Clinton family needs time to heal

by Marie Sanz

WASHINGTON, Feb 13

(AFP)

President Bill Clinton�s impeachment trial is over but the effects on his family likely will linger.

First Lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea have been forced to live with the Monica Lewinsky scandal for more than a year.

Following Friday�s acquittal by the Senate on two charges stemming from the affair, Clinton apologized publicly for the hurt he had caused, but for once Hillary was not by his side.

Throughout the controversy Hillary has presented a picture to the world of a strong, supportive woman, standing by her husband against the world. Few clues have emerged concerning her private, personal response to a year of very public crisis.

On Sunday, Valentine�s Day, the first couple was to jet off to Mexico where they spent their honeymoon in 1975. Clinton will be on official business then, but the next family gathering following his return will be purely personal, for Chelsea�s 19th-birthday party on February 27.

Now that the first family is certain to remain in the White House for two more years, the Lewinsky affair will recede and become what Clinton considered it was all along � a private matter between him, his wife and daughter.

Reconciliation with his family is a difficult path for the president, according to Saturday�s New York Daily News. It quotes a Hillary confidante as saying the first lady was �very angry at the president for what this did to Chelsea. I�d be surprised if she ever really forgives him for that.�

Ever the political activist, Hillary is also bitter at the president for allowing scandal to paralyze his agenda for more than a year.

�She is really furious that his stupid, negligent, outrageous behavior gave the right-wing conspiracy a leg up on them,� a friend was quoted as saying.

Hillary responded to the scandal by throwing herself into her work, traveling widely to promote children�s and women�s issues. Already she is an influential political player and is being courted to run for the Senate seat of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York veteran Democrat who is retiring.

The private relationship between the Clintons remains a mystery to many Americans, and some question why Hillary sticks in the marriage. They see her own drive for power � not loyalty to the president � as the cement of the marriage.

�Her life strategy decided long ago was to take the raw material of a brilliant emotionally battered child with a good heart and a desperate ambition and shape him into a political star to which she could hitch her wagon full of dreams for changing the world,� journalist and author Gail Sheehy wrote in February�s Vanity Fair.

But her concern for Chelsea is legendary and it was in character for the president and Hillary to publicly condemn a recent magazine for running a cover story on the first daughter.

�We deeply regret and are profoundly saddened by the decision of People Magazine to print a cover story featuring our daughter Chelsea,� the first couple said.

�Grace Under Fire� and a picture of Chelsea and her mother are emblazoned on the February 15 issue of the popular celebrity gossip magazine that has sparked the unusually vehement outcry.

The People story stresses the bond that has strengthened between Chelsea and her mother since the Lewinsky crisis, saying they have �reached out to each other more than ever before.�

The Clintons� only child reportedly has acted as a sturdy bridge between her parents.