She is neither Saint Hillary nor Hillary Rodham Boesky, of course, and the public, if not the press, seems willing to give the vacationing Clintons a break. A NEWSWEEK Poll shows the Clintons’ popularity slightly on the rise, while most people (57 percent) think that the press is wallowing in Whitewater. Still, Mrs. Clinton has been unwilling to own up to the usual dilemmas of Yuppiedom, and her pride has predictably set her up for a fall. In fact, the truth about her personal ethics is better, or at least more human, than the current cartoon image suggests.
The wife of a small-state governor who is also a partner in the leading law firm of the state capital could, if she chose, be as greedy as Bluto going through the cafeteria line in “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” Free meals beckon everywhere: insider tips, no-risk investments, $200 an hour just for opening the door. The record indicates that Mrs. Clinton was actually fairly dainty about what she placed on her tray. But she has been as reticent about her restraint as she has been about disclosing the sweet deals she did pursue. NEWSWEEK reporters last week pieced together how she has handled temptation in the past.
As a top graduate of Yale Law School. she could have cashed in right away on Wall Street. “I advised her that she was crazy to go to that Mickey Mouse state to marry a country professor,” said Sara Ehrman, a friend who drove her down to Fayetteville, where Bill Clinton was teaching at the University of Arkansas. Her father, a Depression-era Republican, had warned her to save up. Her new husband was no help: “He was always bumming money off people for coffee,” recalled a friend. “He never had any cash.”
Even so, cattle futures? Playing the commodities market was like “going to the track or playing blackjack,” said Gene Lyons, a local writer. “It doesn’t square with Hillary’s image. She’s so damn straight she makes me want to take another drink.” One friend of Hillary’s suggested that she was trying to do well early so she could afford to do good later. Hillary’s mother, Dorothy, may have the simplest and most perceptive explanation: “She just does everything she has to do to get along and get ahead,” Mrs. Rodham said last week.
Hillary was mindful of the risk of improper appearances. Her early insistence on keeping her maiden name has long been viewed as a feminist statement. An equally plausible explanation is that it was her clear-eyed calculation that as the wife of the attorney general in the late ’70s it would be “awkward” to practice law as Mrs. Bill Clinton. “She was conscious of the fact that she was walking a fine line between what was and was not acceptable,” said her close friend, Diane Blair, whose husband, Jim, lured Hillary into the commodities market. Although the Rose Law Firm was proud to claim the governor’s wife, the lawyers in the rival Wright, Lindsey & Jennings firm were quietly relieved that she hadn’t signed on with them, fearing that they would have to pass on some clients because of possible conflict of interest.
Hillary was faced with close calls. At first she decided not to sit on corporate boards-but later reversed herself and eventually sat on three, including Wal-Mart and TCBY Enterprises, earning more than $60,000 a year in fees. She decided not to take money earned by her law firm from directly representing state agencies but did share in profits from the firm’s work handling state bond issuances, which is obvious conflict. In 1986, after it became an issue in Bill’s reelection campaign, she quietly decided to return the money she had made from the firm’s bond work.
Her feeling, however, was that such ethical decisions were strictly her own business. She didn’t even inform her husband’s presidential campaign staff in 1992. After the Illinois primary she said in response to a reporter’s question that she had “never, ever” profited from state business. The staff was horrified to discover that this was not entirely true, when it turned up a 1986 memo detailing her decision to give up the bond profits. The “War Room” was plunged into gloom as it tried to decide what to do with the information. “This is a disaster,” said campaign strategist James Carville at the time. The staff ended up sitting on the memo-which, fortunately for Clinton, never leaked. But Carville & Co. were furious with the Clintons for failing to come clean with their own advisers. “I’ve had blind dates with women I’ve known more about than I know about Clinton,” said Carville. “The arrogance!” exclaimed a senior adviser that night. “The arrogance that they-because they are smarter than most people-can talk their way out of any problem.”
Hillary’s friends rallied round last week. A group took out a full-page ad in The New York Times charging that the attacks “have less to do with Whitewater … and more to do with her effective advocacy of… health care.” Democratic activist Ann Lewis said, “We can’t leave her out there alone. We all have a stake in what’s happening to Hillary.”
But the persistent ambivalence toward Hillary has little to do with a reactionary crusade against the First Lady’s political agenda. It is the result of the impossibility of maintaining her preferred image as a selfless public servant against the more complicated reality Bill Clinton evoked sympathy and understanding by acknowledging marital problems on the famous “60 Minutes” interview. His wife is too dignified for confessionals, but she could benefit just from admitting that she, too, has occasionally yielded to temptation and made the wrong choices. The public might even be tickled to discover that the prim and sometimes preachy First Lady has a gambler’s streak. Hillary’s brief fling in commodities was possibly reckless, but it shows a glimmering of a more credible, if more flawed, human being.
Do you think Hillary Clinton’s public role in making and promoting administration policies is…
About right for the wife of a president? MEN 27% WOMEN 35% TOTAL 31% Larger than it should be? MEN 52% WOMEN 41% TOTAL 46%
FOR THIS NEWSWEEK POLL, PRINCETON SURVEY RESEARCH ASSOCIATES INTERVIEWED 753 ADULTS BY TELEPHONE MARCH 31-APRIL 1, 1994. THE MARGIN OF ERROR IS +/-4 PERCENTAGE POINTS. SOME RESPONSES NOT SHOWN. THE NEWSWEEK POLL (COPYRIGHT) 1994 BY NEWSWEEK, INC.
