CLIFT: What does it mean for women to have you as First Lady? CLINTON: What we are going through is generational and social and global, and a large part of it has to do with the role and responsibilities of women. Many of the questions that are raised by the changes that have occurred are being dealt with day in and day out in people’s individual private lives and in the political and professional work world as well. But there isn’t yet any clear consensus about how we are defining ourselves, the changing roles between men and women. So it’s been actually an exciting year in many ways. Many, many people have had to think about issues in different ways than maybe they ever had before.
Women have historically juggled different roles. Is this juggling act getting harder or easier because of the changes you’re talking about? Well, that’s a real good question. I think that there are some parts that are easier, and some parts that are harder. I really think that life, in general, for many Americans is a funny combination of much less demanding physical tasks, but much broader responsibilities and stresses as a result of technological changes, of increased mobility, of economic pressures. So on the one hand, it’s very exciting to see how many people have an opportunity now to define their own lives in terms that were never available to their grandmothers or grandfathers, but it’s also a daunting prospect that leads to a lot of stressful and even alienating experiences for people in the modern world.
The real interesting set of issues for me are the whole intersection of women’s and men’s roles with what is now being called a kind of “postmodern age,” where we are all recognizing that the kinds of rationalistic, scientific, technical, organizational responses to human needs in the past several centuries are not sufficient to respond to people’s deeper yearnings, their spiritual desires and the way they treat one another.
I know you don’t want to talk specifically about what you’ll do as First Lady, but traditionally the East Wing has been the nurturing side of the White House. Do you see yourself as shaping the country’s spiritual destiny? Oh, I don’t know. I certainly want to give people a feeling of possibility, and openness, and nurturing, and support both in what we do specifically at the White House and in the kind of messages we send out about what is important to us and what we think is significant in life. But the exact day-today way of doing that, I don’t really know yet.
Do you agree math Susan Faludi’s thesis in her book “Backlash,” and do you think you were a victim of backlash this year? I don’t know. I certainly think that any time life is changing quickly, and people are being thrust into new roles and responsibilities, and the level of insecurity-economic and psychological-is rising, then it’s to be expected that those who have traditionally been considered less powerful will suffer some backlash, whether it’s ethnically, religiously, racially or gender-based. And so, I think that the point is well taken but I think that it has to be seen as a part of a much larger set of issues that people are struggling with.
You use the phrase “less powerful,” and yet the criticism of you has always been that you’re too powerful. Well, I think that in gender or class or status terms, women are stereotyped in that way. And any time anyone, perhaps, defies or confuses those stereotypes, that does create a reaction.
You have not said much publicly during this transition period. Why are you so quiet when so many people are so excited at the prospect of you being in the White House? I don’t think I have been quiet. I have given two major speeches on children’s issues. I have spoken out all through the campaign, oftentimes in ways that weren’t covered nationally, but got a lot of local press coverage. . . [SO] I really felt a little confused when people would say: well, you know, you’re not speaking out. I mean, you know, I continued to make four to five speeches a day. I had crowds of 10, 12, up to 20,000 at university campuses. So, you know, I continued to do what I felt very comfortable doing in the campaign.
Then the quiet is more about your future role. You haven’t explained or discussed what you’ll do in the White House. I guess you want to lot that evolve. Exactly.
Was the criticism directed against you during the campaign personal, or did it reflect a larger conflict about the role of women? Well, I don’t really know. I think that some of it was very politically motivated. People who were trying to cast me in some role that they could then gain political advantage from by contrasting with me. And some of it was a result of this confusion that we have been talking about. I’ve viewed much of it as either not relevant to what I cared about, or not accurate in its depiction of me-kind of off base, I guess, in terms of how it’s tried to characterize who I was or what I believed in, that I really didn’t take it personally. I viewed it as either deliberate political strategy or a consequence of these changing times that we’re living in that I was partly caught up in.
What do you think the ’90s will be about when it comes to the role of women? Well, I think the ’90s is a time where we’re trying to reconcile a lot of the changes that we’ve lived through in the last 20 or 30 years, where we acknowledge that we have a right to have control over our own destinies and to define ourselves as individuals; but where we also acknowledge that, whether it’s biological or social, women want to be part of relationships as well, and to be connected to something bigger than themselves as part of the kind of ongoing cycle of life.
When women present themselves, often they have to prove they’re as tough as the guys, and then they have to worry about softening their image. Have you experienced that? Well, I think you know I’ve worked in some way or another ever since I was 13 during the summers. And full time: worked through college, worked through law school and certainly full time since I’ve been a lawyer. And I think that women are always being tested. The tests go on inside the home as well as outside the home. And I think that it is an extra burden that we carry to be able to fit into a workplace that is based on values and experiences that we didn’t have much role in shaping, but in which we want to make our contribution. When we have to shift gears and still be as nurturing and understanding and supportive to those closest to us, it does cause some difficulty, I think, for a lot of women. And men who are equally confused about how to define themselves and their relation to this new world order that is coming up between the sexes.
A lot of women are projecting their hopes and their fears on you. How does that make you feel? You can only do the best job you’re able to do. I try to be who I am, and to both present that and to feel comfortable with what I’m doing because, ultimately, nobody can live anybody else’s life. And you can get hints from looking at how other people behave … But ultimately, each of us has to define who we are individually and then do the very best job we can to grow into that.
You certainly won over Barbara Bush. Well, she has been very friendly and warm to me for many years.
If there weren’t 20 years between you, she could very well be you. Many of the things that have been said and written both by her and about her over the past years, I think, recognize that. You know, she made her life choices and lived them in an exemplary fashion. She has been quoted as saying she doesn’t know what choices she would have made had she been born 20 or 30 years later.
In moving to Washington, I know you must have some concerns about Chelsea. You’ve always tried to give her a normal life. What are your thoughts about that, and is normality possible in the White House? We’re just not sure, I suppose, about all of the actual experiences she’ll be subjected to, but we’re going to do the best we r-an to do what we’ve done here, and that is to give her as normal a life as possible. But we don’t have any hard, fast rules to guide us. We’re just going to be pretty much making it up as we go.
Has she talked to Amy Carter? No, she didn’t do that actually. And, in fact, we told [reporters] that had never occurred but they printed it anyway.
