Hillary's Meltdown Or, The Death of a Legend - Hillary Clinton

National Review, August 30, 1999 by Noemie Emery

That odd sound you hear is a legend imploding; the short, saintly stardom of Hillary Clinton, as it sputters to a halt. As legends go, it had a brief heyday, but while it lived, it was strong-strong enough to spawn a large cult, magazine stories, and what now seems a faltering preliminary Senate run.

The legend began on January 27, 1998, when she stepped into the impeachment breach to defend her cowering husband as the victim of a right-wing conspiracy. It grew through the spring and the summer as feminists somersaulted to defend the First Couple, and traditional women, normally cool to the lady, backed her for backing her man. Her numbers rose, but this was mere approval. Deification began in mid August, in the week before the startling Gap-dress confession, when stories ran (or were planted) in the heavyweight press praising her for her dignity (as compared to whom?) under stress. Then came the August 17 confession. As the wife of an accused seducer of interns, Mrs. Clinton had seen her numbers steadily mount. As the wife of a confessed lout and liar, she now saw them soar.

A halo started to surround her bleached hair-or was it merely the glow of static electricity, generated by the tension she doubtless was feeling? When would she hit him? When would she leave him? Whatever went on in her head? The Susan Lucci of politics, she was a crisis in progress, generating drama all over the landscape. Everyone found something to feel with and for her: Men approved-their own wives should be this forgiving. Women felt she now had come down to their level. Humbled, she started to glow in her victimhood. She was finally one of the girls.

Empowered by stress, she hit the campaign trail, charging it with her manic dysfunction. If you still liked Bill Clinton, then she was his surrogate. If you loathed Clinton, but were still a Democrat, you could stay on board by supporting his victim-his wife. (Was she his partner or victim? Nobody knew.) She glowed on the cover of Vogue, looking regal. "Hillary's Splendid Season," said Newsweek. "The Better Half," added Time. Jesse Jackson would take it to Biblical levels, saying, "Hillary, you've walked through rain, and you're not wet; you've walked through fire, and there is not a singe on your clothing . . . You have walked through fire, and don't have the smoke on your clothes."

Why then, barely a year after Gapgate, is Hillary either down or barely breaking even in the polls? First, a funny thing happened after impeachment was over: Public feelings began to turn around. Contempt of court here, a rape charge there, and a delayed-action fuse began to burn against Democrats, especially those most closely linked to our Bill. Tied with George W. Bush through most of the winter, Al Gore sank like a stone in the springtime, his biggest drag being his ties to Bill Clinton. The same happened to Hillary, whose numbers had peaked while she was still being urged to make a gift of herself to the nation. Since then, those numbers have dropped, in New York and the nation. Her much- publicized launch has done nothing to help her. And then there was the new magazine.

Talk, the Tina Brown effort, has certainly caused it, and in Lucinda Franks, married to a Democratic D.A. who is Rudy Giuliani's sworn enemy, Hillary had an interviewer after her own heart. Which, after all, is the nub of the problem: Reality barely intrudes. Franks sees a Hillary who is humble, brave, noble, and radiant-and also a genuine beauty. She agrees with Hillary that impeachment occurred only because "they" had been "jealous." Adultery is mentioned, not harassment or battery. Monica is mentioned; never Kathleen. Franks is a journalist who thinks it an invasion of privacy to ask a woman now running for high public office to address the fact that her husband-also a fairly high officeholder-has been accused of different degrees of assault by various women. The name "Juanita Broaddrick" comes up only once, and then in the context of making Mrs. Clinton unhappy-something it was very wrong of Mrs. Broaddrick to do.

Franks is a woman who can let Hillary say, "People are mean . . . we sort of strip away everybody's sense of dignity and privacy," without either laughing or bringing up the names of the many women who have been slandered and trashed by Bill Clinton's minions, possibly with Mrs. Clinton's approval. Mrs. Clinton herself is a woman who thinks that she and her husband have brought nothing but good to this country. She is a woman who thinks that the worst thing that Bill Clinton has ever done in his life is to break the vows of his marriage and bring pain to her. This is a woman who can compare herself to Jesus Christ without even blinking. Worst, this is a woman who cannot seem to realize how incredible all of this sounds.

Her interview is being likened to the one Ted Kennedy gave to his friend Roger Mudd in 1979, which crippled a presidential challenge that had once seemed as glory-bound as Mrs. Clinton's Senate run appeared to be. This, and the latest Kennedy mourning, reminds us of what else these two have in common: Hillary is much less like Robert F. Kennedy, the man whose seat she seems to be seeking, than she is like his last brother, Ted. Bobby Kennedy and Jack were men of inherent political interest. Ted and Hillary, on the other hand, take what charisma they have from their family dramas and are really quite commonplace pols. JFK and RFK were originals, who tweaked party dogma. Ted embodies it, as does Hillary. JFK and RFK were national figures, who ran well in races throughout the country, appealing to different electorates. Ted does not travel well outside Massachusetts, and reaches no one beyond his own base. He-and Mrs. Clinton-get rousing cheers when they reinforce pre-conceived notions. JFK and RFK could get skeptics involved in their personal causes, a different, and much higher, level of leadership.