It is not exactly the world’s greatest-kept secret that the Clintons have failed to keep their sex life restricted to the marital bed over the last forty years. No one who was alive to witness the 1992 presidential campaign will forget the parade of endless women who came out of the Arkansas woodwork to accuse then-candidate Bill Clinton of carrying on affairs with them. Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky; by the end of Clinton’s eight years in the White House, the American people knew more about the president’s sex life than nearly anyone else in the world. And all the while, Hillary stood by her man…even as she famously distanced herself from that old Tammy Wynette song.
Now, according to a new book by a man who has worked for both Bill and Hillary in their political campaigns, it’s coming to light that all of that cheating may not have actually been “cheating.” Indeed, Mark Penn writes in the book that the Clinton’s have “at least a one-way open marriage,” though he concedes that this arrangement was perhaps “not by choice.”
In the book, excerpts of which were published by The Daily Mail, Penn talks about the fictional relationship between Frank and Claire Underwood in Netflix’s House of Cards to draw a comparison and explain to readers why a political power couple might choose such an arrangement.
“Hollywood usually does as Hollywood writes,” Penn notes. “For example, Frank and Claire Underwood in House of Cards have numerous partners, including one who sleeps at the White House, as they pretend to ignore it. There seems to be a rage of jealousy under the surface.
“These open marriages are based less on sex and more on love, creating additional meaningful relationships that are part of the marriage in some ways and that may come and go, revolving around the couple, which still serves as the core unit,” he explains.
The interest in the Clintons’ sex life has surely seen its peak come and go, but this is a couple that continues to fascinate the American people (like, say, a particularly gruesome car wreck might draw your lingering attention). Seldom have we ever seen a couple of people so obsessed with power and so seemingly devoid of normal human emotions. They were the antithesis of “the couple next door,” even if Bill had a charming streak of charisma that his wife sorely lacks to this day. Even so, they managed to far exceed their own ambitions…right up until the day Hillary met an unstoppable force named Donald Trump.
