All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  “The first lady.”

  “Hillary?”

  “Hi, George, how did we do?”

  “Pretty well, I think. My first press calls were positive, and Stan …”

  “Oh, there's Stan now …”

  “Really? Take it. I'll talk to you later. Bye.”.

  But even a month of boffo press conferences wouldn't save health care, which had already fallen victim to the forces that had defeated every other president who had tried. Corporate America, the insurance industry, and small business pooled their enormous resources and invested millions in lobbying and advertising to preserve the status quo. The Republican Party coupled sincere ideological opposition to our approach with pure political opportunism. When they saw, in the words of future Speaker Newt Gingrich, that health care was “a springboard to win Republican control of the House,” they pounced. Democrats were basically united around the goal of national health care, but our various factions didn't trust each other, and we were deeply divided on matters of tactics and strategy.

  All of these obstacles might have blocked health care reform even if we had run a perfect legislative campaign from the White House. But we didn't. Presenting a detailed bill to Congress (on the theory that it could be pared down by horse-trading as the legislation worked its way through Congress) turned out to be a serious tactical mistake. While the provisions that threatened a segment of the health care industry became targets of laserlike lobbying campaigns to remove them, all the costly benefits of the bill became effectively locked in once they were printed. We couldn't compromise without cracking apart our coalition.

  Besides, compromise didn't come naturally to Hillary. She was driven by the righteous and intellectually sound conviction that only a comprehensive solution would work, but that was more than the political system could bear. In a way, her leadership was more than the political system could bear. It's difficult to escape the conclusion that having Hillary run health care was a mistake.

  At the time of her appointment, however, I was convinced it was a masterstroke. By choosing his wife to head the effort, we believed, Clinton was showing how much he cared about health care, and Hillary had all the right tools. She knew the subject cold, she was a tough-minded political tactician who could organize a national campaign, and her public advocacy was brilliant. But the approach she developed reflected both her strengths and her weaknesses. The plan, like the woman who guided it, was ambitious, idealistic, and highly logical; but it was also inflexible, overly complex, and highly susceptible to misinterpretation. Our standard line after the 1994 debacle was that we tried to do “too much too fast,” that “we bit off more than we could chew.” Instead of threatening to veto legislation that didn't meet our demands, we should have articulated the long-term goal of universal coverage and negotiated legislation that built up to it in stages. Here is at least one instance where Clinton's sometimes maddening instinct for the political middle ground might have better served their shared cause.

  Hillary was also too juicy a target for the enemies of reform. They supplemented legitimate questions about the propriety and wisdom of having a first lady manage a major legislative campaign with more sinister attempts to cripple health care by turning Hillary into a caricature of a power-hungry radical feminist. Which leads to a final question: not what Hillary did to health care, but what health care did to Hillary. It made her vulnerable. The press cited her quasi-official position as justification for more intense scrutiny of her past, which helped fuel the Whitewater mania. The Republicans and their fringe allies felt that it made her fair game. Inside the White House, her position stifled healthy skepticism about our strategy, and Hillary became the object of some quiet resentment because no one was ever quite sure what the rules were in internal debates. Only Hillary can say if she would take the lead again, but my guess would be no.

  On August 26, 1994, Congress adjourned without acting on the Clinton plan, and Senator George Mitchell announced that comprehensive, universal health insurance would not pass the Congress that year. By then it was a mercy killing.

  12 CRASH

  Andrew Jackson was in office when the old magnolia first graced II the South Lawn of the White House. Now, at 1:49 A.M. on September 12, 1994, that tree was Bill Clinton's last line of defense. A small plane piloted by a depressed veteran was heading straight for the White House. It skidded across the lawn, hurtled through a holly hedge, and winged the branches of the old magnolia before slamming into the wall two floors below Clinton's bedroom. The agents on duty could only duck for cover.

  I didn't learn about the crash until 6:25, when I strolled up to the Starbucks next to my Dupont Circle apartment and saw the stack of Posts propped against the still-locked door: “PLANE CRASHES ON SOUTH LAWN.”

  No way. How could this happen? How come nobody called me? I rushed to work, upset at being out of the loop, unsure if this was a national security crisis or a bizarre prank gone awry. Apparently it was a little of both. The Secret Service agents managing the situation from their West Wing basement control room said that the dead pilot, Frank Corder, had boasted about landing a plane on the South Lawn, but his friends had brushed it off as beer talk. The incident was, however, a severe problem for the Secret Service. Their effectiveness in thwarting threats against the president stems in part from the illusion that their protective shield is impregnable, from the unconfirmed but undenied belief that a kamikaze heading for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be blasted out of the sky by a heat-seeking missile.

  My immediate concern was ensuring that our snakebit White House avoided blame. The way our luck was running, I half expected to discover that the pilot was a first cousin of Gennifer Flowers's who had stolen one of Harry Thomason's planes from Arkansas's infamous Mena airstrip; or that the failure of the FAA's early-warning system was connected to some REGO budget cut. As Leon Panetta and I walked across the Rose Garden to inspect the damage, our mission seemed both surreal and surprisingly mundane. It's Monday morning, the start of another work week, and we're dealing with another crisis that's cropped up overnight — this time a stolen Cessna crumpled up against the White House like a crushed beer can.

  Hours later, hundreds of kids and their congressmen and women were scheduled to gather on the South Lawn for an event celebrating Clinton's Americorps national service program. Instead of canceling our “news of the day,” we moved the rally to the North Lawn, and we did our best to deflect questions by designating that all official press briefings be handled by Secret Service and Treasury Department officials. Let them take the hit for this one. Of course that wouldn't stop our press corps from writing the inevitable “tick-tock” stories of what the president knew and when he knew it, laced with analysis of what all this said about Clinton. Maureen Dowd of the Times pressed me all day for a Reaganesque anecdote — something like “Honey, I forgot to duck,” the line President Reagan was said to have delivered to Nancy after being shot by John Hinckley.

  “C'mon, George, you never give me anything.”

  “Maureen, I'm always nice to you.”

  “But you never give me anything. This is the time.”

  “Maureen, I'm not going to give it to you.”

  Still, Maureen may have been right. So we actually had a meeting about whether to leak an anecdote showing Clinton handling the “crisis” with equanimity and a sense of humor. All Clinton said when Dee Dee and I went to the Oval to get his story was that after Leon called him he “turned over and went to sleep.” So far, so good. “Can we knock down the rumor that you're going to stop jogging because of security concerns?” “Hell, yes,” Clinton replied. “If I don't jog, I'll get up to two hundred sixty pounds. Be an even bigger target.” Nice, but a joke about Clinton's struggle with his waistline didn't seem to strike the insouciant note Maureen had in mind. Our best spin here was the straight story: He turned over and went to sleep. The less said the better. We didn't want this to be a story about Clinton. We didn't have to prove that he was a regular guy with a g
ood sense of humor. We had to show that he was up to the job.

  Especially since the president would be ordering military action later that week. Shortly after I left the Oval, John Deutsch, the deputy secretary of defense, dropped by my office and mentioned his misgivings over the impending invasion of Haiti. “The first few days may be easy,” he said, “but I'm afraid we might get three or four boys hacked up in a few months.”

  In the year following the humiliating retreat of the Harlan County from the docks of Port-au-Prince, the situation in Haiti had steadily deteriorated. The troika of military dictators, led by Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras, refused to reinstate President Aristide and intensified its reign of terror. Back in May, Clinton had resisted calls for American military intervention, preferring to ratchet up the pressure on the dictators with tightened economic sanctions and a final diplomatic push. But as Haiti's decline threatened to create a new wave of boat people heading for Florida, he felt more pressure to act. In July, after international human rights observers were expelled from Haiti, the U.S. pushed a resolution authorizing force to remove the Cedras junta from power through the UN Security Council. By September, there was no turning back.

  The president believed military intervention was morally justified, but he fretted privately that he was being forced to act at the worst possible moment: “I can't believe they got me into this. … How did this happen? We should have waited until after the elections.” But I knew by then that his scapegoating and second-guessing were just nervous tics, his way of steeling himself for what he knew he had to do. In the broader meetings with his national security team, Clinton was markedly more self-assured than in his early encounters with the military.

  On September 7, the national security brass assembled to review the proposed battle plan. At first I wasn't sure they'd let me in. Now that Leon was reorganizing the White House staff, I no longer had automatic walk-in privileges to any policy meeting, especially on military matters, and I was still suspected of being a leaker. But Tony Lake invited me both because he was my friend and because the success of the effort would depend, in part, on how we handled Congress and the public — my areas of expertise. I walked into the cabinet room that afternoon aware that I needed to make a real contribution to justify my presence.

  General John Shalikashvili, Colin Powell's replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, opened the meeting. With his straight back, square shoulders, and short haircut, Shali was the epitome of an American military man — an identity reinforced for my ethnic ears by his clipped Polish accent. Listening to the general detail the pathetic state of the Haitian military, I was struck by his supreme confidence — and slightly apprehensive. Isn't this what they always think before the fighting actually starts? But his certainty wasn't hubris. The Haitian forces were fierce when facing unarmed women, orphans, and priests, but they'd cut and run at the sight of twenty thousand American troops.

  “Thank you for the briefing, General,” Clinton replied briskly. Then, without hedging or hesitation, he gave the command: “It's a good plan; let's go.”

  That was that. The rest of the meeting, however, dealt with the aspect of the invasion he was worried about: convincing the Congress and the country that invading Haiti was the right thing to do. First, we had to decide whether to secure a congressional vote authorizing military action. Secretary of State Christopher framed the argument against seeking a resolution in terms of presidential power, saying that if Clinton insisted on going to Congress he would be constraining his successors. Colored by my years in the House, I believed that a president shouldn't send soldiers into combat without congressional support. But that principle was now being tested by hard reality: We didn't have the votes, not even close. Congress wasn't about to give President Clinton political cover for an unpopular invasion, so restoring democracy to Haiti required sacrificing a bit of it here at home. I thought the cost was justified, but Congress would howl, and partisan tensions were so high that a few members might even argue for impeachment if American casualties mounted. To cover our flank, I suggested that the State Department draft a public “white paper” making the case for unilateral presidential action. Like me, Clinton had just read in Doris Kearns Goodwin's new book that FDR had used this tactic when he circumvented Congress on lend-lease. He took the suggestion.

  Quit while you're ahead, George. I kept quiet as Clinton discussed marketing the mission to our various audiences: Congress, elite opinion leaders, the Haitian people, and the American public. With two-thirds of the country against military action in Haiti, it wouldn't be easy. And with two dozen people in the cabinet room, it would be just as difficult to maintain military secrecy. All through the session, the president grumbled about leaks coming from so large a group. When we adjourned, General Shali was nose to nose with Tony Lake, heatedly warning that if “one American soldier dies because of some leak, it will be on your head!” As one of the “extras” ringing the cabinet table, I hoped my presence hadn't put Tony in an untenable position. But any guilt I felt was balanced by indignation and anxiety: Those of us on the political team couldn't build public support without the basic facts. Besides, the most damaging national security leaks almost always came from dissenters in the bowels of the Pentagon or Foggy Bottom.

  No real secrets leaked, thank goodness, but our political situation didn't improve either. Led by two war heroes, Senators Bob Dole and John McCain, the Republicans pounded Clinton, arguing that returning Aristide to Haiti wasn't worth a single American life and that Clinton was ordering the invasion not to protect national security, but to appease a political constituency. That was the argument that drove us most crazy. Aside from Harry Belafonte and a few members of the Black Caucus, no one was clamoring for an invasion of Haiti. This was our most unpopular act since gays in the military. But although the invasion was not politically motivated, and full of political risk, it could be a political plus. Clinton was constantly being called “spineless” and “wishy-washy” — Doonesbury was depicting him as a talking waffle. Paradoxically, the more the Republicans screamed, the more they helped the president. Taking a lonely stand on a tough issue like Haiti was the best way for Clinton to demonstrate presidential character. It was also one of the times that I was most proud to work for him. Defending human rights and democracy was what Democrats like us were supposed to do, and despite his private doubts about the timing, the president didn't flinch.

  Which is not to say that he was always pretty to watch. On Tuesday morning, September 13, Clinton was riled up from a night of phone calls from complaining members of Congress. As Pat Griffin, Leon Panetta, and I filed into the Oval Office to brief Clinton for a meeting with other Hill Democrats, the president greeted us with a blast of shared pain: “After those fucking phone calls, I guess we'll have something to show those people who say I never do anything unpopular.” I kind of liked Clinton's defiance, but the members we met with feared it would cost them the election. The discussion was dominated by talk of delaying any action until after November. Clinton just brushed the suggestion aside. “We're damned if we do, damned if we don't,” he explained. “We get hit for politics by going in now, but the downside dangers of slow-walking until after the election are higher. More people will be killed.”

  Because the members knew they couldn't dissuade Clinton from going into Haiti, the congressional meeting had a resigned, desultory feel. But as our troops began to mobilize and the president prepared to address the nation from the Oval Office, the White House air was charged. Missile strikes were one thing, but this was the first time in our twenty months in office that the United States was planning a military invasion. OK, the Haitian armed forces weren't exactly a fearsome adversary. But restoring democracy to Haiti was a good cause, and something about watching grim-faced officers with medals on their chests and spy photos under their arms hustle through hushed corridors helped me imagine what it must have been like to be Ted Sorensen during the Cuban missile crisis, or Bill Moyers when LBJ dispatched troops
to the Dominican Republic. I never presumed to question the military plans, but on Tuesday night, the mission commander, Admiral Paul Miller, called me to talk politics. “We need to get a couple of people flying wing on the Hill for us,” he said in the can-do cadence of a career military man. As for the speech, “that democracy argument is right on the bull's-eye. People want to hear value and cost. But you have to hit them where they live. Tell them there are nine million Haitians off our shores — and they all want to be your neighbor.”

  Actually, our polling showed that the American people were more moved by altruism than naked self-interest. Since August, we'd been quietly testing various arguments for the invasion. Unlike foreign-policy elites who insisted that the United States should deploy troops only when “vital” economic or military interests were at stake, the general public was more willing to use our power to protect innocent civilians from torture and terror. This was all relative, of course; risking even one American life was unpopular, but a humanitarian argument softened the opposition. How to use the evidence we had — graphic photos of maimed children and mothers with slashed faces — was dicey, and it revealed a subtle shift in the world of spin between the Reagan and Clinton administrations. David Gergen argued that when the president met with wire-service reporters on Wednesday, he should have the photos spread on the table before him for the reporters to see. “That would have worked for Reagan,” I argued, “but they'll kill us for it. Just have the photos in a folder. If he hands them out, he hands them out.” The Reagan team's success at spin control had conditioned the White House press corps. Elaborate staging only increased the tendency of skeptical reporters to focus on the process rather than the substance of what we were trying to say. The benefits of spin were being canceled out by the press's resistance to it. Often we reacted by spinning even harder, but I was beginning to see the virtue in just letting stories go — Zen spin.