Hillary's Bio Eruption

WHIP APPEAL Clinton

Back in 1989, Bill Clinton was allegedly ready to end his marriage to Hillary. In love with a beautiful Southern belle by the name of Marilyn Jo Jenkins, he told his wife he wanted to leave her. Hillary, as we know, convinced him to stay.

A Woman in Charge, a new book by Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, describes just how exactly she accomplished that. One of two new Hillary bios, it tells the story of a hard-headed feminist who deep down holds a soft spot for bad boys, and, much to the delight of beach readers, tells her story in large part by diving deep into Bill's penchant for unseemly dalliances. Bernstein reveals how, during their work on the McGovern presidential campaign, assorted trysts prompted a breakup with his then-sweetheart, Hillary. (It eventually took Hillary two years to say yes to his marriage proposals.) But Bill's shenanigans obviously continued. It got so bad that Hillary allegedly phoned him from Washington one night threatening to sleep with another man if he didn't change his ways, Bernstein reports. Bill responded by sobbing and pleading with her not to "go and do something that would make life miserable."

Whatever pain Hillary experienced from his cheating, the tension apparently made for top-notch make-up sex, readers of A Woman in Charge soon learn. In the words of a former Clinton aide: "They would constantly argue, and the next thing you know, they'd be falling all over each other with 'Oh my darling ... come here baby ... you're adorable ...' then throwing things at each other, and then they'd be slobbering all over each other."

And then there's the other biography, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, (Gerth is a former reporter from the New York Times who broke the Whitewater story.)