White House: "These Were Not Seances"

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, June 24) -- The White House is providing a rapid response to a new book reporting that, starting in late 1994, a troubled Hillary Rodham Clinton met with a spiritual advisor to help her deal with the pressures she faced following the defeat of the Clinton national health plan.

"These were not seances," White House spokesman Neel Lattimore said, anticipating criticism and comparisons to former First Lady Nancy Reagan, who consulted a psychic to help plan the former president's daily schedule.

She's No Nancy Reagan The book is "The Choice" by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward which deals with the inner workings of both the Clinton-Gore campaign and that of presumptive GOP nominee Robert Dole.

Woodward's work, excerpted in Sunday's Post, described a series of meetings during which Mrs. Clinton, encouraged by spiritualist Jean Houston (224K WAV sound), had imaginary conversations with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Clinton resisted role-playing with Jesus Christ, saying that would have been "too personal."

The White House stressed Mrs. Clinton consulted Houston to brainstorm for her recent best-selling book on children, "It Takes A Village." But Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said the meetings also reveal the first lady as "a human being (160K WAV sound)."

"She reaches out," Panetta told CBS' "Face The Nation. She "talks to friends, talks to others, gathers information. We have to draw strength from wherever we can in order to make it from day to day."

Republicans, so far, have had little to say about Mrs. Clinton's interest in Houston. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said it sounds "a little flaky (64K WAV sound)." Former Reagan official Michael Deaver predicted the revelations wouldn't make "a heck of a lot of difference." Dole chuckled, "I don't know. Let me read the book."

But the administration clearly doesn't think they've heard the last of it, and they're probably right. "They have attacked her practice of law 15 years ago," vice president Al Gore said late Sunday. "Now they are going into the way she brainstormed to write her book."

White House: "These Were Not Seances"

Related Stories: