Book Review: Government Girl

by paradox

Government Girl
Stacy Parker Aab
HarperCollins Publishers, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-1672222-4

[It may seem a little strange that paradox, the 6-1 210 Machiavellian Oakland Raiders fan, would review such a girl-centric title, but someone simply asked me to review, so I said yes. I need to read more books, I didn’t mind.]

This well-written, nicely flowing work can legitimately looked at from three separate perspectives: the coming of age story of a young, hardworking, ambitious woman slinging it out in the White House, an insider’s account to Bill Clinton and all the personalities swirling around his Presidency in all of its fun phases, and a simple valuable historical snapshot of how part of the White House worked in the 1990’s.

The reader will have to make up his or her own mind as to which is more compelling, obviously all three are legitimate facets to the story, but for my money I naturally liked the historical snapshot, I found the working narratives of what really goes in with the work in the White House very valuable. I also liked the endless stream of fine, hardworking government souls seen in all the positions, it’s very good to see firsthand accounts of such hard government work.

I get so tired of the noxious, stupid, anti-government screeching and sneering from so many of our citizens. America has consistently had some of the best human government on the planet, how does one think we ever got to be a great country? Not with a pipsqueak government, not hardly, and that government is made up of extremely hard-working, dedicated Americans like Stacy Aab. Our service people are some of our best, at least the Republicans always bray about that, if always somehow forgetting the military is part of government (with real costs) too. The Foreign Service is full of great people, all of our government is, it was good to see this fact re-enforced so well in the book.

Believe you me, Stacy Aab can work. A college athlete in the one of the most rigorous, teamwork-demanding, howling world of pain sports ever thought of by man, crew. When always performed at 0600, well, it’s just a warm-up for a long day ahead, crew means putting up with an agony of never-ending lactic burns I don’t want to think about.

It’s a bedrock characteristic to a good story in an interesting time and place, any political junkie or citizens interested in the Clintons would find it interesting, and I was pleased the time invested in the book was well spent.