All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  I borrowed the driver’s cell phone to call the White House. But Rahm said he didn’t know anything beyond what he’d read in the paper—and he sounded sick. His shaky voice brought me back to the worst moments of my old life. The afternoon in Little Rock when I heard Clinton on the Gennifer tapes. The night in New York when I learned about his draft notice. The morning in Washington when I read that Clinton had called his Arkansas troopers to keep them quiet. Blindsided again—and these were the most serious allegations yet. They were about the present, not the past. He was president; she was an intern. If Clinton had asked here to lie under oath, or lied under oath himself, he had broken the law.

  A moment from a Sunday morning in late 1996 recurred to me. Monica had approached me as I walked from my apartment to the Starbucks next door. I hadn’t seen her in nearly a year, but I vaguely remembered her as a pretty, busty, fifty intern I’d pass in the halls or see hanging out at Starbucks on weekends. A few times at work, she had tried to surprise me with a double-tall latte, but my assistant Laura Capps would stop her at the door. That morning, Monica had a question for me: “Does your president tell the truth?” I thought her phrasing was peculiar, but people stopped me on the street to say strange things all the time. After mumbling some answer like “He does his best.” I bought my coffee and didn’t think about it again.

  Until now, When added to the leaks out of Starr’s office, it seemed like more evidence against Clinton. Although I still found it almost impossible to imagine how a president of the United Status could take such a risk, my gut told me the core of the story was true. As much as I wanted to believe Clinton, I didn’t—and couldn’t pretend that I did. As much as I owed him, I didn’t believe that loyalty demanded lying, and I still liked the president and supported his work, I was lived. How could be be so stupid? So reckless? So selfish?

  I reached the studio just as Good Morning America was going on the air. While the technicians fiddled with my microphone and earpiece, I reminded myself to stay balanced. to control both my anger at Clinton and my instinct to spin for him. Don’t accuse. Don’t defend

  Analyze. When anchor Lisa McRee questioned me, I said that I didn't know much about Monica or her relationship with Clinton, then added my assessment of the situation:

  These are probably the most serious allegations yet leveled against the president. If they're true, they're not only politically damaging, but it could lead to impeachment proceedings. But they're just questions right now, and that's why I think we do all have to take a deep breath before we go too far here.

  I didn't think I had gone too far. Saying that proven charges of perjury, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice by the president of the United States “could” cause Congress to begin the impeachment process seemed to me like an understatement. But to the rest of the political world, it was a leading indicator. Hearing a former close adviser to the president use the “I word,” however qualified, made them think, “Even apologists like George think Clinton's lying this time.” The political newsletter Hotline made it the quote of the day. Worse, the Wall Street Journal editorial page cited me approvingly after years of snide attacks. Although my analysis was accurate, I hadn't realized when I said it that a single word would signal such a fundamental break with my past.

  That first day felt like old times. Another Clinton crisis, another round of anxious calls. James joked about moving to Honduras. Rahm worried about his wife and new baby. Paul wondered most about what had really happened. All of us thought the situation was dire. None of us knew the whole truth. The only difference was that instead of being in the foxhole with my friends, I was calling from behind enemy lines — the headquarters of ABC News. They had a job to do, and so did I. On the phone, I was consoling them, but I was also reporting the story; they were venting their frustration but also spinning me. From the start, I cautioned Rahm not to tell me anything that he didn't want me to report, and our phone conversations had a new code: “Just friends” meant “off the record.” We promised each other that we wouldn't let Clinton's craziness drive us apart but somehow knew that it would. While they were prepping the president, I was analyzing his performance. While they dutifully went before the cameras to defend Clinton, I couldn't bring myself to say I believed him.

  I wondered what I would do if I were back inside. After five years of getting burned in battles, after a year away from the fray, I didn't believe that I could actually be drawn back into the psychology of the barricade. But it wasn't hard to imagine the slide from skepticism to certainty, from conscientious objector to kamikaze warrior: I'd advise the president to come clean, and I'd resign if he didn't. … Alone? Then you'd be the Brutus doing him in. You can't do that. … Right, I'd stay for loyalty's sake, but I wouldn't speak out in his defense. … Impossible. You've been on the front lines for years; public silence now would be condemnation. … OK, I'd defend Clinton but refuse to attack his accusers. … But they're lying about him. They set him up, and Starr's out of control. This is war: If we don't destroy them, they'll destroy us and everything we've worked to achieve. … The truth is I couldn't really know what I would do because I wasn't there — in the Oval, inhaling that high-octane White House air, sitting in my usual chair, resting my forearm on his broad oak desk as the president of the United States looked me in the eye and put his hand on mine and begged me to believe him just one more time.

  Having that meeting with Clinton was the last thing I wanted, but I tried to advise him from afar. On the second night of the scandal, during a prime-time special on the “Crisis in the White House,” Peter Jennings gave me the chance.

  Peter Jennings: “George, my assumption is that President Clinton has a lot better things to do at the moment than be watching ABC television. But if he were watching you at the moment, what would you tell him?”

  George Stephanopoulos: “I would tell him, ‘Mr. President, get your story together, get it out as quickly as you can. You've been through tough things before. You can weather this storm if you go out and get your story together and answer all the questions to the best of your ability.’”

  I wanted to scream: “Tell the truth. Take responsibility.” But “get your story together” was as far as I could go without directly accusing Clinton of lying. Coming clean with the country wouldn't be easy, but it was the right thing to do. The president was getting similar advice from my friends inside; from his friend and chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, from his former chief of staff Leon Panetta, from his former deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. But at his moment of maximum peril, the president chose to follow the pattern of his past. He called Dick Morris. Dick took a poll. The poll said lie. It was out of Clinton's hands.

  The next day, Clinton called in his cabinet and sent them out to defend him. Why is he dragging the secretary of state into this? That Sunday, I sat grimacing in the ABC control room as Paul Begala got pummeled by my fellow This Week panelists with questions he couldn't answer and presidential actions he couldn't explain. How can Clinton do this to them? By Monday, January 26, I watched the president wagging his finger in the Roosevelt Room (“I never had sexual relations with that woman …”) with a kind of fascinated disgust. This was Clinton at his cold-blooded worst. Gone were the guilty tics of his past denials — the downcast eyes, the stutter, the dry throat and pale face that displayed a sense of shame and sorrow and vulnerability. Now, full of self-righteous fury, he was lying with true conviction. All that mattered was his survival. Everyone else had to fall in line: his staff, his cabinet, the country, even his wife.

  I don't think Hillary knew about Monica until Clinton came home from the Jones deposition. That night, they canceled plans to have dinner with Erskine and Crandall Bowles, and Hillary later said, cryptically, that they had spent much of the weekend “cleaning out closets.” But Clinton probably didn't come clean then either. I imagine he told Hillary that he slipped up but didn't stray — that he had befriended a troubled girlfriend of Betty Currie's, but it got a little out of hand b
ecause the girl was insecure, infatuated, and slightly crazy. She came on to him, began to imagine an affair. It got so bad she started to stalk him and repeated her fantasy to friends. Somehow the Jones lawyers heard about her. He stupidly tried to fix the situation himself: talked to her on the phone, met with her when she came to see Betty, asked Vernon to help her get a job and get her out of town. But he never had sex with her and never told her to lie.

  How could Hillary buy that? How could she not? The alternative was too painful to admit — and not only because she cared about their political survival. Every marriage is a mystery, but it seemed to me that their bond had been strengthened by the intensity of their White House experience, that Hillary had fallen in love all over again with the boy from Arkansas who had become the president she dreamed he could be. By the time I left the White House, there was less whispering about screaming bouts on the second floor. Hillary hinted to Time that she and Bill had talked about adopting a second child, an unexpected revelation I would have dismissed if I hadn't also heard West Wing gossip about their trying to have a baby of their own. The last time I'd seen them together was in October 1997 at Hillary's fiftieth birthday party. The Ritz-Carlton ballroom was filled with their friends of a lifetime and Washington's power elite. Chelsea had flown home from her first term at Stanford to surprise her mom. As Hillary swirled around the dance floor in her husband's arms, surrounded by family and friends, she seemed as happy as I'd ever seen her.

  Hillary had to believe him. It was harder this time, but she had to. She had to believe that as he'd grown in office he'd outgrown his past. She had to believe that he wouldn't risk their life's work for a fling with an intern only a few years older than their daughter. She had to believe that he loved her enough not to humiliate her. She had to do what she had always done before: swallow her doubts, stand by her man, and savage his enemies. On the Today show the morning of the State of the Union, Hillary sounded the trumpets for one more battle against the “right-wing conspiracy.”

  But I wasn't there to answer the call. I refused to vouch for Clinton's credibility, and I couldn't buy the party line that this was more about Clinton's accusers than his own actions — which meant I was the enemy now. That's the way it was with the Clintons: You were either for them or against them. I knew what being under siege was like, so I couldn't entirely blame them for feeling that way. But the first signs of my ostracism were disconcerting and painful. In early February, on the eve of a White House party to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Clinton's economic speech, I received a flurry of phone calls from Paul and Rahm to make sure I didn't accept the invitation mistakenly sent by the social office. They didn't want to risk a scene. I heard that as far as Clinton was concerned, I was now a nonperson — my name was not to be mentioned in his presence. As the White House settled into a strategy of stonewalling and denial, the rift widened. My commentary became more pointed, my tone more raw. The White House responded in kind, and my friendships became strained. A series of articles in which I was featured as a poster boy for betrayal appeared in several prominent publications.

  Democrats called me an ingrate, arguing that I had a duty to swallow my doubts and defend the man who had “created” me. Journalists labeled me a hypocrite, arguing that I must have known about Clinton's affair with Monica, and that my past defenses of Clinton against similar charges made my present skepticism suspect. My former colleagues took a more subtle tack. Off the record, they suggested I was simply trying to please my new paymasters by being provocative; on the record, they explained away my dire predictions of where the scandal might lead as a symptom of my pessimistic and anxious “dark side.”

  There was just enough truth in each of the charges to get to me: I didn't think that Clinton had “created” me or that loyalty should require me to defend behavior I found abhorrent, but Clinton had given me the opportunity of a lifetime, and I did owe him some benefit of the doubt. I didn't think I was a hypocrite, because my defense of Clinton against past bimbo eruptions had been predicated on my belief that he wouldn't create new ones, but maybe I was complicit because when I worked for Clinton I had been willing to suspend my disbelief about some of his more suspect denials. Although I had never seen Clinton in a compromising position with Monica or any other woman, I may not have looked hard enough then because I didn't want to know the truth. I was sure the Monica story was true, and that Clinton was jeopardizing his presidency by covering it up, but what if I was wrong? What if I was just being “dark”? Maybe, just maybe, those floating trial balloons about Clinton's being guilty of nothing more than taking pity on a sweet-natured stalker were true.

  Now I knew what it felt like to be on the other side of the White House spin machine. But my bouts of doubt were balanced by all the leaking details: Monica's thirty-seven White House visits, the late-night phone calls and gifts, the blue dress. So I steeled myself to the public criticism and became accustomed to reading hate mail from liberal Democrats instead of conservative Republicans. What bothered me far more was what I heard from my friends. Carville and I still talked several times a day, but after one This Week performance in which I looked and sounded more like a prosecutor than an analyst, he screamed at me: “Boy, you were tough this morning. It feels like you're pulling for the other side.” Paul said I was acting like a father umpiring Little League who makes all the close calls against his own kid's team.

  The truth hurts. There were times when I did start to pull for the other side. Although I wasn't proud of the feeling and tried to control it, I wanted to be right and wanted Clinton to pay a price. The longer he lied, the more it seemed as if he might get away with it, the more furious I became. I was angry at Clinton for selfishly risking his presidency on a foolish dalliance and arrogantly trying to fix it himself, for lying about it and sending others out to lie for him, for paralyzing his policy agenda and making his accusers look like prophets instead of fools. The “new covenant” heart of Clintonism now seemed hollow. Apparently the rule of personal responsibility applied to every American except the president himself.

  My heart was getting hard, partly from self-righteousness, partly as a shield against sadness and shame. I realized that the intensity of my anger was both irrational and uncharitable, but I couldn't help it: I took Clinton's actions personally. For several years, I had served as his character witness. Now I felt like a dupe. I had done everything I could to make Bill Clinton president, and everything in my power to keep him there. Although I wasn't proud of all I'd done, I was proud of our accomplishments. But the scandal now cast a shadow over the whole endeavor, making it seem more like an experience to be explained than an adventure to be celebrated. Decisions I had defended in the past seemed more dishonorable now. The ultimate rationale for getting my hands dirty and doing what it took to win — from attacking Gennifer Flowers to working with Dick Morris to accepting welfare reform — was not just the thrill of the fight or my need to be on top, but also my belief that progressive ideals would be better protected as long as Clinton was president. If that was true, then Clinton didn't have a right to put his presidency at risk. He didn't have a right to betray those of us who had put our trust in him. He didn't have a right to compromise my compromises, to make me question whether helping him get elected was the best thing I ever did — or the worst.

  All of these emotions boiled over on August 17, when Clinton addressed the nation after his grand jury appearance. For many who had chosen to believe him, this was the worst moment — now they had to start coping with feelings of anger, disillusionment, and betrayal. For Clinton, it was another missed opportunity. If he had acted against type; if he had apologized, acknowledged his wrongdoing, and accepted responsibility more forthrightly; if he had resisted the temptation to vent his rage against Starr in that forum on that night, the impeachment process would not have developed momentum. For me, it was a relief. Clinton's admission, however grudging and cramped, ended the futile debates about what he did and whether he deserved to be believed.
It helped me put-his failings back in perspective.

  As angry as I was, I didn't believe that Clinton should be removed from office. In all of American history, through countless scandals petty and grand, only one president had resigned, only one president had been impeached. Despite being saturated with all the tawdry details, the country still wanted Clinton to stay. Resignation might have been an act of personal honor, I thought, but the obsessively abusive conduct of Clinton's prosecutors and their partisan accomplices was an argument for resistance. It shouldn't be easy to force a president from office. Starr's investigation demonstrated that Clinton lied under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but it did not prove that he obstructed justice. Although he humiliated himself, dishonored his presidency, and deserved to be punished, Clinton did not abuse presidential power in a way that justified impeachment. His crimes were more about the man than the office.

  On September 21, my heart caught up with my head. The videotape of Clinton's grand jury testimony was about to be played to the whole country, and I was wired up in a small room at ABC, watching the monitor next to the television camera that would broadcast my commentary on Clinton's testimony.