A Woman in Charge (93 page)

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.

• Sidney Blumenthal, in
The Clinton Wars
(2003), has given us an indispensable record of his conversations with Hillary and Bill during the Lewinsky period, as well as his unique analysis and reporting on the vast right-wing conspiracy and the Starr investigation.

•
Shadow,
by Bob Woodward (1999), is also about other presidencies affected by the shadow of Watergate, but it is especially valuable with regard to Hillary and Bill in that it is based on interviews conducted during and immediately following the Lewinsky/Starr/Clinton engagement—while memories were fresh, and before extraneous political considerations caused some people to change or mute their accounts.

• David Brock's
The Seduction of Hillary Rodham
(1996) must be considered in the light of its author's ongoing political conversion, but it contains some very useful reporting that nails down parts of the Clintons' lives.

•
The System,
by Haynes Johnson and David Broder (1996), is the indispensable account of Hillary's health care debacle.

• Connie Bruck's profile “Hillary the Pol,” which appeared in the May 30, 1993, issue of
The New Yorker,
is a masterful piece of reporting to which all journalists writing about Hillary eventually return for some basic information.

• Robert B. Reich's
Locked in the Cabinet
(1997) is that rare Washington memoir—genuinely candid and filled with good humor, with some important insights into the political raison d'être of the Clintons, and their ambitions.

• Elizabeth Drew's
On the Edge
(1994) is invaluable in understanding how the Clinton presidency got off to such a difficult start, and the mind-set of its principals.

• Dick Morris's
Behind the Oval Office
(1999) is a reissued account of a memoir first published in 1997. It is therefore invaluable, because most of it represents his memories and analysis unclouded by the ideology and animus of his later published works.

•
The Survivor,
by former
Washington Post
White House correspondent John F. Harris, is a well-written and solidly reported overview and analysis of the Clinton presidency.

• Another
Post
reporter, Peter Baker, is the author of
The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton,
a compelling and extensively reported account.

• Webster Hubbell's
Friends in High Places
is an unusual and essential text in terms of understanding parts of the Clinton journey, and is notably introspective.

• In
A Vast Conspiracy,
Jeffrey Toobin fills in important information about Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, especially in the period surrounding Bill Clinton's grand jury appearance.

• Garry Wills's essays in
The New York Review of Books
during the Clinton years are particularly insightful. Generally speaking, the extensive commentary and reporting in
The New Yorker
likewise was unusually perceptive.