A Woman in Charge

by Carl Bernstein

  “Her handling of the war issue subjected her to the kind of broader examination that she wasn’t expecting,” said a former Democratic senator, an admirer. “It put her in the position of looking backward, not forward, of caving to conventional wisdom instead of moving in the direction of new leadership, new ideas, being bold. Hillary stands for very good things on almost all of the other, traditional issues. Women’s rights, child care, health care, minimum wage, etc. She’s studied a lot of them. She is a very good senator, one of the best. But the war revealed something about her that she may not be able to get past: the idea that she is a throwback to another time, that she is looking like a tired version of herself.”

  One of her former White House aides observed, “I don’t know how anything in her life can be deep or honest because she’s tied herself in to stay with Bill…. So everything is seen from this kind of warped perspective, in a way. She can no longer be honest about what she actually feels, so it is hard to know if she’s being honest about what she says she thinks.”

  Another aide referred to her very visible position on flag-burning:

  “The only major thing I can remember her doing is the flag-burning statute. That is evidence of the old Dick Morris/Bill Clinton ‘triangulation,’ looking for the opportunity to break away from Democratic Party orthodoxy, which is a good idea. But she might have picked something significant; it’s not as if flag-burning on the streets of America is a national problem. As a constitutional question it leads you to wonder if she really believes people should go to jail for burning the U.S. flag. I can’t believe somebody who graduated Yale Law School believes people should be prosecuted and put in jail for burning the American flag.”

  A long-time associate of the Clintons, with whom Hillary has consulted in her quest to return to the White House, said: “She has a very plausible case for president. She had an eight-year supergraduate course in the presidency, a progressive platform. But she should have been more probing and aggressive by this stage, not looking back.” He paused. “Besides, I’m not sure I want the circus back in town.” This may be a succint expression of her biggest obstacle.

  HILLARY’S MEMOIR, Living History, was published in June 2003.

  “It was a campaign document,” her deputy press secretary in the White House, Neel Lattimore, had said about her first book, It Takes a Village. It was meant to define her in unexpected ways. Living History was likewise meant to be a campaign document. It is a very revealing document, but not in the sense she intended.

  Since her Arkansas years, Hillary Rodham Clinton has always had a difficult relationship with the truth. She is hardly different from most conventional politicians in this regard. But she has always aspired to be better than conventional; Living History was meant to demonstrate that. But judged against the facts, it underlines how she has often chosen to obfuscate, omit, and avoid. It is an understatement by now that she has been known to apprehend truths about herself and the events of her life that others do not exactly share. Living History is an example of that.

  In her artfully crafted public utterances and written sentences there has almost always been an effort at baseline truthfulness. Yet almost always, something holds her back from telling the whole story, as if she doesn’t trust the reader, listener, friend, interviewer, constituent—or perhaps herself—to understand the true significance of events.

  Hillary values context; she does see the big picture. Hers, in fact, is not the mind of a conventional politician. But when it comes to herself, she sees with something less than candor and lucidity. She sees, like so many others, what she wants to see.

  In Living History, for example, she fails to note the common view of many of her friends from childhood and members of her extended family that her father was verbally and mentally abusive of her mother, and that other women might have chosen to walk out of such a painful marriage. Instead, Hillary alludes to the “difficult” nature of her father, as if he were merely a complicated curmudgeon. Never does she mention the traumas she endured during her husband’s final, desultory term as the governor of Arkansas, which led her to consider divorce five years before the Clintons came to Washington.

  To get caught up in the wave of one’s time and to experience it and even try to influence its course is to live history. This, Hillary Clinton has done. But to tell history is something else again. Living History was intended to get on the record an acceptable version of events that would render the past reasonably explicable, blur the edges, put the past behind her, and allow her to move on with her airbrushed persona, regardless of election results.

  As a girl and then as a woman, Hillary has almost always been desperate to be a passionate participant and at the center of events: familial, generational, experiential, political, historical. Call it ambition, call it the desire to make the world a better place—she has been driven. Rarely has she stepped aside voluntarily into passivity. Introspection, however, has not been her strong suit; faith in the Lord, and in herself, is.

  Three pillars have held her up through one crisis after another in a life creased by personal difficulties and public and private battles: her religious faith; her powerful urge toward both service and its accompanying sense (for good or ill) of self-importance; and a fierce desire for privacy and secrecy. It is the last of these that seems to cast a larger and larger shadow over who she really is.

  On January 20, 2007, Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her candidacy for president of the United States, fourteen years to the day after Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the nation’s forty-second president. “Let’s talk. Let’s chat. Let’s start a dialogue about your ideas and mine,” she said. She chose to make her announcement over the Internet, in a video, sitting on a living room couch—alone. “I’m in, and I’m in to win,” she said on her Web site.

  Increasingly, what Hillary serves up for public consumption, especially since setting her sights on the Senate and the presidency, is usually elaborately prepared or relatively soulless. This is the true shame.

  Hillary is neither the demon of the right’s perception, nor a feminist saint, nor is she particularly emblematic of her time—perhaps more old-fashioned than modern. Hers is a story of strength and vulnerability, a woman’s story. She is an intelligent woman endowed with energy, enthusiasm, humor, tempestuousness, inner strength, spontaneity in private, lethal (almost) powers of retribution, real-life lines that come from deep wounds, and the language skills of a sailor (and of a minister), all evidence of her passion—which, down deep, is perhaps her most enduring and even endearing trait.

  As Hillary has continued to speak from the protective shell of her own making, and packaged herself for the widest possible consumption, she has misrepresented not just facts but often her essential self.

  Great politicians have always been marked by the consistency of their core beliefs, their strength of character in advocacy, and the self-knowledge that informs bold leadership. Almost always, Hillary has stood for good things. Yet there is often a disconnect between her convictions and words, and her actions. This is where Hillary disappoints. But the jury remains out. She still has time to prove her case, to effectuate those things that make her special, not fear them or camouflage them. We would all be the better for it, because what lies within may have the potential to change the world, if only a little.

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  Interviews

  From the start of work on this book, in 1999, both Hillary and Bill Clinton told me on several occasions they would welcome being interviewed by me. In the end, both formally declined; through their spokespersons they said they did not wish to favor one of several books being written about Hillary.

  Their closest friends and associates, however, are the primary sources for this book, especially those who have had the most proximity to Hillary during and since her childhood. Many agreed to be interviewed on the record. Others asked that they not be identified in the text or notes. I interviewed more than two hundred people and am grateful to
each one of them. Of those who can be identified, I owe several special gratitude.

  I would especially like to thank Betsy Johnson Ebeling for the many hours, patient explanations, and careful recollections she shared with me in discussing Hillary’s early family life and the years in Park Ridge, and her continuing close friendship with Hillary, particularly in the year of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I would also like to offer special thanks to Betsy’s husband, Tom.

  Of all the classmates, friends, and teachers I interviewed from the Wellesley years, Geoffrey Shields, Hillary’s boyfriend for almost the whole period, was invaluable in helping me understand the young woman who arrived at age seventeen still unformed and left with so many of the essential elements of her adult character in place. Geoffrey also shared with me a number of Hillary’s letters to him from the period—some quoted herein—that offer useful insights into her psyche, her seriousness, her ebullience, and her capacity for fun and risk-taking. I am particularly grateful for his observations about Hillary’s family life, and his recollections of the time he spent with her parents.

  At Yale Law School, Hillary and Bill Clinton formed a lasting friendship with Nancy Bekavac, an extraordinary woman who now serves as president of Scripps College in California. Her recollections and insights into the character of each, her familiarity with the details of their courtship and Hillary’s hesitancy in marrying Bill, and her enduring relationship with them both—not to mention her humor—were sources of great help to me.

  The late Diane Blair has often been described by Hillary as the closest friend of her adult life. Her contribution to this book is evident throughout its pages, based both on our extensive conversations in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and on the material from her seminal interviews with virtually every major participant in the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. Those interviews were conducted for a book she planned to write, were transcribed verbatim from tape, and fill four large binders, each three inches thick, that are the property of the Diane Blair Trust, and which were made available to me by Jim Blair, who was Diane’s husband. The book was never written. Tragically, Diane died in June 2000, an enormous loss to Hillary, and to all those lucky enough to have known her well. Because of her own senior position in the campaign and the trust in her by those interviewed, there is great candor and coherence in the accounts. Hopefully, when the definitive story of the Clinton campaign and presidency is written, those binders will be even more fully utilized.

  Jim Blair shared his recollections and thoughts with me about every aspect of the lives of Hillary and Bill Clinton, in dozens of hours of interviews and less formal conversations in Fayetteville, and in many, many phone calls over the years. I sincerely thank him for all of it.

  Betsey Wright met Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton during George McGovern’s presidential campaign of 1972, and found Hillary so impressive that she went to Washington shortly thereafter to advance the role of women in American politics generally, and, more specifically, Hillary, who she hoped and believed would one day be president. Along with the Blairs, no person knows more about every aspect of the Clintons’ personal and political lives during their twenty years together in Arkansas than Betsey, who was Bill’s chief of staff when he was governor, installed in the job by Hillary. Their trust in her abilities and discretion in those years was total, and well placed. I made several trips to Arkansas to interview Betsey, and she gave me an automobile tour of the state that furthered my understanding of the Clintons’ story. Betsey’s role in the 1992 campaign was essential: she assembled and kept the records of those aspects of the Clintons’ past that formed the factual basis for their responses during the next eight years, when they had to answer questions of government investigators and journalists alike. David Maraniss, Bill’s most prescient biographer, once mentioned the “love-hate” relationship between Bill and Betsey. I have tried to describe both that relationship and its effect on Hillary’s life through these pages.

  Dick Morris, the other essential figure in the Clintons’ political lives during the Arkansas years and the White House years from 1993 to 1996, is obviously elemental to the story in these pages. Beyond his animus to the Clintons these days, in talking with me he had many invaluable recollections and facts at his command that could either be confirmed by other sources or are presented here as his personal insights and put in context. I owe him and Eileen McGann, his wife, my thanks.

  Webb Hubbell and his wife, Suzy, have been especially generous in sharing their time and recollections with me. My understanding of Hillary’s relationship with Vince Foster borrows heavily from their knowledge, and Webb sat through long interviews with me on several occasions in Washington, about—among other things—the Arkansas years, the Rose Law Firm, the Clinton governorship, the transition, and the first year of the Clinton presidency. I cannot thank them enough.

  Deborah Sale, who grew up in Arkansas, has known Bill Clinton since his younger years, and Hillary since she met Bill at Yale. Her recounting of her friendship with both has been a reference point that I placed great trust in, and I owe her special thanks for her help, as well as my respect for the discretion she showed in discussing the lives of her friends with me.

  Nicole Boxer, the former wife of Hillary’s brother Tony, agreed to several interviews with me, and provided insights into the Rodham family and life in the White House residence, in both the early part of the presidency and the period of the special prosecutor’s investigation of the Monica Lewinsky affair.

  Oscar Dowdy, Hillary’s first cousin, offered a perspective on her early life and her family that deserved examination, and my thanks for his help.

  Donna Shalala and Robert Boorstin were enormously helpful in my understanding of Hillary’s attempt at health care reform.

  Special thanks to the late Dick Atkinson, Peter Edelman, Sara Ehrman, Mark Fabiani, Anne Henry, Jean Houston, and Bernard Nussbaum, all of whom described periods and incidents in the lives of Hillary and Bill Clinton in great detail and with unique understanding.

  I also owe special thanks to the following individuals for their particular areas of insight or expertise:

  Oxford and onwards: Robert B. Reich and Richard Stearns; Arkansas: Woody Bassett, Ernie Dumas, Connie Fails, Ann Pincus, Senator David Pryor, and Molly Raiser; Washington and Congress: former senators Bill Bradley and Robert Torricelli, Senators John McCain and John Kerry, and Lawrence O’Donnell; the 1992 campaign and White House: Roger Altman, Don Baer, Richard Ben-Veniste, Marcia Berry, Erskine Bowles, James Carville, Lanny Davis, Rahm Emanuel, Mark Gearan, David Gergen, Richard and Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stan Greenberg, Terry McAuliffe, Mike McCurry, Mack McLarty, Lissa Muscatine, Roy Neel, Mark Penn, John Podesta, the late Ann Richards, Ann Stock, Robert Strauss, and Melanne Verveer; special friends: Frank and Carol Biondi, Ellen Chesler, Richard Friedman, Jim Hart, Carly Simon, and the late William Styron.

  Anonymous Sources

  Many of the people I interviewed, including some who worked most intimately with Hillary or Bill Clinton in Arkansas, the White House, and on their legal defense, asked not to be identified. I am indebted to them all.

  Books and Articles

  A great many words have been written about Hillary Rodham Clinton, a condition explained both by the force of her personality, her unique position in our politics and our culture, and the information age in which we live.

  A full bibliography of the books and articles I consulted in writing this book appears elsewhere, and quotations from them are listed in the Notes section. (One of my corollary objectives during interviews was to obtain the assessments of the people who know Hillary and Bill Clinton best about what has been written about the Clintons—and especially to help determine what printed information is reliable and what deserves to be discarded or contradicted. In cases where I have cited material from sources that raised doubts in my mind, I confirmed the information elsewhere.)

  I want to note in particular several important and essential texts:

  • First
in His Class by David Maraniss (1995) is the essential starting point. It is indispensable almost as much in what it says about Hillary as about Bill Clinton, its main subject. The book ends with Clinton’s announcement for the presidency in 1991.

  • Hillary’s Choice by Gail Sheehy (1999). Hillary has been zealous about guarding her correspondence and keeping it from journalists and authors. Happily, Sheehy obtained portions of perhaps the most essential letters of the earlier part of Hillary’s life—the correspondence between the Rev. Don Jones and Hillary. Likewise, Sheehy’s reporting on the Park Ridge years contains important contributions to the record.

  • Donnie Radcliffe’s Hillary Rodham Clinton (1993) was undertaken as Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign began. The book is particularly useful because Hillary and others were interviewed by Radcliffe when, relatively at least, they were more apt to be candid than in later years.

  • George Stephanopoulos’s All Too Human (1999) is notably even-handed and candid, and reflects his closeness to Bill Clinton, as well as his difficult relationship with Hillary during the 1992 campaign and the first four years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. It is essential to understanding the Clinton years.

  • David Gergen’s Eyewitness to Power (2000), by the man Hillary was (initially) happy to see supplant Stephanopoulos in influence, is a particularly useful addition to the record.

  • James B. Stewart’s Blood Sport (1996), and The Hunting of the President (2000), by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, are best read or consulted in tandem: they are two extensively reported books that consider the Clintons’ finances, the investigation by Kenneth Starr, and their coverage by the mainstream press. Conason and Lyons castigate Stewart at times in their indictment of Starr, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other news outlets covering Whitewater, but both books represent important contributions to understanding what happened to the Clintons in Washington.