by Peter Baker
The next day, Thursday, August 20, McCurry was in the middle of another briefing where reporters were quizzing him about the state of the presidential marriage when he was handed a note saying Clinton was on his way over to the Marthas Vineyard school that had been converted into a press center. Abruptly interrupting an answer about Lewinsky, who was reappearing at the grand jury that day to contradict Clintons testimony, McCurry disclosed that the president would arrive any moment to make an announcement about national security and would then return immediately to Washingtonsetting the room abuzz with speculation about the surprise Clinton had in store. Resignation? Divorce? McCurry had said national security, but few paid attention.
A few minutes later, at 1:55 P.M., Clinton whisked into the school gymnasium wearing a suit and a solemn expression. Good afternoon. Today I ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan because of the threat they present to our national security. Three minutes later, he marched back out to head for his plane and Washington, where he could oversee the operation. Clinton had no genuine national-security reason to leave the island, as the White House had set up all the communications equipment he would need to monitor activities and talk with foreign leaders. But Clinton decided it would look more presidential to be in the Oval Office at such a momentand if it provided a brief escape from his domestic turmoil, so be it.
Just like that, Clinton had changed the subject. He was the commander in chief again, leading the nation against embassy-bombing Middle Eastern terrorists, not the weak-willed husband who was putting the country through a national soap opera because of his personal failings. Administration officials argued they had no choice about when to act because the leaders of bin Ladens organization were gathering that day at the camp in Afghanistan hit by missiles, a rare opportunity to strike at the core of a major terrorist organization. Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and Trent Lott rallied behind the president and praised his decision as justified. Yet the timing was so convenient that it drew immediate comparisons to Wag the Dog, a Robert De NiroDustin Hoffman movie about a president who waged a fake war to distract attention from a sex scandal. Theres an obvious issue that will be raised internationally as to whether there is any diversionary motivation, opined Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania. If there was any diversionary motivation, though, it did not work. The president returned to Marthas Vineyard the next day to face the rest of his two-week sentence in purgatory with his wronged wife.
Dick Gephardt had mostly kept quiet in public about the presidents admission for more than a week, but now he had no choice. Having returned from Europe, he was scheduled to embark on a three-day campaign swing for fellow Democrats running for the House, and a handful of national political reporters had already been invited to join him long before Clintons grand jury appearance. Gephardt could not cancel and could not avoid being asked about the hottest political issue in the country.
Gephardt had never been close to Clinton. The son of a milk-truck driver, the fifty-seven-year-old congressman had grown up on the south side of St. Louis and started his political career as a new-breed leader who had broken with old Democratic orthodoxies. After a stint as a city alderman, he won election to Congress in 1976 as an ardent opponent of abortion and a skeptic about the value of new government programs. In 1981, he voted for Ronald Reagans tax cuts. As he prepared to mount his own bid for president in 1988 in a field that included then-senator Al Gore, though, Gephardts political center shifted to the left, and he embraced abortion rights and waged a populist crusade on foreign trade. After winning the Iowa caucuses, Gephardt stumbled in New Hampshire and collapsed on Super Tuesday, but when he returned to the Capitol, impressed colleagues rewarded him with the job of House majority leader.
When Clinton arrived in Washington four years later, the new president from Arkansas never bothered to woo the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the House. Gephardt refused to support Clintons drive to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) early in his presidency, setting the course for a relationship that would remain distant at best. With Gephardt now thinking of running for president in 2000 against Clintons loyal lieutenant Vice President Gore, tensions with the White House had only increased. Indeed, the month before the Lewinsky story broke, Gephardt had tested out a campaign speech that implicitly criticized the small-bore politics of the Clinton-Gore team by calling for a party where principles trump tactics and that created a movement for change and not a money machine. Infuriated White House aides retaliated by boycotting a meeting with Gephardt and openly attacking him in the press for his flip-flops on multiple issues.
So by the time Lewinsky arrived on the scene, there was no reservoir of good will between the two men. Although now a leader of liberals, Gephardt was still something of a conservative with a small c, as one ally put it, when it came to personal behavior and was genuinely offended by Clintons conduct. Added to that, Gephardt had been working tirelessly to close the gap with the Republicans in the midterm 1998 elections, now just ten weeks away, only to find his labors undermined by a president who could not keep his pants on.
The day before embarking on the campaign swing, Gephardt spent hours on telephone conference calls, listening to other Democratic congressmen vent their frustration at the president and urging them not to react too precipitously. His members were unsatisfied by the presidents public apologies and were petrified about what next sensational disclosure might be around the corner once Starr delivered a report to Congress. Members should feel free to disavow the president and his actions, Gephardt told some of the nervous Democratic congressmen. Huddling with his strategists, Gephardt then tried to figure out what to say when he was asked about Clintons conduct. In the end, they decided, Gephardts top priority had to be keeping his own people together, particularly moderates and conservatives within the caucus. That meant he had to maintain a strategic distance from the White House to keep his credibility.
Still, the next day he went a little further than even his own advisers thought he should. During a stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, August 25, Gephardt used the I-word, seemingly opening the door to the possibility of impeachment. If Congress decides to go forward with an impeachment process, we will be involved in perhaps the most important task the Congress will ever have. We have to, under the Constitution, carefully examine the facts and then make a judgment on whether or not he should be expelled from office. On one level, that was simply common sense; but the signal Gephardt unintentionally sent was that he thought impeachment might be warranted. While it should not be done lightly, he said, that doesnt mean it cant be done or shouldnt be done; you just better be sure you do it the right way.
Clinton erupted in anger that night when he read in an early version of a story in the Washington Post about what Gephardt had said. The headline went further than Gephardts actual words and fueled the fire: Gephardt Says Clinton Could Be Impeached. Clinton picked up the phone and tracked down his friend and chief fund-raiser, Terence R. McAuliffe, who was also close to Gephardt.
You see what your friend Gephardt did? Clinton yelled into the phone.
McAuliffe did not know the details but tried to calm Clinton down. Mr. President, its not true. I havent talked to him for a couple days, but I guarantee it. Theres no way he said that.
McAuliffe called Gephardt the next day and communicated the presidents unhappiness. Gephardt, who had been in McAuliffes wedding, said there had been a misunderstanding but warned that he could not be seen as the presidents defender. Look, we have a role that we have to play here. We dont know what the facts are. We cant be anything but objective.
McAuliffe called Clinton back and relayed the message. But the president had been fuming for hours and had also registered complaints about Gephardt with Jesse Jackson; John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO; and Gerald McEntee, head of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. All three tracked down Gephardts chief of staff, Steve Elme
ndorf, at a labor conference in Hawaii to pass along the presidents gripes. Like his boss, Elmendorf conceded that perhaps the comments were not as artful as they could have been, but stressed we have to hold the moderates. Sweeney and McEntee also called House Minority Whip David E. Bonior of Michigan, who shared their concern. Bonior, who had often clashed with Clinton, nonetheless had made the cold calculation that dumping him would be worse for Democrats than keeping him around. But he was having trouble impressing that on the more wary Gephardt.
The White House did not have a full appreciation for the level of antipathy on the Hill. Earlier that summer, Gephardt had met with small groups of fifteen or twenty members of his caucus to talk over the presidents predicament, always taking care to pick a cross-section for each session so that the conservatives known as Blue Dogs could hear how the more liberal members felt and vice versa. The anger that poured out at these meetings was palpable. Gephardt was struck by how negative many of the members were toward the president, and he found it particularly ironic that the harshest were the New Democrats, with whom Clinton had so consciously allied himself, sometimes at the expense of Gephardt and other party leaders. Even before the presidents August 17 admission, some of the partys senior congressmen, including Martin Frost of Texas and David Obey of Wisconsin, had told Gephardt or his staff that the minority leader should consider going to Clinton to demand his resignation.
With an impeachment referral from Starr now all but certain, Gephardt had his staff work up lists of members they should worry about, and the results that came back were overwhelming. After poring through whip books, Elmendorf and Gephardts floor director, George Kundanis, identified 100 of the 206 Democrats as possible votes for impeachment. The staff came up with a second watch list of eighteen House Democrats who deeply disliked Clintonfrom liberals such as Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii and George Miller and Fortney H. Pete Stark of California, to conservatives such as Ralph M. Hall of Texas, Gene Taylor of Mississippi, and Pat Danner of Missouri. Others they put on that second list were Scotty Baesler of Kentucky, Peter DeFazio of Oregon, Diana DeGette of Colorado, Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, Bob Filner of California, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Matthew G. Martinez of California, Carolyn McCarthy of New York, Lynn Rivers of Michigan, David E. Skaggs of Colorado, Louise M. Slaughter of New York, and James A. Traficant Jr. of Ohio. These Democrats were not necessarily proimpeachment votes, but given their personal distaste for Clinton, it was critical to monitor them.
What these meetings and lists demonstrated was that as he faced the most perilous threat of his political career, Clinton had no safety net beneath him.
** *
Bill, youre a fool! Youre a damn, damn, damn fool!
Clinton was being taken to task by a senator fed up with his sense of victimization. It was a breach of protocol even for a senior member of Congress to call the president by his first name, let alone to curse him, but the Democrats on Capitol Hill were beyond aggravation. And not just those Democrats who did not get along with himin this case, Senator Patrick J. Leahy was on the phone, a liberal Vermont Democrat and Clinton supporter who shared his outrage at Starrs conduct. Even Leahys wife could not believe how blunt he was being. Thats the president! she whispered in horror.
At the urging of his staff, from Marthas Vineyard Clinton had begun making phone calls to key congressional Democrats. The idea had been for him to do in private what they complained he had not done in publicapologize for his actions. But after telling them he was sorry for putting them in such a bad situation, Clinton would invariably launch into a tirade about how unfairly he had been treated. As they hung up the phone, several of the lawmakers were more convinced than ever that Clinton was not truly sorry. He was still too busy nursing his resentment. After listening to one such presidential rant, Senator Joe Lieberman took out a laptop computer at his summer beach house and began tapping out his feelings of disappointment, emotions that were only exacerbated when his ten-year-old daughter told him she was worried she would be laughed at when she returned to school because she had insisted to her classmates the president had told the truth.
Leahy took out his frustration directly on the president. The longtime senator had been watching a movie after dinner while celebrating his wedding anniversary at the family farm in Vermont when Clinton called on Tuesday, August 25. Clinton was defensive and went on at some length about Starrs vendetta.
Look, Leahy interrupted. I really dont need to be told that. Im a former prosecutor myself. I know this is excess. No elected prosecutor, Democrat or Republican, would ever do this. Leahy continued: But dont even look for sympathy on this. Youre going to have to be damn sure your testimony has been honest before the grand jury. People will be very critical of Starr, but they arent going to excuse your conduct one iota just because of Starrs misuse of the office.
Clintons tone changed somewhat, and he admitted he had done wrong.
Leahy asked if he had spoken with many other senators.
Not many, not yet, the president responded. He was not really anxious to talk with them at that point.
Well, you should, Leahy said, and then softened himself. You realize that even people like myself who are very, very angry at what you did are still your friends.
Friends, though, were in short supply for the president, angry or notparticularly in Marthas Vineyard. By the middle of his second week of vacation, Clinton was growing stir-crazy and decided to get out for a while. His staff looked around for a short day trip he could make and settled on Worcester, Massachusetts, a short hop away, where he could announce a scholarship program for would-be police officers and a new teachers guide for detecting troubled youth. No mention would be made of Lewinsky, no new apologies issued. This would be the first test of Clinton in a crowd following his admission, albeit a hand-selected crowd in a friendly region of the country.
This should be interesting, Clinton said nervously as his small military plane landed at the Massachusetts airfield on Thursday, August 27. He had no idea how it would go or how he would be received. For a politician with a consistently keen instinct for his audience, this was flying blind.
Along the way, Clinton saw signs in crowds lining the motorcade route, including one that said, Thanks, Mr. President. Thanks to you Ive got a job. That provided a momentary uplift, but his face still betrayed the weight of his ordeal. During a series of scripted events, he talked about school violence, international terrorism, and Hurricane Bonnieanything but the one subject that was at the top of everyones mind. His speech was uninspired and a little distracted. But flanked loyally all day by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Clinton found the crowds warm as they gave him standing ovations, and he did his best not to focus on the smaller groups of protesters hoisting signs like Liar, Resign, and Impeach. As he got back on the plane at the end of the day, Clinton was relieved, confessing to aides that he had not known what to expect.
The president, though, had ignored the relentless chant from his staff to address the Lewinsky subject again and offer the more fulsome apology that so many politicians and media pundits back in Washington were demanding. His aides were virtually united in their desire to see him speak out in more remorseful tonesmostly out of conviction that he had no choice, but perhaps a little from their personal need to see more genuine contrition. Clinton had spoken with a few of them individually to apologize for lying to them, including Bowles, Podesta, Emanuel, and Paul Begala, but they had not found his words truly satisfying. Now they were pushing him to take another stab at it with the nation watching, particularly before he left the country in a few days for a state visit to Russia.
Feeling more confident after Worcester, Clinton decided to give it a try the next day, Friday, August 28, during a church service intended to com memorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.s famed I Have a Dream speech. Taking the three-page remarks about King prepared by his staff, the president turned over the sheets of paper and began scribbling new lines that would allude, however ellipticall
y, to his own crisis. A few hours later, he got up at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, a small, predominantly black town on Marthas Vineyard, to address an audience of four hundred people packed into a sweltering building, including Anita F. Hill, the law professor who had accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, and John Lewis, the civil rights legend who now served as the only black member of the Democratic congressional leadership. After some reminiscences about Kings speech and a segue into the economic turmoil in Russia, Clinton pivoted to the topic of forgiveness and ruminated on Nelson Mandelas ability to forgive the white jailers who had stolen away so much of his life.
All of you know, Im having to become quite an expert in this business of asking for forgiveness, he said with a smile, triggering a round of applause. It gets a little easier the more you do it. And if you have a family, an administration, a Congress, and a whole country to ask, youre going to get a lot of practice. At this, the crowd laughed. But I have to tell you that in these last days, it has come home to me, again, something I first learned as president, but it wasnt burned in my bones, and that is that in order to get it, you have to be willing to give it. More applause. And all of usthe anger, the resentment, the bitterness, the desire for recrimination against people you believe have wronged you, they harden the heart and deaden the spirit and lead to self-inflicted wounds. And so it is important that we are able to forgive those we believe have wronged us, even as we ask for forgiveness from people we have wronged.
Hillary Clinton did not show up at the Oak Bluffs church that day and showed no sign of forgiveness throughout their island stay. Unable to play golf or work the party circuit for fear of angering her and appearing to the public to be taking his penance too casually, the president puttered around the estate and the small cottage, down from the main house, that had been set up as an office. Desperate for company, he summoned aides a couple of times after midnight to come over and play his favorite card game, hearts. He commiserated with a few friends by phone. I fucked it up, he told his fund-raiser and golfing buddy Terry McAuliffe. I was mad. You wont believe the questions they asked me. . . . A fucking witch-hunt. People did not understand how this had hurt him, Clinton added. Ive been living with a thousand cuts a day. With his consultant and confidant James Carville, the president confessed his worry about his marriage. She is not going to forgive me, he moaned.
