My life

A few days later, Hillary and I hosted our annual breakfast for religious leaders at the White House. We usually discussed shared public concerns. This time I asked for their prayers during my personal travail: I have been on quite a journey these last few weeks to get to the end of this, to the rock-bottom truth of where I am and where we all are. I agree with those who have said that in my first statement after I testified, I was not contrite enough. I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned. I said that I was sorry for all who had been hurt—my family, friends, staff, cabinet, and Monica Lewinsky and her family; that I had asked for their forgiveness; and that I would pursue counseling from pastors and others to find, with God’s help, “a willingness to give the very forgiveness I seek, a renunciation of the pride and the anger which cloud judgment, lead people to excuse and compare and to blame and complain.” I also said I would mount a vigorous defense in response to the charges against me and would intensify my efforts to do my job “in the hope that with a broken spirit and a still strong heart I can be used for greater good.”

I had asked three pastors to counsel me at least once a month for an indefinite period: Phil Wogaman, our minister at Foundry Methodist Church; my friend Tony Campolo; and Gordon MacDonald, a minister and author of several books I had read on living one’s faith. They would more than fulfill their commitment, usually coming to the White House together, sometimes separately. We would pray, read scripture, and discuss some things I had never really talked about before. The Reverend Bill Hybels from Chicago also continued to come to the White House regularly, to ask searching questions designed to check my “spiritual health.” Even though they were often tough on me, the pastors took me past the politics into soul-searching and the power of God’s love.

Hillary and I also began a serious counseling program, one day a week for about a year. For the first time in my life, I actually talked openly about feelings, experiences, and opinions about life, love, and the nature of relationships. I didn’t like everything I learned about myself or my past, and it pained me to face the fact that my childhood and the life I’d led since growing up had made some things difficult for me that seemed to come more naturally to other people.

I also came to understand that when I was exhausted, angry, or feeling isolated and alone, I was more vulnerable to making selfish and self-destructive personal mistakes about which I would later be ashamed. The current controversy was the latest casualty of my lifelong effort to lead parallel lives, to wall off my anger and grief and get on with my outer life, which I loved and lived well. During the government shutdowns I was engaged in two titanic struggles: a public one with Congress over the future of our country, and a private one to hold the old demons at bay. I had won the public fight and lost the private one.

In so doing, I had hurt more than my family and my administration. It was also damaging to the presidency and the American people. No matter how much pressure I was under, I should have been stronger and behaved better.

There was no excuse for what I did, but trying to come to grips with why I did it gave me at least a chance to finally unify my parallel lives.

In the long counseling sessions and our conversations about them afterward, Hillary and I also got to know each other again, beyond the work and ideas we shared and the child we adored. I had always loved her very much, but not always very well. I was grateful that she was brave enough to participate in the counseling. We were still each other’s best friend, and I hoped we could save our marriage. Meanwhile, I was still sleeping on a couch, this one in the small living room that adjoined our bedroom. I slept on that old couch for two months or more. I got a lot of reading, thinking, and work done, and the couch was pretty comfortable, but I hoped I wouldn’t be on it forever. As the Republicans intensified their criticism of me, my supporters started to stand up. On September 11, eight hundred Irish-Americans gathered on the South Lawn as Brian O’Dwyer presented me with an award named after his late father, Paul, for my role in the Irish peace process. Brian’s remarks and the crowd’s response to them left no doubt about why they were really there. A few days later, Václav Havel came to Washington for a state visit, telling the press I was his “great friend.” As the press continued to ask questions about impeachment, resignation, and whether I had lost my moral authority to lead, Havel said America had many different faces: “I love most of these faces. There are some I don’t understand. I don’t like to speak about things which I don’t understand.”