William Jefferson Clinton's Psychologythe best brief summary of her life and persona is the portrait of her as
a woman who
worked hard and played hard, with an affinity for the night-
clubs and the thoroughbred horse-racing tracks. ... In later
years, her flightiness and raucous laughter coupled with her
love of flashy and multiple pieces of jewelry and colorful ensem-
bles gave her an Auntie Mame quality as surely as her jutting
jaw, spidery false eyelashes, and quarter- moon grin gave her an
uncanny resemblance to Bette Midler. (Oakley 1994, 23)
Mrs. Kelley had ambition and possessed the ability and determi-
nation to accomplish her purposes. A major purpose early on was to
find a way out of her mother's home and the tensions that existed in
it. She seems to have identified strongly with her gentle, people-lov-
ing father and rebelled against any identification with a mother she
saw as angry and vindictive (especially toward her father).^2
A central feature of her psychology was her narcissism. One form
this took was her great concern with appearances—hers and others.
From the vision of how she would look in the crisp white uniform of
the profession she chose in part because of this image, to her concern
with the outward appearance of the men she married and the woman
her son brought home from Yale, appearance, not substance, seemed
to play a major role.
Another form her narcissism took was her desire to be noticed,
indeed, to be the center of attention and doing whatever was neces-
sary to ensure that position. From carefully constructing her Auntie
Mame persona to joining entertainers on stage, Mrs. Kelley liked the
spotlight. As she says of her partying in Hot Springs, "I was obvi-
ously born with a flashy streak inside me, just waiting to burst out,
and Hot Springs let me be me with a vengeance" (1994a, 107).
Her narcissism was also reflected in the men she chose, men whose
own narcissistic charm masked questionable character and behavior.
Mrs. Kelley found Roger Clinton's
vast vanity charming. I like a man who likes himself, and
Roger Clinton certainly seemed to approve of Roger Clinton.
He was always trying to catch his reflection in a mirror or a
window. And when he was playing host, you've never seen such
strutting in your life. (19943, 81)