Bill and Hillary Clinton flew to Chicago together last month to deliver speeches a few hours and a few miles apart. And like any couple, they thought about having dinner at day’s end. But life is not so simple when you are married to a Clinton.
The former president left early for Washington, in part to avoid distracting the news media from his wife’s speech. They decided later that dinner would not work, so Clinton did what he often does: He rounded up some friends and went out for a late bite. Only afterward did the Clintons end up at home together.
Clinton is rarely without company in public, yet the company he keeps rarely includes his wife. Nights out find him zipping around Los Angeles with his bachelor buddy, Ronald Burkle, or at parties and fundraisers in Manhattan; she is yoked to work in Washington or New York – her Senate career and political ambitions consuming her time.
When the subject of Bill and Hillary Clinton comes up for many prominent Democrats these days, Topic A is the state of their marriage – and how it might affect Hillary Clinton’s possible bid for the presidency in 2008.
Democrats say it is inevitable that in a campaign that could return the former president to the White House, some voters would be concerned or distracted by the former president’s political role and the episode that led the House to vote for his impeachment in 1998.
“There’s no question that it’s a complicated candidacy for a lot of voters because of the history of that relationship and what they’ve been through,” said Leon Panetta, Clinton’s chief of staff from 1994 to 1997. “They’ve been through a lot of challenges as a couple, though in the end if you’re with them together, you know there’s something there that basically bonds them.”
The dynamics of a couple’s marriage are difficult to gauge from the outside, even for a couple as well known as the Clintons. But interviews with about 50 people and a review of their respective activities show that since leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built largely separate lives – partly because of their career paths and partly as a result of political calculations.
The effect has been to raise Sen. Clinton’s profile on the public radar while somewhat toning down her husband’s; he has told friends that his No. 1 priority is not to cause her any trouble.
They appear in the public spotlight methodically and carefully: The goal is to position her to run for president not as a partner or a proxy but as her own person.
Since the start of 2005, the Clintons have been together about 14 days a month on average, according to aides who reviewed the couple’s schedules. At their busiest, they saw each other on a single day, Valentine’s Day, during February 2005 – a month when each was traveling a great deal. In August, they saw each other at some point on 24 out of 31 days. Out of the last 73 weekends, they spent 51 together.
Hillary Clinton may be the only Democrat in America who cannot look at Bill Clinton as an unalloyed political asset. Democrats preparing for 2008 describe the political challenge this way: Sen. Clinton could prosper as a candidate, yet the return of “the Clintons” could revive memories including the oft-derided two-for-the-price-of-one appeal of his 1992 presidential campaign, her role in the universal health-care debacle, and the soap opera of his infidelity.
Just as it is difficult to predict how voters would feel about the senator as a presidential candidate, advisers say, it is hard to foresee how they would judge the Clintons’ baggage in the context of a third White House bid.
“There are a lot of people who will work for her if she runs for president and who are worried about the relationship,” said Lanny J. Davis, an old friend of the Clintons’ and a lawyer who helped see the president through his scandals in the White House.
Some friends say that they do not notice any tension between the two now, though they are not sure when, or how, it lifted.
“Who knows how any couple conquers the issues in their marriage, but they did it,” said Chris Korge, a Democratic fundraiser who is close to both. “It’s like when he bought her a new diamond ring recently, you just saw the look in her face. When someone shows you something like that, ‘This is what Bill bought me,’ kind of gleaming, it meant something to get it – it meant more to her that he bought it for her than what it actually was.”