Hillary’s directorship of a philanthropy, the New World Foundation, also invited scrutiny. Incorporated in 1954, the foundation had quietly handed out small grants for years, in pursuit of equal rights for minorities, avoidance of war, and development of community initiative programs. But Hillary’s new prominence focused special attention on what it had done during the two years she chaired its board. Her final report, issued in 1988, reiterated the foundation’s commitment to “citizen organizing, in groups and coalitions, to put public needs back on the national agenda and to hold bureaucracies and elected officials accountable.” In listing the hundred or so grants made during her two-year stint, she included many that were small and hardly controversial (such as $5,000 each to the MS Foundation for Women and to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York). But other grants later rankled critics who deemed the recipients part of the “hard left.” Particularly annoying was the $2,500 award made to an admittedly anti-conservative group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and $5,000 to the Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador.29
Even Hillary’s work with the Children’s Defense Fund came under attack. While she chaired the fund, it repeatedly called attention to the increasing number of the nation’s children living in poverty, but her critics preferred to dwell on questions about who would pay to get them out.30 Hillary’s earlier writings on the legal rights of minors were quoted, often out of context, so that they seemed to argue that children should be able to sue their parents over insignificant matters and that youngsters understood their welfare better than their elders.
Rather than trying to refute these charges, she generally kept quiet, but already she was getting a taste of the power of one sound “byte.” Anyone reading her work on children’s rights will be struck by the complex problems she cites, involving sad cases of children shortchanged on health care and education. The reforms she suggests reach beyond families to drastically alter the role of government and the old values of individualism sprouted on the frontier. But evidence and recommendations as dry and complicated as these are unlikely to catch the attention of most audiences, especially if they have just heard her views summarized as “giving children the right to sue their parents.” “Make your point short and catchy,” Americans seemed to say, “or you haven’t a chance of getting through to us.” Candidates running for election learn the “sound byte simplicity” but Hillary had never had to run; her work as attorney and advocate had thrived on complexity and detail.
Hillary Rodham Clinton presented a novel phenomenon in presidential history although candidates running for lesser office had earlier revealed the potential for trouble. Americans who paid so much attention to personal probity, especially after Watergate invited them to look closely at their top leaders, would find difficulty separating a candidate’s record from what a spouse did professionally or financially. As long as the candidates were males who also managed their family’s only career and all its money, responsibility was clearly assigned, but in the Clintons’ case, all evidence pointed to Hillary as the family’s chief financial planner. Money magazine even ran an article, “How Hillary Manages the Clintons’ Money,” and explained how her decisions had pulled the family into the top 3 percent of American households.31 Some observers noted that she cared more than Bill about having money, since her background was solidly middle class whereas he had grown up in poverty and ceased fearing it. Others pointed out that her work in the Rose Law Firm led to contacts with investors that Bill’s governorship did not.
No one could recall such a partnership—a male candidate and his attorney-advocate-investor wife—ever making it to the White House. Few presidential wives had taken jobs outside the home after marrying, and those who did shunned controversy. Mary Baird Bryan, the only attorney whose husband had been nominated for president, had declined to practice law but used her degree to help research and write his speeches. Those few First Ladies who had worked after their marriages had stuck to the family business (Rosalynn Carter and Lady Bird Johnson) or to teaching school (Pat Nixon). None of them had presented herself as the family’s chief breadwinner or financial decision-maker, and all had kept quiet about prickly topics if speaking out would cost their husbands votes.
Some observers reached back to 1984 and Geraldine Ferraro for a parallel to the Clintons although it was an imperfect comparison. Ferraro had distanced herself from her husband’s real estate dealings, but a male candidate found that more difficult. A wife’s disclaimer that she “knew nothing about the family’s finances” rang truer somehow, much as it infuriated those who thought it demeaning to women, than did a husband’s. The Clinton record was larger: Ferraro’s husband came under scrutiny only because of his financial dealings but Clinton’s wife had also taken strong advocacy roles that rankled a lot of Americans. Perhaps most important of all, Ferraro never presented her husband as an important advisor whereas Bill Clinton promised a “twofer” presidency: vote for one Clinton and get two.
In their coverage of Hillary during the primaries, reporters appeared uncertain what to consider. Some focused on her hair style and clothes, as though she were simply the candidate’s wife, and others looked at her record, as though she ran in her own name. Often the two approaches merged in one article, and some were extremely negative. Conservative journals attacked her pointedly under headlines “The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock”32 and “Hillary from Hell,” while other magazines dismissed her more subtly. The New Yorker ran a cartoon showing a woman entering a department store in search of a jacket that was “not too Hillary.”
Moving into new territory without a model to follow, Hillary Rodham Clinton modified her role in early 1992. She spoke out less, and at the Democratic convention, she gamely participated in a cookie bake-off, sponsored by Family Circle, that pitted her recipe for chocolate chip cookies against that of incumbent Barbara Bush. Then, as though to emphasize her domesticity, she permitted her twelve-year-old daughter, who had been shielded from public scrutiny, to appear before cameras and be featured in People magazine, thus underscoring Hillary’s role as mother. The woman who aspired to First Ladyship chose softer, “more feminine” clothing and smiled a lot, so that when television cameras focused on her during her husband’s acceptance speech at the convention, she appeared as fondly and demurely supportive as Nancy Reagan ever had.
After the nomination, Hillary continued to play down her husband’s references to her as a “full partner” in his administration, although her record as governor’s wife gave some indication of how the partnership worked. In 1983, when he wanted to improve the state’s school system, he had appointed her to chair the Education Standards Committee.33 After meeting with teachers and parents in seventy-five counties, she and the committee advocated more rigorous course requirements, teacher testing, a longer school calendar, and increased state funding. All this evidence suggested a large public role for her in a Clinton presidency, and on the night of November 3, when the president-elect acknowledged his victory on national television, viewers were not surprised that he turned to Hillary to hand him the script of his statement.
The period between the November election and the January inauguration showed still more signs of her clout. After meeting with congressional leaders who journeyed to Little Rock to talk with the president-elect, he openly acknowledged that she had sat in all the discussions, “talked a lot and knew more than we did about some things.”34 Such a confession was without precedent, and it caused speculation abroad. Curious Japanese journalists puzzled about whether or not she would sit in on cabinet meetings and they queried First Lady watchers for their view of the odds. As though to encourage speculation about her role in the new administration, she participated in interviews with prospective appointees and put forward some names of her own drawn from her huge network of professional associates.
Although Hillary’s participation in the inaugural festivities mirrored that of the most traditional First Ladies, a
nd journalists showed great interest in the color of her daytime outfit and the cut of her evening gown, she soon made headlines of a different sort. She took an office in the West Wing of the White House, a few feet from the Oval Office. Since the entire West Wing measures only 60 by 90 and its three floors can accommodate fewer than two dozen offices, this access to the center of power appeared to be an important symbolic move.35 Her predecessors had contented themselves with space in the East Wing or the more distant Executive Office Building. Some of the most powerful First Ladies, including Nancy Reagan, set up no office for themselves outside the family residence.
As though to temper talk of too much clout in a First Lady, Hillary chose as her first in-depth interview to talk with Marian Burros, ex-food critic of the New York Times. When the nationally read newspaper ran the front page article on February 2, 1993, it included a photo of the new First Lady, glamorously clad in an off-the-shoulder black dress and leaning over a table set for a formal dinner in the State Dining Room. The article delved into her thoughts on menus, entertaining, and other traditionally domestic and “feminine” topics.36 Soon other newspapers picked up on the domestic theme; they carried articles on how she had banned smoking in the executive mansion and encouraged the serving of wholesome foods, including broccoli, a vegetable that George Bush reportedly detested.
The new First Lady appointed a staff with excellent skills and long experience in Washington. Margaret Williams, chief of staff with a West Wing office near her boss, combined Capitol Hill expertise and graduate study in mass communications, but she had met Hillary while working as communications director for the Children’s Defense Fund.37 Williams’s assistants brought many of her same strengths: political savvy, media insights, and long friendships with one or both of the Clintons.
Although Hillary’s staff performed much like the staffs of preceding First Ladies, another network assisted Hillary in her attempt to remake the nation’s health care system. Soon after taking office, the president had announced that she would take charge of that part of his agenda because she was the best person he knew for the job. It was an important assignment. He had made health care reform central to his campaign and had repeatedly promised to alter the medical system so that all Americans, including roughly 30 million not then covered by health insurance, would be guaranteed coverage and the costs of care for everyone would be capped. Such changes, if enacted, would significantly alter Americans’ lives. Roughly one-seventh of the nation’s gross domestic spending went toward health care, and people who profited from the current system, as well as those who suffered, stood to gain or lose a lot.
A First Lady leading such a major reform broke all precedent. Any proposals her commission reached promised far wider changes than the reforms in mental health care championed by Rosalynn Carter or the beautification program of Lady Bird Johnson. Hillary Clinton’s mandate bore no resemblance at all to Barbara Bush’s literacy program or Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No to Drugs.” She could not be paid for her work because of a law passed in 1967, in reaction to John Kennedy’s appointment of his brother to attorney general, that prohibited government officials from employing their relatives.38 But her salary was not the problem.
Physicians who sought to participate in hearings of the Task Force on Health Care Reform quickly tested the First Lady’s status in a new way. Although keenly interested in the commission’s hearings, physicians were barred from its meetings on the grounds that the commission was formed of “government officials.” The doctors protested, saying that the First Lady did not qualify for that status, and as long as she chaired it, the commission should open its meetings to the public, including, of course, doctors.39
In the initial decision, a district federal court agreed that the commission’s chair was neither a “government official” nor, as her attorneys had argued, “the functional equivalent.”40 Presiding Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that meetings must be open to the public. On June 22, a federal appeals court reversed that decision, accepting the argument that there existed “a longstanding tradition of public service by First Ladies … who have acted (albeit in the background) as advisers and personal representatives of their husbands.” Judge James L. Buckley wrote a dissenting opinion in which he pointed out that the president’s wife was “greeted like a head of state, guarded by the Secret Service, and allowed to spend Federal money,” but such perks did not make her a government employee, he argued, because “she has been neither appointed to nor confirmed in the position of First Lady, she has taken no oath of office and she neither holds a statutory office nor performs statutory duties.”41
Since the Task Force had completed its work and disbanded, the court’s ruling had no immediate effect but criticism of Hillary Clinton’s involvement was not so easily quelled. Newsweek magazine’s cover queried “Who’s in charge?” The First Lady made repeated trips to Capitol Hill to woo Congress into supporting her commission’s findings, and in the fall of 1993, she broke all precedent by talking with five different congressional committees in the course of one week. Television news programs covered her talks, and newspapers and magazines printed “rave” reviews. Congresswoman Lynn Schenk of California relayed a message of admiration from her own mother who had not been so impressed since the days of Eleanor Roosevelt. Then, to an amused audience, Schenk noted: “My mother is not a woman who admires easily.”
All this attention clearly contrasted with the appearances of two previous First Ladies: Rosalynn Carter’s talk to a Senate committee in 1979 got little notice, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s appeal to legislators in the 1940s was hardly mentioned in the media. Hillary attempted to lay a cover of “feminine” concern on top of her competent recitation of health care facts: she began her comments to legislators by saying that she came before them as “mother, wife, sister, a woman.”42
In December 1993, Hillary Clinton raised objections of a different sort. Vogue magazine ran a photo essay featuring the First Lady in glamorous and seductive poses. In one she stared dreamily off into the distance and in another her clinging black dress revealed a shapely figure. No one would have argued that the photographs were indecent. In fact, they were relatively demure. She had refused to wear the black dress off-the-shoulder as the designer had intended, and she showed very little flesh. Yet the dreamy look and rather suggestive pose raised objections. Americans wrote in to say they found the pictures demeaning to women, and they were uncomfortable with evidence that a professional woman would pose for them. Mothers informed the New York Times that they thought a glamorous First Lady an inappropriate role model for their daughters while other readers applauded the prospect that a thinking woman could also care about how she looked.
By the time the “Whitewater” investment of the Clintons came to public attention a few weeks later, the First Lady may well have welcomed more attention to her appearance. Critics charged that the Clintons had acted improperly, if not illegally, in an investment that went bad in Arkansas a dozen years earlier, and then in 1993, when a related matter came under investigation by the Treasury Department, their aides had conferred privately with the investigators. Subpoenas went out for the aides—who came from the First Lady’s staff as well as that of the president. His chief counsel, Bernard Nussbaum, an old mentor of Hillary’s, resigned.
Suspicions got into print, causing Americans to muse about whether or not the suicide of Vincent Foster, Hillary’s friend and law colleague, might have been related to a “cover up” of the Clintons rather than the frantic grasp of a seriously depressed man for relief. Shredding of papers at her old law firm raised other questions. What exactly was this Arkansas real estate development that the Clintons invested in, and if they lost money, what was the fuss? To complicate the story, new evidence emerged that Hillary had traded in futures commodities in 1979 and done it very profitably, converting a tiny one thousand dollar nest egg into a hefty $100,000 bankroll, and she had accomplished this remarkable feat in a very few months.
For most Am
ericans, Whitewater became a convenient tag for money matters too complex to comprehend or take sides on. Even seasoned television reporters frequently flubbed pronunciation of Whitewater, making it into Watergate and thus associating the Clintons with the foibles and demise of another president. The First Lady was suddenly center stage, besieged for interviews and statements, not about how she meant to redecorate or dress, but how she had handled money and instructed her aides.
Recalling an old rule of the political game—that winners should keep quiet until they sense they hold the advantage—Hillary waited, refusing all interviews or calls for press conferences. Then, on a Friday evening in April, while much of the nation’s attention was diverted to a New York hospital where former President Nixon lay dying, she invited reporters to the State Dining Room and gave her side of the story. It ran in newspapers the next day, front page, but surely to be dwarfed by stories of Richard Nixon’s death. The First Lady wore a pink sweater set that emphasized her youth and resorted repeatedly to the need for a “zone of privacy” as an explanation for not telling more of the truth sooner, but she stopped short of admitting guilt. It had been that concern for privacy, she said, that “led me to perhaps be less understanding than I need to of both the press and the public’s interest as well as a right to know things about my husband and me.” Now she had been “re-zoned” to tell more.43
A series of interviews with individual reporters followed. Meryl Gordon wrote “Hillary Talks Back” for the May issue of Elle; June’s Working Woman carried an article by Patricia O’Brien entitled “reality bites” while its cover proclaimed “Hillary Hangs Tough.” The New Yorker ran a long profile, “Hillary the Pol” by Connie Bruck, who admitted she had interviewed the president on Hillary’s first year when the First Lady could not find time to talk. In perhaps the most hostile of the batch, Leslie Bennetts wrote for June Vanity Fair about “Pinning Down Hillary.” Bennetts had not appreciated her treatment: the First Lady brought aides with her to the interview and appeared condescending to the reporter who wrote that she had spoken to her as though “I were a particularly obtuse student and she were wondering how to help me overcome my regrettable ignorance.”44
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