God and Hillary Clinton (32 page)
Read God and Hillary Clinton Online
Authors: Paul Kengor
And just as time will tell where that young woman from Park Ridge continues to move as a practicing Christian, time will also tell where votersâincluding those for whom faith is a central motivating factorâultimately choose to move Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As always, there are many to thank for their part in this book. Chief among them are Cal Morgan and Judith Regan for requesting that I do more “God and⦔ books. Likewise, my agent, Leona Schecter, has encouraged the conceptâand done much more. Also, at HarperCollins, Matt Harper's thoughtfulness and superb editing had once again worked their magic.
In terms of research help, this book literally could not have been done without the assistance of Rachel Bovard, a brilliant young lady. She did an incredible amount of research in a short period of time during the 2005â2006 academic year, as she also simultaneously ran and acted in college plays and productions, headed the college honor society, aced her classes, and planned a wedding. (She is now Rachel Latta.) She also spared me the agony of two-finger typing lots of speech transcripts and statements from Bill and Hillary, and carefully ordered her research chronologically, a crucial step in organizing the book in a way that made the task of writing fluid and easy.
I took on this project at a time when I should not have, when I
was overwhelmed with three book projects at various stages of progressâsomething I will never do again. If not for the fact that I was in my late thirties and in decent shape, I might not have survived the overload; it was overwhelming, requiring minute-by-minute management of my time for a two-year period. Rachel's hard work made this project possible.
Likewise extremely helpful on research was another exceptional young person, Stephen Albert, who picked up research tasks where Rachel left off after graduation. Playing likewise notable research roles were Marie Tyler, Leah Ayers, Andrew Larson, Betsy Christian, Sean Varner, Cory Shreckengost, Shawon Jackson-Ybarra, and Mitch and Paul Allan Kengor. All these individuals are current Grove City College students, recent graduates, or, in the case of Mitch and Paul, hopefully students-to-be someday. Among them, Marie Tyler's research on William F. Harrison was superb.
Grove City College is a special place. President Dick Jewell and Dean John Sparks, terrific leaders and fine men, are continuing to ensure that it remains special, as is Provost Bill Anderson, the “G.M.,” who has assembled a team of remarkable faculty. All have been a wonderful source of support for the college and for me personally. Likewise a crucial source is Lee Wishing, who keeps the Center for Vision & Values moving as I juggle my directorship of the center along with my writing, teaching, fathering, husbanding, and all else. I also appreciate the diligence of Diane Grundy, Joyce Kebert, Conni Shaw, and the excellent Grove City College library staff.
I appreciate the love and support of family, from my parents to my wife, Susan, the latter of whom had serious reservations about my tackling this subject.
I'm also thankful for those two large, packed boxes of material on the Clintons that I had been clipping and saving and stockpiling since about 1992, for reasons I could never fathom. I twice almost threw those boxes in the trash. I'm glad I didn't.
Finally, my apologies to my friend and colleague Michael Coulter
for keeping this book project secret from him, even on that spring day in 2006 when he entered my office and asked, as a gag for the annual “Faculty Follies” show at Grove City College, if I would stare into the video camera and, with a straight face, sarcastically declare that my next book would be
God and Hillary Clinton
. I declined the joke. Likewise in the dark was that wag who on the first day of classes in the fall of 2006 cut out a photo of Hillary and taped it to my office door. That prankster was on to something.
Preface
1.
David Maraniss, “
First in His Class
: A Biography of Bill Clinton,” Remarks from a forum at the Miller Center, University of Virginia, April 11, 1995.
2.
In each faith-based biography I have done, a specific core issue, related to the subject's faith, emerges more prominently than any other, and which ignites the passions of the subject or the subject's critics. For Reagan, it was communism; for Bush, it was the Middle East, War on Terror, and the war in Iraq; for Hillary, it is abortion.
3.
“Falwell Says Hillary Would Spark Base,” Associated Press, September 24, 2006.
Chapter 1: Park Ridge Methodist
1.
For more, see: Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Living History
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).
2.
For more, see: H. R. Clinton,
Living History
.
3.
For more, see: Ibid.
4.
Susan K. Flinn, ed.,
Speaking of Hillary
(Ashland, Ore.: White Cloud Press, 2000), p. 14; excerpt from “Park Ridge: She Had to Put Up with Him,” from Roger Morris,
Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1996).
5.
Gail Sheehy,
Hillary's Choice
(New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 22â23.
6.
Ibid.
7.
Ibid.
8.
Ibid, pp. 24â25.
9.
Barbara Olson,
Hell to Pay
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1999), p. 29.
10.
Hillary told this to Diane Huie Balay of the
Reporter
, a Methodist publication. The passage is cited in Peter Flaherty and Timothy Flaherty,
The First Lady
(Lafayette, La.: Vital Issues Press, 1995), pp. 20â21.
11.
Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, p. 21.
12.
Kenneth L. Woodward, “Soulful Matters,”
Newsweek
, October 31, 1994.
13.
Hillary Rodham Clinton,
It Takes a Village
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 171.
14.
Ibid.
15.
K. L. Woodward, “Soulful Matters”; and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Address to the 1996 United Methodist General Conference, April 24, 1996.
16.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Address to the 1996 United Methodist General Conference, April 24, 1996. Leon Osgood says of Dorothy's involvement at the church: “I remember Mrs. Rodham; she was not that active.” See: Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, p. 21. To the contrary, most other accounts portray her as fairly active.
17.
H. R. Clinton, Address to the 1996 United Methodist General Conference, April 24, 1996.
18.
K. L. Woodward, “Soulful Matters.”
19.
Norman King,
Hillary: Her True Story
(New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993), p. 8.
20.
H. R. Clinton, Address to the 1996 United Methodist General Conference, April 24, 1996.
21.
Ibid.
22.
Ibid.; Olson,
Hell to Pay
, pp. 29â31; and Hillary told this to Diane Huie Balay of the
Reporter
, a Methodist publication. The passage is cited in Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, pp. 20â21.
23.
King,
Hillary
, p. 8.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Ibid.
26.
H. R. Clinton,
It Takes a Village
, p. 171.
Chapter 2: The Don Jones Influence
1.
One account had Jones at twenty-six years of age when he came to Park Ridge. Two others say he was thirty.
2.
Barbara Olson,
Hell to Pay
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1999), pp. 29â31.
3.
Gail Sheehy,
Hillary's Choice
(New York: Random House, 1999), p. 35.
4.
According to Gail Sheehy, he provided to the youth “a window into the more exotic worlds of abstract art, Beat poetry, existentialism, and the rumblings of radical political thought and counterculture politics that were eventually to explode under the smug slumber of even the good gray burghers of Park Ridge.” Sheehy,
Hillary's Choice
, p. 33.
5.
See: Roger Morris,
Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their Administration
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1996), pp. 118â19.
6.
“Park Ridge: She Had to Put Up with Him,” from R. Morris,
Partners in Power
.
7.
Norman King,
Hillary: Her True Story
(New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993), pp. 7â9.
8.
Ibid.
9.
Sheehy,
Hillary's Choice
, p. 33.
10.
Christopher Andersen,
Bill and Hillary: The Marriage
(New York: William Morrow, 1999), pp. 95â97.
11.
David Maraniss,
First in His Class
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 251â52.
12.
Peter Flaherty and Timothy Flaherty,
The First Lady
(Lafayette, La.: Vital Issues Press, 1995), pp. 20â25.
13.
Sheehy,
Hillary's Choice
, p. 35.
14.
Joyce Milton,
The First Partner
(New York: William Morrow, 1999), pp. 21â24.
15.
Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, p. 23.
16.
King,
Hillary
, pp. 7â9.
17.
Interestingly, the source for many of these claims on the Web today is Gary Aldrich, the former Secret Service agent who worked for the Clintons in the 1990s and wrote a best-selling book on his experiences.
Aldrich's October 31, 2003, piece for
American Daily
, “The New Counterculture,” has been widely reposted on the Web; that article, along with Aldrich's book and Web site, features the claim that Alinsky was a party member.
18.
See: Saul D. Alinsky,
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
(New York: Random House, 1971), p. xiii.
19.
Some biographers say that she wrote her thesis on Alinsky, whereas others say that she wrote on ideas that he shared, mentioning him only in passing. See, for example: Milton,
First Partner
, pp. 21â24; and R. Morris,
Partners in Power
, pp. 133â34.
20.
Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, p. 21.
21.
Milton,
First Partner
, pp. 21â24; and R. Morris,
Partners in Power
.
22.
Joyce Milton reports that this situation made some parents in the congregation nervous, a problem of which Jones was oblivious at the time. “There was no flirting or anything like that,” Jones says today. Milton,
First Partner
, pp. 21â24.
23.
King,
Hillary
, pp. 7â9.
24.
“Park Ridge: She Had to Put Up with Him,” from R. Morris,
Partners in Power
.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Ibid.
28.
Ibid.
29.
Ibid.
30.
King,
Hillary
, pp. 7â9.
31.
Milton,
First Partner
, pp. 21â24.
32.
Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, p. 24.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Ibid.
35.
Ibid.
36.
“Park Ridge: She Had to Put Up with Him,” from R. Morris,
Partners in Power
.
37.
As Peter Flaherty and Timothy Flaherty have noted, liberals have needed Don Jones to provide a flashpoint at which Hillary abandoned the alleged repression and closed-mindedness of middle-class suburbia, whereas conservatives have needed Jones as the political Svengali who transformed the Goldwater Girl into a left-wing radical. Most journalists, being liberal, have framed Don Jones's stay at Park Ridge in a positive light. Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, pp. 30â31.
Chapter 3: Hillary Hits Wellesley
1.
Christopher Andersen,
American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 23.
2.
Judith Warner,
Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story
(New York: Signet Books, 1999), p. 31.
3.
Charles Kenney, “Hillary: The Wellesley Years,”
Boston Globe
, January 12, 1993.
4.
Ibid.
5.
Ibid.
6.
Donnie Radcliffe,
Hillary Rodham Clinton: A First Lady for Our Time
(New York: Warner Books, 1993), p. 52.
7.
Kenney, “Hillary: The Wellesley Years.”
8.
Ibid.
9.
Joyce Milton,
The First Partner
(New York: William Morrow, 1999), p. 27.
10.
Kenney, “Hillary: The Wellesley Years.”
11.
Roger Morris,
Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their Administration
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1996), p. 127.
12.
Kenney, “Hillary: The Wellesley Years.”
13.
David Maraniss,
First in His Class
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 255.
14.
Kenney, “Hillary: The Wellesley Years.”
15.
Ibid.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Ibid.
18.
Kenneth L. Woodward, “Soulful Matters.”
Newsweek
, October 31, 1994
19.
This has been reported by Ed Klein.
20.
See: Wilson Yates, “
Motive
Magazine, the Student Movement, and the Arts,”
Journal of Ecumenical Studies
32, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 555â73.
21.
Ibid., pp. 565â69.
22.
K. L. Woodward, “Soulful Matters.”
23.
Carl Oglesby and Richard Shaull,
Containment and Change
(New York: Macmillan, 1967).
24.
Cited by Laura Ingraham,
The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places
(New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 204.
25.
Yates, “
Motive
Magazine,” p. 567.
26.
These opening words were recalled by editor Roy Eddey, who shared
them with Perry Brass. Brass was involved in the publication of this issue of
Motive
. Profile of Perry Brass, posted in the Religious Archives Network of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Web site.
27.
Ed Klein also lists some of these examples in his book,
The Truth About Hillary
. See also the review of Klein's book by Richard Poe, “The Woman Who Would Be President,” FrontPageMagazine.com, July 5, 2005.
28.
Yates, “
Motive
Magazine,” p. 567.
29.
Flaherty and Flaherty,
First Lady
, pp. 39â40.
30.
Milton,
First Partner
, pp. 27â28.
31.
Kenney, “Hillary: The Wellesley Years.”
32.
Ibid.
33.
Gail Sheehy,
Hillary's Choice
(New York: Random House, 1999), p. 124.
34.
Barbara Olson,
Hell to Pay
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1999), p. 35.
35.
Christopher Andersen,
Bill and Hillary: The Marriage
(New York: William Morrow, 1999), p. 98.
36.
Kenney, “Hillary: The Wellesley Years”; also see Miriam Horn,
Rebels in White Gloves: Coming of Age with Hillary's Class
(New York: Times Books, 1998), pp. 46â47.
Chapter 4: God and Woman (and Bill) at Yale
1.
Saul D. Alinsky,
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
(New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 18, 42.