recommended.