What Do Women Want? (3 page)

Rumors of “the coming” floated across the foot-weary crowd. The so-called prominent women had been drinking for an hour or more and were afraid to detour to the toilet for fear of missing the annunciation. Eventually there was a palpable stir in the room. “The first lady is coming!” someone said—and the words were echoed on all sides of the now sardinized space. Would she come from the east or the west? (The room had two entrances, and the faithful were gathered around both.) Rumors flew.

“She’ll be coming in
there
!” said a source. “No—
there
!” said another. And finally Hillary and Tipper were glimpsed, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting. And there we all were—ladies-in-waiting ourselves. But our waiting appeared to be over at last. We jostled forward for a better view.

Cheers, whistles, catcalls. Tipper Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton climbed the raised speakers’ platform, while a factotum checked the mike. Tipper Gore was fulsomely introduced over the roar of the crowd. She seemed as warm and fuzzy as Hillary Clinton seemed tense and chilly. With her plump blond, American good looks, Tipper is everyone’s Girl Scout den mother, everyone’s first-grade teacher, everyone’s favorite sister-in-law. She is so normal-as-blueberry-pie and corny-as-Kansas-in-August that she’s a hard act to follow. After a short Tipperish speech, full of thanks for the organizers and praise for the first lady, Hillary came on.

It’s impossible to watch Hillary Clinton work an audience without being aware of the sheer effort she puts into everything she does. I admire effort. But in politics, effortlessness, a sense of
sprezzatura
(that charming Italian word for the art of making the difficult look easy) is
more
valuable. Hillary spoke well; she always speaks well. She always says things I thoroughly agree with. But in those days she had trouble seeming warm. She was to become warmer and warmer as she grew more powerful—an understandable transformation. Even then, she turned the audience on with references to all their political heroines—the suffragists and Eleanor Roosevelt, in particular—and she convinced us of her erudition and her staunch feminism. But she did not
then
convince us of her everydayness, which was the gift Tipper Gore so abundantly possessed. Hillary Rodham Clinton was always in control.

After her speech, Hillary was led to meet her adoring acolytes, of whom I was one. The Hillary handlers hustled us all into a receiving line behind a rope, and those who had prearranged audiences were told exactly where in line to wait. Secret Service men briskly patrolled the rope lest one of the pilgrims get too close. Hillary went along the “rope line” briefed by her personal assistant and her press secretary about the identity of each of the faithful. Waiting for her, I felt like an idiot. In my time I have hung out with plenty of contemporary icons: Nobel laureates, rock stars more famous than Jesus, movie idols who can’t walk unmolested in the streets, politicians in and out of high office. But waiting for Hillary, I felt diminished. What I had wanted was to know the woman behind the mask. That, after all, is my specialty. And here I was being given only a brief glance at the mask—gleaming with many coats of lacquer. I was determined to use even this brief audience as best I could, but the glazed eyes, the fixed smile, the rather too firm handshake, could only remind me of myself in zombie mode in the midst of a twenty-five-city book tour.

What could I say? I admire you so? I need more time with you? I empathize with all the shit you’re taking? I said all that and more as we clasped hands and I used the trick so often used on me by fans: I would not let her hand go.

“Call the White House to set up more time,” she said, turning to her drudge, who most certainly
heard.
And then she was gone, shaking the tiny hand of a small African-American girl, greeting a fund-raiser here, a prominent woman there—down the line toward her destiny, beginning with the big speech she was to give for the Democratic hoi polloi in the downstairs arena.

It was over. In desperation, I cornered Caputo.

“The first lady has agreed to more time,” I told her. Caputo looked incredulous. Then she looked at Hillary and back at me.

“Call me next week. We’re off to three more states tomorrow.”

“Lisa,” I said, “I need to
travel
with the first lady, hang with her. I know her
policies
by heart. I’ve read her book. I’ll go with you starting tonight. Find room for me.” I must have been pathetic.

“The plane’s too small. The president gets the big planes. There’s no room.”

Does it comfort me that Caputo “resigned” two months later? Not much. The problem, of course, was mine not Hillary’s. I had spent my life in a room writing. I didn’t know the rules of political stalking. And I was green about journalism and access. I was also stupidly vain about my possible use to Hillary. She didn’t
need
me—especially when I was writing for a U.K. publication. I was terribly naïve.

Downstairs in the main arena, thousands of women had assembled to hear the first lady’s official speech. Many had been brought in buses hired by labor unions and New York City and State Democratic clubs. A rainbow of races—working-class women in their Sunday best. I was shepherded to the VIP section and settled in among the prominent, the press, the Big Donors—all the while thinking how hypocritical it was to have this separation between plebes and aristos. In a democracy, such division rankles even if one is the supposed beneficiary of it.

The glorious Jessye Norman sailed onto the stage in a silk caftan. Was she going to sing with Judy Collins? What a sensory experience that would be! Not unaccountably, Jessye Norman was there only to
introduce
Judy Collins, who graciously said that she would go anywhere to be introduced by the opera diva. Judy, who is my dear friend, spoke about the history of the song “Bread and Roses.” Then she sang it. The audience cheered.

By the time HRC spoke, we had all been there—mostly waiting—for at least two hours. And her speech was worth the wait. She made frequent references to the history of the women’s suffrage movement and predicted that we would see its ultimate fulfillment in the next presidential election (that prophecy proved wrong even in 1996). It was a speech designed to please both the rank and file and the intellectual elite. There was something for everyone—union members, academic feminists, fund-raisers. And indeed, with Hillary’s help, Bill Clinton was, at first, the major beneficiary of the gender gap in American politics. He was also, of course, aided by the Republican Party, which continued to tailor its party platform to please the powerful Christian Coalition on the issue of reproductive rights. It was entirely clear from Hillary’s speech that the Democrats were going all out to woo women voters. And they succeeded—at least in the 1996 presidential election. The backlash of 2000 (not to mention the vote-stealing) changed everything.

I went home from the Women’s Democratic Leadership Conference having been promised more “quality time” with the first lady and determined to pin down the promised opportunity. I called and called and
called
the White House. I spoke to Friends of the Clintons and Friends of Friends of the Clintons. I did everything but contribute $650,000 to the presidential campaign, which I guess was then the price of sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom.

After that I was to endure another month of delays by schedulers, another month of being told to call next week and the week after and the week after. In the process, I heard repeatedly, from Clinton supporters and strategists whom I interviewed, that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s people had a deadly knack for turning acolytes into enemies. At that time, they truly could not distinguish friend from foe. Was the first lady so rattled by criticism that she hid when she should have been frank, and locked herself up when she should have been candid? Was she a control freak who feared her admirers as much as her detractors?

Whatever the answer to these questions, she is now, as New York’s senator and the leading Democratic candidate, a totally different politician. Relaxed, funny, sincere, caring, competent—she is a charming and warm speaker. Experience does help. And now she has experience. Few women leaders get the opportunity to evolve as she has. Her spectacular growth is impressive. It also shows us how important it is that women be allowed to get political experience.

Rereading my Hillary Rodham Clinton file before writing about her in the past, I was struck by the great number of times she had gone public with her desire to know why she was failing to get through the barrage of hostility put up by the press. Several times she convened important editors and columnists and asked them why she was so badly treated in print and what she could do to remedy it. Either they were not candid with her or she did not listen. Or she may have lacked the born diplomat’s talent for making other people feel important. People used to come away from encounters convinced their noses have been rubbed in the mud. I certainly did. Now Hillary is much better at having her audience love her.

Was her past awkwardness because, on some level, Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t realize
how
important she was politically and historically, and thus left the management of access to amateurs? I came to think so after months and months of dealing with “her people.” Chaos and contradiction were rife. One hand didn’t seem to know what the other hand was doing. After being promised more time by Hillary
herself,
I was cut off at the knees by her staff. Apparently they had been so scarred (and scared) by the attacks on the first lady that they could not distinguish honest enthusiasm from journalistic seduction. None of which would even be worth remarking on if Hillary Clinton had not always beaten her breast publicly about her puzzlement regarding the hostility of the press.

Why didn’t somebody from the State Department give her a quick course in diplomacy? Why did the people whose job it was to present her to the public do such a lackluster job? And why did the Clinton campaign decide to “disappear Hillary” (as Russell Baker pointed out in the
New York Times
) for most of the summer of the second presidential campaign? When she returned, she was a softer, newer Hillary, wearing nursery colors and saying “my husband” every thirty seconds, but we found it just as hard to believe this incarnation. The trouble was, she had reinvented herself too many times—and what works for rock stars (Madonna, for example) doesn’t work for first ladies. We want our rock stars bizarre and our first ladies ordinary. HRC will never be ordinary if she lives to be 127.

This kaleidoscope of Hillary images and the frequently self-destructive behavior of the first lady are particularly regrettable because the Clinton administrations and the Clinton marriage are both historic. As a couple, the Clintons raise major issues about political and sexual politics. They are the first couple to have been elected president of the United States jointly. It is clear that without HRC’s participation, Bill Clinton would have gone right down the Gary Hart sewer. Because his wife stood by him on that first Barbara Walters interview in 1992, because he did not exactly deny “causing pain in the marriage,” while Hillary held his hand supportively, the first Clinton campaign was able to weather and rise above what had been killing sexual crises for other presidential candidates. The Clintons have been sailing above one sexual crisis after another ever since. Their marriage only appears to be stronger while America appears ever more blasé about sexual scandals.

In fact, this became the pattern in the second administration. Hillary emerged as Bill’s protector and crisis manager. Phase-three Hillary was the twenty-first-century wife who finally silences her detractors.

Before Monica Lewinsky, public adulterers were doomed forever. Even the “little woman” could not save them. Without Hillary Clinton’s forgiveness, Bill Clinton’s sex addiction would surely have sunk him. But because of her fierce protectiveness, his post-presidency even triumphed. Hillary single-handedly revolutionized the political marriage. America has even seemed to grow up sexually because of Hillary.

Two for the price of one. Elect one, get one free. Hillary was originally the freebie. Never before in American politics had any couple campaigned this way—or served this way. The very American ideal of a “power couple” that add up to more than the sum of their parts was perfected during the Clinton presidency. After the unveiling of Monica Lewinsky and Kathleen Willey, Hillary Clinton claimed even more power in the marriage. She became Bill Clinton’s indispensable character witness. And even though nobody believed his character was any good (sexually anyway), Hillary loomed larger than ever. During the spring 1998 African junket, she loomed like an ancient mother goddess.

In all three phases of her public incarnation, Bill Clinton had the best of Hillary: She validated his feminist credentials with the electorate while he remained free to go on being a Dogpatch Bob Packwood—supporting womankind in public, groping individual women in private.

The deal of the Clinton marriage fascinates me, and I know it fascinates many. It is a marriage that reflects our time better than any political marriage I can think of. Clearly Hillary Rodham Clinton figured out in law school that if the time was not yet ripe for a woman president, it was likely to be ripe for a guy as driven and smart and personable as Bill Clinton. And she could be his chief adviser, patron (she made the money—with no small help from his political position), cheering and booing sections, and disciplinarian.

However much she may have warmed to his southern charm, no matter how much she may have loved him, his political ambition turned her on just as much. Not that there is anything wrong with a marital deal. You might even say that the more things bind a couple together, the better their chance of staying together. But theirs is a radical deal for an American political marriage. Hillary has never staked out highway beautification as her bailiwick (as did Lyndon Baines Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird) or crusaded to put warning stickers on rock albums (once the one-woman campaign of Second Lady Tipper Gore). Hillary Clinton claimed the stage with top
policy
issues. This audacity dazzled at first. But then, why
should
a first lady stick to so-called women’s issues? Hillary was always policy-minded, always loath to be ghettoized ideologically. She was always far more serious than Bill, even in college and law school.