On Dec. 11 and 12, the Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to refer 4 articles of impeachment to the full House for a vote. Two articles were defeated, two were adopted. Bill was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. He would now be put on trial in the Senate.
After the impeachmen vote, a delegation of Democrats rode buses from the Capitol to the White House in a show of solidarity with the President. I inked arms with Bill as we walked out of the Oval Office to meet them in the Rose Garden. Al Gore gave a moving statement of support, calling the House vote on impeachment "a great disservice to a man I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest Presidents." Al's approval rating, like mine, soared. The American people had figured out what was going on
The interviewer started with a series of questions about our relationship, adultery and divorce. We declined to answer such personal questions about our personal lives. But Bill acknowledged that he had caused pain in our marriage and said he would leave it to voters to decide whether that disqualified him from the Presidency.
Q: You seem to have reached some sort of an understanding or an arrangement.23 days later, Bill became known as the “Comeback Kid” for his strong 2nd-place finish in N.H.Bill: Wait a minute. You’re looking at two people who love each other. This is not an arrangement or an understanding. This is a marriage. That’s a very different thing.
Hillary: I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him and I respect him. If that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him.
Although Bill had worked in Arkansas on campaigns for Senator J. William Fulbright and others, and in Connecticut for Joe Duffey and Joe Lieberman, he’d never had the chance to be in on the ground floor of a presidential campaign.
I tried to let the news sink in. I was thrilled.
“Why,” I asked, “do you want to give up the opportunity to do something you love to follow me to California?”
“For someone I love, that’s why,” he said.
He had decided, he told me, that we were destined for each other, and he didn’t want to let me go just after he’d found me.
Whether you call it New Democrats, New Labour, the Third Way or the Vital Center, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton clearly shared a political vision. But the question confronting each of them was how to invigorate a progressive movement that had lost steam through much of the 1970s and 1980s, giving rise to Reaganism in the US and Thatcherism in Britain.
Shocked by the margin of their party's losses in 1964, several Republican multimillionaires embarked on a strategy to seed conservative, even right-wing political philosophy, and to develop and advance specific policies to further it. They funded think tanks, endowed professorships and seminars and developed media channels for communicating ideas and opinions.
Morris's specialty was identifying the swing voters who seesawed between the two parties. His advice was sometimes off-the-wall; you had to sift through it to extract the useful insights and ideas. And he had the people skills of a porcupine. Nonetheless, I thought Morris's analysis might be instructive, if we could involve him carefully and quietly. With his skeptical views about politics and people, Morris served as a counterweight to the ever optimistic Bill Clinton. Where Bill saw a silver lining in every cloud, Morris saw thunderstorms.
Starting in 1978, Morris worked for Bill on all his gubernatorial campaigns except the one he lost in 1980.
When Bill was asked to respond to Lieberman's speech, he replied: "Basically I agree with what he said. I've already said that I made a bad mistake. It was indefensible, and I'm sorry about it. I'm very sorry about it."
It was the first of many unconditional public apologies my husband would make on his long journey of atonement. But I realized that apologies would never be enough for hardcore Republicans and might not be enough to avert a meltdown within the Democratic Party. Other Democratic leaders condemned the President's personal actions and said he should in some way be held accountable. None, however, advocated impeachment.
The White House Press Office put out the news of Virginia's death, and when we turned on the TV set in our bedroom we saw the first news item flash on the screen: "The President's mother died earlier this morning after a long battle with cancer." It made the death seem terribly final. Then Bob Dole & Newt Gingrich appeared on the Today show for a previously scheduled appearance. They began talking about Whitewater: "It to me cries out for the appointment of a regulatory, independent counsel," Dole said. I looked over at Bill's face. He was utterly stricken. Bill was raised by his mother to believe that you don't hit people when they're down. That you treat even your adversaries in life or politics with decency. A few years later, someone told Bob Dole how much his words had hurt Bill that day, and to his credit, he wrote Bill a letter of apology.
Dole missed the point of the book, which is that families are the first line of responsibility for children, but that the village--a metaphor for society as a whole--shares responsibility for the culture, economy and environment in which our children grow up.
Jackie told me what she had done to protect her children, Caroline and John. Providing Chelsea with a normal life would be one of the biggest challenges Bill and I faced, she told me. We had to allow Chelsea to grow up and even make mistakes, while shielding her from constant scrutiny. Her own children, she said, had been lucky to have so many cousins, natural playmates and friends, many of them with fathers in the public eye, too. She felt it would be much harder for an only child.
"You've got to protect Chelsea at all costs," Jackie said. "Surround her with friends and family, but don't spoil her. Don't let her think she's someone special or entitled."
My mother and grandmothers could never have lived my life; my father and my grandfathers could never have imagined it. But they bestowed on my the promise of American, which made my life and my choices possible.
My mother was offended by the mistreatment of any human being, especially children. She understood from personal experience that many children--through no fault of their own--were disadvantaged. and discriminated against from birth. She hated self-righteousness and pretensions of moral superiority and impressed on my brothers and me that we were no better or worse than anyone else. As a child in California, she had watched the Japanese Americans in her school endure blatant discrimination and daily taunts from the Anglo students.
My father could not stand waste. Like so many who grew up in the Depression, his fear of poverty colored his life. To this day, I put uneaten olives back in the jar, wrap up the tiniest pieces of cheese and feel guilty when I throw anything away.
My ninth-grade history teacher, Paul Carlson, encouraged me to read Senator Barry Goldwater’s book, The Conscience of a Conservative. I liked Goldwater because he was an individualist who swam against the political tide. Years later, I admired his outspoken support of individual rights, which he considered consistent with his old-fashioned conservative principles: “Don’t raise hell about the gays, the blacks, and the Mexicans. Free people have a right to do as they damn please.” When Goldwater learned I had supported him in 1964, he sent the White House a case of barbecue fixings and invited me to see him. I went to his home in 1996 and spent a wonderful hour talking to him and his wife, Susan.
With Bill’s election assured, we both felt free to get involved in Carter’s campaign when he became the Democratic nominee. Carter’s staff asked Bill to head the campaign in Arkansas and me to be the field coordinator in Indiana. Indiana was a heavily Republican state, but Carter thought his Southern roots and farming background might appeal. I thought it was a long shot, but I was game to try.
Even though Carter did not carry Indiana, I was thrilled that he won the national election.
As my due date drew near, my doctor said I couldn’t travel, which meant I missed the White House dinner for Governors. Bill got back on Wednesday, Feb. 27, in time for my water to break.
After we arrived at the hospital, it became clear I would have to have a caesarian. Bill requested that the hospital permit him to accompany me in the operating room, which was unprecedented. Soon, the policy was changed to permit fathers in the room during caesarians.
Our daughter’s birth was the most miraculous event in my life. Chelsea arrived on Feb. 27, 1980. Chelsea has heard us tell stories about her childhood many time. She knows she was named after Joni Mitchell’s song, “Chelsea Morning,” which Bill and I heard as we strolled around Chelsea in London.
The “buy one, get one free” comment was a reminder to Bill and me that our remarks might be taken out of context because news reporters did not have the time or space to provide the text of an entire conversation. Simplicity and brevity were essential to reporters.
The interviewer started with questions about our relationship, adulter & divorce. Bill acknowledged that he had caused pain in our marriage.
Q: You seem to have reached some sort of an understanding or an arrangement.The fallout from my reference to Tammy Wynette was instant & brutal. I meant to refer to Tammy Wynette’s famous song, “Stand By Your Man,” not to her as a person. I regretted the way I had come across.Bill: You’re looking at two people who love each other. This is not an arrangement or an understanding. This is a marriage.
Hillary: I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honor what we’ve been through together. If that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him.
I could have said, “Look, short of abandoning my law firm partnership and staying home, there was nothing more I could have done to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.“
My aides suggested that I talk to reporters a second time. On the spot, I had a press conference. It had little effect. Thirteen minutes after I answered the question, a story ran on the AP wire. CNN quickly aired one too.
It turned into a story about my alleged callousness towards stay-at-home-mothers. Republicans labeled me the ”ideological leader of a Clinton-Clinton Administration that would push a radical-feminist agenda.“
[A friend] conducted a search for a suicide note on the night but found nothing. According to subsequent testimony, he discovered Vince had stored personal files in his office, including files that had to do with the land deal called Whitewater. These files were transferred to our private attorney in Washington. Since Vince’s office was never a crime scene, these actions were legal. But they would soon spawn a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists trying to prove that Vince was murdered to cover up what he “knew about Whitewater.”
Those rumors should have ended with the official report ruling his death a suicide and with the sheet of notepaper found in Vince’s briefcase: “I was not meant for a job in the spotlight of Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport...The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons.”
I expected that, ultimately, the intern story would be a footnote in tabloid history. But I knew, too, that the political danger was real. A nuisance civil action had metastasized into a criminal investigation by Ken Starr. It appeared that the questions in the Paula Jones deposition were designed solely to trap the President into charges of perjury, which might then justify a demand for his resignation or impeachment.
In my view, the prosecutors were undermining the office of the Presidency and abusing their authority in an effort to win back the political power they had lost at the ballot box.
Starr appointed himself prosecutor, judge and jury in his zeal to impeach Bill Clinton. And the more I believed Starr was abusing his power, the more I sympathized with Bill--at least politically. Privately, I was still working on forgiving Bill, but my fury at those who had deliberately sabotaged him helped me on that score.
Although the case for impeachment was both unpopular and unjustified under the constitutional standard, I assumed that the House Republicans would pursue it if they thought they could.
Neither the fawning admiration nor the virulent rage seemed close to the truth. I was being labeled and categorized because of my positions and mistakes, and also because I had been turned into a symbol for women of my generation. That's why everything I said or did--and even what I wore--became a hot button for debate.
What they understood, and I didn't, was that a First Lady's appearance matters. I was no longer representing only myself. I was asking the American people to let me represent them in a role that has conveyed everything from glamour to other comfort.
"We need a new politics of meaning. We need a new ethos of individual responsibility and caring. We need a new definition of civil society which answers the unanswerable questions posed by both the market forces and the governmental ones, as to how we can have a society that fills us up again and make us feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves."
I suggested a response to Lee Atwater's poignant question: "Who will lead us out of this 'spiritual vacuum?'" The answer, I said, is: "All of us."
My words were derided in a New York Times Magazine cover story facetiously titled "Saint Hillary." The article dismissed my discussion of spirituality as "easy, moralistic preaching" couched in the "gauzy and gushy wrappings of New Age jargon."
Atwater wrote, "The 80's were about acquiring--acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more than most. But you can acquire all you wan and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime."
I suggested a response to Lee Atwater's poignant question: "Who will lead us out of this 'spiritual vacuum?'" The answer, I said, is: "All of us." The day after my speech, my father died.
The Democrats lost 8 Senate seats and an astounding 54 seats in the House--ushering in the first Republican majority since the Eisenhower Administration. It was disheartening to imagine the next two years with a Republican controlled House and Senate.
We all knew last-ditch efforts to avoid impeachment would fail. I was saddened for my country as our cherished system of laws was abused in what amounted to an attempted congressional coup d'etat. As a law school graduate, I had studied the politically motivated impeachment of President Andrew Jackson. As a member of the congressional staff that had investigated Richard Nixon, I knew how hard we worked to ensure that the impeachment process was fair and conducted according to the Constitution.
On January 16, Attorney General Reno wrote a letter to the three-judge oversight panel recommending that Starr be allowed to expand his investigations to the Lewinsky matter and possible obstruction of justice. We later learned that Reno's recommendation was based on incomplete and false information provided to her by the OIC.
When Bill was asked to respond to Lieberman's speech, he replied: "Basically I agree with what he said. I made a bad mistake. It was indefensible, and I'm very sorry about it."
I realized that apologies would never be enough for hardcore Republicans and might not be enough to avert a meltdown within the Democratic Party. Other Democratic leaders, including Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, Sen. Patrick Moynihan of New York and Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, condemned the President's personal actions and said he should in some way be held accountable. None, however, advocated impeachment.
The Republicans finally were being held accountable for both the budget impasse and the shutdowns, and the drop in their approval ratings led to a fracturing of the party's united front. By January, Sen. Bob Dole, likely looking ahead to the launch of his presidential campaign, started talking compromise. Gingrich's strategy of "playing chicken" with Bill had failed, and I felt great relief that we could reopen the government and get workers back on the payroll now that Bill had prevailed.
As Congress opened on Jan. 3, 1996, only three minor pieces of the Gingrich Contract had been signed into law. Bill had sustained 11 vetoes. He had managed to stave off disastrous cuts to Medicare and to save programs like AmeriCorps and Legal Aid services
I offered to shake hands, but he kept badgering me. I only had time to utter one sentence in response before Russert ended the debate. I don't know whether Lazio and his advisers thought they could fluster me or provoke me into anger.
The debate was another turning point in the race that helped push some voters into my corner, although I didn't realize it right away.
Lazio had come across as a bully rather than the nice guy he was trying to project. Public opinion polls & focus groups soon made it clear that a lot of voters, especially women, were offended by Lazio's tactics
The Republican Party in the US had been masterful at creating a groundswell for conservative ideas after Senator Barry Goldwater's resounding defeat by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 Presidential election. Shocked by the margin of their party's losses, several Republican multimillionaires embarked on a strategy to seed conservative, even right-wing political philosophy, and to develop and advance specific policies to further it. They funded think tanks, endowed professorships and seminars and developed media channels for communicating ideas and opinions.
Morris's specialty was identifying the swing voters who see-sawed between the two parties. His advice was sometimes off-the-wall; you had to sift through it to extract the useful insights and ideas. And he had the people skills of a porcupine. Nonetheless, I thought Morris's analysis might be instructive, if we could involve him carefully and quietly. With his skeptical views about politics & people, Morris served as a counterweight to the ever optimistic Bill Clinton.
By 1991, Morris had picked up more Republican candidates, and nobody in the Democratic power structure liked or trusted him
An openly skeptical Republican leadership postponed the impeachment debate when the bombing started. Trent Lott publicly disputed the President's judgment. "Both the timing and the policy are subject to question," he said of the military action. Lott backpedaled when his statement was interpreted as in indication that partisan politics came before national security in this Congress.
The House leadership was determined to force a vote on impeachment in the lame duck session, before the Republican majority was reduced to 11 members in January, On Dec. 18, as bombs fell on Iraq, the impeachment debate began again.
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| 2016 Presidential contenders on Principles & Values: | |||
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Republicans:
Sen.Ted Cruz(TX) Carly Fiorina(CA) Gov.John Kasich(OH) Sen.Marco Rubio(FL) Donald Trump(NY) |
Democrats:
Secy.Hillary Clinton(NY) Sen.Bernie Sanders(VT) 2016 Third Party Candidates: Roseanne Barr(PF-HI) Robert Steele(L-NY) Dr.Jill Stein(G,MA) | ||
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