All Too Human: A Political Education Read online

  Mark and Stan left us alone, and Clinton started to putter around the office, picking up books, poll questionnaires, photos, anything that caught his eye. Before we really began talking, the phone rang. Democratic Party benefactor Pamela Harriman was calling, and she wanted to know Clinton's position on campaign contributions from political action committees (PACs). While he listened, Clinton perused a polling report, licking his finger as he leafed through the pages, looking up at me every moment or so as if to apologize for the interruption. When the call was over, he asked for my advice. Tsongas was refusing PAC money; should he do the same?

  “PAC money isn't morally worse than other contributions,” I said. “But attacking PACs is an easy sound bite right now, so unless you can raise a ton, it's probably not worth ceding the high ground. Besides, Harkin's sucking up all of the labor money anyway. You're not giving up as much as you'd gain with the editorial boards. I'd take the pledge.”

  “That sounds about right,” Clinton said. For the next half hour, I joined him on the first of countless stream-of-consciousness tours across the political landscape of his mind. He seemed to know something about everything — from the party rules for picking superdelegates to turnout in black precincts on Super Tuesday, from how the credit crunch was bankrupting small businesses in New Hampshire to how microenterprise loans could help farmers in the Mississippi Delta — and he swooped from issue to issue without losing his thread, punctuating his soliloquy with questions for me. By the time he closed with the prediction that the nomination would be decided on the day of the Illinois primary, I was blown away.

  Before he left for lunch, he asked me about the 1990 budget deal, one of my areas of expertise. What was good about it? Where was it weak? Could Harkin and Kerrey be hurt by their votes? He wasn't testing me, just looking for advice, and it seemed as if he was taking it in, filing it away for future use. We were working together from the moment we met. He walked out with a wave and a promise to call. When I asked if I could hear soon because of Gephardt, he turned in the doorway and said, “Of course.”

  That evening I felt pulled in different directions. The idea of Kerrey was still appealing, and I thought he had the better chance to win. But compared to Clinton, the man I had encountered was distant and unfocused. He didn't seem to know what he would do as president, and his team didn't seem as enthusiastic about having me on board.

  Clinton was more impressive up close, smart and ready. Yes, he was more conservative than I. He supported the death penalty; I was against it. He had supported Bush's Gulf War; I was for extending sanctions. He supported the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s; I thought this policy was both illegal and wrong. But all of the potential nominees supported the death penalty, and most executions were carried out under state law. As for our foreign-policy differences, what was past was past: By late 1991, Bush had won the Gulf War, Nicaragua had held a free election, and the cold war was over.

  More important, Clinton and I were in sync on the issues I cared most about. His belief that the role of government was to open opportunities to people who “work hard and play by the rules” appealed to my Greek work ethic. So did his devotion to education — from Head Start to student loans to worker retraining — and he had made progress in Arkansas. He wanted to raise taxes on the rich and cut them for the working poor. He wanted national health care and a domestic Peace Corps. Unlike most Southerners, he didn't kowtow to the National Rifle Association. On race, he was willing to fight for what was right in a state where they once had to call in federal troops to end segregation in the schools. He'd never let the Republicans get away with Willie Horton.

  But I was moved by more than what he stood for or how much he knew. It was how I felt around him: uniquely known and needed, as if my contribution might make all the difference. Clinton spoke to the me yearning to be singled out for a special job — the boy who had wrapped his fingers around the archbishop's staff and waved the censer in the path of his dad.

  The day before Clinton announced, I was formally offered a job: deputy campaign manager for communications, a loosely defined slot in which I'd be responsible for figuring out how policy issues would play in the media and the political world. Although my duties were not defined with precision, I didn't press for clarification. I wanted the freedom to freelance, and I was too excited and grateful to raise the other awkward questions my friends were urging me to ask before signing on.

  My girlfriend, Joan, was especially wary. She thought Clinton was way too conservative and Little Rock was too far away. We had first met on the Dukakis campaign. Both of us knew that campaigns have the same effect on relationships as the first year of law school or a new doctor's internship. Sometimes the trial strengthens the relationship; more often it breaks the couple apart. But that wasn't the only thing bugging her. There was something about Clinton. The stories. Everyone we knew seemed to know someone who knew someone who had a tale to tell about Clinton and women.

  That night, we celebrated at my neighborhood Greek restaurant with our friends Richard Mintz and Helene Greenfeld. By the time the baklava arrived, we got to the subject lurking beneath the surface of our little party. They all lowered their voices and questioned me in the same protective tones you reserve for a good friend you suspect is marrying the wrong girl. “What about his past? Are you sure you know what you're getting into?” We kicked around the idea of my raising the issue with Clinton, but I couldn't imagine doing that. I was too young and too junior to be interrogating my future boss about his personal life. His marriage was his business — and Hillary's. Besides, if adultery were a disqualifying offense, half the politicians in Washington would be out of work.

  I had no problem defending Clinton against interrogations into his past. What I cared about was the present — and the immediate future. Was he fooling around now? Was there any danger that he would pull a Gary Hart and sabotage his own campaign? Impossible, I thought. After Gary Hart's 1988 meltdown on the Monkey Business, everyone knew that was against the rules. Getting caught in the act could end a campaign in a heartbeat. I was certain that Clinton was too smart and too ambitious to be so self-destructive.

  I was also reassured by what Clinton had already said publicly. Shortly before he announced, Clinton had attended a Washington ritual known as the Sperling breakfast. About twenty reporters invited by Godfrey Sperling, the longtime Christian Science Monitor columnist, gathered a couple of times a month over eggs and coffee to give a politician or policy maker the chance to talk about an issue at length without the confrontational tone or live cameras of a press conference. Aware that the womanizing rumors were the most worrisome cloud over his potential campaign, Clinton tried to inoculate himself against future questions by bringing Hillary to the breakfast. Toward the end of the hour, he acknowledged that his marriage had “not been perfect or free of difficulties,” but assured the room that he and Hillary had worked it out and expected to be together forever. The message was clear: His past wasn't prologue.

  Nothing more had appeared in the press, but the rumors didn't stop — and not everyone wanted them to. Congressman Dave McCurdy, a conservative Oklahoma Democrat, was conducting a whispering campaign against Clinton on the. floor of the House. McCurdy wanted to jump in the race, so he was presenting himself to centrist fund-raisers and activists as the clean-cut alternative to Clinton — a Clinton with “character.” It didn't work. After the tawdry excesses of 1988, political elites were groping for a shared understanding of how much privacy a public figure deserved and what was fair game in the heat of a campaign. It seemed like a zone of privacy was being staked out.

  So despite the well-intentioned warnings of my friends, I wrapped things up at work, sublet my apartment, and packed my bags for Little Rock. Then, one more hiccup. The Friday before I left, the Northeast corridor was buzzing with a new rumor: Cuomo was getting in. At a fund-raising breakfast in Manhattan, he had cracked open the door to a candidacy. The news hit me like a kick in the stomach. Why now? Where were yo
u a month ago? But the discomfort faded faster than I expected. Something had changed for me.

  The messianic streak in Kerrey's camp had left me cold. But I was yielding to a similar temptation with Clinton. I barely knew him — one meeting, a couple of phone calls. But the feeling I had when we first met was taking root, putting him and his cause at the center of my life. Maybe I couldn't help it. Maybe I had to romanticize the mission in order to survive the impossible hours, the inevitable compromises, and the intense personal pressures that I knew would come with any campaign. Maybe I had to turn it into a crusade. How it happened is still a mystery to me, but I was on the road to becoming a true believer, developing an apostle's love for Clinton and the adventure we were about to share.

  Bruce Lindsey met me at the Little Rock airport. Clinton's old friend and aide-de-camp, he was smaller than he sounded on the phone, with short hair and a handsome, dark face hidden by thick black glasses. He wore a standard-issue blue blazer, gray pants, and white shirt, and his voice was friendly but flat. His whole demeanor seemed designed for the job he held: Clinton's shadow. Wherever Clinton went, Bruce followed — hanging backstage, collecting names, keeping secrets, shuffling cards for a game of hearts.

  We drove straight to the governor's mansion, where Clinton swung open the aluminum screen door by the kitchen to welcome me in and show me around. The heavy autumn haze had left him with a swollen head and a red nose. “I have a hard time thinking when allergy season hits; always sleepy,” he explained. But that didn't stop him from picking up our conversation right where we had left off in Washington. “I feel good about it, but we're behind. … Got a lot to do. … Trips to New Hampshire and Chicago. … Need to set up a network to get me ideas from my friends. … Decide what to do about the Florida straw poll.”

  He kept on talking as I followed him to the bedroom, where he started to change out of his jeans for a downtown lunch, then stopped to hand me an article from a pile on one of the night tables. There were two of them — one for him, one for her — both loaded down with novels, magazines, issue papers, and spiritual books. I hadn't yet met Hillary, but seeing the night tables made me picture the two of them propped up late at night, passing their reading back and forth, arguing, laughing, educating each other, sharing a passion for ideas.

  Then she appeared in the bedroom door. Hillary was prettier than the pictures I'd seen, with a dimpled smile that didn't match her high-powered reputation and a tailored suit that did. Walking over in his briefs, Clinton smacked a sloppy kiss on her cheek and introduced us. “I've heard so much about you,” she said, her Midwestern accent slowed just a touch by her years in the South.

  Nice start. Warm. But it was one thing to be working with the boss while he changed; with his wife there, I just wanted to excuse myself. Hillary insisted I stay and stepped right into the conversation, asking questions, analyzing the upcoming primaries, and reminding me of all the work we had to do. My awkwardness was flushed away by an adrenaline-enhanced sense of arrival. This was exactly what I wanted to be doing: building a presidential campaign — and exactly where I wanted to be: in its inner sanctum.

  Clinton left for lunch, and I made my first visit to the Clinton for President headquarters, a converted paint store in downtown Little Rock. This is it? Where's the buzz? The staff? Why aren't the phones ringing off the book? It felt like the headquarters of an incumbent state senator with no opponent. On my left were the volunteer receptionists, a pair of gracious but elderly ladies putting in a few hours a week. On my right was the bare table that would serve as my desk. Nancy Hernreich, the governor's executive assistant, sat in the back. She was the whole scheduling operation, accompanied only by the black binder that went everywhere she went. No one else in the office seemed to be doing anything. Now I felt like Dustin Hoffman in the closing scene of The Graduate — the pull-away where he's sitting in the back of the bus, Katharine Ross finally by his side and that weak smile on his face that says, “I have no idea what I've done or where I'm going, but I guess I have to make the best of it now.”

  For the first couple of weeks, I stayed in the office, working the press by phone, helping Nancy with the schedule, recruiting friends to come down, following through on the fifty ideas a day Clinton called in from the statehouse: Hillary's friend in Chicago had a tax plan he wanted me to review; a smart New Hampshire supporter had some good ideas on bank reform; could I make a call to Dade County and check on the straw poll?

  After first bunking with some “Friends of Bill,” I moved into an apartment behind the governor's mansion with Richard Mintz, whom I had persuaded to take the plunge with me and work on Hillary's team. Our home was part of a complex of converted crack houses in a neighborhood made attractive only by its proximity to Clinton. One night, Richard came home to find a pair of burglars in the process of stealing our television. Apparently on a work break, they were sprawled on the couch eating take-out chicken when Richard arrived. They politely picked up the bones and left; we moved a few days later.

  I didn't much care about the apartment because I expected my real home to be on the road with Clinton. Our first trip together was to a Democratic Party dinner in Chicago, where both Clinton and Kerrey would be speaking. Because this was the first event of the campaign to feature both candidates, a few members of the national press would be there. For me, this dinner had additional meaning: the road not taken. What if Kerrey turns out to be better than Clinton? What if I made the wrong choice?

  Bruce Lindsey and I accompanied Clinton on a commercial flight, and we all flew coach. Clinton carried a huge saddle-leather satchel stuffed with papers and books. As he worked his way through the bag, he reached across the aisle to pass me memos for follow-up before turning to his crossword puzzle and taking a nap. Sitting a row behind him, I noticed that some of the other passengers kept glancing at him in a way that seemed to be saying, “This guy looks like someone I should know.” When I caught one of their glances, I smiled back with knowing pride and a look I imagined to say, “If you don't know him now, you will. Just wait.”

  We took the El into town — not just to save time at rush hour, but also so that Kevin O'Keefe, a local pol and high school friend of Hillary's, could call the Tribune's political gossip columnist with a little nugget about the governor of Arkansas who was running for president. Riding the El was a nice tip of the hat to the city's working-class spirit, and all the little messages add up. We also made local news by announcing that David Wilhelm, a veteran of Mayor Daley's operation, would now be Clinton's campaign manager. He would give us an edge if, as Clinton expected, the March 17 Illinois primary really turned out to be the decisive contest.

  The trick to speaking at party fund-raisers is to treat them like dinner theater. People are there to have fun and feel good. No heavy lifting. The postmeal speech has to be easy and light, with just enough inspiration to make people feel that being there is a kind of civic duty.

  Clinton began his speech by working his way down the dais with a special word or inside joke for every politician there. Nice stroke. People remember being remembered. Then he made a couple of quips about how much Arkansas had given Chicago, including Scottie Pippen of the Bulls, and launched into his stump speech — a condensed version of his announcement speech on how we needed a president who would fight for the middle class and fix our problems here at home. When he tested a line we had worked on about how America needs a president who cares as much about the “Middle West as the Middle East,” the crowd rewarded him with laughter and applause. I made a note to remind him to use the line again — as if he needed reminding.

  Kerrey arrived moments before the dinner and didn't work the crowd, just stood off to the side cracking jokes with his traveling aide. When he spoke about Vietnam, it was still moving, but there was an edge of bitterness beneath his words that he couldn't hide. And he made no real attempt to tailor his message to this particular crowd on this particular night. Over the course of a campaign, despite all of the artifice, the public
usually picks up a reasonably true picture of a candidate, for better or worse. The Chicago crowd saw an engaged and optimistic Bill Clinton, a man who loved his work. He wooed his audience, forged a connection, and paid them the compliment of delivering a speech that didn't seem canned. Kerrey didn't work hard enough to win the room, giving people the impression that he expected them to support him because of who he was rather than what he would do for them.

  After the speeches, Kerrey left right away. Clinton stayed for another reception with the local VIPs and greeted each one with a personal word while I stood off his left shoulder and collected their business cards for our field and fund-raising efforts. Pumped up by the people and the speech, Clinton fished for compliments as we hustled through the back hallways to our suite: “How'd I do? … You think it was OK? … Find out what Joe thinks.” Joe was Joe Klein, a short, bearded writer for New York magazine who had his eye on Clinton. I found him outside by the curb waiting for a cab, and we schmoozed for a few minutes. He was as high on the speech as I was, confirming that Clinton had cleaned Kerrey's clock. Good news to report.

  Our campaign grew fast through the fall. We traded up headquarters, and Wilhelm built up our field organization, working back from Illinois to Florida, where the first symbolic votes would be cast at a straw poll in December. His buddy Rahm Emanuel came down from Chicago to run the money. All I knew about Emanuel at first was that he had once mailed a dead fish to a rival political consultant. But when the former ballet dancer arrived in Little Rock and leaped onto a table to scream his staff into shape, I knew the money side would be OK.

  I divided my time between setting up shop in Little Rock and accompanying Clinton on the road. Bruce took care of the “body”; I concentrated on press and policy, briefing Clinton before interviews on likely questions and the reporter's angle, checking in with our consultants back in Washington, reading newspapers, magazines, and policy journals for news books and new facts to freshen the stump speech. When Clinton spoke, I took notes — partly so I could help explain his thinking and point out his best lines to the press, partly to help remind Clinton which riffs were especially effective. I was there to hear what worked and to help whittle away what didn't. On the plane, I tried to absorb the thoughts he revealed in snatches of conversation between catnaps and countless hands of hearts. Each hand was a tutorial: Either he was reaching across the table to teach me how to pass the cards, or leaning back into his headrest with a meditation on, say, the right way to confront David Duke: “You can't question his being born-again. … We Southerners believe in deathbed conversions. … Just say we can't go back to the days when his kind of thinking held us all back.”