God and Hillary Clinton (18 page)

Though Hillary tried to poke fun at herself and turn the story into a punch line, the truth was that she had not been forthcoming about the incident. Her acknowledgments were hardly a trip to the confessional—for that, America had to rely on Bob Woodward. She had engaged in some bizarre, spiritually loose behavior that forced many Americans to think anew about her position in the White House and her role in the Oval Office. If it had not been for Woodward's digging, the extent of this behavior would never have been disclosed.

The United Methodist General Conference

In April 1996, Hillary began her public effort to get back on track spiritually, returning to the road of conventional Christianity—or, at least, such was the image she and her staff were eager to convey. That month she got some help from her friends when she addressed the United Methodist leadership, who had evidently lent a hand to a fellow believer in her time of need.
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On April 24, 1996, the first lady delivered the keynote speech to the annual United Methodist General Conference, a talk that included no references to Eleanor or even to Michael Lerner.
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Like many of Hillary's religious speeches, it made no mention of abortion, and similarly, Bishop Richard B. Wilke, for whom Hillary had done legal work back in Arkansas, failed to bring up Hillary's stance on the issue.

Despite these omissions, this was one of Hillary's finest religious speeches. She began by talking about the church of her youth, about her mother and Sunday school, about Vacation Bible School, and even about some of Chelsea's current experiences at Foundry United Methodist Church. All of that laid the groundwork for the theme of the speech: Christians, insisted Hillary, must “put into action what we believe” in all spheres of life, including the public sphere, where secular liberals insist on separating religion from the policies and practices of the state. She was “heartened” to learn that the Methodist Council of Bishops had renewed its call “to make the welfare of children a top priority.” “Children need us,” said Mrs. Clinton. “They are not rugged individualists. They depend, first and foremost, on their parents, who bear the primary responsibility for their upbringing.” She cited Jesus Christ as the chief motivation in her government-based health care ministry to children, stating:

In this one passage, she brought her two predominant interests—health care and children—together under the umbrella of religion, in a telling explanation of her motivations for universal health care coverage. With this speech, Hillary laid bare how her passion for children and her passion for health care were both rooted in her strong belief in Jesus's teachings. It was an important display of the relationship between her private Christianity and her public policy, especially since many of her political counterparts often downplayed the role that religion should play in motivating and selecting policy. Whereas so often she, like her husband, seemed to base the origins for her stances in politics, here she offered a transparent explanation for how she came to believe in the value of nationalized health care: God had led her there.

Equally significant, the first lady cited official church teaching as an influence in her actions: “For me, the Social Principles of the Methodist Church have been as much a description of our history as a prod for my future actions.” The Methodist Church and its principles, said the future senator, provided direction when it came to families, schools, and in “policies” to be developed for “each” child. “We continue in this church to answer John Wesley's call to provide for the educational, health, and spiritual needs of children.”

Hillary then went on to list a number of areas in which she was
“proud” that the church “had been a leader,” citing the quality of education, the expansion of “comprehensive” health care, curbing smoking among young people, promoting “parental responsibility,” and strengthening marriages. She then made a statement that, again, would be welcomed by conservative Christians but would make secular Democrats cringe: Hillary Rodham Clinton found kinship in John Wesley's words that “the world is my parish”—“and if that be the case, then I am optimistic.” Turning once again to the children, she spoke about her book
It Takes a Village
, pointing to the chapter “Children Are Born Believers.” “I feel so strongly,” said Mrs. Clinton, “that we owe our children a chance for them to have a spiritual life.” She made it clear—perhaps clearer than she had stated publicly in years—that all American parents owe their children an opportunity to become children of God.

She concluded by saying she was grateful for her Methodist upbringing and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, we are called to work within our diversity, while exercising patience and forbearance with one another.” She spoke of humility and patience, and concluded with a plea to make “common cause” with others who seek “personal salvation” and share a commitment “for the work we must do in this world.”

It was a powerful speech that manifested Hillary's intent to make a definitive break from the spiritual confusion of the previous year. Here was a public embrace of Christianity unlike any she had undertaken during her time in the White House, one that showed the direction of her spiritual compass and the focus for the coming years. Nevertheless, her comments at the Methodist Conference and other similar functions brought a new question into light: Were her speeches simply products of election-year politics? With her husband in the midst of a campaign and her reputation still suffering from the revelations about Jean Houston, it remained ambiguous whether her newfound fervor was the result of a genuine reevaluation and investment in her
faith, or whether her revised emphasis on her faith was designed to help her husband pick up ballots at the voting booth.

Once again both Hillary's supporters and her detractors found themselves coming across the same set of questions that had long plagued her faith, as people tried to understand just how genuine were her professions of belief. On June 10, 1996, she appeared on
Live with Regis & Kathie Lee
, cohosted by Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, both conservative Christians. There she stated: “You have to fight this feeling of hopelessness and helplessness in your own life as well as in the lives of people around you…. I'm blessed with the kind of religious faith and upbringing that has given me a lot that I can fall back on.”
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And yet despite this appearance and others like it, her actions during 1996 revealed a crucial contradiction: During the previous year, she had relied on nontraditional spiritual techniques to help fight feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. In the face of public anguish unlike any she had suffered before, she sought reassurance from alternate means; she sought answers from a new spiritual realm. While she could have chosen to “fall back” on the Foundry Methodists for support during this period, she experimented with something new, a faith beyond Methodism whose practices were completely foreign.

In hindsight, there appears to be an element of desperation about Hillary's decision to join the ranks of Jean Houston. Certainly when juxtaposed with her subsequent speeches and statements in 1996 and beyond, it appears that her time with Houston was a temporary detour, a spiritual misstep along an otherwise conventional road of faith. Ultimately, the importance of Jean Houston lies less in the overblown facts of what may or may not have transpired at these “sessions” with Eleanor, and more in the plain truth that Hillary had not relied exclusively on her church, family, and friends, to see her through these difficult times. Something about the Methodism on which she had relied for her entire life did not suffice in this instance,
and as such, she left it behind (albeit temporarily) so that she could pursue an alternate form of solace.

Though her faith returned to the fold, her angst and frustration as first lady would only magnify. While she and her husband would survive the election intact, with another four years promised ahead, the next crisis would be the most awful yet, and it would test the moorings of her faith and the bonds of her marriage like never before.

In November 1996, Bill handily won reelection, holding off an uninspiring challenge from Republican Bob Dole. The Clinton-Gore ticket beat the Dole-Kemp ticket 49 percent to 41 percent. Clinton actually lost men, 45 percent to 44 percent, but swept women in a landslide, 54 percent to 38 percent.
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Two months later, he was inaugurated a second time, as feelings of hope and triumph pervaded the White House.

Bill emerged from the election with a stellar approval rating, a wave that he rode for much of the next year. The economy remained robust, rivaling the growth of the Reagan years, and fully recovered from the intervening Bush recession of 1990–1991. In fact, economically, Bill looked like he might be one-upping Ronald Reagan, as the ghost that had hounded the Reagan presidency—and every presidency since FDR's New Deal—the deficit, was slowly disappearing under an onslaught of rising tax revenues produced by the booming economy and disappearance of Cold War and Gulf War military budgets. On top of that, Clinton capitalized on the success of the rapidly
maturing dotcom industry, which seemed to be manufacturing capital and wealth on an unparalleled scale.

Amid these triumphs, however, other events were stirring. There were the usual charges of Bill's caddish misbehavior, but the list seemed to be growing with names from Bill's present as well as his distant past. Of course, some were new, with sudden allegations of Oval Office fondling and groping by Democratic Party campaign worker Kathleen Willey, of past sexual harassment by Arkansas native Paula Jones, and yet more names from the old days: Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Sally Perdue, Dolly Kyle Browning, Gennifer Flowers. There would even be the most explosive claim of them all when Lisa Myers and NBC News went public with Juannita Broaddrick's rape allegations against former Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton; the mainstream press followed, including a detailed report on the front page of the
Washington Post
.
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Despite these and other allegations, Clinton evaded any real scrutiny of his questionable behavior.

That changed in January 1998, when the forty-second president was accused of carrying on a not-so-romantic physical relationship with no less than a White House intern, a California girl named Monica Lewinsky. The affair had allegedly gone on for quite some time, and amid ever-present allegations of other Clinton sexual improprieties, this one was about to be confirmed, and to explode, eventually, all the way to a grand jury.

Bill had initially figured he could easily refute these claims of wrongdoing as he had all the others. Matt Drudge and other sources first broke the story on January 7, 1998, just as the first couple was happily announcing a new day care initiative about which Hillary was hopeful and proud. Joyce Milton called it Hillary's last truly happy day in the White House.

Two weeks later, on January 21, 1998, the story mushroomed, as the exceptionally fair Jim Lehrer of PBS's
The NewsHour
intrepidly asked the president about the Lewinsky matter. In that interview, Clinton said a number of times, “There is no improper relation
ship…. There is not a sexual relationship.” But the issue intensified on Web sites and talk-radio shows, before coming to a head on January 26, 1998, when Bill stood before the press, conjured up a stern look of earnestness, shook his finger, and said believably, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

This denial, too, was well done. But it was a lie, a zinger of a falsehood that even his wife had bought. The next day, January 27, Hillary Rodham Clinton uttered words she would come to regret, claiming there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy” out to get her husband. In the general sweep of things, she was correct—there were untold numbers of right-wingers out to get Bill; this time, however, the dirt they had dug up happened to be true.
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According to
Newsweek
, Hillary “honestly believed” that her husband had changed his ways once they arrived in Washington—as did tens of millions of other liberals and Democrats who voted for the man. When the Lewinsky story appeared, she had told friends that it was false—a product of the same vicious falsehoods as before.
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Unlike previous rumors, this one carried evidence. In July, the FBI began doing tests on semen stains on a blue dress worn by the college girl during one of her encounters with the president in the Oval Office. The evidence would later confirm his sexual involvement with the young woman.

“A Lapse in Judgment”

The bombshell hit the public on August 17, 1998, with Bill giving a public admission in a prime-time speech on national television, and thus starting a nightmare for Hillary Rodham Clinton. The speech was hardly a tell-all. Bill Clinton was master of the parsed word. The way he phrased his admission, conceding a “lapse in judgment,” could have allowed for merely a single sexual act. That was all he needed to admit, since there was only one verifiable stain. Moreover,
he used the speech to take the offensive against Kenneth Starr, the official independent counsel demanded by Congress and authorized by the Clinton Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton had committed perjury.

Bill seemed more frustrated with Starr than with himself. David Maraniss observed that the speech was angrier than he expected, but was also “vintage” Bill Clinton.
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Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said that he “hated to admit it,” but the speech sounded like Richard Nixon in the middle of Watergate, in denial and not taking full responsibility, blaming others. Former close Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos agreed, stating that the president did not satisfy or end the questions, quite the contrary.
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Historical framework aside, it was apparent that his was a most reluctant confession. As former Democratic speechwriter turned pundit Chris Matthews put it, Bill Clinton “didn't decide to tell the truth, he got caught”—literally, one might say, with his pants down. Yes, chimed in legal analyst Stuart Taylor, Clinton was “a fundamentally dishonest man,” who “cannot be trusted.”
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In truth, President Clinton did say that he was “solely and completely responsible,” though that stand-up statement seemed to fall by the wayside as he tore into Starr. He did admit, “I misled people, including my wife. I deeply regret that.” Hillary first learned the truth from the lawyers, not her husband, who told her on August 13. She then began absorbing the treacherous details that were published widely in the press.

While Starr's behavior during the investigation has been debated and discussed in full by people on both the right and the left, it is worth noting that even the
New York Times
editorial board acknowledged that Starr was doing his appointed job: to confirm whether Bill Clinton had committed perjury and obstructed justice. This meant looking into details of Clinton's life, which meant, as Hillary knew, making unsavory discoveries of lurid private behavior and attempts to cover up the litany of transgressions—this time in ways that
seemed to constitute federal criminal offenses. As the
Washington Post
noted in an editorial, “even when [Mr. Starr's] excesses are stripped away, the case he has presented is serious, while Mr. Clinton's current defense is contemptible.” The
Post
stated that Clinton's behavior was “at the margins of impeachability,” acknowledging: “There is…ample evidence in Mr. Starr's report of presidential conduct that Congress could deem grounds for impeachment.”

Yes, Starr had reported some tawdry personal material. Yet Bill Clinton, publicly and under oath, had denied the entire relationship with Lewinsky. As the hired independent counsel, as the official government prosecutor, Starr had a legal and ethical duty to find and report the details that he learned existed. Had he not done so, he, too, would have been guilty of negligence. If he had muffled the information he was receiving, he would have been guilty of a cover-up. In the introduction to the report, Starr apologized to the president for presenting the salacious material, but stated clearly that he had no alternative but to incorporate it. To this day, Bill Clinton remains angry at Starr. As Starr noted, it would be up to others, namely the U.S. Congress, to decide what to do next.

When Starr's fact-finding mission finally became public knowledge, the story was lurid and the public was captivated. There had been eighteen months of gifts and at least a half-dozen sexual encounters between Bill and Monica. The first sexual encounter took place on the same day that Clinton signed a “Family Week” proclamation. On that November 15, 1995, Lewinsky, walking through the hall on her way to the ladies' room, spotted the president of the United States, and greeted him by lifting her jacket to show him the straps of her thong underwear—what the girl later winsomely described as a “little smile.” Hillary's husband was intrigued, and invited the intern back to his office. That was where it all began.
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The public joined Hillary in learning the details of the spectacle, as the Starr Report became public in September. Among the most devastating items in the report, especially from the perspective of
Bill Clinton's faith and the public's perception of him as a religious (or nonreligious) man, was the tale of Clinton's sexual exploits with Monica on Easter Sunday, April 7, 1996, when Bill, who had spent the morning at church, had an afternoon liaison with Monica in the Oval Office. This liaison was perhaps the most scandalous of them all, having commenced in the hallway before moving to Bill's private study, whereupon the president of the United States received oral sex from the intern as he simultaneously conducted business over the telephone.

A few million Americans read about this Easter rendezvous in an excerpted section from the Starr Report in their weekly copy of
Time
magazine. A few million more read the lengthy account in the September 14, 1998,
New York Times
. Another million or so read about it in their morning
Washington Post
, or weekly
U.S. News & World Report
, or
Newsweek
, or wherever. The incident has hardly been forgotten—especially among observant Christians. Detractors and skeptics of Bill's faith never cease to bring it up, always eager to denounce Bill as a hypocrite. In fact, since the days he had attended Park Place Baptist Church as a lonely eight-year-old in the 1950s, up through Immanuel Baptist Church in the 1980s, Bill Clinton had strolled from church with a Bible tucked under his arm. All along, like all Christians, he remained a broken sinner, tormented by demons—as a child, it was the abuse in his household; as an adult, it was sexual temptation and dishonesty. Nonetheless, when the viewing public saw that Easter Sunday image, they thought of Monica. And they also thought of Mrs. Clinton.

More and more information followed, like the revelations of the many occasions of “phone sex,” which the young Monica was excited to share with Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview on ABC. Monica told Barbara over and over about how the president was “so sensual…. I mean, he's just so sensual!” After Monica described the “fun” phone sex with the president, Barbara asked her if what she did for Hillary's husband was technically considered “sex,” an impor
tant legal question, since many feared that the master of the parsed word would claim he had not committed perjury when he denied a “sexual” relationship with the intern. Monica said no. “Then what is it?” yelled an incredulous Walters. Said Monica: “Oh, that's just fooling around!”

Just when some people might have considered this a perverse form of comic relief, even as it belittled the stature of the Oval Office, Monica reminded the American public of the extent of her youth and her naiveté, stating that the president had confided in her that he “might be alone in three years,” referring to the prospects of Hillary dumping him.
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It was a stunning remark, and one that sent both Hillary's supporters and detractors clamoring for answers about how the first lady was responding to these developments. Suddenly, not only was the Monica tale true, but all the others—no matter how they once stretched the boundaries of credulity—seemed not only plausible but likely. Though Hillary had dealt with her husband's stories and cover-ups for years, the new realities that Monica revealed meant that little if anything Bill said could be trusted. It would be a large weight for any person to bear, but for a woman who lived her life in the very public scrutiny of the American media, it was downright impossible. With so many of Hillary's fundamental beliefs about her marriage publicly shaken to their core, the question was unavoidable: How would she weather the storm?

Monicagate

Depending upon whom one believes, or reads, Hillary's reaction to all this was either business as usual—since an unfaithful Bill was hardly a shock to her—anger at the political damage to her partner in power, or deep dismay over this betrayal of her sacred marital vows. Here, again, it is difficult to know what she truly felt in her heart, as the answer was known only to God and Hillary Clinton. Her friends
told the press, “To say that Hillary is disappointed would be a gross understatement.”
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But no matter how much the Clintons and their cronies tried to blame the crisis on Ken Starr for confirming it, or the likes of Matt Drudge for first reporting it, in truth Bill only had himself to blame. As Jonathan Alter wrote in
Newsweek
: “By committing sex acts with a 22-year-old subordinate in the White House, Bill Clinton made his marriage the nation's concern. In doing so, he victimized his wife all over again…. Hillary was only now bearing the full burdens of her bargain.”
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Yet, as Alter and others noted, her “disappointment” seemed as much political as personal. Wrote Alter: “She is said to believe that her husband betrayed not just her and Chelsea, but much of what they have worked together to build.”
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Indeed, the strange press release from the first lady's office referred to her husband in a political as well as a personal way, saying that she “is committed to her marriage” and “believes in this president and loves him very much.”
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