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For all her disdain for the national press, Hillary Rodham Clinton had a long honeymoon. By and large, reporters have gently chronicled her reinvention of the First Lady's office as she added a major policy role to the traditional portfolio of hostess and cheerleader. The glowing press accounts of her crusade for health-care reform, full of charmed lawmkers and cheering crowds, helped boost her popularity higher than her husband's at times. Profiles charted the spiritual journey that inspired her social activism, the theologians she read, the ministers she admired. The New York Times Magazine dressed her in white silk and pearls and captioned her St. Hillary. Her staff loved the picture.
This was risky territory for a public figure: if pride is bad, then one doesn't dare seem proud of being good. Both Bill and Hillary came to Washington promising an end to politics as usual, a rebirth of responsibility, a Politics of Meaning derived from the Golden Rule. Such a specific claim to moral authority can hardly withstand charges of tax chiseling and corner cutting by Hillary and those closest to her. "Can a President credibly advance an ethic of national service," asked Clinton's nemesis on the Hill, Congressman Jim Leach, "if his own model is one of self-service?"
Even the President's friends came to realize the dangers of moral hubris, particularly as revealed by a generation of '60s reformers who campaigned against the '80s as the Decade of Greed. "They think of themselves as the most ethical people in the world," says an Administration insider. "They think everything they do or say is aboveboard and for the good of the country. Therefore they can't understand why someone would doubt their integrity. That is a big part of the problem."
It is a problem for the President's bushy-tailed staffers, who last week were being called upon to explain why 15 top officials had been working for more than a year without proper security clearance. White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers admitted that she and others have been working on temporary passes since the Inauguration because, Myers says, she has been too busy to do the paperwork. "There are no excuses," she said. "I should have done it, and I just kept putting it off."
Despite Clinton's evocation during the campaign of a country that "works hard and plays by the rules," the rules don't always apply in the Clinton White House. Critics recall the infamous haircut on the runway, the summary firing of the travel staff, the use of the FBI to investigate the travel operation. "The Clinton message is 'I'm pure,' " said a veteran of the Reagan White House, " 'I'm above the law.' It's almost Nixonian. And it's a tragic flaw."
Whitewater has introduced all sorts of ironies into the most interesting marriage in America. The official word coming from the White House was that "this has brought them closer together. There is more phone calling during the day, more talking back and forth, a need to reach out to each other more," an official observed. "It is probably a natural reaction to stress and adversity coming from outside." The stress cannot have been helped by the President's having to fire Nussbaum, his wife's early mentor, or invite a special prosecutor to interrogate her closest allies.