All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  Well, I'd almost made it — an entire day without a dark political thought. But as much as I admired the general, he was still the potential opponent I feared most. The U.S. News article, entitled “Colin Powell Superstar: Will America's Top General Trade His Uniform for a Future in Politics?” was the mother of all puff pieces:

  Powell could become another Eisenhower, a military hero who floats above partisanship and taps into mankind's oldest myths about the virtues of the warrior-king. … Powell is a political tidal wave waiting to happen. … By almost 3 to 1, respondents think Powell … would do a better job than Clinton in foreign affairs. … By more than 2 to 1, Americans think Powell would do a better job than Clinton in fighting crime and drugs. … A Republican Powell would defeat Democratic President Clinton by 42 percent to 38 percent in a head-to-head election held today.

  As Powell enjoyed his final days as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we engaged in a series of quiet talks on a “Colin Powell strategy” with Vernon Jordan, the Clark Clifford of the nineties, as our wise man. Though Powell had rebuffed earlier feelers from Jordan, we still held out hope that his role model was George Marshall rather than Dwight Eisenhower — that over time he wouldn't be able to refuse the chance to be America's first black secretary of state.

  Our immediate concern was what honor to bestow on Powell as a retirement gift. Our goal was to offer a prestigious appointment that would show respect without signaling weakness or appearing to pander. Mack asked me to secretly research the procedure for awarding a fifth star to a general. What I discovered from the Pentagon pretty much ended the discussion. Only five generals in American history had achieved the distinction, and the last one was World War II hero Omar Bradley in 1950. Despite the Persian Gulf victory and his earlier service in Vietnam, it would be hard to argue that Powell had a comparable battle record. That obstacle, combined with the fact that the honor would require an act of Congress, was enough to kill the idea.

  When I reported my findings to Clinton, he said that he had reached the same conclusion from a different angle. Had it been a clear-cut case, I'm sure Clinton would have recommended the award for Powell. But since it was a close call, Clinton reasoned that rewarding Powell would be a political trap. If Powell did challenge Clinton, the fifth star would forestall criticism of the general's military record. Instead, we discussed something politically innocuous, like asking Powell to chair the American Battle Monuments Commission, but nothing came of it.

  In his more optimistic moments, Clinton convinced himself that Powell wouldn't challenge him anyway. We discussed it on the evening of Tuesday, September 21 — the end of another good day. That afternoon, the president had signed the Americorps national service program into law, and I had just handed him a draft of the health care address he'd deliver the following night. Betty Currie and the president's valet, Glen Maes, were standing in the outer office, hoping that I'd hurry him along so they could go home and he could get some rest. But on my second trip back, he was still packing up his desk. Without looking up from his open briefcase, he said, “I think things are starting to come together.” It was nice to hear, because despite a few good days, the president had been in a funk since August. Now he talked brightly about bringing in his old friend and our 1992 convention manager, Harold Ickes, to shore up our political operation. Next he brought up Powell. “You don't think he's going to run, do you?”

  “I don't know. I still think he might, but I'm not sure.”

  “I don't think he's going to run. He's going to pull an Eisenhower and sit one out,” Clinton declared, punctuating the point by snapping his case shut and asking me to walk him home. Strolling through the colonnade, we discussed the new Richard Reeves book on Kennedy's White House years. Not wanting to spoil the mellow mood, I went for a full suck up, saying that reading about some of Kennedy's early trials made me feel better, because “he made a lot more mistakes than you did, Mr. President.” Clinton turned the conversation to how debilitated JFK had been from Addison's disease, saying he was amazed to read about how Kennedy's cortisone treatments supercharged his sex drive. As John, the white-tied operator, held the elevator door, Clinton disputed Reeves's claim that JFK was the first president to run from outside the system and urged me to read the Vidal and Oakes books on the man who was his favorite president — a one-term congressman from Illinois who had created his own base and captured the presidency. Clinton didn't mention what he also knew. In 1864, a general named George McClellan had failed to wrest the White House from President Abraham Lincoln.

  But that night, no president was more present to Clinton than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. America's longest-serving chief executive, FDR had secured his place in history during his first term, when he convinced Congress to create Social Security. Clinton almost seemed to regret the fact that he didn't face Roosevelt's challenges: not even a cold war to contend with, much less a world war, and the economy, thank goodness, was going strong. The president was determined, however, to forge another New Deal, to succeed where FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter had all failed, to be remembered as the president who made basic health care, like a secure retirement, the birthright of every American.

  On the second floor, Hillary was waiting for him — Eleanor to his Franklin. Health care was her baby, a sweeping program that would save lives and prove to the world that a first lady could be a fully public presidential partner. Working with Ira Magaziner, she had established a wholly owned subsidiary within the White House, with its own staff, its own schedule, and its own war room, called the Intensive Care Unit. She devoured briefing books, pored over polls, presided at public hearings, schmoozed with senators, buttonholed representatives, and barnstormed the country preaching (without notes) the virtues of preventive care, cost control, and the peace of mind that comes with national health care that's “always there.” The public loved it, rewarding her with standing ovations and sky-high poll numbers. (By September, the president had fought his way back to statistically equal favorable/unfavorable ratings, while Hillary's margin of approval was two to one.)

  But inside the White House, she must have felt like a single mom raising a problem child in a hostile neighborhood with a weekend daddy who loved his baby but was never there when you really needed him. First he flirted with the New Democrats, who pushed welfare ahead of health care. Then came the screwed-up stimulus bill. The whole summer was lost to the battle over deficit reduction. Now her husband's economic team (when they weren't surreptitiously trying to smother her baby in the cradle with endless questions about the accuracy of Ira's economic assumptions or the efficacy of his cost controls) insisted that NAFTA was the most important presidential project of the fall. Meantime, Clinton's buddy Gore wanted to steal him away so they could “reinvent government” together. To top it all off, on the night before he would deliver the health care address that was the biggest speech of her career, the president was late coming home — again.

  But for all the tension that constantly crackled between them, they were compatible. I imagine that they were truly at home working through the speech together on Tuesday night. And whatever their past disagreements over health care strategy, they now shared a passionate opinion: The speech was terrible; it needed a total rewrite.

  On Wednesday morning, a group of us went to the residence to survey the wreckage. The oak table in the family dining room was covered with crossed-out pages. As Clinton scrawled over the text with his left hand while gnawing on the thumb of his right, Hillary stood behind his chair and massaged his shoulders. Jeremy Rosner, the speechwriter with the hottest hand after his highly praised draft of the president's Middle East speech, was sent off with David Dreyer to complete the rewrite. I was late for a round of interviews with the radio talk-show hosts we had invited to broadcast from the North Lawn, and the president and first lady had to get dressed for their joint lunch with journalists downstairs in the old family dining room. With less than ten hours until airtime, we were back to bungee ju
mping without a rope.

  All through the afternoon, I checked in with Rosner and Dreyer. They were the speechwriters; I was more like a shepherd, herding the text through its final stages — from the final draft to the dress rehearsal, from the prereleased text for the press to its final placement in the TelePrompTer facing the president's podium. At seven, we were still assembled in the folding seats of the family theater, watching him at the podium, shouting ideas back and forth, typing revisions directly into the TelePrompTer. Clinton never knew exactly what he wanted to say until he heard himself say the words. Shortly after eight, when the president went upstairs to shower and change, Dreyer printed out copies of the text, handed one to me and one to the president's personal aide, and headed to Capitol Hill with the backup computer disks in his briefcase. I stayed behind to ride with the president. I loved the intimate grandeur of these motorcades to the Capitol. While the cars lined up outside, we would wait for the president and the first lady in the foyer off the South Lawn. Seconds before they descended, the Secret Service agents would glide into action and the rest of us would start to hustle. I waited by the back door of the limo until the president and Hillary got in, then scrambled into the jump seat — my hands clutching his text, my knees brushing up against hers — just as the agent gave the order to roll.

  As we rode down Pennsylvania Avenue, Clinton kept working. “I'm tightening it up,” he chattered. “It's better now.” I had my patter down, pumping him up — “It's a good speech; you really fixed it” — and pointing out where to pause — “Be sure you hold the card up long enough for everyone to get it. That's the picture.” Hillary became quiet. The fear in her face was masked a bit by the heavy makeup she wore for the cameras, but I had seen it before. The tight smile, the fixed gaze, the hands folded firmly in her lap, holding everything inside — it was the look of a wife who always had to worry for two. During the campaign, she'd hide until the debate was over, retreating with a book to an empty room. But that wasn't possible now. She'd be front and center in the House balcony, the architect of the plan she hoped would be her husband's legacy.

  When the president went to the Speaker's office to greet the congressional leadership, I veered off to the Speaker's lobby to give his car-ride revisions to the military aide manning the TelePrompTer. Standing over the operator's shoulder, I made sure he word-searched to the appropriate spots and inserted the proper edits. But I couldn't wait to get to the floor.

  Out there, it was like being home again, only better. I headed straight for my old spot by the podium — the place where I learned to count votes and feel the will of the House. It was also the place where, seven months and several political lifetimes ago, I stood waiting for Clinton's first State of the Union. The economic plan Clinton presented that night was now law. But by the time we had squeezed out the deciding vote, our dreams had been squeezed too. At its heart, reducing the deficit was still about cleaning up an old mess, playing defense. Health care was our real chance to achieve a grand ambition.

  “Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States.”

  Clinton ambled down the aisle, shaking hands, absorbing the nourishing cheers, picking up his pace only as he reached the well of the House, circled the three-tiered dais, and bounded up the steps to deliver his speech.

  I knew something was wrong when I saw Clinton squint into the distance and slide his head from side to side as if he were trying to find a face in the crowd. Then he turned to the vice president, who turned straight to me, motioning with his index finger for me to approach the podium. No way. I shook my head. There's no way I'm going up there in front of a hundred million people; it'll look like I'm going for the clutch of the century. Gore motioned again, more insistently, widening his eyes and nodding his head. I shook my head again but started to worry. What could it be? Is Clinton sick? Then Gore took two steps down from his seat, and I took two steps up, still out of camera range. “The speech, check the speech. It's the wrong one.”

  I sprinted off the steps and rammed through the swinging doors, heading straight for the corner where the TelePrompTer operator was staring implacably into his machine, poised for the president to begin. What I saw next literally took my breath away. This can't be. My eyes are lying. They weren't. The electronic text is still branded on my brain:

  “A NEW DIRECTION”

  ADDRESS TO JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS

  BY

  PRESIDENT WILLIAM CLINTON

  FEBRUARY 17, 1993

  Good thing Dreyer was there. I'm a computer illiterate, and the TelePrompTer operator wasn't as composed as I first thought; he was in mild shock (Only later did he realize what had happened. Testing the TelePrompTer's hard drive earlier that afternoon, he had called up the earlier speech. Then he made a simple mistake: pressing Save instead of Delete. When the new speech arrived, it was tacked onto the tail end of the old.) As Dreyer studied the screen, the president opened with a moment of silence for the victims of an Amtrak train crash earlier that day. Pray long and hard; we need the time. Then he had no choice but to begin: “My fellow Americans, tonight we come together to write a new chapter in the American story. …”

  As Clinton spoke, the old speech was scrolling down the screen. The thought of the president trying to concentrate on his delivery as gobbledygook whirred by his eyes made me sick with worry — for him and me. This screwup might not have been my fault, but it was my responsibility. “This is the worst thing that's ever happened,” I muttered. “I dunno,” replied Mike Feldman, the vice president's aide, “the Holocaust was pretty bad.” Very funny.

  After a moment that felt like a month, Dreyer fed a new floppy disk into the machine and scrolled furiously to catch up with the president, slowing down only as he reached “ … talented navigator — someone with a rigorous mind, a steady compass, a caring heart. Luckily for me and our nation, I didn't have to look very far.” Seven minutes into the speech, with the right words finally in front of him, the president looked to the balcony to thank his wife.

  I wondered if Hillary knew something was wrong as she returned his grateful gaze and accepted her standing ovation. The crowd had no idea, and Clinton had already hit his stride. But I was still a wreck. Only returning to the chamber to actually watch Clinton at work made me feel a little better.

  When he was “on” before a live audience, Clinton was like a jazz genius jamming with his pals. He poured his whole body into the speech, swaying to the rhythms of his words, losing himself in a wonky melody, soaring from the text with riffs synthesized from a lifetime of hard study and sympathetic listening. If he sensed a pocket of resistance in the crowd, he leaned its way, determined to move them with raw will if sweet reason didn't work. It wasn't a hard sell that night, especially when Clinton pulled the card from his pocket and pushed it toward the cameras.

  It was a vibrant blue plastic square embossed with the United States seal and bordered by a white stripe with two gold stars on the bottom and a red bar with the legend “Health Care Security Card” across the top. A prop, sure, but it was more than that. When this battle was over, everyone in America would have one of these cards, and the guarantee that came with it — just like Social Security. Forgetting about the TelePrompTer for a moment, I recalled the New Hampshire campaign, when I had first met people like Ron Machos, who worked two jobs but still couldn't afford to pay for the open-heart surgery his two year old, Ronnie, needed to survive. The card would mean we kept our promise to them and everyone inspired by their story. Then I imagined a dusty lecture hall in the distant future. Once every semester, I would bring in the original card, pull its flaking edges from my pocket, place it on the table before me, and tell the tale of the time we lost the speech but won the war for health care.

  In real life, I worried that my retirement might be coming a little sooner than I had bargained for. As Clinton concluded his speech, I worked my way to the lobby and prepared to face his wrath. But by the time the president reached the back of the House chamber, so many members
of Congress had gushed their congratulations that he couldn't be upset.

  “You saved us again, Mr. President,” I said. “I'm sorry for the screwup.”

  “Yeah, what happened there?” he asked, as his right arm rested on my shoulder. But before I could answer, he had a follow-up. “I think I did OK, don't you?” Of course he did; the speech was a home run, and the way he asked was proof that he knew it. Relieved, I left to meet the press. The TelePrompTer mishap was certain to get out, so we might as well spin it our way. “Clinton's amazing, isn't he? Can you imagine what Reagan would have done without a text?” Too bad it would be the high point of the health care fight.

  “What? What did you say?”

  Busted. Every eye in the living room of Hickory Hill turned my way. But what really made me squirm was the arched eyebrows and brittle smile of the man who was questioning me — Vice President Al Gore.

  It was Friday night, a week after the health care speech, and several dozen cabinet officials and White House staff members were gathered at Bobby and Ethel Kennedy's estate to celebrate the passage of the urban empowerment zone legislation that Vice President Gore had honchoed with HUD's Andrew Cuomo (Ethel's son-in-law). For me, this night was a welcome break from a week of battles over the vice president's Reinventing Government initiative (REGO). But as Gore rose to close the evening, after several toasts in which the speakers joked about Gene Sperling's rumpled appearance and workaholic habits, he caught me whispering to Dee Dee: “Go ahead, George, share it with all of us.”

  C'mon, its Friday night. Gimme a break.

  “Oh, sorry, Mr. Vice President, I just noticed that Gene's become Washington's Joey Buttafuoco. Say his name, you get a laugh.”