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Does Hillary Have Too Much Clout?: A Perilous Precedent
| Article
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11259 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1993 |
1,557 Words |
| Author
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Suzanne Fields
Suzanne Fields, columnist for the Washington Times is
nationally syndicated. She is the author of Like Father, Like
Daughter: How Father Shapes the Woman His Daughter Becomes and
was editor of Innovations, a magazine for mental health
professionals. |
A joke that circulated around Washington cocktail parties after the Clintons moved into the White House related how the Clintons stopped at a gas station in rural Arkansas shortly after the election. The attendant reminded Mrs. Clinton that he had dated her in high school.
As Bill and Hillary drove away, the president-elect turned to Hillary with a sly grin and said, "Well, if you had married him you wouldn't be about to become the first lady."
"Oh yeah?" replied Hillary. "If I had married him, you wouldn't be about to become the president."
Hillary is not the first first lady to be spoken of as the "Woman Behind the Oval Office." But she is the first to have a U.S. court identify her as a "virtual extension of her husband" and "the functional equivalent of an assistant to the President."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia made it official: Hillary, as the head of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, became the equivalent of a "government employee." (No salary, but look at the benefits.) As a result she was not required to open her meetings to the public.
NEPOTISM'S PITFALLS
She cannot get a paid job in the administration because a law enacted against nepotism in appointments after John F. Kennedy chose his brother Robert as attorney general prohibits it. That law probably saves Hillary from herself. Imagine the chaos, public and private, if Hillary resigned in a huff, like Elliot Richardson did when Richard Nixon asked him to fire the special Watergate prosecutor.
But now that the courts have identified Hillary as a public official without pay, the question we must ask is how might this new identification play out in other ways?
What if the first lady as a public official takes a lot of airplane trips like John Sununu, or like Don Regan incurs the wrath of the other White House staff?
As an unpaid administrator in the West Wing and an active participant in policy decisions, she does not undergo Senate confirmation. She is not subject to firing. Or is she? Would her boss dare?
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