william h.

chafe

Hillary

and Bill
The Clintons and the Politics of the Personal
revised and expanded
“William H. Chafe understands, as do too few historians and
biographers, that the personal and public lives of political figures
cannot be separated. . . . Chafe is quite right to insist that the stories
of Bill and Hillary Clinton prove the point.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

“Riveting. . . . Chafe sees clearly what we who were there, chronicling

the Clintons in real time, missed.”
—David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe

“The strength of this book lies in Chafe’s reconstruction of the

Clintons’ early lives and the way their connection affected the
decisions Bill Clinton made as governor of Arkansas and as
president. . . . [This book is] a welcome reminder of the great
promise that the Clinton ‘co-presidency’ initially held, and of the
attributes, from Clinton’s intellect to his willingness to engage on
racial issues and his ability to connect with people, that made those
of us who saw him sworn in truly believe, for a time, in ‘a place
called Hope.’ ”
—Laura Eggertson, The Toronto Star

“Chafe . . . delivers a superior portrait of how the dynamic between

Bill and Hillary Clinton affected their achievements in public life.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An engaging look at the personal relationship behind one of the

most powerful political marriages in the nation’s history.”
—Vanessa Bush, Booklist

“Chafe is careful to back up his suppositions with good evidence,

and the portrait that emerges is both believable and of consummate
interest to political junkies. An illuminating glimpse behind the
scenes.” —Kirkus Reviews
Hillary
and
Bill
Hillary
and
Bill

The Clintons and the Politics of the Personal

William H. Chafe
Duke University Press Durham & London 2016
© 2012, 2016 William H. Chafe
All rights reserved
Published with arrangement with
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
First published as a paperback edition
by Duke University Press, 2014
Printed in the United States of
America on acid-free paper ∞
Typeset in Times Ten by Westchester
Publishing Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chafe, William H., [date] author.
Title: Hillary and Bill : the Clintons and the politics
of the personal / William H. Chafe.
Other titles: Bill and Hillary
Description: Revised and expanded edition |
Durham : Duke University Press, 2016. | Revision
of “Bill and Hillary” published by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2012, and Duke University Press, 2014. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2015038020 |
isbn 9780822362302 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Clinton, Bill, 1946– | Clinton, Hillary
Rodham. | Presidents—United States—Biography. |
Presidents’ spouses—United States—Biography. |
United States—Politics and government—1993–2001.
Classification: lcc e886 .c47 2016 |
ddc 973.929092/2—dc23
lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038020

Cover art: Hillary and Bill Clinton, January 4, 2001.

© Danita Delimont / Alamy Stock Photo
For Lorna,
who has been there
for the whole journey
and to
Bill Leuchtenburg,
the best mentor anyone
could ever hope to have
Contents

Introduction to the New Edition 1

1 Bill Clinton: The Early Years 5
2 Hillary Rodham: The Early Years 33
3 Oxford and the Draft: A Test of Character 48
4 Hillary and Bill at Yale: Two Destinies Intersect 65
5 The Arkansas Years, Part One: 1973–80 85
6 The Arkansas Years, Part Two: 1980–91 112
7 “There Is a Place Called Hope” 135
8 The First Year 165
9 The Health Care Debacle and the Emergence
of Kenneth Starr 205
10 Comeback Number Three 233
11 The Roller Coaster Plummets 268
12 Survival—and a New Beginning 300
13 It’s My Turn 313
14 Madame Secretary 329
15 What If? 354

Notes 361
A Note on Sources 387
Acknowledgments 391
Index 395
Introduction to the New Edition

In the 1960s the women’s liberation movement introduced America to

a new phrase: “The personal is political, and the political is personal.”
The slogan had its origins in thousands of consciousness-raising
groups around the country where women talked about what it was like
to grow up in a society full of sex stereotypes. The culture defined what
was “feminine” behavior and what was “masculine,” what women
could do and what they couldn’t do, what men could do and what they
couldn’t do. Life was compartmentalized into gender-labeled catego-
ries or, perhaps more appropriately, gender-defined cages. American
life was full of such categories. What was “public” differed from what
was “private.” “Political” issues defined one arena of life experience.
“Personal” issues occupied a totally different realm.
Feminists disagreed with these definitions and categories. What went
on in the bedroom or the kitchen, they pointed out, reflected pat-
terns of power that pervaded Wall Street, the factory, the office, and
the government as well. The tone of voice one adopted, the role one
played at home, the assertiveness or passivity one displayed—all of
these reflected a deeper truth: that the private and the public, the per-
sonal and the political were deeply connected. Who did what around
the house spoke to a larger system of how power was apportioned,
what opportunities did or did not exist. The conclusion feminists drew
from this was simple and revolutionary: If relations between women
and men were to change, everything had to change.
Since the 1960s we have learned to translate the insight of feminists
into a larger understanding of how and why people act as they do and
of what animates politics. Public figures are shaped by private experi-
ences. Who they are as people, how they interact with those closest
2 Introduction

to them, shapes profoundly what they do. The political behavior of

government officials reflects personal choices and values as well as
choices about public policy issues. Personal relationships infuse and
inspire the choices that political figures make.
We know, for example, that understanding the presidency of Frank-
lin Delano Roosevelt requires understanding his relationship with his
mother, his aristocratic roots, his marriage to his distant cousin Elea-
nor, and, above all, his experience being a victim of polio. Similarly, we
cannot understand Eleanor Roosevelt without knowing about her al-
coholic father, her experience of intellectual awakening in an English
boarding school under the tutelage of a strong feminist, her engage-
ment in social activism through becoming committed to networks of
women reformers, and the crisis that occurred when she discovered
her husband’s infidelity. The personal is political. Wives affect hus-
bands, and husbands wives.
Hillary and Bill Clinton carried the relationship of the political to
the personal to an entirely new level. Their private family lives as they
came of age helped shape who they became—their harmful obses-
sions as well as their skills in getting along with people. When they
came together, each recognized in the other the complementary qual-
ities that could work to help the other. Hillary’s close associate Betsey
Wright told her in 1972 that she could become the first female presi-
dent if she set her mind to it. She was that talented. But in the 1970s,
when the women’s movement was in its early years, Hillary recognized
that she had a better chance of achieving her goal of transforming
America if she did so in partnership with Bill. He, in turn, understood
that he could never achieve his goal of becoming president without the
discipline and strategic focus that Hillary gave him.
But more than just recognizing the value that each partner brought
to the other, the personal chemistry of their relationship helped de-
fine the political life of a generation. Hillary rescued Bill from politi-
cal disaster on multiple occasions: when he was defeated as governor
of Arkansas in his 1980 reelection bid, when she saved his presidential
candidacy after Gennifer Flowers portrayed Bill as a serial philan-
derer, and, above all, when she stood beside and behind him after his
White House affair with Monica Lewinsky. Yet each time Hillary res-
cued Bill, she also advanced her own agenda. The dynamics of their
personal interaction helped each partner in the relationship to move
 Introduction 3

forward. Thus after Hillary helped Bill get reelected as governor

of Arkansas in 1982, she led the benchmark reform of education in
the state. After saving him from the Gennifer Flowers scandal, she
became—overtly as well as covertly—the most powerful woman
ever to occupy the White House. She had her own West Wing office
right next to that of her husband and Vice President Al Gore; she
appointed, and controlled, a public staff as talented and influential
as that of the president; and she took command of the White House’s
program for health care, the most important initiative of the entire
administration. Finally, when she saved her husband from being forced
from office by standing solidly behind him after the Monica Lewin-
sky affair, she paved the way for her own career as a U.S. senator,
the country’s secretary of state, and a candidate for president of the
United States in her own right.
No personalities in recent history speak more compellingly to
the importance of understanding that the personal and the political
are inseparable.