What Is Hillary's Deal?
Last week, I was included in
a group of journalists invited by Hillary Clinton for an off-camera but
on-the-record "dialogue" about the administration's plans for celebrating the
millennium. This session attracted an unusual amount of interest, because it
was the first time the first lady was going to have to face questions from
reporters about the sex scandal. As we filed into the Map Room, familiar from
the White House coffee videos, we were told that she would entertain questions
that didn't have to do with the millennium toward the end of the hour.
The first lady arrived,
dressed in a pale but intense yellow suit, and proceeded to circumnavigate the
room and greet everyone. She then sat down at the head of the table and for
about 45 minutes explained, with help from a few others, what the White House
Millennium Council has planned. It intends to perform a number of good works,
mostly historical in nature, such as restoring the flag that inspired Francis
Scott Key to compose "The Star Spangled Banner" and conserving the original
Declaration of Independence and other documents. At last Helen Thomas of UPI,
who had been looking rather agitated, piped up.
"How do you think the
president's bearing up?"
"I think he's doing very
well, Helen," the first lady responded, a bit awkwardly.
"Is it hard?"
"Well,
we're working on a lot of very important things," Hillary said. "He's been
spending a lot of time speaking to leaders around the world and consulting with
his political and diplomatic and military advisers about the situation in Iraq.
And that's the primary thing on his mind right now."
The interview was going nowhere. Although Hillary was
prepared to answer tough questions, reporters didn't seem to have the stomach
to ask them--or at least, I didn't. To interrogate Hillary about the news of
the day--a report in the Washington Post that a Secret Service agent had
seen Bill and Monica alone together in the Oval Office--would have seemed to
add insult to the injury she presumably had suffered at the hands of her
husband already. But then someone pitched her a softball that elicited what I
think is the most inadvertently revealing thing she has said on the subject to
date. Hillary was asked whether she was surprised, and perhaps gratified, by
the public's response to "the situation." For her complete answer, click .
This
answer was most of all revealing for what Hillary, in a lengthy discourse, did
not say. In explaining why the American people were supporting her husband
despite plausible allegations of a sexual relationship with an intern, and
perhaps of a cover-up, she did not claim that it was because her husband had
done nothing wrong or that it was because the American people believed his
denials. Indeed, the first lady did not even assert that she believed
his denials. Rather, she made a version of the point that many pundits have
made in recent weeks. The country has thrived under Clinton's leadership, and
the American people are "savvy" enough to weigh--and here the argument remained
implicit--his character flaws against his record as president.
This answer points to something many people
have long suspected: that there is a psychological bargain, if not a literal
one, involved in Hillary's continuing to stand by her man. Reading a bit more
into her answer, one might understand that she is furious at her husband but
stays with him out of respect for what he is capable of, and out of calculated
self-interest. In other words, Hillary's "deal" with her husband may resemble
what has emerged as the American public's deal with him, writ small.
But what
struck me during the interview is that for all the speculation, nobody really
has any idea what she thinks. Does Hillary Clinton believe her husband's
denials? Does she love him, despise him, or both? Do they have an open marriage
in which his extracurricular activity is accepted, or is each new revelation a
painful surprise to her? We all project our own views and experiences onto the
First Marriage. But there is no indication that anyone, including even close
Clinton friends, has any idea what's inside Hillary's head. What she knows, and
what she thinks, determines whether she is a victim or an accomplice, a
long-suffering spouse or a kind of co-conspirator. Remaining an enigma lets her
retain the benefit of the doubt. So long as we don't know, we can't really
judge.
The key question may be not what Hillary knew but when she
knew it. She surely is aware that her husband was unfaithful to her before he
became president--he admitted as much on national television. She may have
thought, however, that she was giving him another chance and that he was
promising, in exchange, to do better. It may have come as an awful surprise to
her to discover--assuming it is true--that her husband was still screwing
around after he was elected. There are degrees of knowledge, of course. Hillary
could have known in detail, known in general, not wanted to know, or truly had
no idea. And she might not care, be hurt but not surprised, or be deeply hurt
and surprised. Here is a grid that expresses the four basic possibilities.
Let's consider each of these, beginning in the
northeast corner and moving clockwise. If she didn't know that her husband was
still fooling around after his election in 1993, but does care, it seems to me
she is in the most sympathetic of the available positions. She would be in the
same spot as many members of the press and public, who thought that Clinton had
made a tacit agreement to quit fooling around for the duration of his
presidency, for the sake of common sense if not common decency. On learning
that her husband had not lived up to his half of the bargain, Hillary would be
very upset. But she would also realize that she couldn't leave him while he was
in the White House, in part because her tenure is co-terminal with his. If she
made a mistaken bet that her husband could reform, she is now in the position
of a Siamese twin. If his presidency dies, her quasi-co-presidency dies with
it.
If, on
the other hand, she didn't know, but also didn't much care, that would suggest
an immoral alliance à la JFK and Jackie. In fact, such a bargain might be
deemed much more ruthless in the Clintons' case, as the wife's reason for
tolerating her husband's misbehavior would probably be less a desire to keep up
decent appearances than a desire to gain and retain power herself. If this is
the way it is, Hillary has used her husband for the sake of her own career as
much as he has used her to advance his. This wouldn't leave much ground for
sympathy.
If Hillary knew what her husband was up to and didn't care,
her position is even worse. If she knew her husband was going to continue to
philander and agreed to help him pretend that he had reformed and become a good
husband, she has been a party to a hoax. If accepting a faithless husband was
her price of power, as Margaret Talbot recently argued in the New
Republic , she would be his accomplice, not only in a fraud on the public
but also, perhaps, in what most people would recognize as sexual
harassment.
But what
if Hillary knew (or at least strongly suspected) that her husband hadn't
changed, and did care? She would be both victim and accomplice--furious at him,
yet for reasons of the heart or reasons of power, or both, unwilling to bring
him to book. She would be in the morally ambivalent position of the abused
spouse, both deserving of sympathy and responsible for her own failure to act.
If I had to guess, I'd guess that this is the contradictory position she is
actually in. But I repeat: When it comes to what Hillary Clinton thinks, no one
really has a clue.
Was Hillary
Clinton surprised by the public's response to "the situation"? Click for her
full answer.
