All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  Which meant that I needed a job description beyond “by my side.” Although I still had strong relationships with my colleagues in the White House, the cabinet agencies, and on Capitol Hill, I was doing poorly with all three principals. On the surface, Clinton was still cordial, and he still sought me out for my advice. But I knew he was constantly complaining to others about how I was to blame for the Woodward book and the liberal drift of the administration. Leon called me in and asked if I was “having any problems with the vice president.” The question answered itself: Gore rightly thought we needed a more clear-cut hierarchy, and our relationship had become more steady, but I was still paying a price for our early disagreements and my lingering ties to his rival Dick Gephardt. My situation with Hillary was more mercurial. We had several nice phone conversations a week, during which I would brief her on what was going on and slip into thinking that all was well, but she couldn't forgive or forget Woodward. For days I couldn't figure out why I was being excluded from a round of secret meetings on resuscitating health care, until Harold pulled me into the old barbershop in the West Wing basement and explained that Hillary went into a tirade every time he suggested including me: “Bring George in? Sure — if you want it all over the street!”

  So the campaign trail was a kind of refuge. Every weekend, I'd pack an overnight bag and head to the airport. For an hour or two on the plane, I could nap or read without being interrupted by the phone. Touching down in another city was like landing on a distant planet, where people were amazed to meet a man who worked for the president, rather than worried about how many minutes a day they met with him. And the audiences at my events were hard-core Democrats, not the skeptical reporters or hostile Republicans I normally had to confront. Their adulation was flattering, and it was fun to be among true believers who just wanted to feel good about their president. Sometimes I had to watch out for the guests who wanted to feel a little more. In the receiving line at one event, I was approached by a pair of hearty nurses on the far side of middle age. Helga wore a brush cut, Rose a beehive. Both had big smiles.

  “We just had a raffle, and we're deciding who gets to take you home.”

  “Great, I haven't had a home-cooked meal in months.”

  “Who's talking about eating?” They giggled, squeezing me between them. “We're not going to feed you. …” Cracking up into the camera, they bid me good-bye by pinching my cheeks — the lower ones.

  Doing these fund-raisers helped cover my butt in another way. Attending them was like paying premiums on a political life-insurance policy. The more favors I did, the more political friends I had, and the more friends I had in Congress, the harder it would be to fire me if my stock in the White House continued to fall. But of my twenty-two appearances that election cycle, the most memorable, the most foreboding, and, ultimately, the saddest was an event I did to repay a political debt — the one I owed Mario Cuomo, whose example had inspired me when I was first starting out.

  That night in Queens, my worlds converged. The rally was held at the Crystal Palace, Astoria's premier Hellenic banquet hall — the place where, back in 1988, thousands of Greeks had smashed plates and danced in the streets to celebrate the nomination of their favorite son, Michael Dukakis. Now the scene was slightly more subdued. Cuomo was running for governor, not president; and he was Italian, not Greek. But the folding metal chairs were all filled, with my parents in the front row. At the cocktail reception, I chatted with some college classmates and a handful of our volunteers from the 1992 campaign while fending off the entreaties of well-meaning but overeager family friends who wanted to know when I was going to run for president. The third time's the charm, they said. We lost Tsongas, we lost Dukakis, but you're going to win!

  Their confidence was comforting but disconcerting too: It made me feel like a bit of a fraud, as if I were hiding a secret. Run for president? I don't know if I'll even have a job next month. I was also worried about my speech: Speaking before Cuomo was like dancing before Baryshnikov. Cuomo cared about rhetoric; he loved what he had once called the “poetry” of campaigns. I wanted to impress him, and I hoped he would understand that my appearance was more personal than political. Normally, I improvised from jotted notes. But this time, I was nervous enough to work on a prepared text. All through the reception, I kept patting my breast pocket to make sure it was still there.

  Then Cuomo arrived, still bigger than life to me, and we waded toward the dais together, shaking hands and leaning over for wet kisses from the older ladies lining the aisles. There was no hurry; this was a dinner organized by Greeks and Democrats — the program was just beginning, and it would take another hour to get through the thank-yous and introductions. Once we reached the head table, someone asked the governor to autograph a copy of the Ken Burns baseball book, which included a scouting report on minor league centerfielder Mario Cuomo (“Potentially the best prospect on the club and in my opinion could go all the way …”). But before Cuomo returned the book, he pushed it toward me, opening to the passage he wanted me to see — a vintage Cuomo riff on baseball and community (“I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice. Even the word is good. Give yourself up for the good of the whole”). It was lovely — his lyrical best — but Cuomo's head didn't seem to be in this game; the speaker was looking at the governor while the governor was watching me read.

  When it was my turn to speak, I nodded to Cuomo, smiled at my parents, and began: “Every generation of Democrats has a leader they look up to. For my grandparents, it was FDR, who in the midst of the depression kept a sign on his desk saying, ‘Let unconquerable gladness dwell …’ For my parents, it was JFK, who fought the ‘twilight struggle’ for freedom and willed American leadership on earth and in the heavens; for the president and his generation, it was Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, who preached of the need to reach beyond hatred and beyond division. But for someone who started in politics a decade ago, that inspiration, that leader, was Mario Cuomo. …” I closed on a confiding, conversational note: “Listen, I've got to tell you, I did everything I could to get Mario Cuomo out of this race. In the spring of 1992, I wrote a memo to Governor Clinton outlining all of the reasons why Mario Cuomo just had to be VP; in the spring of 1993, I was at it again, with all of the reasons he had to be on the Supreme Court. But each time, the answer back from Albany was ‘Don't even think about it; I've got a job to do in New York.’ Well, now New Yorkers have a job to do for the man who's done so much for them, for us … Mario Cuomo.”

  My parents were crying, Cuomo was smiling, and I was drenched with sweat but happy with how I'd done. The governor started well, joking easily, praising my parents and the speakers who preceded him. But within a few minutes, I sensed that something was wrong. This wasn't the powerful orator who urged Americans to see beyond the “shining city on a hill” or challenged them to follow the lead of “our new captain for a new century.” He wasn't preaching on the “idea of family” or pointing to the future with hope and pride. His voice was tired, and his words were hard — his new favorite seemed to be vindication. Thirty minutes after he began, Cuomo was still defending his record, talking about the past, and even this loyal crowd was drifting. When a wild-eyed woman in the back started to scream at him, he didn't ignore her or brush off the ravings with a lighthearted joke. The governor took her on.

  I was in pain — worried for Cuomo and more anxious than ever about the coming election. The governor just had a bad night, that's all. But it sure feels down out there. As I flew home on the final shuttle, my thoughts drifted beyond the immediate contest. Cuomo was a good man, committed to public service, inspiring at his best, but did the whole game of attack and defend, attack and defend squeeze the soul of everyone who played, even the best? And then what? So this is how it ends when you miss your chance and hang on too long. Not in the White House, or on the bench of the Supreme Court — but in a Queens social club, debating a heckler who doesn't know her own name.

  On election day 1994, Cuo
mo lost. So did Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, Speaker Tom Foley, and the old bulls Rostenkowski and Brooks. Senator Harris Wofford, the “Kennedy man” whose special-election upset three Novembers before had foretold our 1992 triumph, lost too. Democrats everywhere were defeated, but not a single Republican incumbent running for governor, House, or Senate lost. The Republicans won back the Senate, captured a majority of governorships for the first time since 1970, and took control of the House for the first time since 1954. Our nemesis Newt Gingrich was now Speaker — two heartbeats away from the White House. If Clinton really were a prime minister, he'd have been out of a job.

  A few days after the election, the president kept to a long-scheduled trade mission to the Far East. With Washington in tumult, Leon stayed home, and I was put on the trip to help Clinton answer political attacks and respond to any new Republican proposals. My only task was to keep him out of political trouble, and I failed. At a press conference in Jakarta, the president was asked for his position on the Republicans' proposed constitutional amendment to permit prayer in public schools. Although Clinton had consistently opposed amending the Constitution, he supported statutory efforts allowing “voluntary” school prayer. Aware of his ambivalence and focused solely on avoiding controversy, I told the president to punt. That's exactly what he did (“I want to reserve judgment. I want to see the specifics”), but it had exactly the opposite effect of what I intended. Clinton's kicker (“I certainly wouldn't rule it out”) made it look like he was flip-flopping on a matter of bedrock political principle. It took us two days to clean up the mess of stories about how Clinton had lost his political and moral compass.

  When the president and Hillary left Jakarta for a short vacation in Hawaii, I dropped off the trip and returned to Washington alone. All through the twenty-five-hour flight, I stewed about my screwup. But my anxiety was about more than a muffed answer at a press conference. The tensions of the past several months were coming to a head. On the long flight over to Asia, the president and Hillary rarely left their cabin. The “silent scream” had descended again, and grapevine rumors (from people who had talked to people who had talked to the president by phone) confirmed that Clinton was privately blaming his trouble on “those kids who got me elected. I never should have brought anyone under forty into the White House.”

  Even if the reports were only half true, they were nearly impossible to take. I thought for sure that my days in the White House were numbered. My confused feelings — of sadness and anger, despair and defiance, and failure most of all — kept me awake night after night. So hours before Clinton's scheduled return, on a dark Saturday night in a deserted West Wing, I walked into the empty Oval with a handwritten letter — a sheet from a yellow legal pad, folded in three, labeled “To: The President. From: George.” Sneaking alone into the Oval was something I had never done. But if I sent the letter through the staff secretary, my colleagues would see it and Clinton wouldn't get it for days. If I delivered it to the residence, the president might show it to Hillary, and I wasn't sure how she'd react. I needed him to read it alone, as soon as possible. When Marine One landed, he'd walk to the Oval as usual, and the letter would be sitting by his phone, the only document on an otherwise empty desk.

  It was an apology. Taking the hit for the school prayer controversy in Jakarta, I said there was no excuse for such inadequate preparation: “I'm sorry.” Then I wrote, “Same theme, different subject,” and addressed what was really bothering Clinton. Still the Woodward book. The time had never seemed right, but I should have found a way to have a direct discussion with the president months earlier. Now all I could do was grovel and hope it worked. I defended my motives but apologized for my awful judgment. Unsure of how it sounded, I called Wendy Smith as I was drafting the letter and read it to her. She was my closest friend then, and she understood Clinton as well as anyone who worked with him.

  “You can't just write a letter like that,” she said. “If you don't close with some constructive advice, he won't pay attention.” So I added a third paragraph: “You're going to get a lot of advice over the next few weeks about how to fix your presidency, so let me get in my two cents: ‘Be president like you ran for president.’” Back in 1992, I continued, you knew what you wanted to do and how you wanted to do it better than any of us around you. No matter what anybody says now, “do what you think is right. And don't worry too much about what we tell you.” In November of 1994, I wanted to be back with the Clinton I had encountered in the autumn of 1991 —in Stan Greenberg's office, at the governor's mansion in Little Rock, at the Navy Pier in Chicago, and at the Church of God in Christ convention in Memphis. I wanted to be inspired again.

  But the president was in a funk, spending more and more time alone, talking to old friends for hours on the phone. He and Hillary even went on to invite New Age self-help gurus Tony Robbins and Marianne Williamson to a secret session up at Camp David. He did, however, respond to my note. Sort of. Passing through my office on Monday morning, Clinton seemed somehow surprised to find me there. He nodded hello and kept on, before turning around suddenly. “I agreed with your letter.” Zeroing in on the relatively comfortable space of paragraph three, his eyes wandered around the room as he talked distractedly about “returning to my roots. … I reread my announcement speech, and that's exactly what we have to do.” Then he mentioned school prayer, accepting my apology by saying, “Nah, I screwed that up; it was my fault.” Not a word about Woodward.

  Until December 3, nearly two weeks later. It was a Saturday morning, and I had just received a call from Peter Jennings, who was filming a special on religion in America at the church of Bill Hybels, one of the president's spiritual advisers. Jennings wanted to interview Hybels about what it was like to be pastor to the president, but Hybels wanted the president's permission. I found Clinton in the Oval, sifting through the paperwork that had built up over the week. He thought it was fine for Hybels to do the interview, but he wanted to talk to him first. When I got up to leave, he said, “Wait.

  “I'm really glad you wrote that letter,” as if he had never mentioned it before. “That Woodward book tore my guts out, and I didn't handle it completely well,” he continued. “We all made mistakes. We hired too many young people in this White House who are smart but not wise.”

  Pretty fair description of me. Although he couldn't quite do it directly, the president was both acknowledging my errors and absolving me of them. “Mr. President,” I responded, “I don't know what to tell you. I saw a bad thing coming and I thought this was the best way to stop it, but I was wrong.”

  “Yeah, you did your best,” he concluded. “But that Woodward's an evil guy.”

  I left the Oval perplexed but enormously relieved. As always, though, the respite was short-lived. Three days later, on December 6, I hit bottom and felt as if I were hanging on to my job by what was left of my fingernails. It started at 6:15 A.M. in Harold Ickes's office. As Harold sipped Irish Breakfast from a mug with the tea bag still floating on top (whether it was frugality or taste, Harold always used his tea bags twice), we talked about what was shaping up to be a typical Clinton day, one in which the nomination of Bob Rubin for treasury secretary would be balanced off by the news that Webb Hubbell was pleading guilty to charges of mail fraud and tax evasion. Harold also reported on what he knew about the various White House reorganization rumors, and when I told him that I'd had a heart-to-heart with the president, he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Yeah, the president mentioned it. He said, ‘George finally fessed up on the Woodward book.’” Whatever it takes. At least he got the message.

  But I soon discovered that any lingering presidential suspicion was the least of my problems. Looking out for me again, Pat Griffin called me up to his office to fill me in on what he was hearing on the Hill. “George, I feel about you the way I feel about my wife,” he said. “When I'm afraid something bad is going to happen to her, I want to protect her, but I feel powerless and it drives me crazy.” He then told me that some Re
publicans on the Hill had decided to make me a target. “D'Amato hates you and wants to bring you down,” he said, which he could do by convening more Whitewater hearings now that he was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Pat added that their focus groups showed that I was exactly the face Republicans wanted people to think of when they heard the words “Clinton White House.” I sent the message that we were too young, too liberal, and too big for our britches, and they were going to do everything they could to reinforce the message. That explained why the new Speaker was gratuitously repeating my name in interviews, saying things like Stephanopoulos “scowls in meetings” and that I should return to my “dacha.”

  That also explained why, the day before, Leon had been so angry at me when the Post quoted me calling the Speaker “irresponsible” for making his outrageous accusation that 25 percent of the White House staff “had used drugs in the last four or five years.” I didn't feel I had a choice, because Devroy had called me on deadline when she couldn't get anyone else to respond. When I walked into the staff meeting that morning, I was expecting to be congratulated for a good save; instead I got reamed out in front of the whole room. Pissed, I went right back at Leon, saying that I had checked first with the counsel's office and his deputy. Only after talking to Pat did I realize that, in his own way, Leon was trying to protect me. We worked it out, but I couldn't fool myself into thinking that everything was OK when his instinctive response to getting unfairly attacked was to blame me for defending us. Maybe I was becoming more trouble than I was worth.

  But my most direct hit of the day came later that afternoon, when the president met with a contingent from the Democratic Leadership Council. I wasn't part of their camp, and now some of them saw an opportunity to correct what they considered a “liberal tilt” in the White House. The ringleader was their outgoing president, Congressman Dave McCurdy, who blamed Clinton for his failure to win a Senate bid in Oklahoma. At the DLC convention, McCurdy called the president a “heavy burden” and said that “while Bill Clinton has the mind of a New Democrat, he retains the heart of an old Democrat.” In the president's presence, he wasn't quite as bold. Talking to Clinton but looking at me, he took his shot: “Mr. President, with all due respect to George, you need to have serious personnel changes. The only way the American people are going to believe you've changed is if you show the change.”