Hillary Clinton: Lewinsky Was 'Narcissistic Loony Tune'

Archived papers of Diane Blair include insights into Hillary's life
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 10, 2014 3:36 PM CST
Hillary Clinton: Bill's Sex With 'Looney Tune' Lewinsky Had 'No Meaning'
In this Jan. 27, 2014 file photo, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks in New Orleans.    (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Talk about timing: With the presidential race just a midterm election away, the conservative Washington Free Beacon has dug up the archived papers of a former friend of Hillary Clinton's. Political science professor Diane Blair—described by Hillary as her "closest friend" before Blair died in 2000—kept diaries, strategy memos, interviews, and correspondence regarding the Clintons' early days in Arkansas and the White House. Among the juiciest bits:

  • In a 1992 memo called "Research on Hillary Clinton," pollsters for Bill Clinton's campaign wrote that voters "fear that only someone too politically ambitious, too strong, and too ruthless could survive such controversy so well. What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary.”
  • In a handwritten note, Blair wrote that Hillary defended Bill over his affair with "narcissistic loony (sic) toon" Monica Lewinsky. "It was a huge personal lapse," Hillary told her, but she put the affair "in context" of personal tragedies and political pressure. “HRC insists ... it was consensual (was not a power relationship) and was not sex within any real meaning (standup, liedown, oral, etc.) of the term."
  • A confidential 1992 memo by two campaign operatives addressed "GF"—Gennifer Flowers—who had just revealed a 12-year affair with Bill. "Exposing GF: completely as a fraud, liar and possible criminal to stop this story and related stories, prevent future non-related stories and expose press inaction and manipulation." Bill later admitted to having an affair with her.
  • In what appears to be a 1970s note written by Bill to Hillary, he writes about reading an erotic love poem: "At 3:30 this morning I fell asleep over Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress. It has been a while since I could feel something so sharply across three hundred years."
  • Hillary called their first year in the White House "hellacious," but took an upbeat approach after Bill's impeachment in 1998. Hillary "sounded very up, almost jolly,” Blair wrote, and talked about going out with Bill and Chelsea to cheers and applause. "This, she said is what drives their adversaries totally nuts, that they don’t bend, do not appear to be suffering."
Click for the full article or the Blair archive itself. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)

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