- Flush with the funds from her lucrative book deal, Hillary
Clinton was due to buy a £2 million house in Washington yesterday.
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- The senator-elect, who will be sworn in next Wednesday,
was buying a six-bedroom, seven-bathroom Georgian-style house near Embassy
Row. The house will enable her to entertain in grand style and to provide
the Clintons' main family home. The purchase should leave plenty of change
from the estimated £5.3 million book deal. Even so, the couple's
friends are rallying round to buy them fancy dinner services, which up
to now they have had gratis in their government housing.
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- But while Mrs Clinton unpacks the porcelain, those New
Yorkers who argued that she was using their state merely as a platform
for a return to Washington are now saying: "Told you so." The
Clintons' new house purchase breaks with the tradition by which Presidents
and First Ladies, when they leave the White House, return home. The Reagans
went back to California, the Bushes to Texas, the Carters to Georgia. No
First Couple has wanted to hang around looming over their successors.
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- But Mrs Clinton wants nothing more to do with Arkansas,
her husband's home state. Her ascent to the Senate and a possible presidential
run in 2004 have put the Clintons on yet another upward trajectory rather
than into a slow fade. Like it or not, the Clintons are neither leaving
Washington nor national life for a good many years yet.
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- But Mrs Clinton is suddenly realising that if she wants
to be a grande dame she is going to have to pay for it. This is going down
badly with her new constituents, to whom her behaviour since she won election
in November has seemed hubristic. First she went out and signed the deal
to write her memoirs, incurring the condemnation of newspapers across New
York state.
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- The New York Times, for example, said in an editorial:
"She above all should know not every deal that is legally permissible
is smart for a politician who wants and needs to inspire public trust."
When pressed by her new Senate colleagues to present the details of her
book deal to the Senate Ethics Committee, she flatly refused, saying her
lawyers told her it was unnecessary.
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- Even after all the unpleasant lawyering of the Clinton
presidency, it appeared, Mrs Clinton still preferred to proclaim her virtue
behind the protection of lawyers rather than through openness. Rival executives
who tried to woo her say she was asking for the entire £5.3 million
by Jan 31. They also say that at no point did anyone ask if she would be
writing about Monica Lewinsky. The publishers' delicacy may haunt them
if Mrs Clinton delivers a turgid, scandal-free script.
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- For now, however, she has her money to cover both her
big needs and big debts. According to the most recent accounts of the Clinton
Legal Expense Trust, set up to pay lawyers in the Clintons' numerous legal
battles, it still owed £2.5 million. Then there is the mortgage on
the house in Chappaqua, the New York suburb where the Clintons bought a
white elephant of a home to establish Mrs Clinton's residency before she
stood for the Senate. After having to turn down a friend's loan because
of a political outcry, the Clintons went to the bank to fund the £1.1
million mortgage.
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- The couple claim they will hang on to the house and commute
from there to offices in Manhattan. Few believe, however, that suburban
life will suit them. A flat in New York city would be more their style
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