HILLARY HATIN', PART 2. A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, which will be released publicly one week from today, has been lumped in with Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.'s nasty new volume Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. I haven't yet had time to read the review copy of the 628-page Carl Bernstein volume, but my first impression of it based on reading the introductory pages and some key passages makes two things clear: 1) this book will be a much more enjoyable read than the Gerth/Van Natta book and 2) its tone is far more sympathetic than the one Gerth and Van Natta took, even as the reporting is more personal and seemingly invasive when it comes to Clinton's private life.

Another thing worth noting: the Washington Post story from Friday on the book says that the Bernstein book tells the following anecdote:

[O]ut of "anger and hurt" she considered running for governor in 1990, when he presumably would step down to prepare his 1992 presidential campaign. The idea ended after consultant Dick Morris conducted two polls showing she had no independent identity with Arkansas voters and compared her to George Wallace's wife, who ran to succeed him in Alabama -- an analogy that offended her.

However, the book itself makes it pretty clear that the dynamic was not one of personal pique or a desire for vengeance on her part. Writes Bernstein:

At first, after their reconciliation, Bill decided tentatively not to run for reelection as governor, and to focus on his relationship with his family. It might also be advantageous not to be burdened with the governorship if he decided to seek the presidency in 1992. If he ran for governor and lost -- a possibility, since Dick Morris's preliminary polls were showing that 50 percent of Arkansas voters would prefer a new governor -- the presidency might never be attainable.

He and Hillary discussed the possibility of her running to become his successor. Morris conducted two polls to assess her chances. "The conclusion I came to in those polls was that she had not developed her image, and that she was seen as Ms. Clinton. She was not seen as Hillary. Which is hard to imagine, but it's true.["]

That sounds more like Bill trying to game out his own future and set up a run for president while still living in a governor's mansion he feared losing than something she was inspired by anger alone to press for. Earlier, Bernstein makes it clear that Hillary only told friends she might consider running "if he didn't run, of course. She had never before explored the possibility of elective office."

UPDATE: Greg Sargent smartly points out that the material on Clinton's electoral ambitions in the Bernstein book directly contradicts the contention in the Gerth/Van Natta volume that the Clintons had a 20-year plan for her to run for the presidency after he did. Says Greg: "It's also worth noting that Bernstein's source for Hillary's thinking is a firsthand one, while Gerth and Van Natta's account was based on a second-hand source. What's more, the Gerth-Van Natta allegation was directly challenged last week when the one person said by the authors to have first-hand knowledge of the alleged plot to make her President strenuously denied its existence to The Washington Post."

--Garance Franke-Ruta