Fuss Over First Lady’s ‘Guru’ Wide, Not Deep Hillary Clinton Calls It ‘Brainstorming’; Political Strategists Reluctant To Attack

Before you start sniggering at Hillary Clinton for her imaginary conversations with the long-dead Eleanor Roosevelt and Mohandas Gandhi, you may first want to take a personal inventory:

Did you check your horoscope today?

Have you bought, like millions before you, the “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,” the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” or used your lucky number to bet on the lottery?

Ever conjured up a conversation with a dead relative when you need some advice?

For many Americans, this isn’t weird. But for the first lady, it can be taboo.

Ever since excerpts have appeared from Bob Woodward’s new book “The Choice” detailing the first lady’s sort of personal Psychic Friends Network, the tabloids have been having a heyday. “Hillary’s Guru!” the headlines screamed, conjuring up visions of crystal balls and mysterious knocks in the East Room.

But most political strategists are taking a pass. For two reasons: One, she’s not the president. And two, they know a bunch of Americans really believe this stuff.

“This is just fodder for Letterman and Leno,” said Michael Deaver, a former Reagan White House official who weathered a similar storm when news broke that Nancy Reagan consulted the stars before OK’ing schedules. “It might make a bigger difference if the president were talking to Abe Lincoln or Harry Truman.”

The White House has gone into overdrive trying to distance itself from these earlier ghoulish episodes. “These were not seances,” Hillary Clinton’s spokesman Neel Lattimore said. And Hillary Clinton did draw the line at an imaginary talk with Jesus.

“This was an interesting intellectual exercise to help spark my own thoughts; it was a brainstorming session for my book, not a spiritual event,” Hillary Clinton said in a statement released Monday.

Hillary Clinton then beat both Letterman and Leno to the punch. Addressing a conference on families and children in Nashville, she said: “Shortly before I arrived I had one of my conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt, and she thinks this is a terrific idea as well.”

What stirred the current fuss, according to Woodward’s book, was this: Early in their administration, the Clintons held a kind of New Age, full human potential kind of retreat.

A couple years later, struggling to figure out how to be a new kind of first lady, Hillary Clinton asked Jean Houston, 55, a highly educated human potential guru, to help her.

Houston led her through an imaginary conversation with Clinton’s role model and “archetype,” Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman similarly troubled by her role as first lady. Clinton, with her eyes closed, role-played both women and asked and answered questions.

The technique, psychiatrists said, is common in therapy. It’s only upsetting to some people because it happened in the White House.

Some pundits are predicting that Hillary’s New Age encounter in the White House solarium will be as big a flap as Nancy Reagan’s star gazing. Deaver scoffs at the notion.

“Nancy was much more establishment. Hillary is much more a New Age woman seeking her role. One morning she’s baking cookies, the next day, she’s trying to fix the health care system. The next, she’s going to Pakistan,” Deaver said. “She’s already had 9,000 hairdos. Nobody’s surprised about it.”