Living History by Unknown (the lemonade war series txt) 📗

just as the tower crashed where I’d been sitting. I was shaken up, and Bill held me tight, whispering over and over, “I’ve got you. Don’t worry. You’re okay. I love you.”

The interviewer, Steve Kroft, started with a series of questions about our relationship and the state of our marriage. He asked whether Bill had committed adultery and whether we had been separated or had contemplated divorce. We declined to answer such personal questions about our private lives. But Bill acknowledged that he had caused pain in our marriage and said he would leave it to voters to decide whether that disqualified him from the Presidency.

Kroft: I think most Americans would agree that it’s very admirable that you have stayed together, that you’ve worked your problems out, that you seem to have reached some sort of an understanding and an arrangement.

An arrangement? An understanding? Kroft may have been trying to pay us a compliment, but his categorization of our marriage was so off target that Bill was incredulous.

So was I.

Bill Clinton: Wait a minute. You’re looking at two people who love each other. This is not an arrangement or an understanding. This is a marriage. That’s a very different thing.

I wish I had let him have the last word, but now it was my turn to add my two cents, and I did.

Hillary Clinton: You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together. And you know, if that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him.

Although the interview lasted fifty-six minutes, CBS broadcast about ten minutes, leaving out much of what was important―at least as far as I was concerned. We hadn’t known how drastically they would cut our words. Still, I was relieved that it was over.

Bill and I felt good about how we had responded and so did everyone with us. Apparently, most Americans agreed with our basic point: that the election was about them, not our marriage. Twenty-three days later, Bill became known as the “Comeback Kid” for his strong second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.

I didn’t fare as well. The fallout from my reference to Tammy Wynette was instant―

as it deserved to be―and brutal. Of course, I meant to refer to Tammy Wynette’s famous song, “Stand by Your Man,” not to her as a person. But I wasn’t careful in my choice of words, and my comment unleashed a torrent of angry reactions. I regretted the way I had come across, and I apologized to Tammy personally and later publicly in another television interview. But the damage was done. And more was on the way.

In early March, with the Democratic primary season in high gear, former California Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Jerry Brown went on the offensive against Bill, focusing on my law practice and on the Rose Law Firm, where I had been a partner since 1979. After Bill became Governor again in 1983, I asked my law partners to calculate my share of profits, without including fees earned by other lawyers for work done for the state or any state agency. The Rose Firm had provided these services to the Arkansas State government for decades. There was no conflict of interest, but I wanted to avoid every appearance of one. The firm agreed to wall me off from the work and any fees derived from it. When Frank White tried to make this an issue in the 1986 Arkansas gubernatorial campaign, he was embarrassed when the facts established that other Arkansas law firms had received significantly more business from the state while Bill was Governor.

Spoon-fed false information by Bill’s political adversaries in the state, Jerry Brown recycled the charges for the debate in Chicago two days before the March 17 primaries in Illinois and Michigan. Brown accused Bill of steering state business to the Rose Firm to increase my income. It was a spurious and opportunistic charge that had no basis in fact.

And it’s what led to the infamous “cookies and tea” incident.

Bill and I were at the Busy Bee Coffee Shop in Chicago, trailed by a gaggle of cameras and microphones. With the Illinois primary looming, reporters were throwing questions at Bill about Brown’s charges. Then a reporter asked me what I thought of Brown’s accusations against us. My answer was long and rambling: “I thought, number one, [the remark] was pathetic and desperate, and also thought it was interesting because this is the sort of thing that happens to … women who have their own careers and their own lives. And I think it’s a shame, but I guess it’s something that we’re going to have to live with. Those of us who have tried and have a career―tried to have an independent life and to make a difference―and certainly like myself who has children … you know I’ve done the best I can to lead my life, but I suppose it’ll be subject to attack. But it’s not true and I don’t [know] what else to say except it’s sad to me.”

Then came the reporter’s follow-up―about whether I could have avoided an appearance of conflict of interest when my husband was Governor.

“I wish that were true,” I replied. “You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life. And I’ve worked very, very hard to be as careful as possible, and that’s all I can tell you.”

It wasn’t my most eloquent moment. I could have said, “Look, short of abandoning my law firm partnership and staying home, there was nothing more I could have done to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Besides, I’ve done quite a lot of cookiebaking in my day, and tea-pouring, too!

My aides, aware that