One was Jean Houston, co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which studies psychic experience and altered and expanded consciousness. She was a believer in spirits, mythic and other connections to history and other worlds. Houston believed that her personal archetypal predecessor was Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. She conducted extensive dialogues with Athena on her computer that she called ““docking with one’s angel.''
Clinton acknowledged that he was feeling pretty beaten down. As both Clinton and Hillary described their lives and the White House, Jean Houston felt their deep torment. But she saw possibilities in their extraordinary openness about their pain.
Hillary and Houston clicked, especially during a discussion of how to use the office for the betterment of society. Houston said that Hillary was carrying the burden of 5,000 years of history when women were subservient. Hillary was reversing thousands of years of expectation, and was there up front, probably more than virtually any woman in human history – apart from Joan of Arc.
Houston saw some bitterness, but more sorrow in Hillary over her failed attempt to reform the nation’s health care system and the constant personal attacks she endured, which had forced her to the sidelines of the policy and public issue debates. Houston felt at one point that being Hillary was like being Mozart with his hands cut off, unable to play.
Though Houston did not articulate the image, she felt that Hillary was going through a female crucifixion. She had perhaps never seen such a vulnerable person, but also one who was available to new ideas and solutions.
Houston told Hillary that she would prevail. Hillary was creating a new pattern of possibility for women. She had to hang in there, not give up. Her time would come when she would be in the place and the role that she could really express the fullness of what she was.
Hillary invited Houston to the White House that spring of 1995. Houston noticed a big picture of Eleanor Roosevelt in Hillary’s office, and the two women talked about Hillary’s famous predecessor as First Lady. Clearly, Houston thought, Eleanor was Hillary’s archetypal, spiritual partner, much as the Greek goddess Athena was for Houston.
On a visit to the White House in early April, Houston proposed that Hillary search further and dig deeper for her connections to Mrs. Roosevelt. Houston and her work were controversial because she believed in spirits and other worlds, put people into trances and used hypnosis, and because in the 1960s she had conducted experiments with LSD. But she tried to be careful with Hillary and the president, intentionally avoiding any of those techniques.
Houston went with Hillary to the solarium atop the White House. It was afternoon and they sat around a circular table with several members of the First Lady’s staff. One was tape recording the session. The sunroom, which Hillary had redecorated and was her favorite place for important meetings, offered a spectacular view to the south of the Washington Monument.
Houston asked Hillary to imagine she was having a conversation with Eleanor. In her strong and self-confident voice, Houston asked Hillary to shut her eyes in order to eliminate the room and her surroundings, and to focus her reflection by bringing in as many vivid internal sensory images as she could from her vast knowledge of Eleanor.
Hillary settled back in her seat and shut her eyes. She had just returned from a 10-day trip with her daughter Chelsea through South Asia, India and Nepal – a trip Houston, an old Asia hand herself, had encouraged her to make.
You’re walking down a hall, Houston said, and there’s Mrs. Roosevelt. Now let’s describe her.
Hillary did. She had a wonderful description of Eleanor smiling, outgoing, slightly frumpy, always engaged, always fighting.
Go there to Mrs. Roosevelt and talk about the future of children, Houston said.
Hillary gave a long answer. Children were her subject, 25 years of legal and policy advocacy on their behalf.
Houston asked the First Lady to open up herself to Mrs. Roosevelt as a way of looking at her own capacities and place in history. Houston regarded it as a classic technique, practiced by Machiavelli, who used to talk to ancient men. What might Eleanor say? What is your message to her? she asked Hillary.
Hillary addressed Eleanor, focusing on her predecessor’s fierceness and determination, her advocacy on behalf of people in need, the criticism, the loneliness the former First Lady felt. Hillary’s identification with Mrs. Roosevelt was intense and personal. They were members of an exclusive club of women who could comprehend the complexity, the ambiguity of their position. It’s hard, Hillary said. Why was there such a need in people to put other people down?
HOUSTON ENCOURAGED HILLARY TO PLAY THE OTHER part, to respond as Mrs. Roosevelt. The discourse with a person not there, particularly a historical figure in an equivalent position, opened up a whole constellation of ideas, Houston felt.
I was misunderstood, Hillary replied, her eyes still shut, speaking as Mrs. Roosevelt. You have to do what you think is right. It was crucial to set a course and hold to it.
Houston thought that in many great people’s lives a period of isolation and betrayal was followed by their most productive years. Attacks made their mission clearer. She had studied 55 creative people and found that most felt they had an archetype, a kind of spiritual partner. But Hillary was facing much greater toxicity and negativity than Eleanor had.
Houston explained that the rise of women to a level of partnership with men was not yet accepted. But women became more resourceful with adversity and backlash.
Hillary reviewed various attitudes and setbacks she had encountered. Each time Houston asked her, How would you explain this to Mrs. Roosevelt? And what would she respond?
The White House had been a shock, Hillary said. She had not been prepared for the kinds of attention she had received for every statement or move she made. Unintentionally, her allies often isolated her as much as her opponents, giving rise to impossible expectations, placing the spotlight on every aspect of her words, actions and past.
Houston said that Hillary needed to see and understand that Mrs. Roosevelt was not just a historic figure but was someone who also was hurt by all that happened to her. And yet Mrs. Roosevelt went on with her work. Hillary needed to unleash the same potential in herself. In adversity she needed to find the seeds of growth and transformation. It then would become possible to inherit from these mythical or historic figures, and to achieve self-healing.
Next, Houston asked Hillary to carry on a conversation with Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu leader, a powerful symbol of stoic self-denial. Talk to him, Houston said. What would you say and what would you ask?
Hillary expressed reverence and respect for Gandhi’s life and works, almost drawing his and her own life together with her words, opening herself up wide, acknowledging the level of his exertion, empathizing with his persecution. She said he too was profoundly misunderstood, when all he wanted to do was to help others and make peace. It was a strong personal outpouring – virtual therapy, and unusual in front of a large group.
Talk with Jesus Christ, Houston proposed next. Jesus was the epitome of the wounded, betrayed and isolated, and Houston liked to quote Jesus, saying, ““What you have within you that you express will save you, and what you have within you that you do not express will destroy you.''
That would be too personal, Hillary said, declining to address Jesus.
Houston felt that she, Hillary, and some of Hillary’s staff formed a kind of ““old girls’ club.’’ Within the club they often communicated with a single word, a laugh, a joke or a lifted eyebrow.
Houston had at least one more deep, reflective meditation session, in which Hillary closed her eyes and carried on an imaginary discussion with Eleanor Roosevelt. Houston’s purpose was to move forward so Hillary put her ““wounding’’ in the middle of her story, ending with the birth of a new grace.
Houston regarded this as intensely difficult. Hillary was not there yet.
In 1995, this articulate woman of great intelligence, talent, stamina and genuine caring seemed not to know what course she was on or where she was heading.
In public she kept up a good front, declaring that she felt no confusion or pain. She laughed, giggled and dismissed most suggestions or questions about her apparent setbacks and difficulties.
Hillary remarked that she was sure that good habits were the key to survival. ““I really believe you can change the way you feel and think if you discipline yourself. You know, there’s that great phrase, I think it’s in Alcoholics Anonymous, that somebody once told me, “Fake it till you make it’.''
On March 21, 1996, when Jean Houston visited the White House, she thought that Hillary seemed a little down. In her role as spirit lifter, Houston told some jokes and stories.
Maggie Williams, chief of staff to the First Lady, said later, ““Oh, Hillary’s ticking. She’s had her “Jean fix’.''
As Williams saw it, Hillary found Houston very smart and colorful, a vivid personality with a great gift for language. In these toughest of times, Hillary had 10 to 11 confidants, including Houston and Hillary’s mother. But Houston was the most dramatic.
Houston sensed the president’s nervousness around her, and she was not sure Clinton liked her. So she asked Hillary whether he did.
““Oh, yes, yeah,’’ Hillary replied.
““Sometimes he’s uneasy,’’ Houston said.
““Well, he’s basically a very conservative man,’’ Hillary said.
Houston wondered what might happen if her role as adviser and friend to the first couple became public.
““If I ever get caught,’’ Houston asked Hillary, ““what should I say?''
““Just tell the truth,’’ Hillary replied, ““just tell them you’re my friend.''
The Fall of 1994 was a disquieting time for President Clinton. He felt isolated, lonely and angry. The first two years of his presidency had been grueling, leaving him off balance. He had not yet conquered the presidency.
In spite of his outward gregariousness on social occasions, Clinton functioned as an outsider in his own city. In private to his intimates it was ““the Washington crowd’’ or ““the f-ing Washington crowd.’’ He made scathing and graphically obscene references to individuals he thought embodied the city.
Hillary Clinton dramatically reinforced this sense of isolation and hostility. She felt that the Washington establishment looked down on them. ““The Washington Post does it all the time,’’ Hillary said privately to an associate. ““They are so snotty about people who don’t live in Georgetown, and I don’t understand that. It’s almost unconscious in a way and anybody who wants to play in their big league has to adopt that manner. And The New York Times does it, too. It infects the atmosphere.''
For Clinton, it seemed as if an automatic cynicism was routinely applied to almost everything he or his administration did. ““This cynicism is my enemy,’’ he said. ““Cynicism’’ was, in part, a codeword for media cynicism.
THOUGH HE OFFERED MANY EXPLANATIONS FOR HIS situation as president, Clinton frequently railed against people in his own inner circle who he felt had betrayed him and presented the media with a false portrait of him and the way he made decisions. ““Traitors on my staff,’’ he called them to more than one intimate. Polls showed his approval ratings had dipped dangerously low, jeopardizing his re-election. Clinton reached outside for help.
He turned to Dick Morris, a Connecticut-based political consultant he had first used 17 years earlier in his initial run for Governor of Arkansas but who now worked almost exclusively for Republican candidates. Clinton had talked intermittently with Morris throughout his presidency, but now the conversations became more frequent.
Clinton and Morris had shared a stormy, on-again and off-again relationship for much of the past two decades. Morris, 47, represented a side of Clinton that the President disliked in himself – the pragmatist who knew that a candidate needed to jockey to reposition himself to win elections. But the attraction between Clinton and Morris was almost magnetic. They knew and understood each other so well they could finish each other’s sentences.
Clinton asked Morris to make an assessment, help reposition the administration and develop a message that would enable him to win re-election in 1996.
Morris told the president first that there had been too much people-pleasing and pandering in the Clinton White House – acquiescence to positions a cabinet officer or a powerful White House staff member was pushing. Second, Clinton had drawn too many ideas and staff from the orthodox wing of the Democratic Party. Third, the political consultants and young staffers like George Stephanopoulos seemed to regard Clinton as the Dauphin, a child king, and the administration as a regency government that had to be held together by the court – his staff.
Leon Panetta, the White House Chief of Staff, did not fully understand what was going on. Panetta had met with Clinton and Morris, and he knew he was someone with powerful lines into the president, but Clinton had not made it clear that Morris was the source of all these new ideas. He had only vaguely referred to someone named ““Charlie,’’ a codeword for Morris’s secret input. Panetta also knew he didn’t like the angle ““Charlie’’ was providing.
Panetta was losing control of the White House operation, and he went into a depression. He was supposed to coordinate the ideas and formulate a political and communications strategy, and Clinton instead had vested authority elsewhere. His initial reaction was to resist, and he turned to his staff dogs and underlings to criticize Morris.
How can I do my job? Panetta asked. He realized he had a choice. He could quit. He could continue to snipe and resist. Or he could find a way to accommodate and include Morris.
Panetta had several very blunt conversations with the president about Morris. ““You have to filter out half of what Dick says,’’ Clinton told him. ““He can get wacky.’’ The president said he could separate the good Morris ideas from the bad Morris ideas. ““He’s going to think strategically. He thinks like I do in terms of where we need to be and what we need to do.''
Panetta could see that the re-election campaign was beginning to inhabit the body of the president more and more.
““I want him in,’’ Clinton said.
Late at night, Clinton would sometimes call Senator Christopher Dodd, the head of the Democratic Party. One call came after midnight. As they talked at about 12:30, Dodd heard an occasional snapping noise in the background. The sound perplexed him at first as he recounted one trip, reporting in detail the good news that Clinton had genuine support among the party faithful. Finally Dodd recognized the distinctive sound of playing cards being shuffled and slowly turned. The president was playing solitaire. Jesus, Dodd thought, at least he ought to be able to get Clinton’s full attention at that hour. Dodd would keep the memory of the young president playing solitaire, on the phone late at night, seeking ideas and comfort.
