Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

book, Composing a Life, which describes how women construct their lives by combining the ingredients of day-today living that work best for them. Choices are no longer governed by the kinds of conventions that traditionally determined women’s roles. We not only can, but must imagine and improvise as we go along, taking advantage of unique talents and opportunities and responding to unforeseen twists and turns along the way.

I found myself engrossed in hours of conversation with Mary Catherine and Jean Houston, a writer and lecturer on women’s history, indigenous cultures and mythology.

While Mary Catherine is a soft spoken academic who favors cardigans and sensible shoes, Jean wraps herself in brightly colored capes and caftans and dominates the room with her larger-than-life presence and crackling wit. She is a walking encyclopedia, reciting poems, passages from great works of literature, historical facts and scientific data all in the same breath. She is also a trove of great jokes and puns and is ready to share her cache with anyone in need of a good laugh.

Jean and Mary Catherine were experts in two subjects of immediate importance to me. Both had written numerous books, and I needed help and advice from experienced authors. I also had been asked by the State Department to represent the United States on a trip to five countries in South Asia. This trip would be a watershed event for me, and I was eager to throw myself into preparations. Jean and Mary Catherine had traveled extensively in the region, so I invited them to share their impressions with me and my staff before I left for South Asia in March and again after our return.

I had resisted the idea of exploiting the First Lady title, preferring to concentrate on specific policies and actions. I distrust the way symbols can be manipulated and misused, and I’ve always believed that people should be judged on the basis of actions and consequences, not just what they say and claim to stand for. A First Lady occupies a vicarious position; her power is derivative, not independent, of the President’s. This partly explained my sometimes awkward fit in the role of First Lady. Ever since I was a little girl, I had worked to be my own person and maintain my independence. As much as I loved my husband and my country, adjusting to being a fulltime surrogate was difficult for me.

Mary Catherine and jean helped me better understand that the role of First Lady is deeply symbolic and that I had better figure out how to make the best of it at home and on the world stage.

Mary Catherine argued that symbolic actions were legitimate and that “symbolism can be efficacious.” She believed, for example, that merely by traveling to South Asia as First Lady with Chelsea would send a message about the importance of daughters. Visiting poor rural women would underscore their significance. I understood her point, and I soon became a convert to the view that I could advance the Clinton agenda through symbolic action.

My friendship with Jean came to light a year later in a book by Bob Woodward, The Choice, about the 1996 political campaign. Woodward referred melodramatically to Jean as my “spiritual adviser” and de scribed some verbal exercises she had introduced to me and my staff to help us find new ways of thinking about our work. He was particularly keen to talk about the time Jean asked me to imagine a conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt.

As I often invoked Eleanor in my speeches and even referred to imaginary conversations with her to make a point, I had no trouble responding to Jean’s suggestion, and never expected it to generate any interest. But a passage from Woodward’s book about the exercise was excerpted on the front page of The Washington Post as an expose.

That night, Jim and Diane Blair were having supper with us on the Truman Balcony, and Jim, deadpan as always, said: “Well, Hill, after this Eleanor business I guess you don’t have to worry about Whitewater anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if they come after you now, you can always plead insanity”

The day after the Post piece, I appeared at an annual family conference hosted by Al and Tipper Gore in Tennessee. “Shortly before I arrived I had one of my conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt,” I said to gales of laughter and applause. “And she thinks this is a terrific idea as well!”

Laughing at myself was an essential survival tool, and preferable to the alternative of climbing back into the bunker―though that too was occasionally a temptation during the months after the Democrats lost control of the House and Senate.

Bill and I knew that a Republican Congress would guarantee at least two more years of Whitewater investigations and Kenneth Starr seemed to be invigorated by the election results. In late November, Webb Hubbell fell into Starr’s net.

Webb had resigned from his job at the justice Department the previous March, to avoid any controversy, he said, while he fought allegations that he had cheated on his billing of clients at the Rose Law Firm. Webb never let on that there was a shred of evidence to support any charges against him. Even when he came to Camp David the previous summer to play golf with Bill, he had assured us that he was innocent.

But on Thanksgiving Day in 1994, we were at Camp David when I heard a radio report that Webb Hubbell and Jim Guy Tucker, the Arkansas Governor who succeeded Bill, were going to be indicted. By now, I was used to inaccurate press reports. Although I was upset at the news, I assumed it was wrong. I also knew that, unsubstantiated or not, this story would spread like wildfire, and that Webb or his lawyer had to respond immediately.

Bill and I telephoned Webb at home, where he was busy roasting turkey. After wishing Webb a happy Thanksgiving, Bill handed the phone to me.

I told Webb what I’d heard about the impending indictments. “You’ve