The Hillary Divide by Andrew Sullivan

It didn't even take a book. It merely took a tiny sliver of a book leak to send Washington into a tailspin of recriminations, accusations and spin. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoirs - already described as "memeroids" by one of her more tenacious enemies - aren't due to be released until tomorrow. But someone somewhere - presumably someone with an axe to grind - leaked some critical details to the Associated Press, and all hell broke loose. It tells you all that you really need to know about the former president's wife that even now, even after September 11, even after two and a half years of a Bush presidency, people still care about HRC. She polarizes America in ways not seen since Nixon. And her obvious intent to make it back to the White House in her own right has the potential to turn America's already fractious polity into something bordering on civil war.

This time, the fuse was the leaked spin that the former First Lady only found out about her husband's adultery with Monica Lewinsky the day before Clinton's civil deposition. Until then, we are asked to believe, she had no idea that her husband would ever have contemplated an illicit sexual liaison with a young intern. The very idea was a product of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" for which she blamed almost every failing of her husband's presidency. "For me, the Lewinsky imbroglio seemed like just another vicious scandal manufactured by political opponents," she writes. And then that dreadful morning, she found out the awful truth: Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, 'What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?' I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea.' In almost any other instance of a spouse being told of her husband's adultery, there would be nothing but sympathy for the wife, and certainly no impulse to question her veracity or sincerity. But not with HRC. Almost as soon as the leak came over the wires, there was a chorus of scepticism. "What Did She Know and When Did She Know It?" headlined the Washington Post's Lloyd Grove. He referred to an account already written by another Washington Post journalist, Peter Baker, "The Breach." In that book, Baker tells another story: that the news of Clinton's infidelity had been broken to HRC two days previously by Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall: "And so it fell to him at that critical moment to play emissary from husband to wife, to disclose the most awful secret of any marriage," Baker wrote on Page 24. "Something obviously had gone on between the president and Lewinsky, Kendall had told the first lady in his soft, understated way. The president was going to have to tell the grand jury about it. Only after Kendall laid the foundation did Clinton speak directly to his wife." Kendall now denies telling the first lady as such - but Baker merely says that Kendall had said "something obviously had gone on" in a "soft, understated way." The next day, August 14, the New York Times reported in a front-page headline that "President Weighs Admitting He Had Sexual Contacts." Did Hillary read the paper that day? Even if you buy the notion that HRC tried as hard as she could to disbelieve the near-universal consensus that her husband had fooled around with a twenty-one-year-old, it's hard to credit that on the morning of August 15, she was that shocked and dumb-founded. Either her powers of denial were even deeper than her husband's powers of deception, or she is simply lying in the book.

And then there's court-stenographer Sidney Blumenthal's account of the same period of time, in his just published, "The Clinton Wars." Blumenthal is a Hillary-crony, a man who treats the Clintons the way Vatican functionaries treat the Pope. But Blumenthal hardly paints a picture of a woman reeling from a personal betrayal. Telephoning Hillary from Italy immediately after she allegedly received the news, Blumenthal doesn't paint a picture of a wife recovering from sudden and unexpected news of inconceivable adultery. He paints a picture of a supremely controlled woman, making cool political calculations: I said that whatever 'issues' anyone had, and hers was worse than anyone's, we had to think about the politics. That was her reasoning as well. She said that the President would be 'embarrassed,' but that was for him to deal with. And that was all she would say about it. Even in a private conversation with a friend, she maintained her dignity. It was my intention to help her do that, and through the next two days we kept in constant contact. Her only remark, according to Blumenthal, was that the president would be embarrassed? And she wasn't? The weirdnesses continue after the president's deposition and immediate speech to the nation explaining his conduct. In her book, Senator Clinton says she was furious and could barely speak to her husband. According to the Associated Press, the 600-page tome "describes in bitter terms the months of chill between them afterward, never more painful than when they went to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts for a vacation following his testimony. 'Buddy, the dog, came along to keep Bill company,' she writes. 'He was the only member of our family who was still willing to.' While on the island, she felt 'nothing but profound sadness, disappointment and unresolved anger. I could barely speak to Bill, and when I did, it was a tirade.'"

Hmmm. This is what her closest confidant, Sidney Blumenthal, wrote about the night of the television speech: About ten minutes after [the speech] ended, my hotel phone rang: it was the president, asking what my reaction was. I told him it was all right. Hillary asked me what I thought. I told her the same... They handed the phone to James Carville and Mark Penn ... I could hear the president and Hillary bantering in the background ... They were still working as a team. So was she furious, enraged, disappointed, shocked? Or was she colluding with her husband to spin the politics of his reluctant confession? To tell the truth, I don't know anyone who believes the account Hillary has served up in her book. Her response is the kind of response you'd get from, say, Laura Bush, if her husband confessed to an adultery after what appears to be a long, happy and monogamous marriage. But, as Dick Morris wrote last week, Bill Clinton had been a serial adulterer for their entire marriage, as everybody with half a brain knows. In 1988, he called me and said that he and Hillary were considering divorce and he had to get away from her for a while. I offered him my house in Key West, Florida. Right before the 60 Minutes show during the 1992 campaign, he called for my advice and I suggested that he admit and apologize for the adultery with Flowers and he said "If I did that, I'd have to find a new place to live." In 1995, reviewing his testimony in the fraud trial of Susan McDougal, he asked me how he should handle his 'relationship' with her. I said: 'If you had sex with her, admit it. Don't perjure yourself. We can always undo the political damage, but we can't undo the legal damage.' He nodded. Hillary always knew that her husband couldn't keep his pants on. She knew that he had had serial affairs. They were so obvious that their joint strategy was - from 1992 on - to coyly concede that their marriage had not been perfect. Perhaps she somehow believed that once he became president, everything would change. But surely, given the past, it wasn't inconceivable that he would continue doing what he had always done. If, then, she was genuinely shocked by his admission in 1998, she was a fool. But better to portray herself as a fool - and as a maligned wife - than to acknowledge the truth: that her political ambitions always outweighed the integrity of her marriage; or that she was completely comfortable with an open marriage as long as it meant she could still ride her husband's coat-tails to political power. Her deal with Bill was a marital version of Gordon Brown's and Tony Blair's Islington pact: one partner would be the front, the other would be an integral part of the project.

With Blair and Brown, this makes a lot of sense. But what middle America cannot quite stomach is the thought that an actual, living, breathing human marriage could be premised on such cynical, cold and political terms. And that's the central and obvious reason for Hillary's current reprise of the dramas of 1998. She knows that if she runs for president, she will have to answer these critical questions about her role in the ethical and legal morasses of the Clinton presidency. Her strategy is to argue that she was a typical wife and he was an incurable philanderer; that she was the wronged party and somehow endured to fight another day on clearer, better terms. What she cannot do is run for president as the partner in an open marriage designed entirely for political ends. Americans simply cannot accept that kind of arrangement in their head of state. Unless she disproves that impression, she is finished.

The trouble, of course, is that the impression is largely true. Even the left-liberal New York Times couldn't disguise this fact in a story this week about the Clintons' still-evolving relationship: "For much of the last two years," The Times reported, "the Clintons have been acting as independent operators. They have a home in Chappaqua, New York, and a home in Washington. Mrs. Clinton spends every weekend in New York, where Mr. Clinton spends most of his time when not traveling. They are much more apt to be seen traveling individually, rather than as a couple. Sylvia Woods, owner of Sylvia's Restaurant, near Mr. Clinton's office in Harlem, said the former president rarely came to her restaurant, though Mrs. Clinton regularly turned up. 'I need to talk to them about that,' Ms. Woods said. 'They need to come in together sometime.' Similarly, in Chappaqua, solo appearances by the two Clintons appear to be the norm. Residents said they often saw Mr. Clinton walking around town with his dog, chatting with neighbors or dining in delis and restaurants. 'I see him quite a bit,' said Kirk Sprenger, who owns a wine shop in Chappaqua. 'He walks through downtown with his dog, stops in at Starbucks for coffee.' Asked if he ever saw the Clintons together, Mr. Sprenger quickly said: 'Never. Oh no, I have never seen them together.'" Of course there's nothing wrong as such with that kind of distant, open marriage. If that's the way the Clintons want to set up their relationship, it's their business. The problem is that America is in many ways a publicly conservative - or at least quietly hypocritical - culture. Americans - especially in the heartland between the two coasts - don't particularly want their president as an exemplar of a transparently post-modern marriage. For a female leader especially, let alone one attempting to become the first woman president of the United States, having a traditional family life is an essential component of her political viability. Hillary knows this; and yet she also knows that that isn't anywhere near a description of her unique deal with her husband/partner/colleague. So once again, she's forced into the kind of lie that undercuts her obvious talents as a political operator. Many Americans will simply concur with Camille Paglia who, contacted by Newsday to give her own predictions about the book and its reception, simply said, "Anyone who stays married to an infantile, drooling, serial groper deserves what she gets."

At the same time, you'd be a fool to discount Hillary's ambition or skill. If she were to jump into the current Democratic race for the White House she would be an instant favorite. Her post-White House career has been shrewd and determined. She ran a near flawless campaign for the U.S. Senate, doing far better in up-state New York than anyone predicted. Once she got to the Senate, she focussed on winning friends, raising prodigious amounts of money for her colleagues (thus increasing her clout over them), and moving to the political center by backing welfare reform, and supporting president Bush on the war against Saddam Hussein. She remains a huge favorite among those Democratic activists who raise money, knock on doors and vote in primaries. Meanwhile, she has kept her own man, Terry McAuliffe, at the head of the Democratic National Committee. It's widely believed that she would be quite happy to see George W. Bush win a second term so that she can run against an unknown successor in 2008. By then, she hopes, the Clinton Wars will be well behind her.

But they won't, of course. There's a solid 20 percent of the country who will do anything to prevent her from becoming president. Mention her name in some contexts and what you get is an irrational, near-hysterical tirade. Even now, rumors spread the instant she puts her head above the parapet. She didn't write her own book; she swears like a soldier at the Democratic Senatorial meetings; she holds grudges. Conservatives - especially in her own baby-boomer generation - froth at the mouth when discussing her. They despise her even more than Bill, who could be dismissed, in Bob Dole's words, as a "likable rogue." But whatever else Hillary is, she sure isn't likable. Frosty, arrogant, self-righteous, imperial, convinced of her own rectitude and of the evil that all Republicans represent, for many she incarnates her own generation's insufferable post-Watergate piety. If the deepest divide in American culture is still that between those who protested the Vietnam War and those who fought it, Hillary looms as the symbol of one side and one side only. She can never transcend this. From her early days as a junior prosecutor in Nixon's impeachment to her dismissal of women who "stay home and bake cookies" in the 1990s, she evokes opposition and, yes, hatred, like no-one else in American culture.

Some of this is clearly unfair. She is obviously a highly intelligent, focused, articulate politician. Her Faustian bargain with her philandering husband could be interpreted as a youthful mistake for which she has already paid dearly. At the same time, she clearly does believe not simply that her opponents are mistaken but that they are evil. Her instinctive response to her husband's betrayal and perjury - that it was entirely a fiction created by the right-wing - revealed how she truly sees the world. Her proximity to liberal bigots like Sidney Blumenthal suggests that her political goal is not to unify the country but to punish and humiliate half of it. Her paranoia in this respect should bar her from much higher political office, especially since her return to the White House would open wounds that have only recently begun to heal.

This cultural divide still exists, and may even be deepening. You saw it in the division between "blue" and "red" America - the liberal coasts and the conservative center - in the 2000 election. You see it in the impassioned debates about abortion - where the alienated pro-lifers have turned in a few extreme cases, to murder and terrorism. You see it even in the troubles of the New York Times, where a classic liberal baby-boomer, Howell Raines, so infuriated his colleagues and readers with pious liberal bromides that he was eventually forced to step down. You see it in the fights over gun control or gay rights. The division is not simply political - it's about something deeper, about the very identity of a country, which is still fiercely contested in America in ways not often seen elsewhere. Some are able to overcome this division. George W. Bush hasn't quite - he is still viscerally loathed in some pockets of "blue" America. But his conduct in the war on terror and his personal aversion to the politics of personal demonization have helped smoothe over some of the raw feelings of the Clinton era. But with Hillary, no such unifying could or would take place. She would be a replay of the rancor of the Nixon and Clinton eras. If she ran for office, she would divide an already divided country in ways that would tilt the United States toward poisonous political unrest.

That's why any sane person will hope she remains for ever a distinguished Senator for New York. And why those hopes will never deter her from pursuing her own ambitions at whatever cost to the country she aims one day to rule.

Can anyone spare a little oxygen? These people's 15 minutes has become an endless Hilleth/Billeth Faire that just won't stop playing.

Interesting to reflect on someone's comment, which I believe originally said by Susan Estrich, that the Clintons were sucking all the oxygen out of the Dem party, has been repeated frequently by other pundits. Even dems want the Clintons to move over, just a little.

The homily at the mass I attended today was about the power of air which is held in something. The priest had two altar servers illustrate by holding up a basketball and a soccer ball. He pointed out that the balls are strong because of the air within (relating it to what the Holy Spirit gives us) and that if the air is removed the power is gone. Without being disrespectful to this priest, I'd like to say that I enjoyed his sermon very much on a spiritual AND a political level. ;>)

Astute observations. The internecine warfare between the Hillary Regina camp and the Bubba Rex camp was real. Yes, this is a gritty marriage-of-political-convenience, but HR was out to minimize all damage to HER future political career by gathering all possible intelligence and controlling Bubba (she didn't entirely succeed with the latter).

The murder of Luther "Gerry" Parks two months after Vince Foster's demise is linked to a phone call Foster made to Parks (overheard by Parks' wife) indicating Vince was going to turn the files on Bubba's errant activities over to HR. Vince was clearly very close to HR (she called him 'Vincenzo Fosterini' and used him as mentor and less savory factotum). Parks objected. He later stated in front of his son just before his murder, "They're cleaning house!"

In short, HR has known everything from the get-go. This book is an epic of mendacious ecstasy. What really gets me is that HR figures she can keep cleaning house, putting out the lies and get away with it (abetted by the media Goebbels of our age). The Time magazine cover is part of this chutzpah con of the millenium. My wife and I are in awe that any American would believe even one syllable uttered by HR. Unreal!

Hillary will lose all 48 states if/when she runs. When she isn't allowed scripted pre-written blather statements, she speaks like a vicious,uninformed, arrogant idiot.

Not to mention she regularly uses four letter words that would make a sailor blush.

I'm with you. When (not if) Hillary runs for prez, we'll finally get to put that final nail in her coffin. Someone as polarizing as HRC can never be president. I just hope all demwits will lay low and let her suffer the worst defeat in history.

Now imagine a Hillary Clinton presidency and a Democrat controlled House and Senate. Unlimited gun control, socialized medicine, radical leftist judges, taxes, you name it.

It will be like Bubba all over again, but raised to the 2nd power (Bubba Squared).

I've never been one to engage in wishful thinking where politics are concerned, and a carefully managed and scripted campaign, along with the fawning media frenzy to come, plus some favourable conditions such as a bad economy, and the thing is done. Remember how we felt when WJC was first elected? That's how we'll feel this time, but worse.

I think we need some careful scripting and planning of our own, so that when '08 comes along (assuming she isn't "drafted" in '04) her reputation is in the gutter and everybody, not just us VRWC types, hates her.

The real problem is that she has more name recognition than just about anybody else out there, which is priceless in politics, and people will already be tired of the Bushes, even assuming Jeb Bush will run, which is questionable.

I think that anyone who looks at the odds realistically and is not blinded by their own emotions has to assume that she is the favorite. At least grant me that much.

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