FIRST SHE blamed it on the malicious rumormongering of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." If the accusations of rank behavior on her husband's part "were proven true," Hillary Clinton said, "I think that would be a very serious offense. That is not going to be proven true."
 As a candidate for the Senate, Hillary Clinton polls best when she portrays herself as Hillary the victim, the long-suffering spouse who won't give up on her husband despite his rotten ways. |
When that rationalization collapsed, she found a new one. "I think a lot of this is prejudice against our state," she told a reporter from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "They wouldn't be doing this if we were from some other state."
Now the First Lady offers yet another explanation for Bill Clinton's scandalous sexual behavior: His mother and grandmother quarreled when he was a child. From this "abuse" grew a powerful urge to "please" women.
"He was so young, barely 4, when he was scarred by abuse," Mrs. Clinton told Talk, a new magazine. "There was terrible conflict between his mother and grandmother. A psychologist once told me that for a boy, being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation. There is always the desire to please each one."
It is hard to read this psycho-twaddle without wincing in embarrassment for the president's wife.
Which is exactly why she said it.
Hillary wasn't speaking off the cuff when she served up this "abuse" excuse. She was playing her part in a carefully scripted publicity event, one intended to promote her interests no less than those of Talk and its celebrity editor, Tina Brown, who has built a career on her skill at generating excitement and buzz. We may safely assume that Hillary and her interviewer, Lucinda Franks, agreed in advance on the subjects to be explored and the questions to be asked. We may assume this because Franks, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting 28 years ago and presumably knows something about how to interview a prominent political figure, appears to have lobbed only softballs for Hillary to hit.
So if she dwelt on her husband's prurient adventures, it was because she wanted to. If she finally acknowledged that he had a history of cheating on her — something she had previously denied — it was on purpose. And if she drew attention to the fact that despite her "enormous pain, enormous anger," she is staying in her marriage — well, that was the whole point.
Hillary has learned that the more anguished her private life seems, the better she does politically. When she is the hard-edged policy wonk, lecturing Americans on her health-care superscheme, her favorable poll ratings sink to the 40s. When she is the wronged but loyal wife, soldiering on despite the humiliating Monica Lewinsky revelations, her favorables shoot to the high 60s.
She wants to be a senator, but acting senatorial hurts her chances. In January, when the notion of running for Congress from New York was first being publicly bruited about, the Marist Institute polled New Yorkers on a matchup between Hillary and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Hillary led by 11 points, 53-42. By April, her lead was 44-43. By July, when she was conducting her "listening tour" of New York, the Marist poll had her down by 6, trailing Giuliani, 47-41. The latest Zogby poll shows her down by 10.
"Hillary is in a Catch-22," says Dick Morris, the consultant who helped engineer many of Bill Clinton's political comebacks, and himself a New Yorker. "The more she campaigns in New York, the more she seems like just another politician hawking her wares. The more she's here, the less she's welcome."
What to do? One possibility would be to ignore the polls — Election Day 2000 is still 15 months away, plenty of time for public opinion to change. But Hillary Clinton is part of the most poll-obsessed administration in US history; to ignore survey numbers is not in her nature. Morris believes the poll data will persuade her to abandon her Senate run. In the end, maybe they will. But for now she intends to do what it takes to boost her numbers back up - and what it takes is to once again be Hillary the victim, the long-suffering spouse who won't give up on her husband despite his rotten ways.
In 1992, Mrs. Clinton went on "60 Minutes" to support her husband's claim that Gennifer Flowers was lying. "I'm not . . . some little woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette," Hillary said. "I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honor . . . what we've been through together." It was impossible to know if she really believed Bill Clinton's denial or merely pretended to believe for the sake of their shared political ambitions.
More than seven years later, she says the same thing. "Everybody has some dysfunction in their families. . . . You don't walk away if you love someone. . . . I have been with him half my life, and he is a very, very good man."
But Gennifer Flowers was not lying in 1992. And her husband is not "a very, very good man." When it comes to women, he is a creep. Hillary may find political advantage in being thought of by New Yorkers as a victim. Let us not forget, however, who Bill Clinton's real victims were. Paula Jones, who braved ridicule to tell of being lewdly propositioned in a hotel room. Kathleen Willey, who described a crude groping in the Oval Office. Juanita Broaddrick, whose memories of a rape are all too believable.
Of course, Clinton calls them liars, too. But what they say about him has the ring of truth. That's more than can be said for Hillary's latest confection.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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