God and Hillary Clinton (21 page)

It was a difficult moment, one that demonstrated the obvious limitations of this new incarnation of public scrutiny.

Impeachment

“It is not in my hands,” Bill Clinton told reporters. “[I]t is in the hands of Congress, and the people of this country—ultimately, in the hands of God.”
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This was Bill's response to the question of how this whole fiasco would end. The House of Representatives laid down its verdict on Saturday, December 19, 1998: impeachment. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Hillary's husband by a vote of 228–206 on article one, “Did the president commit perjury before a grand jury?” and a vote of 221–212, on article three, “Did Bill Clinton obstruct justice?”

He had technically done both, the only debate being whether the
perjury and obstruction involved a serious enough offense to merit impeachment. Democrats said no, but enough Republicans said yes, and on that day William Jefferson Clinton became the second president ever to be impeached and the first elected president to be impeached.
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The next big question was whether he would resign, as many urged him to do, from veteran
Washington Post
journalist David Broder to respected newspaper editorial boards like those of the
Cincinnati Enquirer
,
San Jose Mercury News
,
USA Today
, the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, the
Seattle Times
, and many others.
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The pressure rose when Republican Speaker of the House Bob Livingston (R-La.), caught in his own sexual transgression, though one that did not involve legal breaches before a grand jury, resigned that same Saturday morning.

Bill, however, did not follow suit, opting instead to wait out the debate of his impeachment in the Senate. Despite the successful vote in the House of Representatives, the vote in the Senate was well short of the two-thirds majority required to convict and remove him from office. And so, with the conclusion of the Senate trial, Bill Clinton, his marriage, and his faith had weathered the storm. The cost of these events had been high, as Clinton had spent much of his political capital trying to clear his name. Though he would continue to make speeches and herald the increasingly vibrant economy, he no longer possessed the political strength that he once held dear.

Another Meeting with John Paul II

It never got worse for the Clintons than that December 1998. By the next month, the start of a new year, things began to get better—politically and personally. But just as the Clintons started to turn their heads to the future, Pope John Paul II intervened to highlight an old issue: the disconnect between their faith in God and their views on abortion. The Clintons met with Pope John Paul II
each time he visited America during their presidency, with the most recent occasion coming during an October 1995 papal appearance in Newark, New Jersey. On each visit, the pontiff raised the abortion issue publicly and privately.
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The final meeting of significance between the three came on January 26, 1999, in St. Louis. Once again, Hillary was there. She and her husband joined about five hundred families at a sweltering hot Air National Guard hangar at Lambert Airport to welcome the pope, who had just completed a five-day visit to Mexico. He was scheduled to celebrate Mass before a congregation of more than one hundred thousand at the Trans World Dome. It was his fifth trip to the U.S. mainland; judging by his appearance, which was increasingly frail from the ravages of Parkinson's disease, it appeared that this could be one of the last for the seventy-eight-year-old pontiff.
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The weakened state of the pope did not prevent him from following the aggressive agenda on abortion that he had pursued in all their previous meetings. What happened was a near exact repeat of that first encounter between the pope and the Clintons at the airport in Denver in 1994. Again, Bill provided opening remarks. He spoke of human rights and human dignity, though, like his wife, separating them from the abortion issue. “We honor you for standing for human dignity and human rights,” said Clinton. “People still need to hear your message that all are God's children.”

Again, the pope knew that the Clintons did not apply those words to the same group of human beings that the pope had in mind. And here, too, once again, the pope responded with pointed words aimed at the abortion issue, just as he had done in 1994 in Denver, and as Mother Teresa had done at the prayer breakfast. With the president and Mrs. Clinton listening, the pope—this time his arm shaking and body slightly hunched—made an analogy to the Dred Scott case, which had been tried there in St. Louis. The pope noted that the Supreme Court of this great country of America had, in 1857, declared “an entire class of human beings—people of African descent—out
side the boundaries of the national community and the Constitution's protection.” Hillary and Bill knew what was coming next: “Today,” the Holy Father continued, “the conflict is between a culture that affirms, cherishes, and celebrates the gift of life, and a culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings—the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped, and others considered ‘unuseful'—to be outside the boundaries of legal protection.”

The analogy was effective as it connected abortion to one of the issues closest to the Clintons' hearts—racial bigotry. The pope saw abortion as the slavery of the twentieth century, yet his homily probably mattered little. Intellectually, religiously, morally, Hillary had long ago disconnected the abortion question from civil rights, human rights, and her religious worldview. Nonetheless, the speech served as a reminder to the first couple of his admonition five years earlier in Denver: that it remained a “time of testing” for the United States of America.

Afterward, the president and the pontiff held a twenty-minute private meeting during which the abortion issue again “came up,” according to White House spokesman P. J. Crowley.
⁶⁶
John Paul II told Bill Clinton that he hoped that “the value of the human being will be defended and protected in all circumstances.”
⁶⁷
Clinton steered the discussion to the subject of international affairs, namely Cuba and Iraq, commenting later through his spokesman on the pope's profound “moral guidance” on issues of “human justice.” Despite these platitudes, there was clearly a rift between the pope and the Clintons that could never be resolved. In the pope's mind, the Clintons didn't get it; they refused to connect the dots that he believed constituted the human fabric knitted by God in the womb.

While Monica Lewinsky and the events of the previous year may have forced Bill and Hillary to reevaluate many of their deepest held beliefs about marriage and each other, they still were not ready to recalibrate their view on abortion. Even with all the religious counseling and spiritual outreach that the pair engaged in during their
difficult times, the faith that had pushed them past the sins of adultery could not bring them to go against the values of the Democratic Party. No matter how incongruous their pro-choice spirituality was with the larger teachings of Christianity, the pair would not budge, and as they moved ahead and put the past behind them, this difficult tension between spirituality and politics would continue to raise problems during the years and months ahead.

As 1999 picked up steam, Hillary began to look past the presidency to the future and plan how she could use the notoriety she had gained as first lady to achieve an elected office of her own. As she carefully weighed her options, opportunity presented itself in the form of a Senate seat opening in New York; Hillary had never been a resident of the state, but neither had Bobby Kennedy, who three decades earlier had looked to the same seat as a means to the presidency. Even in a state as liberal as New York, the seat was not a slam dunk for Hillary. She would need to convince New Yorkers as a whole that they could rely on her, an outsider, for effective representation.

On paper, it did not seem that the overwhelmingly Democratic New York City would pose a problem, but outside the city, things grew more complicated—especially in rural Republican areas, where she was viewed as a liberal carpetbagger. In many parts of the state, her unlikability factor was quite high, and most conservatives viewed her contemptuously. For the Hillary campaign, the key would be to win
over just enough undecided voters, along with a massive onslaught of city dwellers.

Thus, 1999 and 2000 were about to become two of the most significant years in Hillary's political life, as she tried to separate herself from her husband's humiliations and her own past baggage by preparing for a run for the venerable U.S. Senate. During this time of new horizons and ideas for Hillary, her faith would be scrutinized as never before, with voters and the media examining it not only to understand her core values, but also to measure her opinions on hot-button religious-political issues such as abortion, gay rights, and gay marriage. In a state with so many ardent Democrats, she would find some of her positions damaging, as her close relationship with God and her stance on the morality of marriage were not in line with some of her party's faithful. But despite public scrutiny of her positions, she would persevere, pushing her agenda straight through Election Day and possibly toward victory.

Gay Rights

Just as her candidacy was beginning to gear up in December 1999, some of her religious values and political stances unexpectedly put her at odds with some of New York's secular Democrats.

At a fund-raiser in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, Hillary told a group of gay contributors that the “don't ask, don't tell” policy, enacted by her husband with the intent of making it easier for gay men and lesbians to serve in the armed forces, had been a failure. In her first public statement on the issue, the Senate candidate said that if elected, she would work to overturn the policy, insisting that homosexuals be allowed to serve openly in the military. Stating that it was politically unrealistic to expect Congress to make a change at the current moment, the first lady maintained that the Department of Defense should take immediate steps to reduce the
number of instances of homosexuals being discharged from the military. “Gays and lesbians already serve with distinction in our nation's armed forces and should not face discrimination,” said Mrs. Clinton in the statement. “Fitness to serve should be based on an individual's conduct, not their sexual orientation.”
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While this opinion would not have threatened her reputation with the crowd, her next set of remarks did. Addressing another hot-button issue of gay rights at the fund-raiser, she said that she supported “domestic-partnership measures” that would permit homosexual partners to receive the same health and financial benefits as married couples.
²
However, her spokesman, Howard Wolfson, added that Hillary, like her husband, supported the Republican Congress's 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, banning federal recognition of gay marriage and allowing states to ignore same-sex unions licensed elsewhere. In her speech, she did not use the word “marriage,” saying only that “same-sex unions” should be recognized and entitled to all the rights and privileges received by heterosexual couples—though not the right of marriage, as her spokesman noted after the speech.
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This was an important distinction and one that would be crucial in the campaign ahead. Gay marriage in the American political and religious debate was quickly emerging as one of the defining social issues of the campaign and beyond. Despite Hillary's advocacy for gay rights, her refusal to support gay marriage placed her squarely in opposition to many in her party. In truth, her unwillingness to support same-sex marriage was consistent with a compelling quote by Don Jones that Gail Sheehy reported in her book released around the time, a remark that did not sit well with gay-rights advocacy groups: “Surely, she is for gay rights, there's no question about that,” explained Jones. “But I think both she and Bill still think of heterosexuality as normative.”
⁴

Her SoHo talk was honest but not as frank as it could have been, prompting the New York press to demand clarification. They got it, as Hillary proceeded to state categorically that she opposed legalizing
same-sex marriages: Speaking in White Plains, New York, she provided a strong, clear explanation, that to this day is the most quoted statement enunciating her position. “Marriage has historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman,” said the first lady. “But I also believe that people in committed gay marriages, as they believe them to be, should be given rights under the law that recognize and respect their relationship.”
⁵

Joel Siegel of the New York
Daily News
said that Hillary then “reluctantly waded” into the myriad of follow-up questions. Among them, significantly, she said that she backed her husband's signing of the Defense of Marriage Act. She said what everyone wanted to know: Yes, if she had been in the Senate in 1996, she would have supported the law.
⁶

From there, the gay marriage issue heated up even more at the March 2000 annual St. Patrick's Day parade, where organizers barred gays from marching as a single, organized group. As a result, many advocacy groups for gay and lesbian rights boycotted the parade, forcing New York's politicians to decide whether to sit out or join the parade. Caught between these two political constituencies that she needed badly in November, Mrs. Clinton had a decision to make. She decided to march. She was not a popular addition: As the AP reported, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, her Republican opponent in the Senate race, “basked in the adoration” of the crowd, while Clinton plowed along forty-two blocks up Fifth Avenue to taunts of “Go back to Arkansas!”
⁷

In her remarks to the press afterward, Hillary only made it worse, trying to straddle the fence while implying that the Irish organizers were narrow-minded. She said she had “hoped the parade would be inclusive,” which she felt it was not, but had opted to march because “this is a day also to honor the values and contributions of Irish-Americans…. When you're in public life, you have to balance competing values.”
⁴
At the other end, her compromise angered homosexuals.
Christine Quinn, the City Council speaker, a councilwoman, and a gay activist, told the New York
Daily News
that she was “very disappointed” in Hillary, as were her gay supporters.
⁹

It was not a good day for Hillary; she had alienated both sides she had sought to appease. It was no great surprise when in 2001 she avoided the decision altogether, saying she had a scheduling conflict that prevented her from marching.
¹⁰

The Abortion Issue

As Hillary campaigned for herself for the first time, she became even more politically attached to the pro-choice lobby, which she now reached out to more than ever before. Now her thoughts on the abortion issue mattered more than ever, as it was she, and not just her husband, who held the potential to make federal law.

On January 22, 1999, Hillary took an unprecedented step for a first lady by delivering a speech to NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the premier advocacy group for legal, unrestricted abortion. Speaking to the group in Washington, D.C., she stated her goal of “keeping abortion safe, legal and rare into the next century,” a slogan that would become the mantra for her position. It was not a lengthy speech, and did not feature the stridency of the talk she would give to NARAL five years later. Nonetheless, she shared revealing remarks beyond conventional pro-choice sentiments, including the noteworthy idea that she had “met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.” The clarification was an important one that displayed her distinct aptitude for political foresight. This notion that she was pro-abortion would be precisely the
argument that moderate to conservative Christians would use against her in their literature.

Also, her words were helpful in illuminating the contours of her underlying personal philosophy on the abortion question. From her remarks and others like them, Hillary demonstrated her belief that the mother of a household has exclusive authority to decide whether the rest of her family will meet the son, daughter, brother, or sister she is carrying in her womb. Hillary feels that the morally decisive factor in that decision is the
right
to make the decision; the exercising of the right determines the rightness of the decision, regardless of which decision the mother chooses. What is moral is what is decided by each and every mother in each and every pregnancy situation; what is moral is relative to the individual—to each and every individual mother-to-be. The father cannot be the moral arbiter in this decision because he is not endowed with the right of “choice.”

There is a personal absolutism here, anchored in moral relativism. The right of reproductive choice is judged the highest moral end in the equation, trumping all other rights, including any consideration of a right to life for the unborn child. This creates a kind of an abortion theology in which the woman having the abortion has the right to decide what is moral for her situation. What is truly right must be judged on a case-by-case basis; there is no objective truth.

Perhaps all of this is a bit too philosophical for one's tastes, but these are important, necessary considerations in trying to understand the interwoven relationship between Hillary's faith and her pro-choice stance. It is precisely this concept of “the mother as moral arbiter” that may help pro-life Christians to understand how Hillary can completely surrender to the pro-choice position, while also submitting to Jesus Christ and to a God that preaches, “Thou shall not kill.” Despite discerning this rationale, many pro-life Christians find themselves unmoved by her logic. Pro-life Christians remain frustrated by what they perceive as her selective social justice.

In the NARAL speech, Hillary continued beyond her argument
for being pro-choice, saying, “Fewer teens are having sex, getting pregnant, and having abortions, but there are clearly too many young people who have not gotten the message.” She added that young men must also be reached, not leaving males out of the equation: “More has to be done to reach out to young men, and enlist them in the campaign to make abortions rare, and to make it possible for them to define their lives in terms other than what they imagine sexual prowess and fatherhood being.”

The sum total was that she had unequivocally laid out her position on abortion rights, demonstrating not only her beliefs but the morality of those beliefs and how she reconciled them to her faith. In the coming months and years, she would continue to revisit and elaborate on these ideas, picking and choosing the elements to emphasize depending on her audience and the issues of the day.

Abortion and the Opposition

While Hillary's pro-choice stance was a big part of her platform, it was by no means unique to her. Her opponent in the race was the Republican mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, who despite his party affiliation and his Catholicism was also pro-choice. At times during the race, Giuliani squared off with Mrs. Clinton over who was a greater champion of abortion rights, with each pushing the other on the issue. On January 22, 2000, the
New York Times
tried to keep score in a feature on Mrs. Clinton and abortion, titled “Hillary Clinton Vows to Fight to Preserve Abortion Rights.” The piece stated, “Signaling that she will not yield the issue of abortion rights in her race for United States Senate, Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday presented herself as a stronger advocate on the issue than Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mrs. Clinton said she would make protecting abortion rights a central concern if she is elected to office.”
¹¹

Hillary spoke up in a press conference: “Depending on what happens
in the presidential election, what happens on the Supreme Court and in the federal judiciary, we could be facing some very serious challenges in the next couple of years to Roe v. Wade,” she said. “I want New Yorkers to know that I wouldn't only vote right, but I would be a strong voice, and I would attempt to organize as much as I could to be sure that we defended a woman's right to choose.” She added: “I want New Yorkers to know that I am and always have been pro-choice, and that it is not a right that any of us should take for granted. There are a number of forces at work in our society that would try to turn back the clock and undermine a woman's right to choose, and we must remain vigilant.”
¹²

She again affirmed definitively: “I have always been pro-choice and my position has never changed, and never wavered.” She was emphatic, clearer than on any other subject, repeating: “The current membership of the United States Senate is not something that we can count on to protect a woman's right to choose. For women, the Senate will be our court of last resort, both because of the votes that will be taken there on issues, and because of the votes that are likely to be taken on judicial nominees.”
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