Bill Clinton may have cheated on his wife with Monica Lewinsky because he had lost confidence in her when she failed to pass healthcare reform, a new book suggests.

The former president may have sought 'solace' in the White House intern after Hillary bungled what should have been the biggest achievement of his first term in office.

Bill 'no longer trusted' Hillary, who he entrusted with the policy, while she withdrew into a prolonged depression, Partner to Power: The Secret World of Presidents and Their Most Trusted Advisers – suggests.

Author and former senior adviser to Congress K. Ward Cummings paints a scathing portrait of a president and a first lady who failed because 'compromise was not part of their vocabulary.'

Cummings writes that they were hampered by characteristics that would later haunt Hillary's presidential run; their 'intense secrecy, the unhealthy nature of their personal power sharing, and their insistence on treating healthcare reform like a war in which everyone was either their friend or their foe.'

Behind close doors: A new book suggests Bill and Hillary Clinton's rocky marriage hampered the presidency due to their 'intense secrecy' and the 'unhealthy nature of their personal power sharing'

Bill's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky could have been sparked after he lost confidence in his wife whose healthcare reform initiative flopped during his inaugural year

In fact, guilt was the 'driving psychological influence' in their marriage; Bill felt it for his philandering and Hillary used it to get what she wanted.

Within this unhealthy dynamic, Hillary was 'addicted' to her husband who rebuffed her and then came to her to be rescued, giving her the love that she craved.

Hillary's role as her husband's close adviser is among those recounted in Cummings's book, which covers advisers from the presidency of Washington to the modern day.

She was one of the most striking because she 'stretched the boundaries of the Office of the First Lady more than anyone in history,' he writes.

But since the time of George Washington, presidents have needed a righthand man - in his case Alexander Hamilton - as their personal counsel.

Most presidents choose one individual or a small group to serve as their confidantes who often work behind the scenes, but at times, such as those during the Bill-Hillary era, they are very public.

When the Clintons arrived in the White House in 1993 there were Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House and it looked as though they would achieve something which had eluded Congress for decades; comprehensive healthcare reform.

Bill thought that Hillary was 'essential to his success' after she helped him win a second term as Arkansas governor.

Bill and Hillary's dynamic was actually an 'unhealthy one', hampered by their inability to compromise and her sense of entitlement 'for helping turn his career around'

'Bill had become deeply and unhealthily dependent on Hillary and she developed a similarly profound sense of entitlement for helping to turn his career around,' Cummings writes.

'She felt she had earned the right to be regarded as a partner to his power.

'Placing her at the helm of his signature program was an expression of their new power-sharing arrangement,' which, Cummings writes, turned out to be a 'gross miscalculation that he would deeply regret.'

'As the saying goes, a team, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link.

'The Clinton partnership in the White House would prove this as the flaws of their dysfunctional marriage.'

Hillary's National Taskforce on Health Reform was announced on January 25, 1993 and it quickly ballooned from 12 to 500 people split into 12 'cluster teams' and 38 'sub groups.'

She immediately sparked a row when she insisted that all meetings take place behind closed doors to prevent leaks.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons responded with a lawsuit, demanding she keep them public. The organization won and the health insurance industry began a PR campaign which turned America against her.

Hillary's next error would be when she shunned offers from a bipartisan group of senators to create a scaled down program.

She vilified those who told her she would fail and would not even meet with senators offering a compromise.

Cummings writes: 'Hillary would not alter her strategy because she believed herself to be totally in the right.

Her national taskforce on healthcare was announced on January 25, 1993, but her efforts became controversial when she insisted all meetings take place behind closed doors. Her campaign ended seven months later when it ran out of legislative time

'The moral confidence she felt made it easier for her to dismiss efforts by others who wanted to steer her towards compromise.'

With the PR campaign against her going full steam, public opinion began to turn and healthcare reform died seven months later on August 26, 1994, when it ran out of legislative time.

Cummings writes that the failure left the Clintons feeling 'rattled.'

And according to their pollster, Dick Morris, one of the few from their inner circle to dish on their relationship, Bill had likely found it hard to stand up to his wife.

In fact, he described Hillary as her husband's 'attack dog' because she loved conflict and he tried to avoid it.

She took charge of much of Bill's early career because he was 'too nice to manage his own life' and he 'doesn't understand how venal people can be, he's not tough enough,' Morris disclosed.

Bill 'owed Hillary far too much to have any hope of managing her as a staff member,' Cummings states.

Morris also claimed that guilt was the 'driving psychological influence' in the Clintons' personal dynamic.

He said: 'I think the big frustration of their marriage is that she's married to the most elusive, withholding, anal-retentive man you can imagine.

'He uses denial of affection as his method of getting people to do what he wants them to do - the ones he's close to - rather than to praise or give affection.

'I believe it's a relationship in which she's addicted to him. And she adores him. She's the best thing that's ever happened to him. But he's very remote.

The power dynamic between the two was thrown off because Bill 'owed Hillary far too much to have any hope of managing her as a staff member,' Cummings writes, and the president likely found it hard to stand up to his wife

'And when he requires rescue she gets more attention, more affection, more love, more of the caring that I believe she craves from him, and also more power than she otherwise would get'.

According to Cummings, after the failure of healthcare reform Hillary threw herself into writing her 1996 book, It Takes A Village, while grappling with depression.

Cummings poses the question: 'Was Monica Lewinsky a source of solace for the president? The breakdown of their partnership was as educational for the president as it was for the First Lady…

'...both flawed individuals the Clintons were each raised in dysfunctional homes and bore the scars into the White House.

'It is how they chose to deal with the consequences of their difficult childhoods that one can see the causes that would ultimately lead to their unsuccessful efforts as a presidential partnership'.

Partner to Power has several warnings to Donald Trump about the dangers of informal advisers, of which the most striking is perhaps Edward House who served such a role for Woodrow Wilson.

House has not been treated kindly by historians and Cummings bluntly states that for him Wilson was a means of achieving 'his lifelong pursuit of power without accountability.'

House ran gubernatorial campaigns in Texas in the late 1800s but soon had bigger ideas and wanted to manage a residential candidate.

House was seeking a rare combination of, as Cummings puts it, somebody who was 'brilliant, handsome, eloquent, a natural campaigner and breathtakingly insecure'.

He found that man in Wilson.

House was a very sharp reader of people and quickly realized that when Wilson trusted a person he was 'unusually open to suggestion'.

'It almost did not matter who made the recommendation or what the context was,' Cumming writes.

'House took advantage of Wilson's loyal, trusting nature, not just to stay in his good graces, but also to reinforce his own personal influence in the White House.'

House acted as an unofficial adviser to the President, much like Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, and just like them House received no salary.

Wilson believed that all House wanted to do was 'serve the common cause and to help me and others'.

But House himself acknowledged the reality was different.

In his memoirs - he kept copious notes, most of which showed him in a flattering light - he said that when Wilson asked for suggestions in drafts of speeches, 'I nearly always praise at first in order to strengthen the president's confidence in himself which, strangely enough, is often lacking.'

House's flattery of Wilson 'knew few limits' and for normal men it would have been embarrassing.

Similar to Hillary's role as confidante to Bill, Edward House (pictured right) served such a role for President Woodrow Wilson. However, Cummings reveals how House often took advantage of Wilson's 'loyal, trusting nature' to reinforce his own personal influence in the White House

But not for Wilson, who was so insecure that he lapped it up even when House said things like: 'I do not put it too strongly when I say you are the main hope left to this torn and distracted world.

'Without your leadership, God alone knows how long we will wander in the darkness.'

There was 'something almost dishonest in the way that House fed Wilson's ego' but that it worked because it 'fed a deep need' in the president, Cummings writes.

When Ellen Wilson, Wilson's first wife, died of Bright's Disease in 1914 he turned to House for comfort, even inviting him to sleep in her old bed in his vacation home in New Hampshire.

But things changed between the two after Wilson after met his second wife, Edith, who knew exactly what House was up to, calling him a 'strange little man' and a 'weak vessel' to her husband.

Wilson sent House to the Versailles peace conference at the end of WWI, but became offended when world leaders asked to speak to him instead of the President of the United States.

Wilson became further enraged when House's name appeared in the papers back home more than his own - another echo of the Trump administration.

It is not clear if there was final disagreement between House and Wilson, but the two grew apart and their relationship was never the same again.

Similar to House and Wilson, Abraham Lincoln and close adviser William Seward and fell out of favor.

Abraham Lincoln had a similar relationship with his secretary of state, William Seward (third from left) who became Lincoln's 'alter ego, his sounding board, his counselor, and his conscience' until his assassination in 1865

Cummings writes that Seward and Lincoln, who appointed him Secretary of State, were such good friends that biographers have said their relationship was more like 'unconditional love.'

Their personalities were quite opposite - Lincoln was 'pensive and moody' and Seward was 'light-hearted and jovial' - but they ended up complementing each other.

Every night Lincoln would walk over to Seward's house on Lafayette Park, a block away from the White House, and the two men would 'sit by the fire trading stories, talking about history and literature.

Both men shared a love of telling stories and an 'almost juvenile' sense of humor that some found bawdy.

Lincoln trusted Seward so much that he got him to do the quiet but necessary work to get the 13th Amendment banning slavery passed - using shady lobbyists to get the required number of votes.

According to Cummings, Seward became Lincoln's 'alter ego, his sounding board, his counselor, and his conscience' until his assassination in 1865.

Their closeness was best illustrated when Seward was in a carriage accident and Lincoln rushed to his hospital bedside.

Cummings writes: 'The President of the United States lay down beside him, arranging his long body next to Seward's and placed his head close on the pillow.

'Together they talked softly until Seward fell asleep.'

Some presidential advisers even had colorful names: H.R. Haldeman liked to call himself Richard Nixon's 'son of a b****' because he did all his dirty work for him.

John Ehrlichman was known as the Nixon's 'extinguisher' for the way he put out political fires.

Ronald Reagan's 'Troika' of advisers were Edwin Meese as counselor to the President, James Baker as White House chief of staff; and Michael Deaver as deputy chief of staff.

They carved up the responsibilities of the White House between them, taking advantage of Reagan's relaxed managerial style.

Not since Sherman Adams had been Dwight Eisenhower's chief of staff had White House staff had so much power over the nation, Cummings claims.

The downside of this became apparent on August 19, 1981 above the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean when two American F-14 jets shot down two Libyan fighters who had fired at them first.

It was 11pm Pacific time at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and President Reagan was asleep.

Meese took the call from the Secretary of Defense and 'saw no reason to wake the president', Cummings writes.

Partner to Power: The Secret World of Presidents and Their Most Trusted Advisers will be released on February 27, 2018

Meese only woke up Reagan at 4am - five hours later - after which the president 'promptly returned to the warmth of his bed'.

When the press found out, Reagan was ridiculed for being so disconnected from the running of the country.

According to Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, the troika had 'no confidence in the judgment or capacities of the president'.

He said: 'Pragmatists and conservatives alike treated Reagan as if he were a child monarch in need of constant protection. They paid homage to him but they gave him no respect.'

Among the other famous presidential advisers was Dick Cheney, who served as Vice President under George W Bush and became his right hand man.

Cheney stands out for supposedly accruing so much power many thought that he was running the White House, earning him the nickname 'The Prince of Darkness' or 'Darth Vader.'

Cummings writes that Cheney did indeed drive much of Bush's first term agenda including his controversial decisions to open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for terrorism suspects.

To most other people, it looked like Cheney had him round his little finger.

Bush had offered the job of Vice President to Cheney in the first place because he was perceived to be loyal and would not come after his own job.

Cheney had to be talked into it in and initially refused due to his heart problems, his daughter was gay, and because he was dismissed from Yale for his poor academic records, something which at the time seemed like it could be a scandal.

After reluctantly agreeing to help to find a suitable candidate Cheney changed his mind - and chose himself.

Cheney then filled the White House with advisers who were friendly to him to consolidate his power.

He became Bush's 'enforcer' and could come and go from any meeting, including those involving the president, as he saw fit.

In a very unusual move, Cheney was also given sole responsibility for intelligence matters and did much of the firing.

Cheney and Bush did not socialize much outside of office hours, but Bush had 'tremendous respect' for him and saw him as a 'mentor of sorts.'

Like many presidential advisers before them, that relationship eventually soured.

During Bush's second term, he was heavily criticized over the torture of Iraqi prisoners of war and for the mistreatment of detainees in Guantanamo.

Cummings says that Bush feared for his legacy and decided to 'change course' and that as a result he sidelined Cheney and took the advice of others like Condoleezza Rice, his Secretary of State.

Partner to Power: The Secret World of Presidents and Their Most Trusted Advisers is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.