Bill Clinton’s role in South Carolina was not a factor in Lewis’s decision. “The president,” he told us later, “was so committed to seeing that his wife had a victory. In his heart, in his gut, he wanted her to win, because I think he felt it was her time, that she had sacrificed for him big-time, in a very big way, that he owed her, and also that his own history, his legacy, was at stake. Sometimes I think he was misunderstood, and she was misunderstood. I’m not sure whether the American people, or the media, read that stuff about racism right. That stuff about King was horrible, awful bullshit. I understood from day one what she was saying there about President Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr.: that it took [both of them] to see that the voting rights legislation was passed.”
Lewis’s most anguished moment came when he had to tell Hillary and Bill Clinton he was switching his support to Obama. Both were gracious, Hillary saying she understood, and that “we were friends before this campaign and we’ll be friends after this campaign.” Bill was equally friendly and understanding. Left unsaid was what the loss of someone so admired and politically important in the black community would mean for the outcome of the Clinton campaign.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Clash of Dynasties
“The votes you’re going to have to cast [as senator], whether it’s guns or . . . abortion or . . . any one of the hot-button items, finishes you as a national political leader in this country. You just can’t do it. It’s not possible.”
—Senator Ted Kennedy’s 2006 advice to Obama
In the fall of 2006, Ted Kennedy was looking for a candidate, a special kind of candidate who might inspire the country. The Massachusetts senator, leader of the liberals and the Democratic Party’s most famous figure, saw potential in many candidates who were then looking to run: in Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, his friends; in Hillary Clinton, a solid legislator in her first term; and in the young and relatively untested Barack Obama. When Obama came to the Senate, Kennedy recruited him to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He admired the young senator’s commitment to finding a compromise on immigration. He saw genuine leadership qualities in Obama, so when Obama talked to him privately about running for president, Kennedy was encouraging.
Kennedy believed the longer Obama stayed in the Senate, the less chance he would ever have to become president. According to a source familiar with their conversation, he told Obama, “The votes you’re going to have to cast, whether it’s guns or whether it’s abortion or whether it’s any one of the hot-button items, finishes you as a national political leader in this country. You just can’t do it. It’s not possible.” Kennedy admired Clinton but felt she was wrong for the times. A successful candidacy in 2008 had to be an outside-Washington effort. You couldn’t be a Washington insider to run, and Clinton appeared to be positioning herself in just the wrong way. Kennedy believed the time was right for Obama and that Clinton was, as an associate put it, “the past.”
Kennedy was in no rush to make an early endorsement. He continued watching the race and the public’s reaction to the candidates. In the summer of 2007, he was with Caroline Kennedy and her children on a boat in Tarpaulin Cove off Cape Cod. Earlier Caroline had taken her children to hear both Obama and Clinton at fund-raisers. As the children talked about the candidates, Kennedy was moved by their enthusiasm for Obama. He had not seen that kind of excitement in young people in a generation and was struck by how Obama’s appeal to them was less about his policies and more about how he represented a dramatic break from the divisive politics of the present. Still, for much of 2007, as the race developed he held back from an endorsement.
In September, he ran into Clinton on the Senate floor and thought she looked very tired. She told him that if she got this nomination she wanted to start working with him right away on health care. When Obama came to see him about the same time, Kennedy remarked on the enthusiasm Obama’s candidacy was generating among young people. My problem, Obama told him, is gravitas. Hillary’s got it. Kennedy suggested Obama talk with Ted Sorensen, who had been President Kennedy’s speechwriter. I talk to Ted all the time, Obama said. Obama asked what Kennedy’s plans were for an endorsement. Kennedy said he had no plans to endorse. But he was still impressed with Obama’s energy and charisma; if Obama became president, Kennedy thought, he could change the country. At the same time, he wondered whether Obama could build a campaign that could win the nomination and the presidency. Also in September, John and Elizabeth Edwards, in town for a fund-raiser, came to see Kennedy at his home in Northwest Washington. Edwards made a direct appeal. He knew Kennedy had friends in the race, he said, but urged him to do right for the country and the party. “I know you’ll do that and when you do what’s right for the party you will be with me,” Edwards said, according to a Kennedy source. “It can make all the difference. We can win this. I’ll win Iowa.”
In the late fall, the phone calls intensified. Hillary Clinton was frank about her wanting his endorsement, though she understood how difficult it would be for him because of his close friendship with Dodd. Bill Clinton, with whom Kennedy had a stronger relationship than with Hillary, called regularly. At one point, Obama, obviously worried that Kennedy might endorse Dodd, said warily, “You could do me some damage in Iowa.” Kennedy laughed it off. “Oh, I haven’t been in Iowa for a long time,” he said. To which Obama responded, “You still have some friends out there.”
In late December, a 2003 tape recording of Obama made while he was still in the Illinois Senate became public. It was a comment on Kennedy’s efforts to pass a prescription drug bill. Obama had described Kennedy as “getting old and getting tired” and said the backers of a strong prescription drug bill should get after him. Obama called Kennedy to make amends. “Well,” Kennedy said when he picked up the phone, “you start the conversation.” Obama began to grovel, but Kennedy stopped him. He would let Obama off the hook, he said gently, because he had once mangled Obama’s name in a speech at the National Press Club the month Obama was sworn in as a senator, calling him “Osama bin Laden” before finally stammering out his right name.
The Kennedys and the Clintons were the royalty of the Democratic Party, their reigns stretching over half a century of national and party politics. Ted Kennedy never reached the White House, crushed by Jimmy Carter when he sought the Democratic nomination in 1976, but he was now an iconic figure, a supreme legislator and a giant in the Senate, the keeper of the Kennedy family flame, the leader of the party’s liberal wing, the patriarch of a family that had seen glory, tragedy, and heartache. Now, at the age of seventy-six, Edward Moore Kennedy moved slowly, stooped as he walked, had the girth of an older man that contrasted with the slim young figure who had entered the Senate more than four decades ago, but his eyes were clear, his voice resonant, his broad Boston accent instantly identifiable, his political passions still burning.
Bill Clinton was as imposing a political figure, as popular within the party, and possessed of equally great political gifts and achievements that had made him the first Democrat since FDR to win back-to-back presidential terms. As a young politician, he had consciously tied his own political story to that of John F. Kennedy, linked by a memorable photograph taken in 1963 of the sixteen-year-old Clinton shaking hands with the young, handsome president in the White House Rose Garden. Later, he courted the Kennedy family. He and Hillary and their daughter, Chelsea, vacationed with them and were seen sailing with Jackie Kennedy and her children, and with Ted Kennedy and his family.
The lives of both men were the stuff of high drama and achievement, low melodrama and tawdry scandal. Both had overcome intensely publicized scandals that would have destroyed lesser politicians: Kennedy with the dead young aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, whose body was found inside an overturned car driven by Kennedy that had plunged from the Dike Bridge off Martha’s Vineyard into Poucha Pond of Chappaquiddick Island, resulting in Kennedy’s arrest after he left the scene and failed to report the accident for more than twenty-four hours. Clinton’s a
ffair with the young White House intern Monica Lewinsky led to only the second presidential impeachment in American history and perhaps the longest-running melodrama in the current age of 24/7 cable TV scandal. Over the years, Clinton and Kennedy had developed a relationship of mutual respect.
Throughout the month of January 2008, as Obama and Hillary Clinton battled through the early states, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton were engaged in a behind-the-scenes struggle over Kennedy’s endorsement that reached a crescendo just as Obama was winning South Carolina.
On the night of the Iowa caucuses, Kennedy had watched the television coverage from home. He was impressed with Obama’s victory, how his appeal seemed to cut across all lines and all groups. With his wife, Vicki, he listened to Obama’s victory speech. He thought it remarkable and inspirational, an uplifting message that defied the politics of divide-and-conquer. What hit him most, he told friends, was his feeling that Obama’s message was “what the country both needs and that’s what the country wants and he’s saying it correctly.” He began to see something of Jack and Bobby in the young senator from Illinois. But he was still not ready to get off the fence.
The day after Iowa, Bill Clinton called Kennedy. The former president believed he had been good to the Kennedys when he was in office, recalling to aides what he had done over the years. He had named Kennedy’s sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, as ambassador to Ireland, and stood with her despite a State Department reprimand. He hosted an event for the Special Olympics, which Kennedy’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver had helped to create. When Kennedy faced a tough reelection campaign against Mitt Romney in 1994, Clinton tried to steer federal funds into the state. When John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crashed on a flight to Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1999, Clinton kept the Coast Guard out searching for the wreckage.
On the phone, the two men talked generally about three Kennedy cousins—Bobby and Ethel Kennedy’s children Kathleen, Robert, and Kerry—who were campaigning for Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire. Kennedy told Clinton that he had talked to Hillary the day before, the day of the caucuses, and that they had had a good conversation. He believed she would do well in New Hampshire because of her strong support in the greater Massachusetts area. Clinton then pressed Kennedy for an endorsement. He had not wanted to bother Kennedy as long as Chris Dodd and Joe Biden were in the race. But now, with their poor showings in Iowa, they were out; Clinton said he and Hillary very much wanted Kennedy’s support. Kennedy was cool and noncommittal. He hoped to stay in touch, he told Clinton, but he would be very busy in the Senate in the coming weeks. In the course of the conversation, Clinton said something that deeply disturbed Kennedy. He never shared it publicly, but a veiled reference to it showed up days later in a column by Albert R. Hunt of Bloomberg News. Hunt said Clinton had “trashed” Obama.
Post-Iowa, Kennedy was still uncertain whether he should endorse anyone. He decided to watch the race develop as the candidates moved into New Hampshire and beyond, but he already was being drawn ever closer to Obama and more resistant to the Clintons.
Over the next ten days came the events that brought the race issue into the forefront of the Democratic campaign. Kennedy watched closely, and became increasingly disturbed at the tone and direction of the campaign. There was Hillary Clinton’s comment about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson. There was the retired teacher who introduced Hillary in New Hampshire the day before the primary, saying, “If you look back, some people have been comparing one of the candidates to JFK, and he was a wonderful leader, he gave us a lot of hope, but he was assassinated and Lyndon Baines Johnson actually did all his work and got the Republicans to pass those measures.” There was an unnamed Clinton adviser who was quoted by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian saying, “If you have a social need, you’re with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you’re young and you have no social needs, then he’s cool.” There was New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, another Clinton supporter, using the phrase “shuck and jive” in a way that seemed pointed at Obama, though Cuomo insisted afterwards it was not. There was Robert Johnson, with Hillary Clinton at his side, alluding to Obama’s youthful drug use and Clinton’s delay in distancing herself from it.
Kennedy was deeply offended by the cascading events. He believed the campaign was sliding into divisiveness, and held the Clintons principally responsible. He also believed that by invoking Martin Luther King in a comparison to Obama, Hillary was attempting to draw attention to the fact that Obama was black. He worried that the Clintons were trying to turn Obama into the black candidate—the Jesse Jackson of 2008.
On January 14, the day after Robert Johnson’s appearance with Hillary, Bill Clinton called Kennedy. Kennedy decided not to call him back immediately, preferring to think about everything that had happened over the previous ten days before talking to him. But Kennedy did talk to Obama, discussing generally what was happening. For Kennedy, the injection of race into the campaign was hurting both candidates and was alienating to the party’s African-American base. Obama said he was not personally bothered by what the Clintons had said, but he knew how much others had been. With his characteristic self-confidence, he told Kennedy he expected to win—not just South Carolina but the nomination—and again asked Kennedy for his endorsement. That’s what you and your family are always about, Obama said, change and progress. Later, Kennedy, struck by Obama’s confidence, told people close to him of his admiration for the way Obama was running his campaign. The Clintons, he said, were misrepresenting things for racial reasons. Kennedy understood that Obama did not want to dignify it by responding. He found it all very offensive.
That afternoon, Kennedy called Bill Clinton back, believing Clinton would try to explain away what had been said during the previous ten days. Clinton began by noting that their private conversation on January 4 had made its way into one of Al Hunt’s columns. Kennedy brushed that aside and urged Clinton to get beyond the racial debate. “We have to move beyond it,” he said. Clinton was furious, launching an attack on the Obama campaign for all they had done to attack his wife. He cited David Axelrod, saying Obama’s strategist had suggested earlier that Hillary bore some of the responsibility for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan. Kennedy accused Clinton of misrepresenting Axelrod’s remarks. Clinton parried, arguing that his version was accurate. “Look,” Kennedy said, “I’ve got the comment right here. You’re distorting it.”
Clinton then went after Obama for distorting Hillary’s vote for the Iraq war resolution. That vote wasn’t a vote for war, Clinton said. A Clinton associate said he cited the support for the resolution by Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican and sharp critic of the administration’s policies. He urged Kennedy to examine some of Obama’s comments in the summer of 2004, saying Obama had suggested then that there was little difference between his and Bush’s positions on the war. The country needs a president who doesn’t change his mind about whether he is for or against the war, Clinton went on—thereby implying Obama had done exactly that. Kennedy, who had led the opposition to the war, was furious. “It was a vote for war,” he said firmly. “I was there. I said it at the time. That resolution was a vote for war. Everybody understood it.” Clinton continued his litany of the attacks the Obama campaign had launched against Hillary until Kennedy tried to cut him off. I don’t know where I’m going to go, he told the former president, but I don’t want to see this get into a pissing match on race.
Ted Kennedy believes that race in America is, as he sometimes puts it, “a-burning,” by which he means that it bubbles just below the surface of the American psyche and it takes little to bring it out. Now he told Clinton, “You know it and I know it. It’s a-burning. Let’s get back and talk about health care. Let’s get the hell off this thing.”
Clinton would not let go of it. An associate of the former president said Clinton pressed Kennedy for examples and cited Hillary’s support from African-American leaders, men and wo
men, noting that many had been threatened with or had gotten primary opponents for their support of Hillary—from John Lewis on down. Clinton told Kennedy that others in the black community would vouch for him and Hillary. They were not racists. It was Obama who was exploiting the race issue, he insisted. The minute we attack Obama, he complained, everybody mentions racism. But Obama had attacked Hillary with seeming impunity from the press and public as the “senator from Punjab” over the money she had received from the Indian community in the United States.
As their conversation neared its tense conclusion, Clinton asked, How can we end this, what can we do? Kennedy said the Clintons should put out a statement saying it was time to get off the racial debate. Clinton said they intended to do that later in the day. But before they hung up, Clinton offered one more defiant comment. “We may get licked but we’re not quitting,” he said. “Clintons don’t quit.”
The Clintons were exasperated by what was happening, wounded by charges that they had raised the race issue after all they believed they had done on civil rights and for the African-American community and frustrated by their inability to attack Obama without being accused of racism. They believed that Obama, without openly running on a racial appeal, evoked emotions within the black community that worked to his benefit. They knew only one way to fight a campaign, which was as vigorously and directly as they could, but their playbook was badly out of date. As one prominent African-American Hillary supporter told us at the time, liberals don’t know how to run against a black man like Obama.
The Battle for America 2008 Page 21
