The Truth About Hillary (30 page)

March 1993

What is morally wrong can never be politically right.

—Abraham Lincoln

D

uring his long years of exile, Richard Nixon had been to the White House several times. But neither Ronald Reagan nor the first George Bush ever saw fit

to put the disgraced president’s name on the official list of White House visitors that was distributed to the media, or to release a photograph of Nixon revisiting his old haunt. As far as the pub- lic was concerned, Nixon was still persona non grata in the President’s House.

At age eighty and in declining health, Nixon had no reason to believe that his official banishment would end during his lifetime. Now that Hillary Clinton, his old nemesis from the House im- peachment inquiry, had taken up residence in the White House, Nixon did not expect the Clinton administration to reach out to him.

But he was wrong.

253

254 THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY

After Nixon returned from a trip to Russia, President Clin- ton phoned him. They had a cordial forty-minute talk, which Nixon later described as “the best conversation with a president I’ve had since I was president.”
1
Then, Clinton invited Nixon to the White House, in his official capacity as a former president, to continue their discussion about the number-one issue on Clinton’s foreign policy agenda: Russia.

And so on a blustery March day in 1993, Nixon found him- self being ushered into the White House, where he had once tearfully bid farewell to his staff. He was kept waiting by Bill Clinton, who finally appeared and escorted the former president to the second-floor family residence.

The elevator door opened, and the first person Nixon saw when he stepped off was Hillary Clinton.

“Your health care reform legislation in 1973–74 was so good that we are using it as a blueprint for our own package,” Hillary said.
2

This struck Nixon as an incredibly strange, wonkish greeting from the First Lady. But then, Hillary managed to top even that by adding:

“Had you survived in office, you would have been light-years ahead of your time.”
3

Had I survived in office!
Nixon later remembered thinking.

Maybe I could have if she hadn’t been working to impeach me.
4

The two presidents made their way to the West Sitting Room, passing the Cézanne, the de Kooning, the Cassatt, and the Tiny Tim. After they were comfortably seated, they began to discuss Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Nixon respected Clin- ton’s intelligence, but not his foreign policy experience or his leadership. He saw Clinton as a Hamlet-like figure who couldn’t make up his mind.

“All of this . . . deliberating over Bosnia makes [Clinton] look weak,” Nixon would later say. “We’ve got to get our allies,

Epilogue
255

the Congress, and the people to go along. Instead of
telling
them what we are going to do, [Clinton is] looking for their permis- sion! This isn’t leadership! He doesn’t
scare
anybody. . . .”

Then Nixon added, as though he had a sudden insight: “
Hillary
inspires fear.”
5

After a while, Chelsea Clinton joined the group.

“The kid ran right to [Clinton] and never once looked at her mother,” Nixon remarked. “I could see that she had a warm rela- tionship with him, but was almost afraid of [her mother]. Hillary is ice-cold. You can see it in her eyes. She is a piece of work. She was very respectful to me, and said all the right things. But where he was very warm with Chelsea—he’s touchy-feely, anyway—she wasn’t at all. . . .”
6

Hillary slid along the sofa to be closer to her daughter, and the young girl involuntarily jerked her arm away from her mother.

“Hillary,” Nixon concluded, “inspires fear!”

A
C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
‌

It was my good fortune to work on this book with several first-rate people. One who deserves to be singled out is Leon Wagener, a veteran journalist and author of
One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong’s Stellar American Journey
. Leon was particularly help- ful in providing insights into Hillary’s years in Park Ridge, Wellesley, and Yale.

Others who stood by my side from beginning to end: my agent, Daniel Strone; my editor, Bernadette Malone; Adrian Zackheim, the publisher of Sentinel; Will Weisser, the head of marketing and publicity at Sentinel; and my wife, Dolores Bar- rett, who read the manuscript several times and provided invalu- able suggestions.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to the following people: Ronald Kessler, Melissa Goldstein, Dick Morris, Steven Hirsch, David Schippers, Christopher Emery, Charles Cook, Juanita Broaddrick, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, Mickey Kaus, Lucianne Goldberg, Maurice Carroll, Richard Lambert, Tony Bullock, Monica Crowley, and Christopher Hitchens.

257

S
E L E C T E D B I B L I O G R A P H Y
‌

Anderson, Christopher.
Bill and Hillary.
New York: William Morrow, 1999.

———.
American Evita: Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power.
New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Baker, Peter.
The Breach.
New York: Berkley Books, 2000.

Barone, Michael, with Richard E. Cohen,
Almanac of American Poli- tics
. New York: National Journal Group, 2003.

Blumenthal, Sidney.
The Clinton Wars
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

Brock, David.
The Seduction of Hillary Rodham.
New York: The Free Press, 1996.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham.
It Takes a Village
. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

———.
Living History.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Crowley, Monica.
Nixon off the Record
. New York: Random House,

1996.

Faderman, Lillian.
To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America.
New York: Mariner Books, 1999.

Goldman, Peter, Thomas M. DeFrank, Mark Miller, Andrew Murr, and Tom Mathews.
Quest for the Presidency 1992.
College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1994.

259

260
Selected Bibliography

Hodgson, Godfrey.
The Gentleman from New York.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

Horn, Miriam.
Rebels in White Gloves.
New York: Anchor Books, 1999.

Isikoff, Michael.
Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story.
New York: Crown, 1999.

Johnson, Paul. “42. William Jefferson Clinton” in
Presidential Leader- ship: Rating the Best and Worst in the White House
, edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo. New York: The Free Press, 2004.

Klein, Joe.
The Natural.
New York: Broadway Books, 2002. Kurtz, Howard.
Spin Cycle.
New York: The Free Press, 1998.

Lasky, Victor.
It Didn’t Start with Watergate
. New York: Dial Press, 1977.

McCormick, Naomi B.
Sexual Salvation: Affirming Women’s Sexual Rights and Pleasures
. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994.

Maraniss, David.
First in His Class.
New York: Touchstone, 1995. Milton, Joyce.
The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton, A Biography.

New York: Perennial, 2000.

Morris, Dick, with Eileen McGann.
Because He Could
. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

———.
Rewriting History.
New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Morris, Roger.
Partners in Power.
New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

Olson, Barbara.
Hell to Pay.
Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1999.

Renshon, Stanley A.
The Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candi- dates
. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Rothblum, Esther D., and Kathleen A. Brehony, editors.
Boston Mar- riages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships among Contemporary Lesbians.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

Sheehy, Gail.
Hillary’s Choice.
New York: Random House, 1999. Sommers, Christina Hoff.
Who Stole Feminism?
New York: Touch-

stone, 1994.

The Starr Report: The Findings of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr on President Clinton and the Lewinsky Affair, with analysis by the Staff of the
Washington Post. New York: Public Affairs, 1998.

Stephanopoulos, George.
All Too Human.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1999.

Selected Bibliography
261

Tomasky, Michael.
Hillary’s Turn
. New York: The Free Press, 2001. Toobin, Jeffrey.
A Vast Conspiracy.
New York: Random House, 1999.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary.
Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States.
93rd Congress, 2nd session, 1974. House Report 93-1305.

Zeifman, Jerry.
Without Honor: The Impeachment of President Nixon and the Crimes of Camelot.
Emeryville, CA: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1995.

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O T E O N S O U R C E S
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As a general rule, perfectionists who have a compelling need to be seen as right all the time, and who exert an iron control over their public image, do not get along well with the media. And Hillary Rodham Clinton is no exception to that rule.

She has had an adversarial relationship with the press for more than thirty years—from the moment she got involved in electoral politics in Arkansas. Her fear and loathing of the media was obvious to everyone in the press corps who covered the Clin- ton White House. And although she has been forced to soften her public relationship with the press since she became a U.S. senator, her genuine dislike has not changed.

Thus, when I set out to write this book, I did not find it sur- prsing that my repeated requests for an interview with Senator Clinton were greeted by a shattering silence from her staff. Nor did it come as a shock that many sources, fearing Hillary’s power to exact retribution, asked to remain anonymous.

The discerning reader will find many references to such

263

264
Note on Sources

anonymous sources in the notes that follow. Because I could not name these sources, I felt an extra obligation to the reader to re- double my efforts to verify the fairness and accuracy of all their statements.

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O T E S
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Prologue

1. “He had this big fiftieth birthday
   ”: “The Testing of the Presi- dent: Lewinsky’s Testimony on Love, Friend and Family,”
   New York Times,
   September 22, 1998.
   

2. “. . . I don’t even know if he
   remembers,
   ”:
   Ibid.
   

3. “I like it when you wear my ties”:
   Monica Lewinsky quoted in Toobin,
   A Vast Conspiracy
   , p. 308.
   

4. Tonight’s extravaganza:
   Jeannie Williams, “The stars come out for Clinton’s big 50th,”
   USA Today
   , August 19, 1996.
   

5. “I had an emergency phone call”:
   Interview with an official of the Democratic National Committee, who requested anonymity, March 11, 2004.
   

6. “
   spearheaded”:
   The Starr Report: The Findings of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr on President Clinton and the Lewinsky Af- fair, with analysis by the Staff of the
   Washington Post, p. 69.
   

7. “Hey, Handsome”:
   “The Testing of the President: Lewinsky’s Testimony on Love, Friend and Family,”
   New York Times,
   Sep- tember 22, 1998.
   

8. That same night:
   Ibid.
   
9. “[Bill] and I talk about everything”:
   Hillary Rodham Clinton
   

   265
   

   266
   Notes
   

   quoted in Alex Massie, “How Hillary brought Bill to book,”
   

   Scotsman,
   June 8, 2003.
   

10. “The estrangement was vital”:
    Morris,
    Rewriting History
    , p. 228.
    

11. “The great irony of [Hillary’s] life”:
    Tomasky,
    Hillary’s Turn
    , p. 37.
    

PART I: THE BIG GIRL

Chapter One: The Impossible Dream

1. In the pantry:
   Interview with a member of the Clintons’ per- sonal White House staff, who wished to remain anonymous.
   
2. As a rule:
   Ibid.
   

3. which was adorned:
   Marian Burros, “A Visit to the White House,”
   House Beautiful
   , March 1994.
   

4. “It’s hurting so bad”:
   Arianna Huffington, “Hillary the En- abler Stands By Her Man,”
   Chicago-Sun Times
   , January 28, 1998.
   

5. “[Hillary] kept her eye on”:
   Johnson, “42. William Jefferson Clinton” in
   Presidential Leadership
   , p. 205.
   

6. footnote:
   “She doesn’t want”:
   Bill Clinton quoted in Maki Becker with Veronika Belenkaya, “Bill: Hil Eyes Run for Prez,”
   Daily News
   (New York), June 24, 2004.
   

Chapter Two: Hillary’s Bubble

1. “stupid motherfucker”:
   Anderson,
   Bill and Hillary
   , p. 258.
   
2. “Where’s the miserable cocksucker?”:
   Interview with David Schippers, chief counsel to the House Managers for the Im- peachment Trial of President Clinton, March 7, 2004.
   

3. Until her ill-conceived decision:
   Martha Sherrill, “The Man Hillary Ushered Out,”
   Washington Post,
   March 23, 1994.
   

4. During the day:
   Interview with former White House usher Christopher Emery, April 5, 2004.
   

5. When she first arrived:
   Sheehy,
   Hillary’s Choice,
   p. 227.
   

6. She had the White House pressroom sealed off:
   Stepha- nopoulos,
   All Too Human
   , p. 112.
   

7. This obsession with privacy:
   Interview with former White House usher Christopher Emery, April 5, 2004.
   

   Notes
   267
   

8. “Bill learns from his mistakes”:
   Morris,
   Because He Could
   , p. 153.
   

9. “The mood inside the West Wing”:
   Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, “Clinton and the Intern,”
   Newsweek
   , February 2, 1998.