Why Did Hillary Stay With Bill?

June 4, 2007

Ever wondered why Hillary Clinton stays with her erring husband Bill?

A new biography of Senator Clinton, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, which will hit bookshops in the US today, attempts to answer that question in a 640-page analysis of the leading presidential hopeful’s life.

The book, by award-winning journalist Carl Bernstein, took eight years to write and involved more than 200 interviews with the Clintons’s friends and colleagues, though with no formal input from the Clintons themselves.

Knopf, a subsidiary of Random House, has printed 275,000 copies of the sometimes salacious story in anticipation of the interest the book will generate.

There are no new scandals but it does provide new insights into the turbulent Clinton marriage.

For a start, it documents Hillary’s two-year resistance to marrying Bill. He pursued her after they graduated from Yale and proposed several times before she finally said yes.

According to Bernstein there were early signs of his wayward activities. When Hillary was in Washington working on the Nixon impeachment trial, Bernstein says she warned Bill that she would have an affair too if he didn’t stop his fooling around back in Arkansas.

Bernstein suggests that failing the DC bar exams - and the blow this delivered to her ego - might have been a factor in her finally saying ‘I do” and opting for a life in Arkansas.

Perhaps the biggest insight in the book is that the Clintons almost divorced in 1989 when Bill fell in love with businesswoman and divorcee, Marilyn Jo Jenkins.

Hillary’s response to this crisis is perhaps an insight into how she dealt with his later, more public, infidelities.

“Marilyn Jo Jenkins was Hillary’s worst nightmare,” wrote Bernstein. “An accomplished, attractive, rich antagonist whom Bill believed himself to be in love with and for whom he wanted to end the marriage.

“Hillary refused. She would fight to keep her marriage and her family together, she told Betsey Wright (Bill’s chief of staff when he was governor of Arkansas). She had put too much of her heart and soul and mind into her partnership with Bill Clinton to abandon it. She had invested too much.”

According to Bernstein, Wright concluded that Bill Clinton was having a mid-life crisis.

She told him: “Bill, you’re crazy if you think everyone in this office is oblivious to the fact that you’re having an affair. You’re acting like an idiot. We’re seeing the way you giggle, the way you shut the door, you know it’s just dumb.”

Wright told Bernstein that at the time Bill was “playing games” with women on staff, inviting them to run errands up to the governor’s mansion when Hillary was away and engaging in “heavy flirting’ that caused her to alter the women who could travel with him.

During that time Betsey Wright talked to Hillary on several occasions.

For all of Bill’s flirting and affairs, Hillary is said to have told Betsey: “There are worse things than infidelity.”

Bill included Wright in several sessions of counselling, but in the end Wright decided she could not longer stay as chief of staff.

The Jenkins incident is not mentioned in Hillary’s autobiography, but she did discuss it in an interview she did with Glamour magazine.

Hillary contemplated a run for governor herself, although she dropped it when Bill decided to run again instead of making a tilt for the Presidency.

It is a pattern that is perhaps repeating itself now.

Bernstein’s portrayal of Hillary is one of steely resolve in the face of a lifetime of dealing with Bill’s infidelity. While Bernstein says there was no explicit agreement that they would take turns at the presidency, it is clear that America’s ultimate power couple decided early on they would undertake what they refer to as “the journey” together - and she is now in charge.

Bernstein says that in their early days at Yale it was her, not him, who had the profile as the student activist going places. She had already established herself as a child welfare activist and a campaigner against the Vietnam war. Bill had returned from Oxford.

But she lacked that elusive quality that Bill has used all his life: the gift to stand and just talk, and an easiness with people from all walks of life.

The second book, by two New York Times journalists, due out on Thursday is potentially more damaging for the Clinton campaign as it forensically documents her record of statements of support for the Iraq War and her shift in position in recent months.

The most damaging revelation is that Hillary appears not to have read the 90-page intelligence report, which was available to senators at two secure locations, before she voted in favour of sending troops, reading the less comprehensive summary instead.

During that time Betsey Wright talked to Hillary on several occasions.

For all of Bill’s flirting and affairs, Hillary is said to have told Betsey: “There are worse things than infidelity.”

Bill included Wright in several sessions of counselling, but in the end Wright decided she could not longer stay as chief of staff.

The Jenkins incident is not mentioned in Hillary’s autobiography, but she did discuss it in an interview she did with Glamour magazine.

Hillary contemplated a run for governor herself, although she dropped it when Bill decided to run again instead of making a tilt for the Presidency.

It is a pattern that is perhaps repeating itself now.

But she lacked that elusive quality that Bill has used all his life: the gift to stand and just talk, and an easiness with people from all walks of life.

Source: Brisbane Times

Posted by Hillary · Filed Under 2008, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Make Overs, Scandals

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