God and Hillary Clinton (10 page)

Importantly, Matthews says that while the couple did not come to him for counseling, Hillary was very much in personal crisis, suffering a broken heart, and sought solace in the Book of Psalms. “I think she especially appreciated the Psalmist's ability to be honest,” said the senior minister. “In the Psalms you can find extreme mood changes in any one of the chapters. The Psalmist could be mad at God—
How could you let this happen? Why is it this way?
—and then wind up asking forgiveness for doubting [God]. I think that kind of honesty and straightforwardness, as well as the mood changes that any one Book of the Psalms could carry comforted Hillary. There is also a sweetness and tenderness about the Psalms that help when your heart is really hurting.”
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Matthews also had insight into what Hillary might have said to Bill at the time, telling Gail Sheehy: “I have a strong feeling that Hillary would have been confrontational with her husband on these
matters. At that time, the more respected friends of the Clintons were anxious that he and so-and-so had had an affair, and that Hillary was now aware of it.”
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According to Sheehy, Hillary never mentioned names to her pastor, but discussed confronting her husband. Matthews told Sheehy, “Clinton admitted it, and at that point maybe they did get some counseling.”
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Despite Matthews's claims that he was not involved in counseling the couple, various biographers over the years say that he did. Norman King's book on Mrs. Clinton says that at one point during 1988–1990, Mrs. Clinton became so engrossed and fed up with the rumors about her husband that she contacted Matthews. “The pastor immediately agreed to meet with the Clintons for counseling,” says the book. “Now it was up to Hillary to convince her husband that the meeting was necessary.” King continues the narrative, describing Hillary's accusation to her husband that he was having affairs, and his agreement—after an argument with Hillary—to seek help:

This touching account of forgiveness and reconciliation, published in 1993, seems to have been picked up and retold by others, including biographers who do not cite sources, making it unclear where their information came from.
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A 1996 book by Martin Walker says nearly the exact same thing, without citing a source. Walker also says the Clintons went to Matthews for counseling. “Under Reverend Matthews's direction,” writes Walker, “they held hands and knelt to pray together” in Matthews's study, “and Clinton promised to change his ways, to work harder at being a better husband and father, and to devote more time to his family. There were repeated sessions in the pastor's study, and Hillary too pledged to change.”
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Walker added more beyond what the 1993 book reported: He says that Hillary went on a “ferocious diet,” losing twenty pounds, and changed her hairstyle and even began to dye her hair blond. He says she spent $10,000 on a new wardrobe, including $2,400 for a cashmere jacket, and went to a beauty salon for advice on cosmetics. “The marriage had been through a severe crisis,” wrote Walker, “and their friends were heartened to see it restored in the course of 1990. They had reaffirmed their marriage vows before Reverend Matthews.”
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Regardless of Matthews's disputed involvement, another debated element of the marriage's problems during this time is when the situation was formally resolved. Sheehy quotes Betsey Wright, one of Clinton's staff members who dealt with the political fallout over Bill's philandering more than any other aide: “In the end,” said Wright, “they made a commitment to work on and save their marriage.” This must have happened, as Sheehy intimates, “at some point” early in 1990, when, according to Sheehy, Hillary sent Bill to a (undated and undocumented) “Come-to-Jesus meeting,” which in the South means a day of reckoning when a sinner confesses his sins and asks to be forgiven.
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Sheehy says that Clinton went to that meeting, and vowed that this was “the last time,” and that he would “start over”
and straighten out. He wanted to be faithful, recorded Sheehy, and wanted forgiveness.
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Even as these stories of reconciliation have circulated over the years, there have also been persistent rumors that the Clintons briefly considered divorce. Judith Warner reports interesting information on that front, noting that Hillary was furious that her partner in power was jeopardizing their mutual political greatness because of his inability to control his sexual appetite—even writing off the 1988 presidential race: “Infidelity seems to have been the prime issue,” reported Warner. “Bill Clinton's inability to run for president in 1988 because of his personal problems was just too infuriating, Hillary told her friends. What was she supposed to do with the rest of her life? Serve tea in the Arkansas governor's mansion?”

According to Warner, Bill—always eager to share his feelings with the world—even broached the subject of divorce in the intimate setting of the National Governors' Association, adding: “Political considerations clearly were never far from his mind.” But in the end, writes Warner, “faith—some kind of faith—in the marriage prevailed.”
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For whatever reason, Hillary reportedly took divorce off the table. Gail Sheehy quotes Betsey Wright, who was adamant: “It [divorce] absolutely was not an alternative that she gave him.”
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Here, too, there are conflicting accounts. Martin Walker, for example, claims just the opposite, stating that Hillary had laid down the law, telling Bill: “Unless you're ready to change, we're getting a divorce.”
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Whatever Hillary said about divorce, and whoever counseled the couple, the reported reconciliation made little difference to Bill, who soon went right back to the dysfunctional behavior. Joyce Milton writes that Clinton's pursuit of other women, “if it was interrupted at all, soon resumed.” In turn, says Milton, Hillary, “as she had before,” now once again “expressed her determination to make the marriage
work by dedicating herself ever more fiercely to the business of getting Bill elected.” Adds Milton: “This dynamic, so obvious to outsiders, inevitably led to speculation that the Clintons had a marriage of convenience, based solely on their shared political ambitions.” Yet, says Milton, “It wasn't that simple. There was very little that could be called ‘convenient' about the Clintons' marriage. But Hillary at this point had invested almost as much effort in Bill's career as he had, a consideration that had to weigh heavily against any thought of divorce.”
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The Chelsea Factor

Not to be forgotten amid these marital problems was a harsh reality caught right smack in the middle of this: a sweet little girl named Chelsea. By the late 1990s, it was hard for her to ignore that something was wrong. With Arkansas's small size, the Clintons had become something of a soap opera, and the rumors were unavoidable. To cope, Chelsea turned to her church—the same place where Hugh Rodham's daughter and Virginia Clinton's son had once found comfort at the same age when the adults in their lives misbehaved.

Several years prior, Chelsea had joined her mom's church, where she was baptized and confirmed. But that did not happen right away: According to Judith Warner, Hillary felt it was important for Chelsea to choose her own denomination, believing that by doing so Chelsea's confirmation would take on added significance for the young girl. Though Hillary did not have the luxury of making her own denominational choice, she relished the remembrance and the significance of her confirmation at First United in Park Ridge and wanted her daughter to feel the same spiritual connection to whatever church she chose. Around the age of ten, Chelsea went to her father's church for a time, attending Sunday school at Immanuel Baptist. Later on, she began to visit Hillary's church, and shortly thereafter decided that
the Methodist church was the right choice for her. Hillary was reportedly relieved when Chelsea decided on Methodism, as was Dorothy Rodham, who, during those days of Chelsea's Baptist Sunday school, had once heard the little girl bark out a charge of blasphemy when the words “Oh, my God!” passed through her grandma's lips. That one scolding from the little girl was all it took. “Dorothy Rodham didn't relish the idea of a fundamentalist Southern Baptist grandchild,” says Warner.
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Chelsea felt more at home at First United Methodist in Little Rock, her mom's church on Center Street. On the day she was confirmed at the church, Bill Clinton joined his wife for the ceremony. Senior Pastor Ed Matthews had many dealings with the Clintons simply through Chelsea and the process of her confirmation. He worked with Chelsea for nine months, during which he says he “spent a good bit of time with each of the parents,” and felt “greatly inspired by all three of them.” Matthews said that while Bill Clinton attended Immanuel Baptist, “when anything involved Chelsea at our church—she was always in the Christmas pageants and the children's choir—he was always there in the front row cheering her on.” He added that Chelsea was “greatly devoted” both to her parents and to her confirmation classes.
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Matthews says that he saw a need to offer some counsel to Chelsea when the sexual accusations were being made against her father. He remembered:

“As it turns out,” added Matthews, “some of these things were true, but this was her effort to prepare Chelsea.”
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One of the more dubious ways that Chelsea's mom and dad prepared her was shared by Mrs. Clinton in her book
It Takes a Village
. As Bill prepared for another election, Hillary explained to Chelsea that Daddy had enemies, mean men who said cruel, untrue things about her father. Hillary recommended a game: Chelsea could pretend to be her daddy, campaigning and telling people that she was the nice governor, Bill Clinton, who had “done a good job” and “helped a lot of people.” “Please vote for me,” she said.
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Just then, Hillary and her husband descended, morphing into the
evil
men that campaigned against Bill, snarling, saying “terrible” things about Chelsea's daddy, about how he was a “really mean man” who hurt people. When the frightened little girl's eyes filled with tears, and she protested, “Why would anybody say things like that?” the Clintons backed off, mission accomplished—for now.

The child care champion judged the role-playing game effective and continued the systematized training for the weeks ahead over several more dinners, until Chelsea had “gradually gained mastery” of her emotions and was equipped to “discern motives” of her father's accusers—which apparently meant that she was taught to reflexively assess negatives tossed at her father as mean-spirited fibs.
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Surprisingly, Hillary wrote openly of her unorthodox method, not grasping
that some would later question it as an ill-advised form of borderline psychological child abuse.
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Whether it was out of their love for each other, their love for Chelsea, or their love for politics, the Clintons' marriage managed to survive the turmoil of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Despite the discrepancies over the extent of Ed Matthews's personal involvement in the eventual reconciliation, it seems clear that, in a variety of ways, Hillary leaned on her faith to help her during this troubled time. Spending time with Chelsea in confirmation class and being a presence at her church in Little Rock, Hillary more than once looked to her faith, and in the midst of the repeated accusations and public controversy, she appears to have turned to God to give her the strength to hold the relationship together.

But although her faith in God during this period seems undeniable, questions persist about her ultimate motivations for remaining by her husband's side, and these questions would only get louder as the public stage of their lives got bigger. While it is safe to speculate that as a wife and as a mother she wanted to keep the family together, the debate continues to rage over why during these difficult years she was so determined to stand by her husband, who seemed so incapable of changing his ways. Indeed, this is a question that people have been asking about Hillary for years: As an independent, intelligent woman whose politics and social causes were very much a product of the women's liberation movement, why would she stay with a man who repeatedly defied her requests to change?