Some people pitied her. Others speculated that she was standing by her man now to score some big payoff down the road (he had landed a $2.5 million book deal as a result of his insider’s role with the Clintons). Still others, especially women, were aghast that the highly regarded trial lawyer, with no children to keep her in the marriage, had appeared so placid in the face of a humiliating betrayal.
In a conversation last week, Eileen McGann finally revealed her emotions and explained her behavior. She described the revelations in the tabloids as ““shocks.’’ Asked if, as has been suggested, she and her husband had an ““arrangement’’ that would possibly condone his behavior, she said flatly, ““No.’’ She doesn’t excuse her husband, but she also insists that her future choices will not be dictated by any feminist formulas.
And she has a good point: when people’s private lives are suddenly thrust into public view, little attention is usually paid to the complexity of human relationships. In any marriage there has to be a ““zone of privacy,’’ as Hillary Clinton once so memorably put it, and outsiders should never assume that they understand what goes on inside.
You have been so understanding of your husband in public that many people find your reaction unbelievable.
While I’m trying very hard to understand, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel any pain or anger. I’m not happy about what he did, and sometimes I think about dismembering him, and good friends have offered to help me dig up the backyard and bury him.
Nevertheless, you’re sticking with him.
I never said I’m standing by this man no matter what. Somebody else said that. I don’t know where I’m going to be six months or a year from now. I’m taking it day by day. I know one thing: I’m not going to leave someone who’s been my best friend for 20 years.
How did you get through those first days?
I was numb. I still am. Thank God I have the resources to be able to go on and do what I do. I have my own life, my own caseload, my own career. I am grounded.
Yet some feminists have criticized you for not asserting yourself more. What do you say to them?
Feminism is allowing women to make choices, and not be bound either by Victorian dictates or the comments of gossip columnists and critics. I think any decision I make is highly personal, and there’s no one formula that’s right.
You are being compared to a long line of political wives who have endured indignities and still helped to maintain their husbands’ careers.
I’m not a political wife. I did not move to Washington to try to be some kind of adjunct to Dick. I have my own life, and I shared part of that with Dick.
What is it like to be thrust into the public spotlight?
It’s been very difficult to find privacy. One night when I was sitting in my living room, all of a sudden I noticed a bright light. It was a TV cameraman and a reporter from a tabloid show who came to the front door. They had been warned by police it was a private drive, but they came up without headlights on, snuck up to the house in the dark and shone the camera lights into the living room.
What would you like to see happen now–for your sake?
I would just like to have my privacy, which I’m entitled to. I don’t make my decisions in public, and I don’t feel I owe anyone an explanation of what I do and why I do it.
How is your husband reacting to the ways your lives have changed?
Believe me, he is suffering terribly. This is not easy for anybody. I think what’s lost in this is, we’re talking about people. We’re talking about human beings. We are in the middle of a terrible, terrible trauma, and that seems to get lost in the overanalysis of people who don’t know me and don’t know Dick.
A Newsweek Poll shows that 39 percent of the people surveyed think you are sticking with your husband for financial gain. There must be easier ways to make money than being dragged through something like this in public for weeks and weeks. I’m financially self-sufficient. That’s not what motivates me. What’s motivating me is a deep concern for someone I’ve been close to and who has been deeply supportive of me for 20 years.
Describe your everyday lives now.
He’s at home writing. He has not traveled. I’m working hard. I spend a lot of time with my friends who make me laugh even when things seem impossibly hard… This is a really horrible trauma for everyone who has been touched by it, and answers don’t come–at least for me–immediately.
