Bill Clinton: I Misled People

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White House officials later announced that Hillary had "learned" over the weekend, which naturally raised the question of what she had been thinking for the past seven months. Denial is a wonderful thing; it can stretch to contain an awful lot of evidence that looks hostile. A friend said her free fall had to do with the fact that in many ways, the Clintons' marriage has gone so well since they arrived at the White House six years ago. Some marriages would blister under such hot lights, but theirs flourished, partly because Bill was under what amounted to house arrest. What trouble could he get into there, right under her nose, not to mention the Secret Service's?

Not before Sunday morning would Hillary show any signs of where she had landed. It's possible that hatred can be a comfort when the alternative is grief. At least a part of her anger at her husband was not about lying or treachery but about handing their mortal enemy a weapon to use against them both. She had stood by her husband when his character was in question, for dodging the draft and whether he had inhaled, through Gennifer and Paula. But prior to Ken Starr, her own morals had never been questioned.

It was Starr who had challenged her judgment, investigated her law firm, friends and partners for four years. The Clintons have always believed in a conspiracy to topple them--they did when they were in Arkansas; they did when they ran for President; and they have since they've gone to Washington. By Sunday morning, says a friend, Hillary pulled on her boots and went to church. Then she prepared to go to war. "She didn't want Ken Starr to kill her husband," says the friend. "She wanted him alive so she could do it later."

Whenever things go terribly wrong, it is always Hillary who leads the way out of the wilderness. By Sunday afternoon she was huddled with the lawyers, shaping the strategy. And though the White House has carefully framed the entire scandal as one immense invasion of privacy, by Sunday the First Family decided to turn on the lights in the mansion so we could see the shadows through the shades. In the middle of the most painful weekend of her life, Hillary invited into her home for comfort the one clergyman in America better known for his pulpit at CNN than at the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Chicago's South Side.

It was hard to know what to make of the family's late-night house call by Jesse Jackson. Jackson has a way with people, and he certainly seemed to have a way with Chelsea. He had been at the White House to watch the Super Bowl back on the first horrible weekend of scandal, and he and Chelsea got along great. It was mainly for her that he was invited back last weekend, family friends said, to help talk her out of her funk.