I know, often Collins approaches things from the standpoint of snark. But that is not what you will encounter when you read Behind Hillary’s Mask, which has the subtitle “How is it possible that we still don’t really know the most famous woman in America?”
She begins by talking about a conversation she had with then Sen. Clinton shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001:
The conversation was memorable not for the information but for her manner. For all her intensity about the city, Clinton was more relaxed than I’d ever seen her while chatting with a member of the press. She was operating in a new space — for the moment, no one really cared that she was a senator who’d gotten elected from a state she’d never lived in, the survivor of the best-known political sex scandal in American history, the former first lady who ran for office while her husband was still president. The country had temporarily lost interest in celebrities, and she seemed to find her relative insignificance liberating.
Already, you can see the seriousness and depth of this column.
And as she reminds us,
In America, she’s been part of the backdrop of our lives for nearly a quarter of a century. We’re watching a very familiar face making a brand-new mark on history.
Collins writes in depth about Clinton’s Senate campaign, and the famous “listening tour” with which she began that campaign.