The Big Story: Clinton papers revive the past

NEW YORK—Newly released schedules from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s eight years in the White House portray an activist first lady who weighed in on policy, traveled the globe and won a race for the U.S. Senate.

But they also serve as an unsettling reminder of her husband’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and the subsequent impeachment proceedings, just as the Democratic presidential candidate appears to be strengthening her position against rival Barack Obama.

The sexual escapades of elected officials have dominated the nation’s conversation in recent days.

Eliot Spitzer stepped down as governor of New York after getting caught up in a prostitution scandal and his successor, David Paterson, was forced to come clean about his repeated marital infidelities.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been pressured to step down while authorities look into claims that he and a former aide lied under oath during a whistle-blowers’ trial last summer when they denied having an affair in 2002 and 2003.

And former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, who resigned in 2004 after disclosing that he was gay and had had a homosexual affair, said this week that he, his wife and a male aide had engaged in sexual threesomes — contradicting his estranged wife’s angry denials.

So the flashback of Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky hardly seemed shocking.

Yet for Hillary Clinton, it is personal, painful and something she has tried to relegate to the past in her groundbreaking bid for the presidency.

Throughout her campaign, the New York senator has trumpeted the experience she gained as first lady and the relative peace and prosperity of her husband’s White House years as reasons for voters to favor a third Clinton term. The darker side of Bill Clinton’s legacy — his trysts in the Oval Office with a woman half his age — is the elephant in the room, never acknowledged but always there.

But Hillary Clinton cannot escape her past. Nor, for that matter, can Obama, who this week struggled to explain his close 20-year relationship with a now-retired pastor who has espoused incendiary anti-American views.

Reminders of the Lewinsky saga haven’t necessarily hurt Clinton as she has continued in public life.

Her favorable ratings spiked during the impeachment proceedings, helping clear the way for her successful Senate bid in 2000. And news of Spitzer’s entanglement with prostitutes outraged many women, who began wondering aloud if electing female candidates might be the best way to solve the problem.

Indeed, a Gallup tracking poll released Wednesday showed Clinton with a significant lead over Obama nationally for the first time in a month — 49 percent for Clinton, 42 percent for Obama. Campaign aides credit the shift to her new emphasis on the economy and readiness to be commander in chief, but acknowledge other intangibles may have played a role as well.

Splitting Michigan “would be fair”

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Barack Obama’s campaign said Thursday that evenly splitting Michigan’s delegates with Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a fair way to distribute them, now that the chances of a do-over primary are essentially dead. The Michigan Senate adjourned Thursday without taking up a bill for a June 3 repeat primary. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, an Obama supporter and former presidential candidate, promoted the idea of splitting the delegates 50-50 in a statement Thursday. “The best outcome is to come to an arrangement where the delegates are apportioned fairly between Senators Obama and Clinton, so the Michigan delegation can participate fully in the Denver convention,” the statement said.