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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Hillary's new book is sparking another round of that favorite national pastime -- solve the puzzle of the Clinton union. Here's one clue: Loyalty between a man and a woman is not always the same as sexual fidelity.
Jun 9, 2003 | It shouldn't be such a big deal that the Associated Press recently leaked a few passages from Hillary Clinton's memoir, "Living History," which is off-limits to the press and to civilian readers alike until Tuesday. In those quoted sections, Hillary describes what it was like to learn that her husband had lied to her about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. She talks about the screaming matches she and Bill had after that revelation, and the fact that, around that time, they slept in separate bedrooms while on holiday on Martha's Vineyard.
None of those revelatory tidbits should matter, since most of us already claim to know everything there is to know about the Clinton marriage -- despite the fact that we're not the ones wearing their rings.
You can't attend a wedding, much less actually be the one getting hitched, without at some point hearing about what a challenge marriage is, how difficult it is to intertwine your life with that of another. It's the kind of thing people say without thinking, the way one might say to a friend who's just turned 50, "You don't look a day over 40!" or blurt out, while gazing at the rubberized visage of a corpse in a casket, "He looks so peaceful."
It's easy to say "Marriage is difficult"; what almost no one ever says is "Marriage is private."
A few days ago the New York Times ran a piece on Hillary's upcoming book, taking note of how the nature of the Clintons' marriage stands to change in the wake of the publication of their respective memoirs (Bill's is due to follow next year): "The personal nature of Mrs. Clinton's book suggests they are about to define a new period in a relationship that has long been a source of gossipy speculation and that even their closest friends describe as enigmatic."
Naturally, everyone gossips about marriages, particularly celebrity marriages, and Bill and Hillary are nothing if not celebrities. But what really struck me about that line was the idea that "even their closest friends" find the Clintons' marriage mysterious -- as if, somehow, their closest friends should have a better idea of what the Clinton marriage is like than the rest of us.
Who ever knows the truth of a marriage except the two people inside it?
That seems like the most obvious statement in the world, one that most married people wouldn't hesitate to agree with once it's put to them so plainly. And yet we all feel qualified to play armchair marriage counselor to the Clintons -- and we all have our own ideas of how marriage should play out where infidelity is concerned.
While Clinton was still in office, I recall reading or hearing, time and again, suggestions that the Clintons must have some sort of "arrangement" -- that it wasn't a real marriage, like the kind normal people have, but a union forged and maintained to further their political careers. Among many other things, this seemed to be a convenient way to paint Hillary as a sort of monster, a hugely ambitious man in a woman's costume -- in short, not the kind of wife anyone would want to have at all. Sure, smart, tough women are great, as long as you don't have to actually sleep in the same bed with one. Can't we please have a first lady who's more interested in reading "Green Eggs and Ham" to underprivileged kids than in figuring out a way to make sure those same little kids have access to doctors and hospitals when they need them?
As a first lady, Hillary was never soft enough, or predictable enough, to suit anyone's taste. Even those of us who have always liked her find her intensity a little scary -- well, OK, a lot.
But we're not the ones who married her. From what we outsiders can see of it -- which, of course, is very little -- I'd argue that the Clinton union, with all its trials and difficulties, should be seen as a new kind of model for a White House marriage. That's not to imply that there's any such thing as a "model" marriage to begin with; it simply means that looking at the Clintons' union, with more objectivity and less gossipy fascination, might expand our ways of thinking about what a "good" marriage actually is.
For one thing, acknowledgement of their mutual political aspirations has always been a part of the Clinton marriage, and how is that necessarily a bad thing? There are plenty of couples who mutually support each other's careers and who view each other, as the Clintons seem to, as intellectual equals.
