Charges continue to haunt Hillary Rodham Clinton

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 19, 1996 | by John Elvin

With that attitude at heart and a stint working with the Children's Defense Fund under her belt, she went on to join the impeachment inquiry staff. But that effort, which might have led to public humiliation of her old foe through the spectacle of a public inquisition, was outfoxed with Nixon's resignation. So Hillary now had the burdens of failure in her efforts for McCarthy and McGovern and the blow of Nixon's resignation to bear. What to do?

According to her official biography, she next "followed her heart" to Arkansas, where through the influence of Clinton she took up teaching criminal law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. There the pair again shared quarters, biographers say, though maintaining separate apartments.

The biographers say Hillary was not happy She traveled a lot. In what would seem to have been an uncharacteristic move given her predilection toward the antiwar movement, she visited the Marine Corps recruiting office in Fayetteville and tried to sign up. The female recruiter suggested that, on account of her age, thick glasses and (Hillary says) her gender, she try the Army instead. Some of her defenders claim this was really a clandestine "feminist" investigative effort, but Hillary has portrayed it literally in a talk to female veterans. At any rate, shortly thereafter she bought an off-the-rack wedding dress and hitched her wagon for better or worse to William Jefferson Clinton.

Though continuing to espouse an independent feminist worldview, the plain fact is that Hillary's advancements from that point on are in very large measure due to her relationship with Clinton. As Midge Decter pointed out in a Commentary magazine article, it has been "as the 'little woman' and only as the little woman" that Hillary has achieved prominence and avoided the consequences of her mistakes along the way.

When some argued that Clinton's defeat after a term as governor was due in part to the natives rejecting her uptown hippie ways, Hillary changed her style dramatically and adopted her husband's last name. So complete was her makeover that some who knew the couple say they thought at first glance that Clinton had taken up with someone new. And Hillary dedicated herself wholeheartedly to pursuing that essential fuel of the modern political campaign: the almighty buck. Though intending the comment pejoratively, Hillary gives a clue to her own attitude in a remark mentioned by columnist Paul Greenberg in his new book, No Surprises: "The 1980s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power and privilege."

There seems to be little doubt that Hillary sits at the center of an elaborate web of financial intrigue. According to another book on the Clintons, Blood Sport: The President and his Adversaries, by James B. Stewart, when Jeff Gerth of the New York Times stumbled onto what Hillary termed "a stupid investment" (now known as Whitewater) made by herself and Clinton, she immediately called her friend Susan Thomases. But before crying on Thomases' shoulder, she first retained her as counsel, thereby putting any further conversation in the realm of lawyer-client privilege. Then she went on to complain, says Stewart: "I don't want everyone digging into our personal records."