Despite the book’s title, and despite the decade Chozick spent on some version of the Hillary beat, Clinton herself does not emerge too vividly here. Sharper are the profiles of Clinton’s entourage, particularly the longtime male press aides whom Chozick never identifies by name but simply calls “The Guys.” The women around Hillary — such as Jennifer Palmieri, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills — rate full names and attributed quotes, but the men are dubbed Brown Loafers Guy, Policy Guy, Hired Gun Guy, Outsider Guy and the loathsome Original Guy, “the longest-serving Svengali and the most-devoted member of Hillary’s court of flattering men.”
The Guys constantly mess with Chozick, magnifying her self-doubts. “I don’t care what you write because no one takes you seriously,” Outsider Guy says. They suggest that a Times colleague is leaking her story ideas to a competitor at Politico and that more-experienced reporters in her newsroom will steal away her assignment. (“C’mon, you really think they’ll keep you on the beat with Maggie there?”) They ask if there are any other Times reporters, preferably male, that they could talk to instead of her. “They’d gotten in my head, and I let them,” Chozick admits. The undercurrent of sexism spills over when Chozick and Original Guy spar over whether a prior conversation can go on the record, and he randomly paraphrases a crude line from “Thank You for Smoking,” a 2005 film in which a reporter sleeps with a lobbyist for information. “I didn’t know I had to say it was off the record when I was inside you,” Original Guy smirks. (“The words hung there,” Chozick recalls, “so grossly gynecological.”)
Chozick doesn’t name him but later cites a Times story by Maggie Haberman revealing that Original Guy served as the Trump stand-in during Clinton’s debate preparation. “Hmmm, wherever will Hillary find a manipulative, sometimes-charming, often hilarious, possible sociopath?” Chozick muses. I won’t out Original Guy here, except to say that his name rhymes with “Philippe Reines.”
