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

trial). Hillary, along with Doar and Nussbaum, also wanted Judiciary Committee members barred from cross-examining witnesses or disclosing any of the evidence in the case—rules that would have given Hillary and other members of the legal staff more or less complete control of the proceedings. “It would then have been a secret star chamber proceeding,” said another staff member, “without the public ever really knowing what the evidence against the President was.”
    Judiciary Committee members rejected Hillary’s ideas, but went ahead and crafted three articles of impeachment on their own. Fellow Judiciary Committee staff member William Dixon would go on to be a supporter of Clinton’s. But even Dixon claimed that in her zeal to destroy Nixon, Hillary “paid no attention to the way the Constitution works in this country, the way politics works, the way Congress works, the way legal safeguards are set up.”
    There were others, like chief counsel to the Judiciary Committee Jerry Zeifman, who railed against the “polished and sophisticated arrogance and deceit” of Doar’s top assistants—most notably Hillary Rodham. Zeifman accused her of withholding information from the committee in an effort to steer it in the direction she wanted. As lawyers go, said Zeifman, Hillary was “less than honorable.”
    On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon went on television to announce that he would resign the next day rather than subject the nation to a drawn-out impeachment trial in the Senate. Hillary, whose own husband would not make the same sacrifice for his country despite calls for his resignation from members of his own party, was elated at the news of Nixon’s resignation. Thirty years later, she would boast that the 1974 impeachment effort “forced a corrupt President from office and was a victory for the Constitution and our system of laws.”
    A world of possibilities now opened up to Hillary. Would she take a high-paying position with a top Washington law firm, accept Marian Wright Edelman’s standing offer of a job at the Children’s Defense Fund, or—as several of her closest friends thought she would do—make her own run for office?
    But Hillary had already made up her mind. She was going to take a teaching position at the University of Arkansas—and do whatever she could to get Bill elected to Congress. Not that she was entirely taken with moving to the land of pie suppers, hog-calling contests, and june bugs the size of Buicks. Echoing the sentiments of all Hillary’s friends, Sara Ehrman wanted to know, “Areyou out of your mind? Why on earth would you throw away your future? You are crazy….”
    For emotional support, Hillary persuaded her brothers, Hughie and Tony, to move to Fayetteville and enroll at the university. “It was never in the game plan to grow up and fall in love with someone from Arkansas,” Hillary conceded. Although she would often say she chose “heart over head—and that’s never wrong,” Hillary was in fact making a conscious change in her game plan—a calculated decision to cast her lot with the man she was convinced would someday occupy the White House.
    Hillary had no intention of abandoning her own dreams. She would run for national office someday, she was confident of that. But from the vantage point of 1974, the presidency was the longest shot for her or for any woman. It was, conversely, not beyond imagining that Bill could pull it off. To help him in his quest for the White House and then share power as equals—this was an attainable goal, and one for which Hillary was willing to make some adjustments.
    “I think she believed he had what it takes to be President—the charisma, the intelligence, the drive,” said longtime Clinton family friend Carolyn Yeldell Staley. “But Hillary also knew that Bill had a tendency to be all over the map, and that he wasn’t as good a strategist as she was.” She would have to be there overseeing every detail, Hillary said, “to