It was a hoot. I am aware that some people Watching, and not all of them Republicans either, were less amused than disgusted by the obsequious manner of so many of the male interrogators. But this aspect of things was, surely, in the first instance, comic. It put me in mind of nothing so much as that dazing moment a few years back when it became plain to the legislators conducting the hearing that any hostile question or even rudeness of bearing directed at the saintly Oliver North was likely to be repaid at the polls in November with political mayhem. Part of the would-be hostile congressmen’s discomfiture in going after North was no doubt due to his incredibly effective testimony; but as much, I think. was due to his special cachet as a decorated serviceman. Likewise Hillary Clinton came to the Hill with the special cachet of being the president’s wife, a lady, as the gents still say, the First Lady, yet. They don’t know how to sock such a person in public, any more than they could successfully jump a teary-eyed, prayerful, uniformed Marine.
I dwell on this because it should carry a bit of warning as to both the depth and the longevity of all the amity proclaimed on this matter in Washington last week. Eras of good feeling have an awfully short life expectancy here, and the very greasiness of some of the compliments suggested to me that they were not wholly premised on Clinton’s command of the subject and commitment to getting something big and serious done. There was a whiff of that artificial, condescending little-ladyism that is sort of like the cockroach and the spiky horsetail plant, those life forms that have defied the odds and survived intact since remotest prehistoric times, while seemingly hardier creatures were going extinct right and left. Like them, little-ladyism will never be eliminated from the ecosystem, in this case Washington’s. It will just be there. And it will always be expressed in the same patronizing way many people choose to congratulate some elderly soul, say, for being “92 years young.” Thus, of a politician’s wife it is invariably said, in this mode, during banquet introductions and so forth, “Now, she should be the president [or governor or senator, or whatever], of course,” at which everybody present goes, “Heh, heh, heh,” and after that, clap, clap, clap.
Well, naturally, this is being said about Hillary Clinton as she moves to the center of the health-care-reform debate. But in her case it is more than just the usual embarrassing badinage. It should be taken as an ominous sign by those in the Clinton entourage who may be dazzled by the response she got in her first week’s testimony. For it says that, whatever her professional presentation, she is seen not as a working official but as a First Lady, and today’s response of excessive gallantry can easily become tomorrow’s response of suspicion and resentment. The fact is that Hillary Clinton has gone well beyond all her modern predecessors in her engagement in her husband’s government. She may have the independent spirit of Betty Ford, the shrewdness of Lady Bird Johnson, the seriousness of Rosalynn Carter, etc., down the line, but she is something different from all of these and more than the sum of their attributes. She is a strong, separate source of power inside the administration with a mandate of authority from the president and an operational base from which to carry it out.
In fact, the proper comparison for her is not another First Lady at all, but rather Bobby Kennedy-the second most important person in government; a close relative whose relationship with the boss was thus unbreakable, only partly official and impervious to outside scrutiny or pressure; the most thoroughly trusted and thoroughly empowered agent of JFK, given many of the most sensitive and difficult tasks to be accomplished, and, finally someone whose own vitality, skill and power managed to create within the government a kind of quasi network of workers in the agencies known as “Bobby’s people.” All this earned him variously admiration, adoration, respect, fear and detestation throughout the administration as well as in Congress. For better and for worse Hillary Clinton can expect about the same.
For here is one unblinkable truth. As smart and professional and hardworking as she is and whatever she may accomplish in government, Hillary Clinton is the president’s wife and that fact will continuously play into the way she is perceived and treated by others in government. She is Clinton’s wife as much as Bobby was Kennedy’s brother. As with Bobby, when she says “we” as she did last week -“we” will look at your proposal or “we” would not prohibit that-her interlocutors are wondering just who the “we” is, the task force or the family. This is unfair because she has been so unremittingly professional about her work, but it is true because she is not Hillary Jones. Hillary Clinton is making precedents big time in her role. Many of those legislators who were so deferential last week haven’t yet figured out how to deal with this. You have to believe that, caught looking like simps, they will now set about trying.
