When is the best time to get something written by liberals resembling the truth about a liberal politician? The answer is after, and only after, that liberal politician has lost the final campaign of his or her career. Such is the case with authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes who in 2014 wrote a mushy book about Hillary Clinton called HRC. Of course, back then Hillary was looked upon as the heir apparent for the Democrat nomination in 2016 which resulted in a book chock full of cheerleading for the anointed one. This was in sharp contrast to their new book due out on April 18, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, which finally reveals much of the truth about Hillary's character previously hidden by their waving pom-poms in their 2014 book.
To get an idea of just what a startling contrast there is in the two works, first let us look at some "HRC" excerpts provided in 2014 by Newsbusters' Executive Editor, Tim Graham, in his appropriately titled ""In Mushy New Book, Reporters Lamely Compare Hillary to Rock Star Bono":
Navigating through a buttoned-down sea of Brooks Brothers and Talbots as she made her way to the podium, Hillary was surrounded by applause, and by groupielike bureaucrats waving camera-phones. It was a historic moment, at least in the world of State…If her debut was a rock concert, Hillary was Bono – a bona fide international celebrity, with credibility as a crusader for the disadvantaged. In that regard, she was one of a kind.
...Her celebrity status came not only because she had the last name Clinton. It came, those who know her well say, because a woman got up and fought every time the world knocked her down, from her failed health care reform effort and her husband's very public infidelities to the brutal slog of the 2008 Democratic president. Time and again her personal tragedies and subsequent triumphs played out in real time for a global audience. Even though she had been first lady and U.S. senator, she retained an underdog quality. She had served as her husband's most valued advisor for decades but suffered accusations that she had ridden his coattails, unaccomplished in her own right.
Apparently more of an hagiography of St. Hillary than an impartial biography. Now compare their 2014 open admiration for their subject to April 12 excerpts from The Hill, where co-author Amie Parnes is Senior White House Correspondent, of their new book in which it is finally "safe" (because she will no longer be a candidate) to take a much more realistic view of Hillary:
Hillary was so mad she couldn’t think straight. She was supposed to be focused on the prep session for that night’s Univision debate in Miami, but a potent mix of exhaustion and exasperation bubbled up inside.
She’d been humiliated in the Michigan primary the night before, a loss that not only robbed her of a prime opportunity to put Bernie Sanders down for good but also exposed several of her weaknesses. How could she have been left so vulnerable? She knew — or at least she thought she did. The blame belonged to her campaign team, she believed, for failing to hone her message, energize important constituencies and take care of business in getting voters to the polls. And now, Jake Sullivan, her de facto chief strategist, was giving her lip about the last answer she’d delivered in the prep session.
“That’s not very good,” Sullivan corrected.
“Really?” Hillary snapped back.
The room fell silent.
“Why don’t you do it?”
The comment was pointed and sarcastic, but she meant it. So for the next 30 minutes, there he was, pretending to be Hillary while she critiqued his performance.
...The underlying truth — the one that many didn’t want to admit to themselves — was the person ultimately responsible for these decisions, the one whose name was on the ticket, hadn’t corrected these problems, all of which had been brought to her attention before primary day. She’d stuck with the plan, and it had cost her.
The funny thing here is that Hillary apparently learned nothing from her Michigan primary loss since her failure to later campaign much in Michigan and most of the rest of the rust belt (and in Wisconsin where she failed to appear at all) helped cause her general election loss. Another cause of her November loss was, as Nate Silver pointed out, the false sense of security that the cheerleading mainstream media, including Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, gave to Hillary's campaign.
If Allen and Parnes as well as the rest of the MSM had previously been in critical rather than cheerleading mode, perhaps Hillary Clinton would have not rested on the laurels of her false sense of inevitability. Only now when it is too late for Hillary do they give us the frankness that was laughably missing in their earlier fawning book.
