Village View: Hillary’s Book Is Mea Culpa

For months now I have had my ticket for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s talk and book-signing, in Philadelphia Nov.30, in my wallet. And I have been reading a few pages each day of her newest book, “What Happened.” This is her post-mortem about the Presidential campaign last year.

Most of the media has been inaccurate in describing Secretary Clinton’s latest opus. She does not, in fact, lay blame on a lot of other people. She does, from the opening pages, apologize for letting people down, for losing the election in November 2016.

With all the craziness that has been happening in our country for the past few weeks, it has been difficult to focus on last year’s presidential election and, for me, the horribly disappointing outcome.

As I write this, President Trump (oh, how it pains me to put those two words together) has once again started tweeting. This time he jumped up and attacked Senator Al Franken. But that’s a subject for another column. Still not a tweet or a single word about Judge Roy Moore, despite many other Republicans, some very prominent ones, including Senator Mitch McConnell, calling for Moore to drop out of the Senate race in Alabama.

Last I looked, Alabama was still one of the states in the United States of America, although it often sounds like a foreign country. Like a foreign universe, in fact.

But back to Hillary. I hope you all have been following the astounding news from Fox TV, how one of their newscasters went on the air attacking his colleagues for falsely having accused Hillary Clinton of having voted to sell an American uranium mine to the Russians.

Turns out that when Hillary was Secretary of State, she had absolutely no authority to vote on or even weigh in on a decision made by a federal committee. Shepard Smith deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor for defending Hillary in the shark-infested world of Fox TV he lives in.

But What Happened is written in a conversational tone, and Hillary shares with us a lot about her personal life, her upbringing, and even briefly the dark period in her life when President Clinton was threatened with impeachment. She also shared her happy memories with Bill Clinton and praised him for being a devoted father and grandfather — and still her best friend and supporter.

It is beyond me to comprehend even friends of mine who have never met Hillary, never spent time in her company, would believe vicious rumors about her and decided arbitrarily to accept Trumps’ “lock her up” chants and jeers. With no proof, they just decided to accept rumors and gossip as if they were unvarnished truth: Even though they know that Trump makes up a lot of stuff and attacks anyone who offers up proof that what he has said is often now just untrue but deliberate lies.

I’m not a psychiatrist, so I cannot explain the mind-set which allows someone to believe “fake news” just because the Trump world repeats and repeats the phrase.

Hillary thanks the many people involved in her campaign and cites examples of inspiration she received by meeting with voters and listening to their opinions. Her chapter on the coal industry is especially enlightening, particularly her apology for having misspoken at a large rally in West Virginia. But she gives us facts and figures from reliable sources to prove her point, that coal is not coming back, despite Trumps’ ridiculous claims to the contrary.

In the chapter called “Change Makers,” Hillary talks about her work with Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. After graduating from Wellesley College, Hillary worked with Edelman to convince Congress to pass the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, requiring schools to make accommodations for students with disabilities.

She deals with Bernie Sanders in the book, and she has an entire chapter entitled, “Those Damn Emails.”

Eleanor Roosevelt has always been one of Hillary’s role models and heroes, and she often quotes from her. She has a long list of people whom she thanks for their loyalty and assistance, starting with Michelle and Barack Obama, and even including Ed Rendell. And her joy in her daughter Chelsea, her son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky, and their two children is mentioned often as part of her healing process.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s honesty and self-analysis are refreshing in the strange Trump world we are now living in. Be sure to check out What Happened.

Bonnie Squires is a communications consultant who writes weekly for Main Line Media News and can be reached at www.bonniesquires.com. She hosts the “Bonnie’s Beat” TV show at Radnor Studio 21 and Main Line Television.