[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 65 (Monday, May 23, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                              THE CLINTONS

                                 ______


                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 23, 1994

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, finally someone asks one of the key 
questions. Very, very sad.

           [From the U.S. News & World Report, May 16, 1994]

                    What Do They Say to Each Other?

                           (By Gloria Borger)

       It is hard, in the wake of the latest flurry of accusations 
     against Bill Clinton, not to wonder about the first lady. 
     What is she thinking? How does she go about her daily 
     business? What does she say to friends? There she was, moved 
     to tears last week at a health reform press conference with 
     parents and their young children stricken with catastrophic 
     illnesses. The families had run out of financial choices; 
     Hillary Rodham Clinton just seemed to run out of words. The 
     issue was emotional, but the first lady looked drained beyond 
     the moment. That morning, the front page of the Washington 
     Post had reported the Paula Jones story. It was no stretch to 
     think that something more was causing her pain.
       Some political ethicists argue that this line of private 
     inquiry is none of our business. They may be right, but that 
     is irrelevant. The truth is that the personal questions about 
     the first couple have remained at the kitchen table since the 
     campaign. Yes, maybe the public has discounted stories about 
     Bill Clinton's alleged philandering because they don't care 
     so long as he does his job. Or maybe the public says it 
     doesn't care but then registers doubts when asked about his 
     character. Whatever the case, after Gennifer Flowers, 
     Whitewater, Troopergate and now Paula Jones, the question no 
     one can answer is the question everyone asks: What do Bill 
     and Hillary say to each other?
       The conversation between them is painful to imagine. And 
     more so because it probably has been repeated so often. We 
     know about the campaign, when Hillary Clinton became the 
     stalwart defender. The couple appeared on ``60 Minutes'' to 
     try to make it all go away. And maybe they even thought they 
     had succeeded by admitting to being real people, with marital 
     problems they had resolved. Americans like people to work 
     things out. There was a sense that, for better or for worse, 
     the couple was a team.


                             smoke and fire

       But that was then. It has all grown so much more 
     complicated, with more charges of philandering, with 
     Whitewater and Hillary Clinton's commodities deals. In the 
     case of Paula Jones and the Arkansas state troopers, the 
     motivations of the accusers are clearly suspect--and we may 
     never know the truth? What we recall is a first lady who 
     passed cookies to reporters last Christmas, the day after she 
     defended her husband against the troopers' charges. She had 
     become the expert public witness--and the public wanted 
     either to believe her or just to let Clinton get on with 
     governing. Still, it all gets stuck back there somewhere in 
     the collective public mind. And the public naturally wonders, 
     when there is that much smoke, whether there is also fire.
       Having introduced themselves as a loving couple with real 
     problems, the Clintons cannot now escape--or redraw--the 
     family portrait. Nor can they deny that their credibility is 
     somehow tied into it. It is understandable that their public 
     response is to treat all the personal charges as a form of 
     political attack. But the public already suspects there is 
     more to this than politics, and that only increases the 
     curiosity about the honest conversations of a real marriage: 
     Does she ever ask her husband whether these things are true? 
     Or does she already know? Do they talk strategy, war-gaming 
     like any good political team? Or does she ask, as Everywoman 
     in this circumstances might: How many more times will I have 
     to go through this? The two public faces of Hillary Clinton 
     are sometimes painful to reconcile: the widely acclaimed 
     pioneer, leading the fight to reform health care, and the 
     first-line defender of a man accused of treating women as 
     disposable objects. Her private face is a mystery.
       There are those moments we all watch, and we wonder. The 
     death of her father seemed genuinely painful to the 
     president; the death of his mother brought the nation a 
     picture of a couple, arm in arm, consoling each other. We see 
     them as caring and loving parents. And Bill Clinton jumped at 
     the opportunity to defend his wife's ethics in Whitewater, 
     proclaiming that her ``moral compass is as strong as 
     anybody's.'' He also defended himself brilliantly at a later 
     press conference, and his approval ratings jumped. If the 
     public took him back, can we be excused for wondering whether 
     that is what happens at home, too?
       In polite society, this is none of our business. But in an 
     odd way, the candidate and his wife invited us to look at 
     their marriage--so long as they could control the access. 
     Before the presidential campaign, it was Hillary Clinton who 
     knew their private life might become very public business. It 
     was she who coined the phrase ``zone of privacy.'' And it was 
     she who admitted to being ``rezoned'' recently when talking 
     about her role in Whitewater.
       Still, the publicly guarded woman married to the intensely 
     gregarious man works to hide the emotion. Sometimes, as in a 
     recent interview with Vanity Fair, she allows her humanity to 
     show. ``It is very hard, when people lie about you and attack 
     you, not to feel anger,'' ``If we act human, which is to say 
     we resent it, we get angry about it--that somehow diminishes 
     us.'' So when Larry King asked the first lady about the Paula 
     Jones charges last week, she froze him out--and then denied 
     being angry. But you had to wonder whether that is how she 
     really felt.

                          ____________________