Lucky for Martha, there's another vilified damsel to provide guidance: Hillary. The two have a lot more in common than first-name recognition. Both rose to the top by dint of brains, resolve, and marriages that jump-started their careers — Martha's to the publisher of her first books, Hillary's to a governor-to-be. Both have had their financial transactions investigated by ambitious prosecutors. Both were humiliated by husbands who fell for younger women. Both are loved and hated for driving while blond.
Last week, though, their fortunes couldn't have been more different. Hillary was soaring high, a U.S. senator whose mega-memoir, Living History, had topped the bestseller list before reaching the shelves, even as she was being hailed by many Democrats as her party's best hope of recapturing the presidency. Martha, meanwhile, was stepping down from the presidency of a billion-dollar empire she started from scratch, having been arraigned at Manhattan's federal courthouse on charges of securities fraud and obstruction of justice. She may have been spared the perp walk, but the sight of Martha in such imperfect circumstances was a shock — the only visible touch of the domestic goddess of old being the spotless white umbrella held above her head.
Yet, in that spectacle lay the seeds of Martha's resurrection, if only she'll stop wielding her whisk long enough to take note of Hillary's example.
Has any public figure ever had more near-death experiences than Hillary Clinton, or risen further from the ashes? In the White House, she first stonewalled, haughtily dismissing her detractors as politically motivated. That worked to a point. A raft of grand juries declined to indict her for anything: not Whitewater, not Castle Grande, not missing billing records, not cattle futures. She occasionally leavened her approach with, well, a touch of Martha, giving a tour of the mansion at Christmas showcasing homemade ornaments, gushing over the pastry chef as he prepared a State Dinner, going on a heritage tour with Ralph Lauren, publishing a book on entertaining at the White House. But none of that rehabilitated her public image. It took her husband's humiliating, reckless affair to turn the tide. Even then, Hillary at first instinctively resisted any sympathy for standing by her man. Once she finally accepted it, she won the widespread popularity that had always eluded her. Wooing county chairmen from Utica and Poughkeepsie, and mastering the arcana of dairy price supports was not what won Hillary her Senate seat. It was Monica.
And now, with this book, she revisits the scene of her humiliation — reluctantly, no doubt, but with a purpose. She knew she'd have to show a little ankle to justify such a huge advance. She also knew the book would allow her to set in stone (or print) the parts of the fiasco that had proved so useful. Indeed, Hillary plays the victim card to perfection, shrouding her lawyer-like efforts to set the record straight. If Hillary had initially been an involuntary victim, she now reprises the role voluntarily. It worked once; it is working again.
So far, Martha has modeled herself more on the early, emotion-free Hillary — most memorably in that disastrous CBS Morning News appearance shortly after the insider-trading allegations broke. She snapped that the accusations against her were "ridiculous," and then brandishing her knife at the head of cabbage she was turning into coleslaw, she concluded "I'm just going to focus on my salad." In a flash, we saw the Martha behind the fluffy 300-thread count towels, the one alleged to have fired her gardener over pennies and to turn to ice the minute the klieg lights go off.
But Martha still has time to morph into Hillary, the Later Years.
One tinge of regret, a single flicker of remorse, could get her millions of fans once again wanting to walk in her garden clogs, buying a sympathy gallon of aubergine paint, or gluing themselves to the TV to watch her make cocoa from imported beans, in much the way Hillary got the blue-haired and blue-collar ladies of upstate New York to vote for her.
Martha took a step in that direction on Wednesday, giving in to the disgrace of the moment, looking distraught and wounded and disheveled for the first time ever on camera. Like that other distressed damsel Hillary, who had Ken Starr, Martha has a villain: James Comey, the U.S. Attorney for New York. He may protest too much when insisting he's indicting Stewart not for "who she is, but because of what she did." Other federal prosecutors readily admit that going after a celebrity is a cost-effective way to deter all the potential lawbreakers out there. But note there is such a thing as going too far. The prosecution needed to show Stewart wasn't above the law, which they've done, and now needs to show she's not beneath it. But should Stewart be forced to choose between her right to declare her innocence and being charged with securities fraud or face indictment unless she agrees to jail time? Martha deserves much of what's she's gotten. But has she behaved more arrogantly than Citigroup's Sandy Weill and Jack Grubman, or bankrupted her company buying $15,000 umbrella stands? Does she deserve to be hung in the town square for lying about trading on information men have been exchanging on the back nine for years?
On Wednesday as she slunk back into her black limousine, you could see the white flag of surrender, however briefly, on her fallen face. She should freeze-dry that demeanor, and disseminate it on her robin-egg-blue web site. She can find pointers in Hillary's chapter on Monica, which doesn't so much show that Hillary's smart — which we knew — but that she's human, which we sometimes wondered about. That doesn't mean Hillary the legal gladiator doesn't take the opportunity to set the record straight on what she knew (nothing) and when she knew it (not until Bill's public admission). But she shrouds that crucial point in a show of grief, describing how she gulped for air and cried and felt the universal female emotion of wanting to wring her husband's neck. There's a couple million votes right there. Martha just needs to don a hairshirt under her perfect Oxford blouse, confess to misjudgments as if she's on Oprah, show contrition, ask forgiveness. She can continue to say she's innocent, but at the same time open herself up to the mercy of public opinion. It's the only way to make schadenfreude give way to sympathy. Who knows? One day the First Lady of Domestic Arts could run for the Senate from New York. Stranger things have happened.
Margaret Carlson's latest book is "Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House"