All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  Fortunately, everyone did laugh, including Gore. But that exchange was just some slight turbulence in an increasingly tense relationship.

  I had never met Gore before 1992, although I did interview for a job in his Senate office after the Dukakis campaign. I ended up working for Dick Gephardt instead. Strike one with Gore. Gore and Gephardt ran against each other in the 1988 presidential primaries, emerging from the experience as political enemies. Gore also knew, I suspected, that after my Cuomo bid failed, I had made a last-minute bid to get Gephardt on Clinton's ticket. Although Gore and I went on to work well together during the campaign, his suspicions of me often surfaced in the White House. At the close of a particularly heated NAFTA meeting, Gore turned to me, exasperated: “George, I'm going to have to find some scientific procedure to get that Gephardt DNA removed from you.”

  Most of the time, though, the teasing was lighthearted. Gore is quick witted behind closed doors; he likes to make fun of himself and everyone else around him. In my case, that meant taking shots at my celebrity profile. Once, when the gossip columns were covering my relationship with Jennifer Grey, I was late from the gym for a Sunday-afternoon budget meeting, and Gore caught me trying to slip into the Roosevelt Room, my hair still dripping wet: “Where've you been, George? (Beat) Dancing?” The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt saga was another one of his running gags; for weeks, Gore would amuse Clinton before morning briefings in the Oval with a detailed bulletin on Mr. Bobbitt's surgical condition. The vice president was also the only person inside the White House who could really poke fun at the president. At press conference preps, he was the designated deflator. If Clinton responded to a practice question with a self-pitying rant, Gore would clap his hands and spike his fist from across the cabinet table. “Great answer, Mr. President. You got that one down!” Clinton got the message.

  Clinton relied on Gore's disciplined intelligence, and from the very beginning he was sincerely committed to making him a full partner in his presidency. But Gore, wisely, took nothing for granted. Right after the election, he booked a suite at Little Rock's Capitol Hotel and solidified his place by the president's side during the cabinet selection process. He had a say in every key appointment, and Clinton gave him free rein with a few positions: Carole Browner at the Environmental Protection Agency; his high school friend Reed Hundt to head the Federal Communications Commission; and his brother-in-law Frank Hunger to run the Civil Division at the Justice Department.

  Gore also went out of his way to cultivate those of us who would be on the White House staff. A few weeks after the election, he invited me to lunch. Aware of the fissures that could develop between a vice president and the White House staff, he told me that his door was always open, that he wanted my advice, and that I should come straight to him if I ever sensed a problem between him and the president or anyone else in the White House — like Hillary.

  The high-level attention was heady but intimidating. Instinctively, I reverted to my subservient humble-staffer mode and told him that he was the one who'd been elected, so he was my boss as much as the president. Both of us were being simultaneously sincere and disingenuous. We liked and respected each other, wanted to get along, and knew that a harmonious White House would help us get more done. But Gore's kind words also carried an implicit threat — “Don't even think about trying to shut me out; if it comes down to you or me, I'll cut your nuts off.” My obedient pose obscured my overconfident overprotectiveness — the belief that my close relationship with Clinton was all I would need, and that the president needed people like me to think only of him.

  Our first clash came early — over the energy tax. Although I had reconciled myself to dropping the middle-class tax cut for the sake of deficit reduction, I believed that adding an energy tax to the mix was a political double whammy. Not only were we breaking our campaign pledge to cut middle-class taxes, we were raising them. Imagining future Republican campaign commercials, I kept replaying the line I'd heard Clinton repeat a thousand times: “I will not raise middle-class taxes to pay for my programs.” It'll be “Read my lips” all over again.

  Gore was the chief advocate of the energy tax, arguing that it was good for both the economy and the environment. He was backed up by the big guns — Bentsen, Rubin, and Fed chairman Alan Greenspan — and in hindsight I know he was right. But then I believed he was treating our early campaign promises cavalierly, and that he failed to appreciate how, for Clinton, middle-class taxes had become a character issue. Through the spring of 1993, Clinton would vent privately that Gore was pushing him to raise taxes too much. I knew Clinton well enough to assume he wasn't saying this to Gore at their weekly lunches, but I took it as an indirect order to keep on fighting for a lower gas tax in our internal deliberations.

  On June 29, Gore and I finally had it out in front of Clinton. The question on the table was our negotiating strategy on the energy tax as the congressional conference committee prepared a final plan for floor votes. I argued for a little elbow room at the negotiating table, saying that we should adopt the lower Senate-passed gas tax rather than defend the broader energy tax backed by Gore and passed by the House. “We should be seen as reluctantly accepting a tax increase,” I said. “But it's beginning to look to the country like we're in love with taxes.” Gore lashed out. I was used to being yelled at by the president, but this was something new and oddly more chilling: “Damnit, George, we can't just go for a good night on the news. Think of the long term. This is the right thing to do.” The president just sat there. Emboldened by his silence, I pushed the etiquette envelope. I didn't quite yell back, but my voice strained the cords of my throat and forced its way through my clenched teeth. “It's not going to do anyone any good if it doesn't pass,” I seethed, “and the plan … can't pass … with this … high … a tax.”

  I won that battle, but my problems with the vice president were just beginning. We clashed again over Reinventing Government.

  REGO was to Gore what health care was to Hillary — a worthy goal that grew out of control, another White House within a White House. I had no problem with the idea of saving tax dollars through better management, but I was frustrated by the fact that Gore's task force was generating ideas in a vacuum, often without regard for political reality or the president's competing interests. A small but telling example: The REGO task force recommended that the president eliminate the selective service registration system. Of course. The president who dodged the draft now wants to do away with it. How come I didn't think of that? No, I don't think so, particularly when it would save a grand total of $15 million — approximately 0.00001 percent of the federal budget.

  I was much more worried about what REGO would mean for the rest of the president's policy agenda. Gore wanted to make a big splash by claiming that his proposals would produce $108 billion in savings. Leon Panetta, our budget director, argued that the real number was probably closer to $30 billion. If he was right (as I suspected), or even close to right, the Republicans would demand that we find other cuts to fill the gap. Which meant that the government programs we'd promised to protect — student loans, worker training, Medicare, Medicaid — would become vulnerable. I feared that our self-imposed goal would become a straitjacket, forcing us (as the president used to say) to be more like Eisenhower Republicans than Roosevelt Democrats.

  I lost that battle, and late in September, a couple of days before the Hickory Hill party, I had my worst fight ever with the vice president. The REGO task force had called a meeting to review its proposed government procurement reforms. I was so busy, and the subject sounded so boring, that I wasn't even planning to attend. But I started to get calls from people like Sperling and Chris Edley, associate OMB director, lobbying me to attend. They had heard that the task force was about to set off a political firestorm by proposing to abolish the affirmative action guidelines that helped blacks, women, veterans, and other minorities break into the business of government contracting.

  Affirmative action was one of my core
issues, and it's nice to feel needed, so I went to the vice president's ceremonial office, a cavernous room with ceiling murals and an inlaid marble floor, and took a seat in the second tier of chairs ringing the conference table. A deputy from the Domestic Policy Council handed me a letter from the Civil Rights Commission opposing the proposal, and several other staffers stopped by with more information. I realized I had a network of support in the room if I was willing to make some noise. After a few minutes, I raised my hand and asked a question: “Has there been a political vet on this?”

  “Yes, everyone's signed off on it.”

  “What about the Civil Rights Commission? Have they checked it out?”

  “No.”

  Hmm. Why are they lying about this? Hold back.

  Then Gore walked in the room, and the conversation heated up. After a few minutes of debate, I made what I hoped would be the decisive intervention: “Listen, I don't know a thing about procurement reform, so I can't make an argument on the merits. I apologize. But I do know politics. Veterans already hate us, and after the problems we've had with the women's groups over abortion coverage in the health care plan, and the problems we've had with African Americans over Lani Guinier, and this bloody battle with labor over NAFTA, and the troubles we've had with the disability community because they think we've been silent on their issue, after all that, I just know it's going to be very difficult to do away with these requirements. I mean, it's like throwing a cluster bomb into the middle of our base.”

  The half smiles I got from my silent supporters in the room felt like a standing ovation. The vice president was compelled to respond, and he was angry. No yelling this time, but he did pull rank. “Now wait a second,” he said. “Let's start off on the premise here that the president has already made this decision. …”

  What the hell are we doing here if that's the case? The vice president had invoked divine authority — a powerful but perilous tool. Once he said that, the meeting was essentially over. But as Hotspur reminds Glendower in Henry IV, Part I, any man can call spirits from the “vasty deep” … “But will they come when you do call for them?” If you claim to be speaking for the president, you'd better be on solid ground. Something told me that the decision couldn't be that clear-cut. After letting a few minutes pass so it wouldn't seem as if I stormed out in a huff, I went to find out.

  The president was taking a break, relaxing in shirtsleeves by rearranging the books in his study before a meeting with the Russian foreign minister. “By the way,” I said after updating him on the news of the day, “I just left some meeting. Did you ever approve waiving all of the affirmative action requirements on government procurement?” He turned around, put the last books down, removed the unlit cigar from his mouth, and took two steps in my direction.

  “No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head and laying the tips of his right hand on my forearm. “I mean, Davis-Bacon [a prevailing wage requirement] I knew about, but never affirmative action.”

  Three nos and fingers on the forearm. He promised Gore something, but he doesn't want to kill affirmative action. The vice president wasn't lying, but he must have snookered Clinton a little. They had probably discussed the issue briefly during lunch. Maybe the president had been daydreaming for a moment; maybe Gore had couched the decision in technical terms and left out the red-flag words affirmative action; maybe Gore had rushed right through it. Whatever the case, it was clear to me that the president didn't want to kill affirmative action. So I closed the loop with Bob Rubin, who as director of the National Economic Council had the institutional heft to force a review of the decision. “I went to the president,” I told him. “He doesn't remember making the decision, or even discussing it in a clear way.” The proposal eventually died a bureaucratic death.

  Which meant that I was in big trouble. I may have won this preliminary skirmish over affirmative action, and I believed the issue was important enough to risk creating hard feelings, but I knew that I could never prevail in a prolonged war against the vice president. When I went home that night I was as discouraged as I'd been in months. Gore hates me. He'll get me fired. The worm's going to turn again, and I'm going to pay the price.

  But at that point, doing the president's bidding was my reason for being; his favor was my fuel. Not long after the fight, my assistant Heather Beckel pulled me out of the morning meeting because Betty needed help getting Rosie Grier, the former football star, out of the Oval so Clinton could go upstairs to change out of his jogging clothes. Once Rosie left, the president pulled a folder from his desk and fixed me with a serious look. “I know you've been worried about the credibility of Reinventing Government,” he deadpanned. “Now I'm really worried that the vice president has gone over the line.”

  Smiling, he handed me the folder, which contained a Xerox copy of “REGO Action #39,” a $2 million government project to clean the air by cutting bovine flatulence. Two million bucks to fight the cow-farting crisis. I left the Oval laughing, convinced I wasn't crazy to keep an eye on REGO.

  I always wore a beeper on my belt. Just in case he needed anything — anything at all, at any time. One Sunday evening, Chelsea was having trouble with her homework, a project on immigration, so Clinton paged me. From the restaurant pay phone, I tracked down the information on border guards she needed and passed it to Chelsea through her dad. But when my belt buzzed at ten minutes to midnight on Saturday, October 2 — “PLEASE CALL 628–7087 FOR PRES US” — I assumed it was more serious.

  So much was going on. American troops were searching the streets of Mogadishu for Aideed, the Somali warlord. Old-line Communist foes of Boris Yeltsin had barricaded themselves inside the Russian parliament building. Back home, we had spent much of the morning in the Oval discussing the case of Admiral Frank Kelso — the chief of naval operations during the Tailhook scandal. The president wanted to ensure that Kelso got a fair shake without interfering in the Pentagon review process, but he seemed most intrigued by exactly what happened at Tailhook: “What do you mean, leg shaving?”

  Could it be about Woodward's letter? Bob Woodward was writing a book about the economic plan and had passed on a written interview request to the president through me. All Clinton said then was, “Maybe I should do it to get him off our ass for the next four years.” Maybe he wants to discuss it some more. Whatever he wanted, it's hard to be blasé about a midnight call from the leader of the free world, especially when you're walking home from dinner with your best friend as a witness to the welcome intrusion. Although I was only three blocks from home, I stopped at the pay phone by the Twentieth Street Safeway and held for the president.

  “Hey, you doin' OK? I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm really worried about this Red Mass tomorrow. I don't think I should go.”

  Each year, on the Sunday before the traditional first-Monday-in-October opening of the Supreme Court term, the John Carroll Society sponsored a mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral to seek “God's blessing and guidance for those who administer justice.” Every president since Eisenhower had attended at least once, and it had been on the Clintons' schedule for weeks.

  But now Hillary wanted out, a conclusion I reached from hearing her in the background, coaching Clinton. She had picked up a rumor that anti-abortion activists were planning a protest, and that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago might take the occasion to criticize the president from the pulpit. But a last-minute cancellation would create an even bigger story — “CLINTON SNUBS CATHOLICS” — and from the tone of Clinton's voice, I sensed that he knew he couldn't cancel but needed some answers to calm her nerves.

  “I can't imagine that Cardinal Bernardin is going to do that, Mr. President,” I said. “He's got a good reputation. You might get some protesters, but what matters is how you handle them. It doesn't hurt to show respect and stand up for what you believe.” We went back and forth awhile, and he agreed to attend before he said good night. I was concerned enough, however, to skip Sunday services at my own church and go with the Clintons instead. If
anything happened now, it would be my fault.

  As I walked to the residence the next morning, the television hanging in the corner of the lower press office caught my eye. CNN was going live with pictures of anti-Yeltsin protesters poised to seize the state television station and storm the Russian parliament. I called the situation room for Tony Lake, and they connected me to his home so I could get briefed before seeing the president. He assumed I was calling about news that hadn't broken yet: Several American soldiers had been killed a few hours earlier in Somalia. But the first he heard about Moscow was from me. Once again, CNN beat the CIA. As soon as he stopped cursing our intelligence, Tony and I quickly agreed on a “we're monitoring the situation” placeholder response for the president, and I sprinted to meet the Clintons.

  They were already downstairs, and the president was engrossed in his red folder from the situation room — a bulletin on the fighting in Mogadishu.

  “Are you ready for the questions?” I asked.

  “About Somalia?”

  “No, Russia.”

  He didn't know either. So we decided it was best to say nothing now. I would get an update from Tony during the mass, and after the service Clinton would take a few questions from the reporters staked outside the cathedral.

  The mass was blessedly uneventful. Cardinal Bernardin did address the sanctity of life from conception to death, but his homily's theme was the “common good” and the need for virtue in American life. Only a few silent protesters held signs by the cathedral steps. In Moscow and Mogadishu, however, things were deteriorating. Riot police were firing on the Russian protesters, and more American soldiers had been killed or captured in Somalia. Tony beeped me just before the end of church, and I left my pew for “Roadrunner” — the mobile communications van in the president's motorcade.

  The press still didn't know about the firefight in Somalia, but reporters were clamoring for a Clinton comment on Russia. Tony and I didn't think it was smart, however, to address a volatile crisis on sketchy reports from the steps of a church, so I pulled the president aside after he thanked the cardinal and said we needed to return to the White House for a briefing before he faced the press. He nodded and guided me to the limo, where Hillary was waiting.