CONNECTIONS October 2016 issue 17 The Presidency

CONNECTIONS Issue # 17
say yes to a long-term relationship. It was a
story repeated again and again, throughout
his stay in England and now on his return.
Instead of sustained commitments, he had
begun a chronic pattern of carrying on
multiple relationships marked by no honest
communication with the various women
involved. Where would all that lead?
At Yale, Clinton found an answer—another
person, equally bright, just as driven to
break barriers and change the world. She
was almost as complicated as he was—
perhaps even more so—with a family
history that came close to his in its crazy
dynamics. Hillary Rodham would change
his life. He would change hers. And from
the moment of their meeting, they created a
partnership, both political and personal, that
helped shape the course of the country.
* * *
Excerpted from "Bill and Hillary: The Politics
of the Personal," available September 4 from
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
When Bill Clinton arrived at Yale in the fall
of 1970, one thing was clear: Politics would
be the singular focus of his life. Far less
clear were his other priorities. He continued
to exude charm and affability, drawing to
himself potential political allies, personal
friends, and devoted acolytes. But what
about his intellectual life? Did academics
matter? Should he prepare for a
professional career if politics did not work
out? More important, would he be able to
reconcile his parallel lives? In particular,
how would he resolve his persistent inability
to sustain a long-term relationship with a
woman? Repeatedly, he had commented
on his lack of commitment to others. His
relationship with Ann Markusen—whom he
first started to date at Georgetown—had
broken off, even though he said he loved
her, because he could not bring himself to
There are multiple stories about how the
two met. The classic version, told
repeatedly, is that they had noticed each
other early on. She was in her second year,
he in his first. But rather than start a
conversation, they circled each other warily,
each sizing the other up. Then one day in
the library, after Bill kept gazing at Hillary
down at the other end of the Gothic-arched
room, Hillary strode up to him and said, in
effect, “Look, if we’re going to spend all this
time staring at each other, we should at
least get to know who the other is.”And the
rest, supposedly, is history.
Robert Reich claims to have introduced the
two at the beginning of the semester. But
nothing happened. In Bill Clinton’s memoir,
he says that he saw Hillary for the first time
in a class on political and civil rights. “She
had thick dark blond hair,” he wrote, “and
wore eyeglasses and no makeup. But she
conveyed a sense of strength and selfpossession
I had rarely seen in anyone,
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