Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

John Wesley’s dictum “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

But the general impulse to destabilize a group, to reclaim attention and make life mildly unpleasant for everyone—these were tendencies I knew well.

Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.

Aaron, my communications director, said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” “Except backwards,” said the consultant, Rebecca. “And in high heels.”