Obama knew he had lost the day. Now he understood better what Plouffe had told him in December about the pressures of a presidential campaign. “Her presentation was sharp and she knew how to arouse the crowd. . . . He was impressed by it,” Axelrod said. “Basically he had leaped into the deep end of a very cold pool and I think it was a shock to the system. It took him a while to figure out how to swim. . . . As bright and as gifted as he is, this was all new to him. He went through a period that was very difficult. He was tired. But he felt challenged as well. Little by little he began to learn the rhythm and the pace and the requirements.”
When we talked to him about that Las Vegas forum more than a year later, Obama vividly recalled it. “We had made a strategic decision that we weren’t going to put our health care plan out yet,” he said. “I thought to myself, this is conversational. I’m going to have a conversation with Karen [Tumulty] about how I see health care. And Hillary came in and made a full-blown stump speech presentation. She was standing up, she was playing to the crowd.”
A few days after the SEIU forum, Obama spoke before a convention of the Building and Construction Trades in Washington. He opened with a dismissal of the group’s significance. “I’ve got to vote at noon so I’m going to have to cut this short,” he said. He was as good as his word, speaking briefly and then departing. On his way back to the Capitol, Obama confided to a colleague that he had not done well before the union audience. He was, he admitted, exhausted after only two and a half months as a candidate. He asked Gibbs to follow him over to the Capitol for the vote. Gibbs was struck by Obama’s demeanor. He looked miserable. “You could tell he was wiped out from the whole thing,” Gibbs said.
One issue posed a grave threat to Clinton’s candidacy. She was badly out of step on Iraq in a party whose antiwar wing had grown increasingly stronger and more vociferous.
Not since Vietnam had Americans been so traumatized by a war. Though unpopular and powerful as a political issue, Iraq did not have the same corrosive effect on American society as Vietnam. That earlier war had personally affected every young American of military age subject to a draft; Iraq was a war fought by an all-volunteer force. Although the public attitude toward the professional military had improved since the Vietnam era, there was a growing distance between those who wore the uniform and those who did not. You could be passionately against the war but totally unaffected by it directly. At the same time, the heated exchanges on the campaign trail made it difficult to reach measured positions on how to extricate the United States from the disaster. And the campaign debates rarely addressed a greater issue: how to maintain American forces abroad and repair the damage done to a military that, as in Vietnam, was stretched to the breaking point.
For these reasons we traveled to West Point to get a military perspective about the impact of Iraq, now and in the future. There, on a bitterly cold and blustery day, with snow swirling over the bluffs of the Hudson and against the background cadences of chanting cadets jogging along the streets, we talked with a remarkable young officer, Ray Kimball. After graduating from West Point in 1995 and twelve years of active service holding command and staff positions, Major Kimball teaches history to what he describes as “the next generation of leaders” at West Point. After his combat duty in Iraq, he earned master’s degrees in history and Russian, East European, and Eurasian area studies from Stanford University “It’s a time of enormous change and stress on our military—without question, the greatest stress since Vietnam,” Major Kimball told us. “We’re seeing the flight of talented people. We’re seeing the loss of our human capital—our captains and majors and sergeants—who are the building blocks of the Army of 2010, 2015, 2020, and 2025. One of our biggest concerns involves our enlisted soldiers. We have significantly lowered our standards. There’s been a rise in requiring people to get moral waivers for heavy crimes before they can enter the service. It concerns me that part of the way we’re bringing in folks is by putting a dump-truck load of money in front of them. I worry what that does to our professional military standards.”
Major Kimball was closely following the presidential election. “I would like this election to be a referendum on what we want from our armed forces—and, in a larger sense, our government,” he said, “because if we’re going to be asked to do jobs like Afghanistan and Iraq, the status quo can’t continue. . . . These are tough, complicated things we’re asking the military to do. So if you want to sign up the nation to do these things, then you better be ready to pay the costs in manning and training and equipping people. You need to be willing to pay later in benefits, in health care, in education. If you’re not willing to bear those costs, something has to give way.”
At this point, the historian in Major Kimball emerged. “There’s a larger question, a greater issue, in all this,” he said. “We are disconnecting the military from the society it serves. You know, we’ve had the term ‘citizen soldier’ for 225 years and it’s a concept I believe in. I heard this month that the Army’s magazine for the reserves and National Guard was describing them as ‘warrior citizens.’ The fact that we’re putting citizens second is wrong. George Washington said it: ‘We took up the role of soldiers, we did not lay down the role of citizens.’ Citizen comes first. Period. End of story. And it worries me that Americans in the main are not as familiar with the military role and experience as they have been in the past.”
As the campaign began, Obama had the purest position on Iraq, having opposed the war before the invasion. He could draw a sharp distinction with Clinton over Iraq. Politically, the war provided his candidacy energy and ready-made support among the Democratic activists who were key to the nomination.8
Clinton was isolated on the issue and increasingly uncomfortable. On her first trip to Iowa, she was hit with a hostile question about the war, prompting a long and defensive answer. She was being told bluntly by allies in the early states that her position was unsustainable. That she was so slow to recognize her problem was surprising for an otherwise astute politician. “The first stage was acceptance of the problem,” said one Clinton adviser. “And then the second stage was coming up with a solution.”
Clinton had been shifting her position for months, but the political winds were shifting even faster. Clinton’s goal was to strike an uneasy balance—critical enough of Bush’s policies to persuade her critics on the left, while preserving her hard-earned reputation as a Democrat with a muscular foreign policy to carry into the general election.
Her starting point was always the vote in 2002. Her vote was not an endorsement of the president’s policy of preemption, she said, but she supported the war resolution without reservation. “This is a very difficult vote,” she said. “This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make—any vote that may lead to war should be hard—but I cast it with conviction.”
Once the invasion was over and Saddam toppled, Clinton supported the overall mission, but increased her criticism of the administration’s handling of the postwar conflict. She spent Thanksgiving 2003 in Iraq and in February 2005 returned there, traveling with John McCain. From Baghdad, the two appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press. She said vigorous debate about administration policy was needed, but added, “It is not in America’s interests for the Iraqi government, the experiment in freedom and democracy, to fail.”
From Washington, moderator Tim Russert asked whether that meant she disagreed with those calling for a timetable for withdrawal. She said it would be wrong to send a signal to the insurgents that the United States would be out at a date certain. “We want to send a message of solidarity,” she added.
By the autumn of 2005, the president’s approval rating had dropped dramatically. Bush was in a frantic bid to shore up support for his presidency and his war policy; Clinton was looking to put more distance between herself and the unpopular president and the unpopular war. On the eve of a presidential address on Iraq, she took the unusual step of sending an e-mail to her constituents, outlining her views
on the war. Those sixteen hundred words were by far her most detailed—and critical—statement on the war.
If her careful wording hinted at a repudiation of her vote, her aides vigorously denied that interpretation. Still, by neither admitting her own mistake nor embracing a timetable for withdrawal, she remained out of step with a growing segment of her own party.
There matters stood through much of 2006, as one after another Democratic lawmaker advocated timetables for getting out of Iraq. Pressure continued to increase for Clinton to do the same. In an interview in May 2006, once again she held back. A few weeks later she was booed before an audience of progressive Democrats when she said, “I [do not] think it is a smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.”
On NBC’s Today show just before Christmas 2006, she took another step away from the vote. “Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote,” she said. She had been saying that for more than a year. But this time, she added, “And I certainly wouldn’t have voted that way [italics added].” That comment passed almost unnoticed.
In January, she announced her opposition to Bush’s new plan for a “surge” to send additional troops into battle in Iraq, but continued to resist signing on to a timetable. “I’m not going to support a specific deadline,” she said.
Even though she had dramatically escalated her rhetoric, Clinton could not satisfy her antiwar critics. The press turned the issue into a dominant theme of her candidacy, ignoring her pre-Christmas Today show statement. Grassroots activists continued to express their unhappiness with her. By now, she had stood behind her vote for too long to “cut and run.” But she kept looking for ways to express her dissatisfaction with the president. In early February, at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting, she found one. She said then, “If I had been president in October of 2002, I would not have started this war. . . . If we in Congress don’t end this war before January 2009, as president, I will.”
Still, it was not enough.
Her advisers now concluded there should be as little daylight as possible between her and Obama, or between her and the majority of Senate Democrats. Wherever the Democratic caucus moved, she would try to move with them. Next, she should forcefully point out that, as a senator, Obama’s votes on the war were virtually identical to hers, thus challenging Obama’s antiwar convictions. Finally, she must lay out her opposition to the war and her policy for ending it as clearly as she could—and in the place where she needed it most, Iowa.
The bad blood between the Clinton and Obama camps broke into the open during a Harvard University Institute of Politics conference on March 19, 2007. Through most of the day, their conversation was civil—and tepid. But that night the antagonisms, bile, and bitterness between the rival campaigns burst into public view. It began when a Kennedy School of Government student asked about Clinton’s Iraq war resolution vote. “The question I have for you,” the student said, “is how do you convince those of us who might otherwise be inclined to support her that she has the judgment not to get us involved in another quagmire?” That question triggered a slashing exchange between David Axelrod and Mark Penn. The two chief strategists viewed politics through different lenses. Penn relied on data, cold and impersonal as it was, to frame his attitudes about candidates and voters. He divided the electorate into subgroups and looked for policies that would appeal to them. Axelrod believed candidates and voters responded less to issues and specific policies than to broader narratives and personal character. He found Penn’s approach soulless. Penn had wanted the Clinton campaign to challenge Obama on the war. Bill Clinton agreed and was doing so in private gatherings with Democrats. Now Penn decided to take the fight public by launching an attack on Obama: that Obama had waffled when asked how he might have voted on the resolution had he actually been in the Senate; that during his first year in the Senate, he had been virtually silent on the war. “Senator Obama voted for the $301 billion of funding,” Penn said. “So did Senator Clinton. Senator Obama voted against a definite withdrawal date. So did Senator Clinton.”
Axelrod, a few feet away from Penn on the stage, was seething. He tried to interrupt. Penn kept talking. When Axelrod finally got the microphone, he accused Penn of distorting the record. The country wouldn’t be in the mess it was, he said, had Bush followed Obama’s recommendations on Iraq.
This was more than a difference over policy. It was personal. Axelrod disliked Penn, felt him to be arrogant. Penn resented the advantage Obama was getting for his stand against the war. He continued his attack. He asked, is this election going to be about what happened in 2002 or about the future? “Who is going to do the best job in Iraq?”
Axelrod answered sharply. “Are we going to spend ten months savaging each other or are we going to try and lift this country up?” he said. “And we choose to lift this country up.”
As the audience broke out in applause, Penn tried to cut them off. “Are we going to look at everybody’s records,” he said, “everybody’s votes—tell everyone out there the truth about who supported what, who voted for what, when, or are we going to selectively tell people?”
In May, Clinton took her most dramatic actions to silence her critics. Earlier, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin had proposed a measure calling for a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days of passage and to be completed by March 31, 2008. Both Clinton and Obama indicated they would support a motion to cut off debate on the measure to which it was attached. Although the Senate refused to shut off debate, Clinton had sent the signal she wanted. She was fed up with the president and was prepared, as one adviser put it then, to “throw the kitchen sink at him.”
But the cloture vote was mere symbolism. Two weeks later, the Senate voted on a $120 billion spending bill that included $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. For Clinton, the bill presented her with an excruciating choice. Should she bow to reality, support a bill certain to pass, and risk losing enough support among the Democratic base to threaten her nomination? Or should she stand firm against the president, yield to the howls of protest from the antiwar activists, and face Republican charges in the general election of turning her back on the troops?
Two of her Senate rivals quickly announced how they would vote. Chris Dodd said he would oppose the spending bill. Joe Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, declared he would vote for it. Obama, like Clinton, refused to tip his hand.
Clinton’s campaign advisers were unanimous—surprisingly so. All recommended a no vote. Her Senate office also urged her to go against. Only a few outside advisers cautioned against a no vote. Clinton was torn, convinced that Obama would support the funding measure. What if he votes no? one adviser asked her later in the day. “He’s not going to,” she replied.
Her advisers were not convinced. A “yea” by Clinton and a “nay” by Obama would violate her “no daylight” policy—and would hand Obama another major weapon. But a no vote would seem to violate her nearly five-year effort to preserve her credentials as a future commander in chief.
She and Obama were among the last two senators to cast their votes that night. In a statement, she said, “Tonight I voted against the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill because it fails to compel the president to give our troops a new strategy in Iraq. I believe that the president should begin a phased redeployment of our troops out of Iraq and abandon this escalation.” Obama said, “I opposed this war in 2002 precisely because I feared it would lead us to the open-ended occupation in which we find ourselves today. . . . We should not give the president a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path.”
Just fourteen senators opposed the measure. Although she would never apologize for her war resolution vote in 2002, she had now moved dramatically to a point where she was in a minority within her own Democratic caucus. Other than his original opposition to the war, while he was a state senator in Illinois, Obama would have nothin
g further to use against her, her advisers believed. In Des Moines a few weeks later, she outlined her commitment to ending the war. By midsummer, she and her aides were convinced they had largely neutralized Iraq.
Debates gave Clinton yet another opportunity to separate herself from the field. Like all front-runners, she was wary of debates, particularly early debates, because she knew expectations would be highest for her and she would be the target of all the others. But the cable networks were in fierce competition for ratings and audience share, and the campaign was a major attraction for viewers. Debates could fill the entire prime-time hours—with the added benefit of all-day live coverage from the debate site. So the pressure was extraordinary. Despite efforts by Clinton and Obama to resist, the first debate was scheduled barely three months into the campaign—the first of what would become more than two dozen Democratic debates (Republicans had more than twenty) over a full year.
Though they were billed as “debates,” in reality they were staged appearances where candidates traded carefully crafted, poll-driven sound bites and moderators often sought to trap the candidates with “gotcha” questions. But the candidates had no alternative to participating in them. Despite the criticisms of debates, they did draw viewing audiences, did spark interest in the election.
The Battle for America 2008 Page 9
