The two faces of Hillary Rodham Clinton

The public loves the stand-by-your-man wife, but she's not running. Welcome, once again, the cookie-dissing, Whitewater-dissembling, health-care-botching 'equal partner' who nearly set off a culture war during her husband's first term.

by Dan Kennedy

The headline on the front of Sunday's New York Times -- STARR MAY ISSUE REPORT CRITICAL OF THE CLINTONS -- looked like a déjà vu remembrance of a déjà vu moment. The subtext, though, was a cold, hard shot of reality for those who've worked themselves into an ecstatic lather over the possibility that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the next senator from New York.

The story, by Neil Lewis, quoted an unnamed source who said independent counsel Ken Starr -- yes, him again -- is thinking about issuing a final report that "might be `blistering' in its descriptions of her actions."

Of course, the widely reviled Starr isn't going to change anyone's mind about Hillary. Nevertheless, the story served as the most prominent indication yet that the wildly popular first lady is not going to have the opportunity to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Oh, sure, the Democratic candidate will be named Hillary Clinton -- but she won't be the fawned-over sympathetic martyr to her husband's libido who's emerged as something of a wounded icon during the past several years. Rather, the Hillary who hopes to take Manhattan and the rest of New York will, of necessity, be the hard-edged, ethically indifferent, health-care-botching Clinton who was cryogenically frozen after the disastrous congressional elections of 1994.

Walk or run? Mrs. Clinton takes Manhattan by Christopher Hitchens A permanent political class exists in this country, and it's made up of people from law firms small and large. The squawk surrounding Hillary Clinton's potential candidacy for the New York Senate vacancy highlights some of the drawbacks of this set-up. Every four years or so, we must have yet another argument about which of these people has earned the right to a turn at bat. (How, otherwise, would Bill Bradley have come under consideration for the presidency of anything?) There are lots of potential players to choose from, because too many of these folks just don't have enough to do. This is illustrated clearly by the prospect of a soon-to-be-ex-president who is barely out of his 40s: what hole can possibly be worthy of such a peg? That question is too daunting to think about at the moment; liberals and members of the press have decided, instead, to focus their attention on finding something for his wife to do. Personally, I am more interested in whether Mrs. Clinton walks than in whether she runs. Her emphasis on the first person in her recent interview with Dan Rather, coupled with the announcement that she is moving to New York -- by which she means the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- is, in any case, intriguing. What if she wants to be Senator Rodham? If she decides to exercise that option (as, after using her daughter as a stage prop, she ought), she will have earned the right to duck questions about her marriage. But if not, then she will no longer have the first lady's privilege of claiming the protection of gallantry, while using that protection as a shield for the launching of diatribes. The least impressive of these diatribes -- less convincing even than the one about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" -- was the allegation that criticism of the Clintons was motivated by a snobbish dislike of people from Arkansas. Since Mrs. Clinton -- I don't call her Hillary because I don't know the woman -- is actually from a tony suburb of Illinois, this raises questions about her true identity, her geographic loyalties, and her destiny (in which we all, of course, owe her our attention because of everything she has been through on our behalf). If she runs as Rodham, I won't go to her press conferences and ask if she watched the Juanita Broaddrick interview. I won't ask why she insisted on the secret re-hiring of Dick Morris as Grand Vizier. I won't ask her: "Health care, Ms. Rodham -- what were you thinking?" I won't even spoil her day by bringing up her courageous advocacy of a Palestinian state. (That theme seems to have been de-emphasized of late, in any case.) I will still find it necessary, however, to inquire as to why she relies so much on Harold Ickes, whose lack of scruples on campaign finance makes him noteworthy even in Washington -- but then Ickes is another member of that permanent class of professional and partly hereditary pols to whom we owe so much. It may also be necessary to ask her about her business relationship with Webster Hubbell, because -- though you would hardly know it -- that case is still pending before the courts, and has recently been reinstated. It is a case that raises an intriguing question of timing. The first lady is taking a risk in keeping those impatient New Yorkers waiting, and by discarding her diaphanous veils one by one. Why is she running out the clock in this irritating manner? Is it because, like Hubbell, she may one day need a presidential pardon? If so, she can't very well walk before she runs. And thus one of her greatest potential advantages -- the chance to assume the role of the proud, independent woman who went solo and thereby avoided having to answer for two -- is dissipated. I do not now and have never cared whether Hillary Clinton lives or dies. But I do think of New York City as a spiritual home. Lately, with its prissy new laws on street-vending and smoking and jaywalking, and with the Disneyfication of Times Square and 42nd Street, it seems to be trading in character for respectability, safety, and correctness. An adulation nomination for a woman who has never made a self-critical remark and has always succeeded in placing blame on others would be almost as much of a victory for the Giuliani ethos as a vote for Rudy himself. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Nation. His most recent book is No One Left To Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton (Verso).

Times columnist Maureen Dowd, desperately casting about for something with which to fill her 1500-words-a-week quota now that Bill and Monica are kaput, instantly understood the threat posed by the latest Starr report. No doubt she was thinking: God almighty, what if Hillary decided not to run? After making some lame Austin Powers analogies in her Sunday column (Starr as Dr. Evil, Bill Clinton as the shagadelic playboy president), she concluded with a plea to Starr: go away. Now. Yes, it must have been a frightening moment for Dowd, with 16 months' worth of cheap and easy Hillary Clinton-versus-Rudy Giuliani columns flashing before her eyes.

But not to worry. Hillary's running. She's got to, now that she's squeezed out all of the other potential Democratic candidates and even gotten Representative Nita Lowey, who actually comes from New York, to back off. Quitting now would amount to a gross act of selfishness -- something that Bill would do as easily as spending a dime, but that she, presumably, is above.

The movie analogy that Hillary's candidacy calls to mind thus far is not Austin Powers but, rather, The Phantom Menace. Like the latest Star Wars vehicle, the HRC campaign has been the subject of an extraordinary amount of hype. Dan Rather made an even bigger fool of himself than usual in a gooey one-on-one on 60 Minutes II. Time (SENATOR CLINTON?) and Newsweek (HER TURN) weighed in with cover pieces the same week; they even led with similar anecdotes about Representative Charlie Rangel, the Harlem Democrat who first suggested that Hillary would make a good senator. The normally sensible James Bennet wrote a gushing cover profile for the New York Times Magazine in which his principal misgiving was that, gosh, she might not be liberal enough for New York Democrats. (Sounds like fodder for a Clinton campaign ad.)

The danger is that, as with The Phantom Menace, the public might well get sick of this particular show before it even opens. We'll find out soon enough: with her announcement that she is, indeed, forming an exploratory committee, the curtain is about to rise.

There are signs that the novelty is already beginning to wear off. After starting out with a lead of a dozen or so points over New York mayor Giuliani, Hillary has fallen back into a dead heat. "This trend confirms a basic rule about politics: candidates tend to be most desirable when they are least available (think Colin Powell)," observed Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker. And Giuliani's recovery in the polls took place at a time when he was under unprecedented attack because of the brutal excesses of his police department. The truth is that Giuliani, no matter how unlikable he may be, has presided over one of the great success stories of the '90s: the comeback of New York City. As the campaign grinds on, one suspects that will come to be seen as far more important to voters than Hillary's personal drama. ("To fix her psyche, we're supposed to give her one of our Senate seats. We are a One-Step Program for the emotional and political addict," sneered Richard Brookhiser in the New York Observer last week.)

Besides, even on the small stuff, Hillary can be as annoyingly slippery as Bill. Example: her ridiculous assertion that she, an Illinois native and long-time self-described Chicago Cubs fan, is also a big Yankees booster. How? Well, you see, if you like the Cubs, you can't like the White Sox, so you need an American League team to root for, and . . . Sounds like her husband trying to explain what he means by sex. "If Herbert Kohl were retiring, not Daniel Patrick Moynihan, would she be a lifelong Brewers fan?" asked Boston Globe/ESPN baseball analyst Peter Gammons on Sunday.

The nastiest take on the Clinton campaign so far was John Ellis's Globe column of June 5. But Ellis, in dismissing Clinton as someone who "has accomplished nothing of importance," "a partner at a second-tier law firm in a third-rate state" who "entered into a corrupt real-estate partnership that to this day she has never adequately explained," missed the real (that is, the pop-cultural) significance of all this -- accurate though his assessment may be.

The Clinton-for-Senate campaign isn't about who should succeed Moynihan, or whether Hillary's coalition of liberals, feminists, and African-Americans can defeat the conservatives and suburbanites who will presumably support Giuliani. Rather, it's about the Two Faces of Hillary.

Up till now, we've seen the reinvented Hillary, the demure, self-denying helpmate, the sensible but stylish Vogue model who self-righteously inveighed against vast right-wing conspiracies rather than allow herself to believe for one minute that her Bill was getting blowjobs from the office help.

What we're about to be reintroduced to is the unsmiling Hillary who doesn't bake cookies, who somehow turned a $1000 investment into a $100,000 windfall, who's rumored to be the dark force behind Travelgate, Filegate, and Whitewater, who drafted in secret the doomed, Rube Goldberg-esque Clintoncare universal-health plan, and who, depending on which lunatic-fringe theory you care to indulge, is either a man-hating lesbian socialist or a Lady Macbeth who had her boyfriend Vincent Foster murdered and dragged out of the White House in order to cover up her criminal misconduct.

Even former White House aide George Stephanopoulos, in his book All Too Human, puts considerable blame for the Clintons' scandal problems on Hillary. In an excerpt published by the Washington Monthly titled "Hillary's Big Mistake," Stephanopoulos argues that her inexplicable decision to withhold Whitewater documents from congressional investigators was what started her husband on the road to impeachment.

Call this movie The Return of Hillary Rodham, She-Wolf of the Democratic Left.

---

To page through some of the early press Hillary garnered is to be struck by what a long, strange trip it's been -- and to lament what she might have become. Or, to be more accurate, what she seemed to be. In her first incarnation, during the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton came across as independent, dauntingly intelligent, every bit her husband's equal -- and more disciplined, too. Bill Clinton openly boasted about her, telling crowds that if he won, the public would be getting "two for the price of one." The Clinton presidency was going to be a partnership in every sense of the word.

Elanor Roosevelt rides again. New Yorkers and the first lady have clearly formed a mutual admiration society. But how -- and why -- did it happen? by Joe Conason "If I decide to do this crazy thing . . . " is how Hillary Rodham Clinton now prefaces remarks about her entry into the race for the United States Senate seat from New York that will be vacated next year by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But when she says it, she smiles broadly. Sometimes she even winks. The most controversial first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt is preparing to make history, and the questions that are driving pundits crazy begin with "Why?" Why is Hillary Clinton running for the Senate? Why did she choose New York? Why does New York -- or at least the state's Democratic majority -- seem ready to embrace her? The first question is the most easily answered. Hillary Clinton will run for the Senate, almost certainly from New York but, if not, from her birthplace in Illinois, because she is and always has been a political person. Which is to say that despite the intense attacks she has endured for most of her husband's career, she enjoys and believes in the work they do. Public life engages her both intellectually and emotionally, even in an era when the public sphere has narrowed and declined. Had she wanted a quiet sinecure, as some well-meaning people have suggested she should, she probably wouldn't have married Bill Clinton in the first place. For Hillary, her husband's impending retirement is not the end of an era but the beginning of one. She represents a center-left perspective -- known variously as New Democrat, New Labor, or Third Way -- now being hotly debated among liberals and progressives. Yet because of her popular persona and her ties to traditional constituencies, she can serve as a unifying force among Democrats. Indeed, she is in certain respects the real, if not the titular, leader of the Democratic Party. The explanation for Hillary's attraction to New York is simple, apart from the undeniable charms of the place. There is no open seat in Illinois or Arkansas next year. She was invited -- make that implored -- to run by Democratic members of Congress, most notably Harlem's Charlie Rangel; by the newly elected junior senator, Chuck Schumer; and by the state party leadership. Even during the depths of Whitewater, New York has always provided a hospitable climate for the Clintons, whose approval ratings there have consistently remained at levels 10 to 20 points above the national average. No doubt she still remembers the tumultuous welcome she received in Madison Square Garden, from a floor swarming with New Yorkers, when she stepped to the podium at the 1996 Democratic convention. They loved her when the rest of America didn't. Now those New York Democrats have another reason to love Hillary Clinton. Facing the possible loss of a Senate seat they have held since 1976, they've had to ask themselves: what's the alternative? The Democratic Party in New York is not exactly teeming with bold political talent. It could barely mount a credible campaign for governor last year. There were a few attractive prospects to succeed Moynihan, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Andrew Cuomo. But, discouraged by fear of the supposedly invincible Republican, Rudolph Giuliani, and the need to raise about $20 million to mount a viable candidacy, they -- and others -- bowed out. Until Hillary Clinton makes up her mind, the field is left to a lone, uninspiring suburban congresswoman with a wealthy husband. Finally, if there's any state where a carpetbagger might be welcomed rather than shunned, it's the Empire State. The most revered example is Robert Kennedy, of course, who didn't show up here until a few months before Election Day 1964. But as one of Kennedy's most ardent supporters pointed out back then, New Yorkers showed a proclivity to elect out-of-state leaders as early as 1798. "Rufus King, the first United States senator from New York, was a Massachusetts native who moved into New York immediately before his election to the Senate," recalled a precocious student politico, arguing in a column for the Manhattan College newspaper that the carpetbagger charge against Kennedy was merely a diversion from real campaign issues. "Rufus King had, only shortly before his election, served as a delegate from Massachusetts to the Constitutional Convention." The author of that intense essay, incidentally, was a well-informed, rather intense young man named Rudolph Giuliani. Joe Conason is editor-at-large of the New York Observer and the co-author of the forthcoming book The Hunting of the President: The 10-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (St. Martin's).

This, of course, drove cultural conservatives into a frenzy. And though supposedly enlightened baby boomers would never admit it, it seemed to do something to them, too. The emblematic moment came in early 1993, right around the time of Clinton's first inauguration: Spy magazine, the '80s beacon of all that was hip and urbane, pasted Hillary's smiling face onto a leather-clad body, whip in hand, ready to mete out some serious punishment.

One of the smartest deconstructions of the early Hillary (or, rather, of how the culture responded to the early Hillary) was Katha Pollitt's essay in the Nation on May 17, 1993. Headlined THE MALE MEDIA'S HILLARY PROBLEM, the article took the overwhelmingly male punditocracy to task for repeatedly revisiting the topic of whether Hillary had too much power. As Pollitt noted, the proposition was ridiculous on its face: Hillary Clinton had not one bit more power than had been granted to her by the president, which made her no different from any other appointed official. Indeed, with no clearly defined duties, she had far less power than another notable beneficiary of presidential nepotism, Robert Kennedy, who served as attorney general under his brother Jack.

As Pollitt explained it, there was something else going on -- the same something else that could be seen on the cover of Spy. Hillary Clinton wasn't just a strong, independent woman; she was a strong, independent, attractive woman, of roughly the same age as many of the boomer reporters, the first presidential wife whom thirty- and fortysomething journalists could fantasize about. And many men seemed threatened.

"Now that she's actually ensconced in the White House, the first lady has become a quasi-pornographic obsession," wrote Pollitt. "There are dirty jokes, sexist jokes and sexual rumors galore: H.R.C. is a lesbian, currently conducting an affair with a well-known actress; she's got Bill in some incredible sexual stranglehold." And Pollitt blasted the media -- including Nightline, which devoted two shows to exploring whether Hillary had too much power -- for building up "the now-familiar media cartoon: Hillary Rodham Clinton as the overbearing wife with a finger in every slice of government pie, a workaholic ideologue accountable to no one but her pussy-whipped husband."

Pollitt's observations were so acute that her explanation -- that "anti-Hillary media types, for the most part men, are protecting their turf" -- was disappointingly reductionist. In fact, the phenomenon Pollitt tried to explain was more primal than she wanted to admit.

Getting closer to the truth was a 5700-word profile of Hillary in the New York Times Magazine that appeared at almost exactly the same time as Pollitt's essay. Written by Michael Kelly, later the Clinton-bashing editor of the New Republic and now the editor of National Journal and a columnist for the Washington Post, the piece didn't so much explain the cultural antipathy to Hillary as embody it. Kelly's article, titled "Saint Hillary," portrayed her as a devotee of New Age babble and the ill-defined "politics of meaning," a modern Carrie Nation who was, more than anything, a creature of "the pacifistic and multiculturally correct religious left of today."

Kelly added, ominously: "The true nature of her politics makes the ambition of Hillary Rodham Clinton much larger than merely personal. She clearly wants power, and has already amassed more of it than any first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. But that ambition is merely a subcategory of the infinitely larger scope of her desires." (Like what? World domination?) The Hillary Clinton of Michael Kelly's fevered imaginings was not a whip-wielding dominatrix but, rather, a hypermoralizing social worker who would make all of us conform to her vision of what was right and true and proper, like an overbearing teacher cracking down (okay, cracking the whip) on her unruly charges. No more talking. No more chewing gum. No more fun.

At the time, Kelly's piece was both celebrated and criticized for the supposed viciousness of his attack. Hillary Clinton, in particular, was said to have been deeply hurt by it. In retrospect, it's striking how much has changed since then -- how mild it seems now that we know so much more about Hillary. Today, no one makes fun of her idealism, because that idealism is at such variance with the many scandals she has oh-so-lamely attempted to explain away. Today, it's her husband who's seen as the corrupt one. Remember, though, that pre-Monica, the roles were reversed.

It was Hillary's subpoenaed billing records that mysteriously appeared in the White House living quarters. It was Hillary, after Vince Foster's suicide, who ordered Foster's papers to be spirited away before the FBI could get hold of them. It was Hillary who was supposed to be behind the travel-office firings and the improper use of FBI files on prominent Republicans. And it was Hillary, not Bill, who Matt Drudge reported would be indicted just before the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Drudge gets no points for accuracy, but his alleged scoop does say something about that particular cultural moment.

Which brings us to yet a third major piece of Hillary Clinton journalism -- a piece that, unlike Katha Pollitt's essay and Michael Kelly's profile, seems as relevant today as it did when it appeared, on June 2, 1996, on the front page of the Washington Post. The massive, 11,800-word take-out, by Clinton biographer David Maraniss and Lewinsky-affair pit bull Susan Schmidt, was headlined HILLARY CLINTON AND THE WHITEWATER CONTROVERSY: A CLOSE-UP.

Dealing mainly with the unfathomable Castle Grande real-estate development, the piece reported on Hillary's business ties with the unsavory Jim McDougal and documented a series of half-answers, changed answers, and suddenly-expanded answers that she offered over time in response to investigators' questions. Maraniss and Schmidt wrote that "an examination of Hillary Clinton's public statements suggests someone less passive in her behavior, less consistent in her answers, and less committed to full disclosure" than she wanted us to believe. The story concluded: "There appears to be a four-year pattern of Hillary Clinton avoiding full disclosure, occasionally forgetting places and events that might embarrass her, and revising her story as documents emerge and the knowledge of her questioners deepens."

In discussing the risks and benefits of Clinton's running for the Senate, one of the first hazards her allies invariably bring up is the insatiable mean-spiritedness of the New York tabloids -- principally the New York Post, owned by Clinton-loathing press baron Rupert Murdoch.

In fact, Clinton should be -- and probably is -- far more concerned that the quality press, such as the New York Times and Long Island's Newsday, will produce pieces similar to the Washington Post's.

---

To be sure, despite the many legitimate unanswered questions about Hillary Clinton's past conduct, there remains a degree of irrationality about the antipathy expressed by her enemies.

Former Reagan-Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan hyperventilated in the Wall Street Journal that Clinton's candidacy "is such an act of mad boomer selfishness and narcissism that even from the Clintons -- the Gimme and Getme of American politics -- it is an act of utter and breathtaking gall."

Terry Golway, in the New York Observer, called Hillary's candidacy "an offensive and astonishingly tone-deaf notion."

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, no Hillary admirer himself, put it in the proper perspective this past Monday. Noting that Clinton brings considerable assets to the race, such as popularity among Democrats, 100 percent name recognition, and the ability to raise mucho money, Jacoby pointed out that New Yorkers who don't want her to be a US senator have a simple solution: they can vote against her.

But Jacoby, like his Globe colleague John Ellis, doesn't get the broader cultural context in which Hillary's candidacy must be seen. Her enemies, for all their nutcase ravings, don't make that mistake.

On March 21, the Washington Post Magazine ran a profile by Liza Mundy that, despite occasional inconsistencies and artificial attempts to force the argument, really gets at the essence of Hillary Clinton -- that bridges the gap between the Woman Who Stood By Her Man of 1998-'99 and the strong, independent lawyer who ran afoul of health-care policy and Whitewater. Mundy's insight is that Clinton's supporters invariably use the word "choice" when explaining why they continue to admire Hillary despite the travails of the last year -- but that they have turned the word's feminist meaning on its head.

"Choice . . . is the word invoked by leaders of the women's movement as they try to make sense of Hillary Clinton -- her silence, her suffering, her decision to stay with her husband, her newfound popularity -- and how all these things affect her status as a feminist leader," Mundy wrote. "Choice, apparently, is the one concept strong enough to dissolve the inconsistencies and explain the devolution of Hillary Clinton's public persona. It's the ideal that permits her supporters to accept her dual role as one of the world's most articulate advocates of women's rights, and, at the same time, a wife who has endured months -- years, decades -- of emotional mistreatment."

The problem, Mundy argues, is that by defending Hillary Clinton's choices, the women's movement has been forced to abandon its previous position that "the personal is political," and that "decent treatment in one's own household was a crucial element of equality." (And, though Mundy doesn't mention it, Hillary's choices have included staying with a husband who has been credibly accused of forcible rape.)

"If Hillary's choices are okay," Mundy asks, "are there any choices that aren't?" Mundy offers an interesting synthesis of the she-wolf and the suffering wife: what transformed Hillary was not cold political calculation so much as the compromises she's made over the years -- compromises not with Bill, who's never had to give up a damn thing, but with her own principles. It is, in the end, a sad story.

The Clintons have been with us for a very long time. It's been 11 years since Bill Clinton appeared on the Tonight show, full of youth and promise, making light of his way-too-long nomination speech for Michael Dukakis. It's been seven years since he lied to us about Gennifer Flowers, about the draft, about inhaling. It's been nearly that long since Hillary Clinton began stonewalling on questions about her law practice back in Arkansas, about her dealings with one partner, Vince Foster, who committed suicide, and another, Webster Hubbell, who went to prison. Later this summer, she may be called on to testify at yet another Hubbell trial -- not the sort of photo op that an aspiring senator wants in her campaign literature.

Clinton fatigue has long since set in. Al Gore's mentor Martin Peretz recently ran a cover story in the magazine he owns, the New Republic, urging Hillary not to run -- in part on the grounds that one Clinton legatee, Gore, may be all the public can handle. Don Imus, commenting on the Yankees' appearance at the White House with Bill and Hill, put it this way last week: "We hate you people. You've disgraced this country, you're a buck-toothed crook, your husband's obviously a dirtbag. Get out of our life. Leave us alone. God almighty. Just go away! God, it's like some rash you can't get rid of. God, would you two fat goobers just get out?"

The media are going to have the time of their lives. Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani (assuming he's the Republican nominee -- no sure thing, given that Republican governor George Pataki hates his guts) are brutally tough political brawlers with massive egos and a love for the limelight. But as Imus so delicately put it, the public's enthusiasm for Clinton's celebrity psychodrama is likely to fall considerably short of the press's.

If Clinton is to be elected, she'll have to reconcile the Two Faces of Hillary -- to come up with a credible synthesis of the independent woman and the suffering wife, the she-wolf and the doormat. If she can do that, she could be formidable. If she can't, voters will likely opt for the One Face of Rudy instead.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.