It's no surprise the US secretary of state snapped when asked what her husband thought of the Chinese investing in Africa, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
ON THIS day 11 years ago, US president Bill Clinton admitted in his testimony to the grand jury: “Indeed I did have a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong.”
It had taken the investigator Kenneth Starr four years of digging and $25 million of American taxpayer money to get Clinton on to the ropes. But that is not the interesting thing now; the interesting thing now is that we are still talking about him.
Poor Hillary Clinton. It came as no surprise that while in the Democratic Republic of Congo she snapped at an unfortunate student who asked her – probably by mistake – what her husband thought of the Chinese investing in Africa. Hillary, who looked hot and tired – note to earnest students: never rile a woman whose hair has collapsed – was not in the humour. Her husband was not in the country; he was at home basking in the approval he had earned by springing two pretty young journalists from a North Korean jail.
On her tour of the less lovely parts of Africa, Hillary, who is US secretary of state, as she reminded us, had plenty to say. For example, she appealed to the authorities in the DRC to do something to reduce the appalling level of rape, of males and females, in the war-torn eastern part of that country. But that’s not what made the headlines. The headlines were about Bill, and Hillary being cranky about Bill, and the fact that Hillary is still so overshadowed by her husband.
The poor student was later said to have used her husband’s name in his question in a moment of understandable confusion. What he had really wanted to know was what President Obama thought about Chinese investment in Africa. But it was too late. We were back talking about Bill – and to a lesser extent Hillary – all over again.
In the global memory, Bill is the last president of the United States before Obama. It’s like George W’s two terms of office never happened. We want to pretend they never did happen. We leapfrog them, and land back at Bill’s feet, along with the adoring biographies and the important foreign missions that President Obama asks him to take on.
Maybe we think that Bill came directly before Barack because their life stories are so similar. Their biographies read more like novels, and the two fatherless boys, with their much married mothers – Virginia Clinton married four times – could almost be brothers. They each spent their earliest years with their maternal grandparents, who had known the rough side of the American dream.
Poor Monica Lewinsky has gone down in history as a dirty joke, but Bill is a hero to us still, and as mysterious as ever. Maybe his mother, Virginia, was the key to Bill, with her gambling and her optimism and her love of parties and the fact she was as smart as a whip, although a bit vague on the circumstances of her eldest son’s conception. Maybe unconventional mothers make the best presidents.
When he made his statement to the grand jury on August 17th, 1998, Bill Clinton had already denied his affair with Lewinsky to the American people seven months before, on January 26th, 1998. On that occasion he had lied through his teeth. On August 6th, Monica told the grand jury she had had an 18-month relationship with President Clinton – rather a long time for an inconsequential affair.
Then, on August 17th, this strange, strange man confessed that he had previously lied about the affair, and launched into a series of squirming definitions. “It depends what your definition of ‘is’ is,” he said.
His peculiar testimony to the grand jury was initially videotaped for the benefit of a juror who could not attend the sessions that day – that must have been some pretty fascinating other business. His testimony was released to the press on September 21st, 1998. Lord, it all seems so long ago. It seems even more unlikely now than it did then. However peculiar Clinton was revealed to be, Kenneth Starr seemed just as odd, and exhibited an unattractive fascination with stains and Monica Lewinsky’s thong underwear. This Kenneth Starr shambles fell down around the same president who worked so hard for peace in Northern Ireland. Paula Jones had brought a sexual harassment case against him in 1994. Although whether you had believed this was further evidence about a sexually incontinent president, or just further proof of a right-wing conspiracy, depended on whether you liked Clinton or not.
On the whole, the American people did seem to like Clinton, much more than they have ever liked his wife. This must be galling for Hillary, who has worked and plotted for power for so long. There is no justice in politics and there is certainly no justice in politics for middle-aged women burning with self-belief and a sense of entitlement. The American people were not greatly interested in Clinton’s dalliances, and did not get half so excited about them as the press did. They just like Bill Clinton, whose birthday falls this Wednesday. Hillary’s birthday is in October, but nobody cares about that.