First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies by Kate Andersen Brower Read Free Book Online Page A

interviewed by Starr and, according to the investigation, confirmed that he saw White House intern Lewinsky in the West Wing during the time of her affair with President Clinton. Joni Stevens worked in the Military Office, across the hall from the First Lady’s office, during the Clinton administration and remembers a friend of hers who was working in the West Wing. One day she wasn’t working at the White House anymore. “Where did she go?” Stevens asked a colleague. “She got transferred to another department. She caught the President in the family theater with an intern.” This was in the fall of 1996, about ayear after Clinton first began his affair with Lewinsky. “The Military Office always kept our mouths shut,” Stevens says.
    But Hannie remembers happier times with the Clintons. On Inauguration Day in 1993, he told Hillary Clinton some alarming news. “Mrs. Clinton, there’s a white man downstairs in a wheelchair in the Yellow Oval Room asking me for some Ronald Reagan souvenirs. He said he’s a Republican, not a Democrat.” The new First Lady laughed. “Yeah, I know, George, that’s my dad.” Hugh Rodham never gave up hope that his son-in-law would join him in the Republican Party. (Hillary supported Republican Barry Goldwater for president when she was in high school, and even owned a cowboy outfit and straw hat with the slogan “Au H 2 O”—the chemical symbols for “gold” and “water” worn by his most enthusiastic supporters—etched on it. As a freshman at Wellesley College she was president of the Young Republicans Club, but by 1968 she had left her father’s party and was volunteering for Democrat Eugene McCarthy’s campaign.)
    Hillary was often the only one who could focus her husband and it was Hillary who believed that her husband could win the presidential election in 1992, before he was even convinced of it. Because Hillary’s East Wing staffers knew how loyal she had been to him throughout his political career, most of them never fully forgave the President for his affair with Lewinsky. “At the White House correspondents’ dinner he joked about why [the Monica Lewinsky scandal] hadn’t made the association’s list of top fifty stories of last year, and Hillary was right there,” said former Hillary spokeswoman Marsha Berry. “How was she supposed to feel?” The dozen or so women who make up Hillaryland, a nickname created by a Clinton campaign aide in 1992 and one that members of the close-knit circle seem eager to encourage, are incredibly loyal. “My staff prided themselves on discretion, loyalty,and camaraderie, and we had our own special ethos,” Hillary said, adding that her husband’s aides “had a tendency to leak” while “Hillaryland never did.” Hillary’s former press secretary Neel Lattimore says, “I think it’s very telling that to date no member of ‘Hillaryland’ has written a book about their experiences.” Hillary’s friends are surprised that she wants to go through another campaign. If President Clinton becomes the first man to be the president’s spouse, they say she would likely dispatch him as an envoy to a hot spot somewhere around the world, like the Middle East. They also say that if Hillary is elected she would choose a very experienced social secretary and chief of protocol who could make most of the decisions about dinner menus and flowers, since it’s unlikely that Bill would be interested in those more traditional assignments. Since there’s no blueprint for what a first spouse should do, they say, there’s no reason why he should feel confined. Hillary herself has said that she has “ruled out” her husband when it comes to selecting china for state dinners and choosing floral arrangements. She has said that, if elected, she would “send him on special missions because he’s just unique in the world in being able to do things for our country.” Chelsea is also expected to take over some of the first lady’s