Living History (76 page)

As the hour for his statement approached, everyone was putting in his or her two cents, and this was not helping Bill. He wanted to use this opportunity to point out the unfairness and excesses of Starr’s investigation, but there was a vigorous argument over whether he should take a shot at the independent counsel. Even though I was furious with him, I could see how upset he was, and it was awful to watch. So I finally said, “Well, Bill, this is your speech. You’re the one who got yourself into this mess, and only you can decide what to say about it.” Then Chelsea and I left the room.

Eventually everyone else left Bill alone, and he finished writing the statement by himself.

Immediately after his speech, Bill was criticized for not apologizing enough (or, rather, for appearing less than sincere in his apology because he also criticized Starr). I was still too upset to have an opinion. James Carville, who may be the most contentious, inyour-face, don’t-give-’em-an-inch friend we have, thought it was probably a mistake to attack Starr. This was a moment to admit wrongdoing and leave it at that. I still don’t know who was right. The press hated the statement, but over the next days reactions from most Americans indicated that they considered a consensual relationship between adults a private matter, and they did not believe that it affected a person’s ability to do a good job, whether in the courtroom, the operating room, the Congress or the Oval Office. Bill’s standing in public opinion polls remained high. His standing with me had hit rock bottom.

The last thing in the world I wanted to do was go away on vacation, but I was desperate to get out of Washington. Chelsea had wanted to go back to Martha’s Vineyard, where good friends were waiting. So Bill, Chelsea and I left for the island the following afternoon. Buddy, the dog, came along to keep Bill company. He was the only member of our family who was still willing to.

Just before we left, Marsha Berry, my imperturbable press secretary made a statement on my behalf. “Clearly, this is not the best day in Mrs. Clinton’s life. This is a time when she relies on her strong religious faith.”

By the time we settled into our borrowed house, the adrenaline of the crisis had worn off, and I was left with nothing but profound sadness, disappointment and unresolved anger.

I could barely speak to Bill, and when I did, it was a tirade. I read. I walked on the beach. He slept downstairs. I slept upstairs. Days were easier than nights. Where do you turn when your best friend, the one who always helps you through hard times, is the one who wounded you? I felt unbearably lonely, and I could tell Bill did too. He kept trying to explain and apologize. But I wasn’t ready to be in the same room with him, let alone forgive him. I would have to go deep inside myself and my faith to discover any remaining belief in our marriage, to find some path to understanding. At this point, I really didn’t know what I was going to do.

Shortly after we arrived, Bill returned briefly to the White House to oversee the Cruise missile strikes against one of Osama bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan. The United States had waited to launch until there was confirmation from intelligence sources that bin Laden and his top aides were at the target sites. The missiles missed him, apparently just by a matter of hours. In the annals of damned-if-you-door-don’t situations, this was a classic. In spite of clear evidence that bin Laden was responsible for the embassy bombings, Bill was criticized for ordering the attack. He was accused of doing it to divert attention from his own troubles and the growing talk of impeachment by both Republicans and commentators, who still didn’t understand the dangers presented by terrorism in general and bin Laden and al Qaeda in particular.

Bill returned to a house thick with silence. Chelsea spent most of her time with our friends Jill and Ken Iscol and their son, Zack. They offered their home and hearts for my confused and hurting daughter. It was excruciating for Bill and me to be locked up together, but it was hard to get out. The media had staked out the island and were ready to descend as soon as we appeared in public. I was in no mood for socializing, but I was touched by how our friends rallied around us. Vernon and Ann Jordan were sympathetic, of course. Katharine Graham, who had had her own experience with the agony of infidelity, made a point of inviting me to lunch. And then Walter Cronkite called and coaxed the three of us to come out on his boat for a sail.

We didn’t want to go at first. But Walter and his wife, Betsy, had a comforting attitude about the people who were calling for Bill’s head and criticizing me for putting up with him. “This is just unbelievable,” Walter said. “Why don’t these people get a life?

You know, I’ve lived long enough to know that good marriages go through tough times.

None of us is perfect. Let’s go sailing!”

We took him up on his offer. Although I was too numb at that point to say I relaxed, it was refreshing to be out on the open water. And the Cronkites’ kind concern lifted my spirits.

Maurice Templesman, who came to Martha’s Vineyard every summer, was also wonderful to me. I had gotten to know him even better since Jackie’s death, and he visited us in the White House. He called and asked if I would come by. We met on his yacht one evening and watched the lights of boats coming into the harbor at Menemsha. He talked for a while about Jackie, whom he missed terribly, and told me he understood how hard her life had been at times.

“I know that your husband really loves you,” he said. “And I hope you can forgive him.”

Maurice didn’t want to infringe on my privacy, and he offered his advice gently. I accepted it with gratitude. After we talked, it was an immense relief just to sit quietly by the water in the company of a good friend.

I looked up at the night sky and its bright wash of stars, just as I had as a child in Park Ridge, while lying on a blanket with my mother. I thought about how the constellations hadn’t changed since the first sailors set out to explore the world, using the positions of the stars to find their way back home. I have found my way through a lifetime of uncharted territory with good fortune and abiding faith to keep me on course. This time I needed all the help I could get.

I was thankful for the support and counsel I received during this time, particularly from Don Jones, my youth minister, who had become a lifelong friend. Don reminded me of a classic sermon by the theologian Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” which Don had once read to our youth group in Park Ridge. Its premise is how sin and grace exist through life in constant interplay; neither is possible without the other. The mystery of grace is that you cannot look for it. “Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness,”

Tillich wrote. “It happens; or it does not happen.”

Grace happens. Until it did, my main job was to put one foot in front of the other and get through another day.

By the end of August, there was detente, if not peace, in our household. Although I was heartbroken and disappointed with Bill, my long hours alone made me admit to myself that I loved him. What I still didn’t know was whether our marriage could or should last.

The day-to-day was easier to forecast than the future. We were returning to Washington and a new phase in a never-ending political war. I hadn’t decided whether to fight for my husband and my marriage, but I was resolved to fight for my President.

I had to get a grip on my feelings and focus on what I needed to do for myself. Fulfilling my personal and public obligations drew on a reservoir of different emotions―

requiring different thinking and different judgments. For over twenty years, Bill had been my husband, my best friend, my partner in all of life’s trials and joys. He was a loving father to our daughter. Now, for reasons he will have to explain, he had violated my trust, hurt me deeply and given his enemies something real to exploit after years of enduring their false charges, partisan investigations and lawsuits.

My personal feelings and political beliefs were on a collision course. As his wife, I wanted to wring Bill’s neck. But he was not only my husband, he was also my President, and I thought that, in spite of everything, Bill led America and the world in a way that I continued to support. No matter what he had done, I did not think any person deserved the abusive treatment he had received. His privacy, my privacy, Monica Lewinsky’s privacy and the privacy of our families had been invaded in a cruel and gratuitous manner. I believe what my husband did was morally wrong. So was lying to me and misleading the American people about it. I also knew his failing was not a betrayal of his country. Everything I had learned from the Watergate investigation convinced me that there were no grounds to impeach Bill. If men like Starr and his allies could ignore the Constitution and abuse power for ideological and malicious ends to topple a President, I feared for my country.

Bill’s Presidency, the institutional Presidency and the integrity of the Constitution hung in the balance. I knew what I did and said in the next days and weeks would influence not just Bill’s future and mine, but also America’s. As for my marriage, it hung in the balance, too, and I wasn’t at all sure which way the scale would, or should, tip.

Life moved on, and I moved with it. I accompanied Bill to Moscow for another state visit on September 1 and then on to Ireland to meet Tony and Cherie Blair and to walk the streets of Omagh where the bombing occurred. The detonation of 500 pounds of explosives in a busy shopping area did not succeed in shattering the cease-fire, as the bombers had hoped. It simply inspired people to work even harder for peace. Shocked hard-liners on both sides of the conflict softened their positions in response.

Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, announced publicly that violence in its seventy-seven-yearold war to end British rule was “a thing of the past.” Following Adams’s public statement, David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, agreed to meet with Sinn Fein for the first time. All sides concurred that such hopeful developments would not have been possible without the direct diplomacy of Bill Clinton and his envoy, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

The agony of Omagh was a reminder of the worthy risks Bill was willing to take for peace around the world, of all the good he had accomplished. Bill spent innumerable hours trying to persuade the Irish, Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, Kosovars, Israelis, Palestinians, Greeks, Turks, Burundians and others to give up past grievances and overcome barriers to peace. His efforts were sometimes successful, sometimes not. Many of the successes were fragile, as we later learned in the collapse of the Middle East peace process. But even the failures forced people to come to grips with the pain and humanity of the other side. I was always proud and grateful that Bill persevered in the search for peace and reconciliation.

The huge contingent of reporters who followed the President to Russia and Ireland was looking for more than a peace mission story. They were watching both of us closely for clues to the state of our marriage. Did we stand close together or apart? Was I frowning or crying behind dark glasses? And what was the significance of the knitted sweater I bought for Bill in Dublin, which he wore to Limerick for his first golf game in more than a month? I desperately wanted to restore a zone of privacy for myself and my family, but I wondered if that would ever be possible again.

While Bill was negotiating with foreign leaders abroad, Joe Lieberman, Senator from Connecticut, admonished him publicly. Lieberman, who had been a friend since Bill had worked on his first campaign for the Connecticut state senate in the early seventies, took to the Senate floor to denounce the President’s conduct as immoral and harmful because “it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family.”

When Bill was asked by reporters in Ireland to respond to Lieberman’s speech, he replied: “Basically I agree with what he said. I’ve already said that I made a bad mistake. It was indefensible, and I’m sorry about it. I’m very sorry about it.” It was the first of many unconditional public apologies my husband would make on his long journey of atonement.

But I realized that apologies would never be enough for hardcore Republicans and might not be enough to avert a meltdown within the Democratic Parry. Other Democratic leaders, including Congressman Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, condemned the President’s personal actions and said he should in some way be held accountable. None, however, advocated impeachment.

By the time we returned to the White House, there were several challenges on my mind, personal and political. Bill and I had agreed to participate in regular marital counseling to determine whether or not we were going to salvage our marriage. On one level, I was emotionally shell-shocked and trying to deal with the raw wound I had suffered. On another level, I believed Bill was a good person and a great President. I viewed the independent counsel’s assault on the Presidency as an ever escalating political war, and I was on Bill’s side.

When people ask me how I kept going during such a wrenching time, I tell them that there is nothing remarkable about getting up and going to work every day, even when there is a family crisis at home. Every one of us has had to do it at some time in our lives, and the skills required to cope are the same for a First Lady or a forklift operator. I just had to do it all in the public eye.

Even if I was undecided about my personal future, I was absolutely convinced that Bill’s private behavior and his misguided effort to conceal it did not constitute a legal or historical basis for impeachment under the Constitution. I believed he ought to be held accountable for his behavior―by me and by Chelsea―not by a misuse of the impeachment process. But I also knew that the opposition could use the press to create an atmosphere in which political pressure would grow for impeachment or resignation, regardless of the law. I worried about the Democrats who might be stampeded into calling for Bill’s resignation, and tried to concentrate on what I could do to help get them reelected in November.