Hillary Clinton was all too aware of the threat Bill Clinton's womanizing posed to his political career, according to a new biography about the former first lady.
"A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton" by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Bernstein details the life of the former first lady, U.S. senator and current 2008 presidential candidate.
"She married Bill Clinton knowing, as I say in the book, that the chances of his being monogamous were probably less than his being president of the United States," Bernstein told CTV's Canada AM.
Bernstein, who is known as being one of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal while working at the Washington Post, researched and wrote the book about Clinton for eight years. While he did not speak to Clinton or her husband former U.S. president Bill Clinton, 200 friends and advisers of the Clintons were interviewed for the book.
The book provides an insight into a woman, who, despite her high profile has managed to meticulously manage information about her personal life.
"She's the best known woman in the world and almost nothing is known about her that is really accurate or true or contextual in the larger sense," Bernstein said.
Bernstein discloses in the book that Bill Clinton wanted to leave his marriage after having an affair, but that Hillary Clinton did not allow him to leave and that the couple eventually reconciled.
"The important thing about the other women is that Hillary proceeded to forgive Bill over and over again and yet she savaged the women, interrogated them, at one point hired her own law firm to represent five of the women who were said by some people to have had affairs with Bill Clinton," Bernstein said.
"She hired her law partners and herself to interrogate them and represent them to get statements that they hadn't had sex with him."
Bernstein says that Clinton went to these great lengths to keep Clinton's affairs secret because of his political potential.
"What's important about the other women is that Hillary Clinton married someone she and others recognized as the greatest political talent of our era," Bernstein told Canada AM.
"She knew unlike everybody else that he would not be politically viable if his secret compulsions became known and the effects of acting them out. And she covered that up."
But now with the 2008 presidential elections looming in the U.S., the former first lady is training her focus on her own political career. Bernstein is undecided on how effective she would be as a president if she captured the White House.
"I think she brings great experience," Bernstein said. "She brings as her constant counsellor, her husband. But I think the most important thing is we don't know. She is the most fascinating woman of our time and it is a great drama."
