Free American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power by Christopher P. Andersen

destroy Hammerschmidt at the polls.
    Working up to twenty hours at a stretch, Hillary ate, slept, and breathed Watergate. Yet she was still obsessed with Bill. Whenever the opportunity arose, she blithely informed her coworkers that her boyfriend was going to be President someday. “She said it to me,” said fellow staffer Tom Bell. “She said it to a lot of people.”
    Hillary had come to rely on one senior staff member in particularfor advice. But Bernie Nussbaum made it clear that he felt Hillary’s predictions about her boyfriend’s future were inappropriate. Nussbaum was giving her a ride home one night when Hillary launched into her “Bill’s going to be President someday” speech. Angered by Hillary’s presumptuousness, Nussbaum told her it was “insane” to be making such comments while they were in the process of seeking ways to remove Richard Nixon from office.
    Hillary, red-faced, ordered Nussbaum to stop the car. “Bernie,” she shouted, slamming the car door behind her, “you are an asshole!”
    Back home in Arkansas, Bill was already on the road to fulfilling Hillary’s prophecy—literally. Crisscrossing the state, he charmed voters and began to build a formidable war chest for his campaign.
    Despite her own demanding schedule, Hillary somehow managed to pepper Bill with a half-dozen or more calls a day. A harbinger of things to come, Hillary virtually ran the campaign over the phone. Speeches, schedules, staff assignments—all had to be run by Bill’s girlfriend for her approval.
    Hillary’s involvement did not stop there. She was hearing rumors that Bill was spending time with a precocious eighteen-year-old volunteer, as well as with his old high school flame Dolly Kyle, who had just divorced her first husband. Hillary dispatched her father and her younger brother, Tony, down to Arkansas to “help out with the campaign.” Translation: to check out those disturbing rumors about Bill and other women.
    When they reported back that Bill was involved with at least a half-dozen women in Fayetteville and Little Rock, Hillary got on the phone and tore into Bill. Coming over the receiver, her blistering obscenities were clearly audible to campaign workers seated nearby.
    Bill pleaded tearfully for Hillary to forgive him, and she did, grudgingly. Two weeks later she was at his side as the primary campaign wound down. “I’ve got to be there,” she told a fellowmember of the Watergate impeachment staff, “just to make sure they don’t fuck it up.”
    On May 28, 1974—primary day—Bill and Hillary flew to Little Rock for one final TV interview. Bill, distracted by the pressures of the campaign, had forgotten that Dolly Kyle—his nickname for her was “Pretty Girl”—would be meeting them at the airport. The good-looking blonde in the clingy white summer dress was not prepared for the sight of Hillary—matted hair, thick glasses, body odor (even in the oppressive Arkansas heat Hillary abstained from wearing deodorant), unshaven legs, and all. For one fleeting moment, Kyle thought this was a practical joke, and that Bill had hired an actress to play Hillary. But then she “knew from looking at Hillary that she’d make him pay” for this awkward moment.
    Bill handily won his party’s nomination, but the campaign against Hammerschmidt would be an uphill battle. Hillary, meanwhile, returned to her job on the House Judiciary Committee staff and resumed feeding Bill valuable, behind-the-scenes details.
    Hillary’s most important assignment had been to draw up procedural rules for presentation of evidence to the House—in other words, the blueprint for prosecuting a case against the President. Among other things, Hillary argued that the constitutional definition of impeachable offenses was outmoded and should be disregarded, and that the President had no right to legal counsel in impeachment proceedings (her husband would have no fewer than seven lawyers represent him during his impeachment