Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

“Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn’t do us anything. We’ve had lots of empathy; we’ve had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.”

good I could control, while great was more nebulous and chancy,

the Rule of Two: If I was unsure of a course of action but could think of two reasons for it, I’d do it. If I could think of two reasons against it, I wouldn’t.

“Am I scaring you?” “No,” I said. “You’re impressing me. A lot of people underestimate their ability to change the status quo or they’re too lazy to try.”

The lesson was this: You will encounter boys and men with whom you think you enjoy chemistry. A boy or man will find you funny and interesting and smart, just as you find him funny and interesting and smart. The pleasure you take in each other’s company will be obvious, but, crucially, while this pleasure will make you feel as if you’re in love with him, it will not make him feel as if he’s in love with you. He might remark on how much he likes talking to you, but there will be girls he wants to kiss, and you will not be one of them.

The privileged bustle of Yale, all of us with our sparkly eyes and theoretical notions about justice, our clever conversations, our impending diplomas—they seemed a kind of illusion or pretense.

I often secretly experienced my own good fortune as slightly shameful and my impulses toward activism as a form of contrition, but what if I could lead a life that made me worthy of luck? What if getting what I wanted most could be a fuel for my own morality, and additive rather than unfairly advantageous?

“Try not to actually fall in love, because I don’t think it’s legal for the president of the United States to be married to the Supreme Court chief justice.”

I smell a sitcom!

“I’ve never been serenaded by a naked man before.”

I have, but it was with a kazoo.

direct and sincere compliments are shockingly effective—that they feel wonderful. What in theory should sound saccharine or manipulative rarely does in practice, so long as you believe the other person really means it. And we crave praise not, I think, because most of us are egomaniacal. It’s because we’re human.

I knew plenty of smart people, but I’d never before encountered a person whose intelligence sharpened mine the way his did. His perspective both overlapped with and differed from mine so as to be challenging, reassuring, and never boring.

“I want to be a good man,” Bill said. “It probably sounds corny, but I want to be honorable. I want to be an honorable elected official, an honorable father, and an honorable husband.”

Taking the temperature of water in a restaurant wasn’t some sort of shtick with him, and I’d never seen him do it. But the general impulse to destabilize a group, to reclaim attention and make life mildly unpleasant for everyone—these were tendencies I knew well.

Some mild emotional and verbal abuse, please.

“How on earth is it not personal? Does he say things like that to people other than his children?” “Presumably, he realizes he can’t get away with it.” “That illustrates my point.

How were intelligent men blind to the damage they could sow?

I said to Barbara, “Do people think I’m a fool?” She made a dismissive sound. “Who are people? There’s no monolithic opinion.

The excitement of sex comes and goes, no pun intended, but great conversations make life worth living. Don’t they?”

President Ford’s decision to posthumously restore Robert E. Lee’s citizenship.

Wait, this happened??

you’ve certainly read the Bible more thoroughly than I have. But it’s not as if people are all one thing or the other, sexually or maritally.”

was there a version of me that existed in a parallel universe who would by this point have absorbed the customs of Arkansas, including its fashions? If I’d married Bill, would I now be Hillary Clinton? Hillary Rodham-Clinton? Would I be the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl?

I think this is lampshade hanging…is it?

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Did they not give her media training?” She was so—there was no other word for it—weak. Bill needed an equal who’d act like even if he’d had affairs, so what?

I wonder if his choice of wife will cause such a big divergence, he doesn’t get elected president?

How strange that Bill had ended up married to a woman who clearly hated him! Granted, he was probably cheating on her and she probably knew it.

Oh well, that would explain it all.

The extra time female politicians were expected to spend on our appearance, known as the pink tax, amounted to an hour a day for me, but I’d learned the hard way that it was necessary.

“You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with these kinds of skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for office.”

Those skeletons being orgies.

Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.

Everyone always thinks not wanting kids is a temporary phase, which is so condescending. I don’t dislike them, but I don’t want my own.”

Because, really, weren’t they two sides of the same coin, wasn’t Donald simply a far less palatable version of Bill? Rich and narcissistic and verbose, charismatic, and transfixing? Bill was far smarter, but was he really less sleazy?

I mean, in a way, this is true…

there was a passage where the woman described her difficulty having deep friendships with white women, how betrayed she’d feel by their casual comments that dismissed the complexity of race for her. I read the passage several times.

I don’t think anyone who’s lost their moral compass wonders if they’ve lost their moral compass.”

“I don’t think we can overestimate the magnitude of the dude’s insecurity, and it seems like there’s something about you in particular that he’s intimidated by.” “My X chromosomes?”

“If there was ever a time when you were pure, Bill, I think it was long before we met.” He looked a little hurt, and I added, “But I’ve come to think purity is overrated.

Putting up with Bill Clinton’s bullshit—hadn’t I earned the right never to do it again? Sometimes speaking your mind is expensive, which doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.

whenever you’re on TV, imagine you have a huge tattoo across your face. You’re discussing healthcare, and people can hardly listen because they’re so busy thinking, Why did she get that tattoo? That’s how unfamiliar voters are with a woman running for president.”

“But this gets to my point about the tension between fate and free will. Is there a parallel universe where I married Bill, and if there is, did we stay married?

Technically, yes.