Attaboy

Their Lives: The Women Targeted By The Clinton Machine
by Candace E. Jackson
Publisher: World Ahead Publishing, Gardena, Ca

The recent release of two very different works about the Clintons has created an unfortunate confluence over their subject matter. That’s a shame for one of those books, because it provides a unique insight into Bill Clinton’s behavior before and during his White House years. Yet much of the recent discussion about Edward Klein’s The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President has drawn attention away from Candace Jackson’s remarkable Their Lives. Even though Jackson’s book focuses on the Clinton who already served in the White House, it provides a unique insight into his behavior with and against a familiar group of women, one that shatters the myth of the good ol’ fellow who happened to be President.

The subjects of Their Lives are familiar to anyone remotely interested in the Clinton years: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Katherine Willey, Juanita Broadderick, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Sally Perdue. These women all have the distinction of either having had consensual sexual affairs with Bill Clinton, or having accused him of acts ranging from sexual harassment to outright rape. His relationship with Lewinsky and his sexual advances toward Jones provided the fodder for both embarrassing admissions and clever manipulations of truth by Clinton and his proxies, a failed impeachment attempt by Republicans, and an Office of Independent Council probe that sickened many with its salacious details and that fed the late-night talk show comedians with years’ worth of material.

Each woman’s story is re-told, one per chapter, in various levels of detail (some of the women cooperated with Jackson and provided interview material; some did not). Although Jackson avoids the extreme details of the Lewinsky affair, she provides enough background on each woman and the specifics of each one’s experiences with Clinton to establish a historical base. In that regard, there’s little here that hasn’t been covered elsewhere.

But the similarities to other probes ends there. Early on, Jackson points out that the very title of her book was meant to drive home an important point: that this volume is about the lives of the women negatively affected by Bill Clinton, who gave most of them barely a word of mention in his 1000-page biographical tome, My Life. This despite the fact that in many of these cases, whether the sexual advances were consensual or unwelcome, nearly all of these women were, to some degree, victimized by the political machine with which Clinton surrounded himself. That machine cranked up rapidly beginning with his run for the 1992 presidential nomination, when the allegations of his indiscretions began to surface nationally.

Jackson establishes that Clinton, through his alleged unwanted sexual advances and assaults followed by the second wave of mistreatment by his personal and political attack machine, frequently fits the classic definition of a misogynist, one who actually hates women. But, states Jackson, Clinton is more than just the standard misogynist; in reality, Clinton is a “liberal misogynist”…

…a person who supports women’s rights politically yet repeatedly mistreats women personally.

At this point, Jackson has established the unique analytic concept that threads its way throughout her book. Following each chapter devoted to one woman’s story, she establishes that people who adhere to the same liberal political tenets of Bill Clinton frequently justify their (or specifically, his) behavior because of those very political tenets. In each chapter, Jackson selects one specific liberal political belief, relates it to the victimization of a specific subject, then connects each to Clinton, the “liberal misogynist.”

Perhaps the most maddening conclusion, especially for many who personally and politically despised Clinton, is one that Jackson discusses early in the work: in modern liberalism, political goals justify any political means to achieve them. This has been the single most antagonistic point of division between the Clinton-centered circle of American liberalism and those who scratched their heads in amazment at his political victories and public approval, in spite of all the negativity piled against him. As Jackson points out again and again, the liberal supporters of Bill Clinton’s presidency, from women’s groups to Congressional Democrats to the media, were more than willing to look the other way every time allegations from one of these women became public. To the American Left, the simple fact that Bill Clinton was in the White House and was able to fight for the agenda they wanted was far more important than the possibility that his personal behavior ran counter to every position he publicly took, especially on women’s rights. For organizations like NOW and NARAL, Clinton’s continued support for abortion rights for all women was a far more important reason to support his presidency (and ignore his behavior) then the allegations of women labeled “trailer trash” and “nutty” by Clinton’s own internal attack machine.

One could even compare Jackson’s political protection theory to the recent battles between President Bush and Democratic Senators over his judicial nominees, including the recent nomination of John Roberts for Sandra Day O’Connor’s Supreme Court seat. Democrats and lberals in general seem to be willing to excuse eight years of boorish and possibly criminal behavior by Bill Clinton, just because of his favorable (to them) political views. But let the current Republican president nominate a potential judge with a sniff of a conservative (read: not liberal) ideology, and watch the Democratic fur fly. If Bush nominated a convicted sexual pervert who supported abortion rights and gay marriage, you likely wouldn’t be hearing a peep from the Left.

Jackson’s careful detailing of the activities of the Clinton attack machine demonstrates the paradox that occurred when Juanita Broadderick came forward with her shocking rape allegations against Clinton in February 1999. According to Broadderick’s story, Clinton, then the Arkansas Attorney General and a hopeful for the governor’s job, assaulted and raped her in a Little Rock hotel room in late April of 1978. Broadderick, who actually volunteered to campaign for Clinton’s run for the state house, reacted in a way many women did under similar circumstances in the late 1970s: she kept the incident secret. One must remember that the battles against sexual violence by the women’s movement in America was still in its early stages. Broadderick admitted she was in shock after the incident, but was able to relate the details to a handful of friends. But her feelings about the aftermath of the alleged rape were similar to many women who experienced similar fates: she went into a denial stage and blamed herself for getting into a position in which Clinton could take advantage of her. And, as in the case of similar events in Clinton’s past, there were no direct witnesses, which would make Broadderick’s story a “he said-she said” tale which the Clinton machine could plausibly deny.

Broadderick also came forward at a time when the nation was rapidly tiring of the investigations into Bill Clinton’s behavior. The impeachment hearings in the Senate had just ended in his favor, and people were pretty sick of hearing anymore of the details of the President’s alleged sexual proclivities, which had included using cigars as sexual toys and a claim that oral sex wasn’t really sex (the latter attitude soon giving the green light for all kinds of nationwide adolescent misbehavior). Though she had briefly spoken to the OIC investigators and rumors swirled that she was out there with her story, few people were ready for what she told the nation during an NBC interview on February 24, 1999.

But, as Jackson points out, both criticism of Clinton and any attacks on Broadderick by the political hacks and the media were subdued. Clinton was a lame duck, well into the final two years of his term. The country was already starting to focus on the 2000 presidential campaign. Broadderick never asked for anything. She never sued Clinton in any civil court, and the statute of limitations on any possible criminal charges had long run out. For a very long time, Broadderick saw what happened to other women who came forward with allegations against this President and decided it wasn’t worth the pain and humiliation. Yet after the allegatons from Kathleen Willey, she began to change her mind and decided to un-bury her story once and for all.

As a result, there wasn’t much the Clinton machine could to to discredit or harm Broadderick. Women’s groups, normally staunch supporters of Clinton and frequently silent on the old sexual allegations, showed lukewarm support for Broadderick and similar lukewarm disdain for the man they believed was the beacon for their causes. The attitudes of the media opinion mills, also frequently siding with Clinton, now questioned much of what they previously believed about him.

Yet, the prevailing attitude on both sides of the political spectrum was a virtual shoulder shrug, since most agreed there wasn’t anything that could be done at that stage. The public was tired of the accusations and hearings, and any further probes would have been seen as a continuing attack on Clinton by the Right. Limitations against charging him with any crime, and the continuing support of his family and friends basically shoved the story into oblivion after a few months of interest. My guess is that few people in America today would immediately remember who Broadderick was or what happened to her in 1978 at the hands of Bill Clinton.

The Broadderick story provides for another of Jackson’s opportunities to relate the liberal mindset to boorish and violent behavior. She cleverly manages to align the concept that modern liberalism paradoxically aligns itself with force to bring about goals of peace with Clinton’s proclivity to force himself upon women like Juanita Broadderick. In her analysis, Jackson dismantles the liberal ideology that all things that liberalism does is good for all people and must become law. She reminds us that the teachings of spiritual figures such Jesus Christ have long been the basis for many of liberalism’s lofty world goals. Yet, she also reminds us that even Jesus never said that these ideals were to be forced on anyone by legal fiat. Through this connection of ideology and force

…attachment to liberal ideology can reinforce misogyny because of liberalism’s advocacy of political force as an appropriate way to impose values…It does not require a stretch of the imagination to surmise that Clinton’s political convictions installed in him a belief the he could justifiably initiate force against a woman if she somehow threatened his ability to suppose acceptable values on society.

Detractors will have a difficult time attacking Candace Jackson as just another right-wing conspiracy hack. Jackson describes herself as a “libertarian feminist,” a description that, in current times, might seem somewhat contradictory, at least until she defines the term. Jackson also has the added insight of having been the victim of a sexual assault. In the later chapters of the book, she briefly describes the incident, committed by someone she personally knew, someone she trusted as a friend. One can compare what happened to Jackson to what happened to nearly all of the Clinton women: they were taken advantage of, used sexually or assaulted by a man they thought they knew, a man frequently in positions of trust. Would you expect to be sexually attacked by the Attorney General of your state? Or have to face, in a hotel room, the graphic sexual come-ons of the Governor? My guess is that none of these women did, either.

Jackson concludes her work with a bit of commentary on Hillary Clinton, who is usually mentioned only in passing through the rest of the book. Mrs. Clinton quietly put up with her husband’s behavior throughout his entire career, often defiantly defending him against the accusations, especially as he rose to national prominence. Her behavior often sparked questions as to what her motivations were; what was in it for Hillary to have to withstand such humiliations over and over? At times, there were even tales floating about about possibilities that she was also leading a philandering lifestyle, but those stories were never anything more than speculation.

What Mrs. Clinton did get out of all this was a seat at the table of power. She briefly tasted it when her husband unwisely put her in charge of a failed attempt at redesigning the nation’s health care system. In spite of that misfire, she did eventually wield enough political influence to get elected to the Senate from New York, and her aspirations to become the first woman president are no secret, despite her lukewarm denials. Yet Jackson makes it clear, in her short closing chapter on the possibility of a second Clinton Presidency, that Hillary is the last person who should break that “glass ceiling” as the first woman president:

When it comes to electing our first female president, we can do better than Hillary Clinton. We need to do better than Hillary Clinton, or the symbolism of a woman as president will be marred by electing a woman who has done almost as much to inflict mistreatment on real-life woman as her misogynist husband.

Somebody please say “amen.”

Jackson’s book is a fascinating account that covers many ideological landscapes untouch by previous analysis of Bill and Hillary Clinton. While focusing on Bill Clinton’s rotten behavior might seem like piling on after the game has ended, one can’t escape believing that we now have a better insight into a man so loved and admired by his fellow liberals, and possibly a few so-called conservatives as well. The Bill Clinton we see traveling the world for tsunami relief isn’t the nice guy he still wishes to believe that he is. The commentary on how this affects Hillary as she approaches her big political decision is just a bonus. Jackson’s work is well worth your time.