Vanity Fair Profile on Sidney Blumenthal -THE HILLARY CONFIDANT YOU CAN’T ESCAPE
Some people consider Sidney Blumenthal a canny adviser. To others, he appears a meddlesome opportunist. Now he has published a big book on Lincoln. But as his countless e-mails suggest, he is as connected to Clintonworld as he was 20 years ago.
IN his new book, A Self-Made Man , a sharply executed and well received first installment of a four-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, the journalist-provocateur Sidney Blumenthal introduces us to William Herndon, Lincoln’s “worshipful, dreamy, and often strangely effective” young law partner in Springfield, Illinois. He was “garrulous and sociable” and “served as Lincoln’s precinct captain, press secretary, editorial co-writer, and all-purpose aide,” as well as acting as Lincoln’s “pulse on public opinion.” Herndon was nothing less than Lincoln’s “tuning fork.” Reading the book in the middle of the current presidential campaign, longtime Blumenthal-watchers will be struck by an analogy that is never stated but leaps off the page: that Blumenthal may be a latter-day Herndon, with Hillary Clinton cast in the role of Lincoln.
(....)
No comments:
Post a Comment