Hillary's Gifts

Clinton talks of Bill's romantic gifts

When I saw this Associated Press headline, I didn't realize it was about Bill Clinton's gifts to Hillary. I thought it was about the many gifts he's given during his many romances, to all the girls he's loved before.

I thought it was a list of Bill's favorite gifts to his favorite women, not just those he gave to his wife.

For example:

During their final White House meeting on Dec. 28, President Clinton gave Monica S. Lewinsky more than a half-dozen "going-away" presents, including an Alaskan stone carving and a decorative pin....

Throughout their 18-month relationship, Mr. Clinton and Ms. Lewinsky exchanged numerous gifts. He gave her a T-shirt, the poetry book (Whitman's Leaves of Grass), a brooch, a hat pin and a stuffed animal. She gave him six ties and several books, including the novel Vox by Nicholson Baker.

That's not at all what this AP story is about.

It's about the romantic gifts that Bill gave to Hillary.

She gushes, "Oh he's so romantic."

Yes, we know.

Hillary Rodham Clinton says husband Bill often brings her romantic gifts: a giant wooden giraffe from an African trip, for example, and a Chanel watch that reminded him of teeth.

"Oh he's so romantic," the former first lady said in an interview for the November issue of Essence magazine. "He's always bringing me back things from his trips."

The watch had a bracelet made of white cubes. "I had dental surgery, and he said it reminded him of teeth," she said.

The New York senator, now a presidential candidate, said she is satisfied with the decisions she has made in her marriage.

"Now obviously we've had challenges as everybody in the world knows," she said. "But I never doubted that it was a marriage worth investing in even in the midst of those challenges, and I'm really happy that I made that decision."

Right. There's nothing more romantic then getting a bracelet that looks like teeth and conjures up images of dental surgery.

Very romantic.

Referring to Bill's affair with Monica Lewinsky, and no doubt all his other dalliances:

While sticking it out might not be for everyone, Mrs. Clinton said women should support each other in the choices they make in their marriages.

"I think it's so important for women to stand up for the right of women to make a decision that is best for them," she said.

Of course, a couple needs to decide how to handle their relationship.

A woman should have the right to determine whether she wants to try to work things out when her spouse has betrayed her or get out. I don't question that.

We're human. We make mistakes. We forgive, maybe.

However, in presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's case, there's another angle to consider.

It's not how she chose to deal with her marital difficulties that matters to me. That is personal.

What concerns me is how and why she made her personal story public in her book Living History, as well as in interviews and on other occasions.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's eagerly awaited memoir, "Living History" -- for which she received an $8 million book deal -- goes on sale next week.

But for now, the Associated Press has obtained a copy of the 562-page book and reveals what everyone wants to know: What the U.S. Senator from New York, 55, has to say about her husband Bill's extramarital relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. It is not a pretty picture.

"The most difficult decisions I have made in my life were to stay married to Bill and to run for the Senate from New York," she writes, revealing that he lied to her about the relationship until the weekend before he admitted the affair to a grand jury.

Up until then, Hillary had believed -- and stated publicly -- that the Lewinsky scandal was part of a right-wing conspiracy to do in her husband and his administration.

But on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 15, 1998, the president (whom she describes as ashamed) woke her up, paced at the bedside and "told me for the first time that the situation was much more serious than he had previously acknowledged. ... He now realized he would have to testify that there had been an inappropriate intimacy. He told me that what happened between them had been brief and sporadic," AP reports.

Her reaction to hearing the news: "I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, 'What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?' I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea.'"

She goes on to write, "I was dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged that I'd believed him at all." She reportedly describes the president's eyes as filling with tears when she told him he would have to confess to their teenage daughter as well.

In the end, she writes, she decided that she still loved her husband, although "as a wife, I wanted to wring Bill's neck." Time and his help during her senatorial campaign ultimately bridged the marital schism between them, she adds.

Here's more from Hillary, in her own words.

Was Hillary really clueless about Bill's relationship with Lewinsky until the morning of August 15, 1998?

Was she really that blind and trusting?

If she was, I think that calls her ability to be the President of the United States into question.

I think it raises serious doubts about her judgment.

I doubt that Hillary's Dem primary opponents or her eventual Republican opponent will raise the specific issue because there's no need to raise it.

It's already there.

It's embedded in the minds of everyone.

Hillary allowed herself to be a doormat for Bill and lied to the country for him, or she is one of the stupidest women in America.

It's very clear.

These are not qualities that I want in a president.