Clinton Scandal of ’90s Resurfaces With Papers

 

It has been more than 16 years since the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. The 22-year-old White House intern is now a low-profile 40-year-old. The once-embattled President Bill Clinton has assumed a postpresidential role as global philanthropist and the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is now a former senator, a former secretary of state, and a potential 2016 presidential candidate.

And yet, it seems difficult these days to escape the scandal that rocked the late 1990s and led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.

In response to attacks on the Republican Party as waging a “war on women,” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has repeatedly recalled Mr. Clinton’s White House indiscretions. Mr. Paul said on “Meet the Press” late last month that Mr. Clinton had taken advantage of a young intern. “That is predatory behavior,” he added.

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, unloaded a trove of documents from Mr. Clinton’s White House years from Diane D. Blair, a close friend of Mrs. Clinton who died in 2000. The Blair papers include diary entries based on conversations with Mrs. Clinton, private memos and letters that had been kept at the archives of the University of Arkansas, where Ms. Blair had taught political science.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, and Diane D. Blair, a close friend whose correspondence was released. Susan Walsh/Associated Press

The correspondence reveals new insights into how Mrs. Clinton dealt with the setbacks in the White House, such as her struggles to pass a health care overhaul and difficulties in dealing with journalists whom she described as having “big egos and no brains.”

“I know I should do more to suck up to the press,” Mrs. Clinton told Ms. Blair in 1996, according to the documents. “I know it confuses people when I change my hairdos, I know I should pretend not to have any opinions, but I’m just not going to,” she continued. Then, Mrs. Clinton said, “I’m used to winning and I intend to win on my own terms.”

The papers also underscore the tensions contained in Mrs. Clinton’s reaction to her husband’s infidelities. As first lady, she was viewed broadly as a champion of women’s equality, but, according to the Blair papers, she did not see her husband’s behavior toward Ms. Lewinsky as exploitation.

Mrs. Clinton called Ms. Lewinsky a “narcissistic loony toon,” according to a 1998 conversation Ms. Blair recalled. “HRC insists, no matter what people say, it was gross inappropriate behavior but it was consensual (was not a power relationship) and was not sex within real meaning” of the word, Ms. Blair wrote.

In his attacks on Mr. Clinton, Mr. Paul also recently said that “the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass” on his affair with Ms. Lewinsky. But Ms. Blair’s papers describe a White House that felt constantly under assault from the news media.

“She can’t figure out why these people out there so anxious to destroy them,” wrote Ms. Blair, who first befriended the Clintons in Arkansas in the late 1970s and who worked on the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. “I told her I thought she was taking it too personally.”

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Senator Rand Paul, who has criticized Mr. Clinton. Doug Mills/The New York Times

The mentions of Mr. Clinton’s personal life extend beyond Ms. Lewinsky. A Feb. 16, 1992, memo marked “privileged and confidential” highlights “possible investigation leads,” including a strategy to stop reports about Mr. Clinton’s alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers. The memo expressed the need to expose Ms. Flowers, who claimed to have had a 12-year relationship with Mr. Clinton, as a “fraud, liar and possible criminal to stop this story and related stories.” (Spokesmen for the Clintons declined to comment Monday.)

It is unclear whether the resurrection of Mr. Clinton’s indiscretions will have any impact on his wife’s presidential ambitions. After all, she enjoyed some of her highest approval ratings as first lady when she seemed the injured party in their marriage.

But Mr. Paul’s attack and the release of Ms. Blair’s papers come at a time when Mrs. Clinton’s operation has worked hard to diminish the dramas that played out in the 1990s and shed her image as a calculating, partisan operator. In her four years as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was barred from political activity, and in that time she was able to shape an appealing image as a hard-working, committed public servant who knew how to have some fun.

Ms. Blair’s writings reinforce that her friend had struggled with her image long before she ran for office herself. She mentions a 1992 poll titled “Research on Hillary Clinton” that found that the traits voters were willing to accept in Mr. Clinton — his political shrewdness and tactical mind — could seem “ruthless” when applied to Mrs. Clinton.

(Of course, 12 years later, Mrs. Clinton would lose to Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary, and her image would, in part, be to blame.)

Mr. Paul’s attacks and the papers could rehash the drama from the Clinton administration, particularly for young voters who have a rosy memory (or no memory at all) of the 1990s. Ms. Blair’s papers make Mr. Clinton’s office look particularly dysfunctional.

But, mostly, the papers paint a bleak picture of the Clintons’ time in the White House, filled with devastating personal trials, including, but not limited to, the death of Vincent W. Foster Jr., an old Arkansas friend and deputy White House counsel, and the Lewinsky scandal. Mrs. Clinton expressed frustration with Washington’s “insane process” and her determination to “figure out how to make the crappy thing work.”

The takeaway, perhaps, is not so much that the past could hurt Mrs. Clinton’s chances at the White House should she run in 2016. It is a question of why, after all that heartache, would she want to go back?