Mediaboss Marketing

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer in March 2012.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Newly uncovered documents from a confidante of Hillary Clinton are making headlines about the former first lady. But they also reveal new details about legacy moments in her husband's presidency that were frustrating and distracting to the White House.

It seemed as if Bill Clinton had too many choices in his first chance to name a Supreme Court justice and not enough for his second.

The deliberations went down to the wire, and when Stephen Breyer's name came up each time, he was not the person the President, in his heart, preferred.

"At this point BC [Clinton] also said he did not want to name Breyer," wrote Diane Blair in May 1994 just two days before he was ultimately selected. "Didn't want to give a big deal to Massachusetts."

That's where Breyer, then 55, was serving. Apparently naming someone from that reliably liberal state would not pay political dividends.

Blair was a close family friend who took copious notes of conversations she had with both Clintons throughout most of their White House years that ended in 2001.

Notes from that conversation with Clinton are part of papers Blair, then a University of Arkansas professor, left the school after her death in 2000.

CNN has uncovered one inside look at how Breyer was ultimately chosen, and it mirrors the tricky, often delicate game of politics nearly every White House must navigate.

Read the original post:

Memo reveals Clinton's difficulty over Supreme Court choice