All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  Babbitt could probably have prevailed in the Senate, but the confirmation battle would have been bloody. Nominating Breyer in June of 1993 was politically impossible. He was well qualified, and he had the backing of Senator Kennedy and key Republicans like Orrin Hatch, but he also had a “nanny problem.” Like Baird, he hadn't paid social security taxes for his housekeeper, and the fact that he hadn't fully reimbursed the IRS until after Justice White announced his retirement would be difficult to explain to a skeptical Senate committee.

  Some of Breyer's supporters made the perverse argument that we should take a stand on Breyer precisely because he was a white man with a nanny problem. He's the best-qualified candidate, they argued, so by fighting for him we'll stick it to the diversity police and the good-government “goo-goos” in a single blow. Yeah, that'll show 'em, you morons. Let's beat our bloody head against a brick wall one more time just to prove to the world we can take it. The argument I made in the Oval, along with Howard Paster and Vince Foster, was slightly more restrained, and it persuaded the president. “I agree with them,” Clinton said. “We don't need another gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight story.”

  That left Ruth Ginsburg, but the president hadn't interviewed her yet. She was invited for a meeting in the White House residence on Sunday morning. The seat was hers to lose.

  I walked into work Saturday slightly deflated. It's not so bad. Ginsburg will get confirmed. She'll be a reliable liberal vote. At least we won't have to eat another round of nanny stories. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a solid choice, but she wouldn't set the world on fire like my man Cuomo.

  Then Cuomo called. Andrew, that is, although it was hard to tell the difference over the phone. “Is Stephen Breyer a done deal?” he asked. “No. Why?” I replied, hoping that I already knew the answer. “Because that means this is Mario's last chance. If you pick a white male now, you can't pick a white male next time.”

  I couldn't believe it. Andrew was trying to put his father back in the race! What I should have done was tell him right then that Ginsburg had it, even though that wasn't yet true. But I still wanted to see Cuomo on the Court, and now there was a new inducement: If Andrew's call to me somehow led to his father's appointment, I would be the go-between who made it happen, an agent of history. Stay cool. Hear him out. Make sure you nail him down. In a moment, I would become the moron beating my head bloody against the wall.

  “So, what are you getting at?”

  “Did you see Mario on Evans and Novak?” Andrew continued, encouraged by the fact that I hadn't hung up the phone. “They asked him what he would do if the president called, and he said, ‘I would not say no to the president.’”

  I hadn't seen the show and didn't know that Cuomo had been more equivocal than Andrew led me to believe. But I had been burned enough before to be skittish. “Are you sure your father will accept if the president calls?” I asked. “We can't go down this road again. Before the president even thinks about picking up the phone, we have to be absolutely sure that the answer will be nothing but yes.”

  “Let me check.” He put me on hold. Seconds later, Andrew was back on the line. “I just asked him. The answer is yes.”

  Well, it's out of my hands now. The Democratic governor of the state of New York has an important message for the president of the United States. Who am I not to pass it on?

  “I'll get back to you.”

  My finger reached out to the White House operator's line with Cuomo's message still ringing in my ear. Clinton came on the line. “Mr. President, may I come up and see you for a minute? It's important,” I continued, pausing for dramatic effect, “but I don't want to talk about it over the phone.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Come on up. Are you OK?”

  I was already on my way. I didn't tell Mack or anyone else, because if the president was understandably reluctant to reconsider Cuomo, it was best to let the idea die a quiet death. And if he did like it, I didn't want it diluted by other advice. When I reached the second floor, Clinton was changing from his suit into one of the Day-Glo polos he wore for golf. He was in an expansive mood; his class of Rhodes Scholars had come to the White House that morning, and later in the day he'd be heading to the British embassy to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the scholarship. Maybe that affected how he took my news. Instead of rejecting the idea out of hand, Clinton rolled his tongue behind his lower lip like a pitcher adjusting his chaw — a sign to me that he was listening, intrigued, thinking ahead to his next move. Then he asked me what I thought.

  “Well, you know me, Mr. President, I'm biased. But I still think Cuomo's the best choice.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  That meant he wanted to talk to Hillary. I returned to my office and waited. A few minutes later Hillary called. “George, we need to talk about this,” she said. “Can you come back up with David Gergen and Mack?”

  Two weeks into my new job, I had settled into a relatively comfortable working relationship with Gergen and Mack, and I was sensitive to the fact that my news could upset the equilibrium. Gergen had been for Breyer, Mack didn't want Clinton to pick a liberal, and they both would likely perceive my collecting them for a meeting with the president as a power play. So I went out of my way to emphasize that I had “received” a call from Andrew and that I was simply passing on a message from the president.

  But Clinton and Hillary seemed to be on my side. A liberal like me, Hillary had been warm to the idea of Cuomo on the Court ever since the convention. Clinton was getting positively lyrical about the prospect: “Mario will sing the song of America. It'll be like watching Pavarotti at Christmastime.” Music to my ears: Clinton wanted to take the next step. He told me to tell Andrew that “the president was interested in his proposal” and that someone would get back to him after he returned from his round of golf.

  That was all Andrew needed to hear. I reached him at his sister's wedding, but that didn't stop him from feeding me more talking points. Don't worry about the background check, he said. “Every tax return since 1974 is public.” He also tried to reassure me about his father's psyche. “Mario will do it because the president wants him to. …” What came next should have made me pull the plug. “But the president really has to put it to him. Unless he puts it to him, he won't do it. He needs to use strong language, has to tell Mario that he has to do it.”

  Here we go again. Andrew and I were caught up in the world's oldest courtship ritual. He was telling Cuomo that Clinton really wanted him; I was assuring Clinton that Cuomo really wanted him. Andrew worked his father over all through the wedding, asking him four times if he was sure. I didn't have to work that hard with Clinton. Putting Cuomo on the Court seemed even more attractive to him after eighteen holes. At the British embassy that evening, he pulled me into his limo before he left. Talk about pulling rank at a reunion. All our fellow Rhodes Scholars saw me singled out for a private consultation. Even better than how it looked was what Clinton was saying. He'd thought about it and still wanted to see Ginsburg tomorrow, but Cuomo was now his top choice.

  At 11:30 that night, Andrew called me one more time from a rest stop on the New York State Thruway. Mario was on board. I relayed the message to the president at 9:30 the next morning, just before his meeting with Ginsburg. After that, Clinton told me to call Andrew again and to let him know that Cuomo should expect a call around six P.M. At five o'clock, the full Supreme Court selection team was scheduled to meet in the Oval. Clinton, who liked to pull strings on secret parallel processes, would tell the Ginsburg group then that he was going with Cuomo.

  Clinton didn't actually arrive in the Oval until around 5:30. Before he called in the others, he told Mack, Gergen, and me that he liked Ginsburg but was ready to go with Cuomo: “It's the right thing to do.” I was so excited I could barely sit still when Bernie Nussbaum and his team entered the Oval and Clinton started to talk about his meeting with Ginsburg. He liked her, he said, but was afraid that her positions on public funding of abortion would “pus
h her out on the cultural left. Given the fact that we're in a hole, that's a pretty clear argument to call Cuomo and reconsider.” Cuomo on the Court, he added, would make “a big, powerful statement. If he doesn't say yes, we'll announce Ginsburg tomorrow.”

  There, he had said it. It was really happening. But before anyone could even begin to make a counterargument, Nancy Hernreich walked into the Oval with a note for me: Mario Cuomo was on the line.

  My stomach sank to my knees. This couldn't be good news. It was 5:45, and Cuomo knew that Clinton was scheduled to call at 6:00. I picked up the phone in the dining room, and Cuomo started a soliloquy: “George, Andrew's been trying very hard to bring me to change my view, but I feel that I would be doing a disservice to the president. I feel that I would not be able to do what we all need, including supporting the president politically. I surrender so many opportunities of service if I take the Court. I feel that I would abandon what I have to do. I don't want the president to think that I might say yes.

  “It's important to do what you believe you can do. The only two times I didn't were disasters. That's what I'm afraid of. It would be untrue to myself. It's wrong to enter a marriage that you don't feel. I don't want to be in a position to say no. The president shouldn't call me.”

  While I was listening to Cuomo in disbelief, Andrew called. “This is a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn from yesterday,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

  I was too. Just to make sure, I got back on the line with the father: “I have to see the president. Let me be clear: If he calls you, you will not accept. Will you turn the president down?”

  “Yes.”

  The game was over. Now I had to walk back into the Oval and own the failure. So much for being an agent of history. Instead, I was the master of another disaster — embarrassed, angry, disappointed, and defeated. Cuomo would never be on the Court, and I looked like a fool. My colleagues would revel in my loss, and Clinton would have a hard time trusting me again on a matter like this. On that late Sunday afternoon, however, he took it in stride, shaking his head with a slightly bemused smile that said this was what he had expected and was probably for the best. I imagined him replaying that line from the stump speech in his head: “My wife, Hillary, gave me a book that says, ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.’”

  The next afternoon, the president stood in the Rose Garden and introduced his new Supreme Court nominee to the country. The sun was shining, and a tear rolled down Clinton's cheek as he listened to Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg accept her nomination with a tribute to her mother, “… the bravest and strongest person I have known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”

  Brit Hume of ABC News broke the spell with a pointed but respectfully phrased question to Clinton about “a certain zigzag quality in the decision-making process here. I wonder, sir, if you could kind of walk us through it, perhaps disabuse us of any notion we might have along those lines. Thank you.”

  President Clinton: “I have long since given up the thought that I could disabuse some of you from turning any substantive decision into anything but political process. How you could ask a question like that after the statement she just made is beyond me.” (Applause)

  But not beyond the pale. Brit just didn't know how right he was.

  “WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?”

  When August turns Washington into a ten-square-mile steam bath, the best place to be is the U.S. Capitol. Its marble columns and polished stone floors throw off a chill like ice blocks in an old Frigidaire, and the air-conditioning is cranked up high for the comfort of members of Congress chafing under the perennial prerecess pressures — all-night sessions, cliffhanger votes, and nonrefundable airline tickets for the family vacation.

  But on August 5, 1993, even the Capitol wasn't cool enough for Senator Bob Kerrey. It felt more like a pressure cooker. Gaggles of reporters pursued him through the halls. Republicans were reaching out to him, Democrats were trying to reel him in, the White House was bearing down on him. Governor Clinton's bullshit buddy in 1991 and candidate Clinton's bitter rival in 1992, Senator Kerrey was the final undecided vote on Clinton's economic plan — the legislation that would make or break Clinton's presidency. Would he be the fiftieth yes or the fifty-first no? Would he save the man who had beaten him? Or let him choke on the vote Clinton called “the bone in my throat”? It was Kerrey's choice.

  With official Washington watching his every move, “Cosmic Bob” played to type. He went to the movies: What's Love Got to Do With It — the life story of Tina Turner.

  Back in my office, I got word of Kerrey's walkabout and shook my head in disgust. Figures. Same flaky shit he pulled in New Hampshire, watching videos in his van while Clinton was out shaking hands. That's how we beat him. But now he's got us by the balls. In May, Kerrey had been with us on the first Senate vote, but he was going south. That morning, the president called him from the Oval. I didn't hear what Kerrey said, and I didn't need to. Clinton's increasingly heated responses told the whole story:

  “If you want to bring this presidency down, then go ahead! …

  “Maybe I ought to just pick it up and go back to Little Rock. …

  “My presidency's going to go down. …

  “Fuck you! …

  “Fine. OK! If that's what you want, you go do it.”

  By then, Clinton's temper was my daily companion. I'd felt the blasts and watched them pass, seen other staff startled their first time, and mended fences with reporters who'd touched a presidential nerve. But I'd never seen him yell at a senator before, especially a senator who could cripple his presidency with a single vote. Man, is he losing it? Maybe we'd better keep him off the phone. But when Clinton hung up the receiver, he wasn't red at all, and his voice was flat, matter-of-fact, almost shell-shocked. “It's going to be no” was all he said.

  I didn't believe it. Besides, Friday's Senate vote was a lifetime away. If we lost tonight's House vote, tomorrow wouldn't matter. So while Kerrey sought inspiration in the lyrics of Tina Turner — “I've been thinking of a new direction. … I've been thinking of my own protection” — Clinton and I spent the afternoon in the Oval, working the phones.

  From my chair pushed up against the president's desk, I was the link between Clinton and the House Democrats — between my old life and my new. But there was one huge difference: This time, we weren't looking for enough nays to defeat a president's program or enough yeas for a symbolic show of force before the inevitable veto. Passing this economic plan, with all of its compromises and imperfections, was what we were elected to do. The opposite of Reaganomics, it reduced the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy while cutting them for the working poor and preserving social programs for the poor and middle class. If it worked, interest rates would keep coming down, the economy would continue to grow, average Americans would be better off, and Clinton would get reelected.

  Counting votes was something I knew how to do. When the day began, my five-column tally sheet (Yes/Lean Yes/Undecided/Lean No/No) showed us 30 votes short. Getting to 218 would take a lot of hand-holding and hard dealing. The Democratic leaders — Speaker Tom Foley, Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, and Majority Whip David Bonior — did their part with Howard Paster up on the Hill. Bob Rubin, Lloyd Bentsen, and Mack McLarty called everyone they knew too. But Clinton would have to get the final few votes himself. In the end, this was his plan and his presidency. He was commander and crew.

  I was the coxswain. My official function was to get the right people on the phone, to record the deals and ensure they got done, to pass bulletins back to the Hill and relay the responses back to Clinton. But I also served as coach and companion, prompting the president during his calls with handwritten notes, gingerly urging him to do a little less listening and a little more demanding, helping him decipher the hidd
en meanings in a member's words: “I'll be there if you need me. … Don't worry about me. … I won't let you down. … I won't let it die.” With the Republican attack — “Biggest tax increase in the history of the universe” — already ringing in their ears, the final holdouts repeated variations on a theme: “I've been thinking of my own protection.” They didn't want to say no to the president, but they couldn't bring themselves to say yes; so they stalled for time, hoping the president would get enough votes without them. Some solved the dilemma by simply disappearing: Congressman Bill Brewster spent the afternoon tooling around Washington in his car, with his cell phone turned off.

  By early evening, we'd hit a wall. Two hundred eight hard yesses, ten short. We had to decide: Do we call the roll and count on party loyalty and personal honor to carry us over? Or do we pull it? No meeting had to be called, and there was no real debate. If we postponed the vote, it would take months of negotiation to build a new coalition based on new compromises. Delay was the functional equivalent of defeat. But all of the main players — Gore, Bentsen, Rubin, Panetta — came to the Oval anyway, the way everyone gravitates toward the kitchen at family reunions. It's the place to be when there's nothing left to do — except worry. They paced around the president's desk and chomped on cookies. Clinton's nerves showed on the shredded butt end of the unlit cigar he'd been chewing all afternoon. My bloodred cuticles betrayed me.

  But for the first time in our entire relationship, I was more optimistic than my boss. Usually, I was the dark one; he was Mr. Lucky. Now our roles were reversed. Maybe it was because I knew the House and its rhythms, knew that the body needed a victory even if its members didn't want to vote for it. Maybe it was the fact that Bonior, Foley, and Gephardt were taking early credit by calling the president with their vote counts. Maybe I'm more of a mood balancer than a true pessimist. Or maybe I was just fooling myself. But the more Clinton fretted over the final vote, the more I was convinced we were going to win.