Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine

by Daniel Halper

  As the nomination slipped further from Hillary’s grasp, the Clinton team faced the prospect that she might never be president. A return to the Senate would be a poor consolation prize. The job that she had plotted for, the one a deeply conflicted Bill Clinton (at least in his more magnanimous moments) thought he owed her, seemed to have been taken from them. Perhaps forever. As a result Bill seethed at Obama indiscriminately—to George W. Bush, to reporters, to campaign biographers, to friends, to aides, to strangers on the street. The Clintons were so resentful that Hillary held on to her primary delegates, and her clearly losing campaign, far longer than decorum or reality dictated. Even after Obama received the sufficient delegates to be the nominee, Hillary’s campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, refused to allow the possibility that his candidate, and financial patron, would drop out of the race.

  Once Barack Obama officially received the number of delegates he needed to be nominated on the first ballot at the Democratic convention in Denver, things in ClintonWorld got really weird. At a rally in New York, the losing candidate was introduced by McAuliffe as “the next president of the United States.”26 She walked out with a lip-biting Bill and to the sound of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”27 Bill stood at center stage until Chelsea discreetly pulled him aside. Before a crowd in the hundreds, Hillary claimed—falsely, as the Obama campaign pointed out—that she had won a majority of the popular vote in the various Democratic primaries and continued to make the case for a candidacy that was to everyone outside of that room already dead.

  Feelings against Obama ran deep, exacerbated by the belief that he’d waged a nasty primary campaign against Hillary and gotten away with it. This was, in fact, true. Obama had portrayed himself as above negative campaigning while successfully affixing that label to Clinton. In reality, he and his team waged a brutal below-the-radar opposition campaign against the onetime front-runner, one that was shielded by cooperative reporters. Obama operatives routinely brought statistics, news stories, and allegations to the attention of campaign reporters, under the strict proviso that none of the dirt be tied to their campaign. This worked for months, until one of their attacks—a memo criticizing Hillary’s campaign contributions from the Indian American community and labeling her the senator from Punjab—found its way to a Clinton staffer. Caught red-handed, a furious Barack Obama threw his own staff under the bus, claiming that his team, unbeknownst to him, had made a “dumb mistake.”28

  According to associates, Bill Clinton was convinced the Obama campaign was also fanning the flames on the racial front. His new friend, the current president George W. Bush, was among those privately calling him and offering sympathy over the “unfair” racial attacks. Few recalled that Arkansas was the only state that did not have a civil rights statute when Bill left the governor’s mansion. Or how the young governor cavorted with segregationists to win elections. Or how his campaigns used racially coded language.29 None of that was relevant in 2008. Bill Clinton decided his feelings had been hurt by anyone daring to question his civil rights bona fides. And at the peak of a self-pitying frenzy, he wouldn’t be easily sated. “I think that wound . . . the guy who was once called the first black president and had a very strong relationship with the black community, probably ran very deep,” said a Democratic strategist.

  The Clintons let it be known to reporters that Doug Band was tasked with keeping yet another enemies’ list, this time of those who betrayed the Clintons in the 2008 campaign. The existence of the list made headlines in 2014 in a book called HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton. It claimed that enemies were scored on a scale of one to seven according to the severity of their treachery. In fact, the existence of that list was not news. It was reported by the New York Times in 2008. The paper noted that the list included Bill Richardson, South Carolina representative James Clyburn, Obama advisor David Axelrod, Missouri senator Claire McCaskill, “several Kennedys,” and many no-name congressmen.

  Terry McAuliffe implicitly confirmed the existence of this list to the New York Times. “The Clintons get hundreds of requests for favors every week,” he said. “Clearly, the people you’re going to do stuff for in the future are the people who have been there for you.”

  There were, according to the reports, media “enemies,” too. That list included Matt Drudge, who broke the Lewinsky story, as well as many other torments in the years that followed; Todd Purdum, author of the offending profile in Vanity Fair; and Obama “cheerleaders” like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

  The dutiful aide Band would keep the list handy on his BlackBerry, ready to pull it up at a moment’s notice in case a congressman or some other favor-seeker called asking for help. And in the coming years it would come in very handy.

  When Hillary finally did surrender to the inevitable, at a press event in Washington, D.C., at the National Building Museum on June 7, 2008, Bill was on board in person but not in spirit. He still wanted Hillary to hang in there until the bitter end. When the Obama campaign proved less than effusive in their efforts to unite with Team Hillary, the former president’s attitude became somewhat contagious. Their daughter, Chelsea, for example, was filled with contempt for Obama, close associates tell me. “She loathes him,” says one.

  For weeks the Clintons displayed their penchant for sulking and selfishness. On television, Bill refused to say whether he thought Obama was qualified to be president. In private and public settings, Hillary mused aloud about putting her name in nomination against Obama for a public “catharsis” at the convention.30 A group called PUMA—People United Means Action—arose in support of Hillary remaining in the race against Obama, which threatened to cause endless trouble for Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.31 There was an effort to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, which had been disqualified for violating Democratic National Committee rules and whose votes would all have gone to Hillary.32 Liberals accused the Clintons of trying to steal the convention and using Nixon-style dirty tricks. Indeed, many of these efforts were spearheaded by Howard Wolfson. Even when defeat appeared certain, Wolfson continued his attacks on Obama, perhaps even increasing them. He even hinted that delegates who were pledged to support Obama could and should break their pledges and jump ship at the convention. There was some truth in Chris Matthews’s criticism of Wolfson in the final month of the Clinton campaign that ended in early June: “You’re like one of these Japanese soldiers that’s still fighting in 1953.”33

  “Some of us can’t get over the personal demonization of her by the Obama campaign and the sanctimony,” says a high-level Clinton advisor in 2013 (note the present tense). “Every time I see David Axelrod on television, I can’t get over that he did the ads that distorted and personally attacked her.”

  Many demanded the vice presidency for Hillary, which was of course a nonstarter, if only in part because of the two people in charge of the selection process: Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder. For his part, Barack Obama took every opportunity, in public and in private, to assure people that Hillary Clinton was on his short list for the vice presidency. Which in the byzantine lingo of national politics of course meant she wasn’t. The very suggestion met almost uniform opposition within the Obama vetting team, including from the two most powerful voices—Michelle Obama and family friend Valerie Jarrett.

  But while an Obama-Clinton ticket was out of the question, Obama did want to do all he could to keep his selection from causing their relationship further angst. It is almost certainly not a coincidence that of all the possible candidates Obama could have chosen, Joe Biden was the one who garnered the most Clintonian enthusiasm.

  The other two finalists, Indiana senator Evan Bayh and Virginia governor Tim Kaine, were potentially disastrous—at least for the Clintons. Young and ambitious, they would be able to build a potentially formidable machine by 2016 to challenge Hillary. Biden was almost laughably the opposite. For one, there were questions of his health—he had suffered two cranial aneurysms, resulting in brain
surgeons, “literally” taking “the top of my head off,” in Biden’s telling of the story. Another consideration was his age—he would be seventy-four years old on Inauguration Day 2017. And of course there was his, well, Bidenness. His inability to stay on message and his unbreakable habit of saying dumb things. Often. Senate colleagues viewed him as at worst a well-meaning buffoon or at best an occasionally brainy eccentric. Biden was the kind of guy who couldn’t help but undermine himself, such as when he told reporters with a straight face that Hillary would be a better choice for vice president than he was. Even Obama second-guessed the Biden choice almost until the moment he made it. I can’t believe I’m nominating Biden, he said to himself.

  The Clintons received the selection of Biden, a longtime friend, with great enthusiasm. Bill offered an effusive endorsement, saying, “I love Joe Biden, and America will, too.” He added, “With Joe Biden’s experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama’s proven understanding, instincts, and insight, America will have the national security leadership we need.”

  After the Biden announcement, in fact, there was a sudden shift in the Clintons’ mood. Though still bitter, depressed, and self-pitying, they now saw a glimmer of hope for a future presidential run. Much of the turmoil of the previous weeks seemed to slip away—there would be no convention floor fight, no real effort to seat Michigan and Florida; Hillary and Bill would both be happy to endorse Obama at the convention and on two separate nights.

  Perhaps finally sensing he was going too far in his public performance as a sore loser, and perhaps missing the spotlight, Bill Clinton was now Obama’s champion. “Barack Obama is ready to lead America and to restore American leadership in the world,” Clinton said to raucous cheers and applause in Denver. “Barack Obama is ready to honor the oath, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States.” Whether Clinton meant a word of it was irrelevant. “These are two people who hate each other,” says one prominent Democrat who insisted he not be named on the record, even though what he was telling me was the worst-kept secret in Washington. “I mean, hate each other.” But in any event, one of the longest roller-coaster rides in American political history had taken another unexpected, death-defying turn. Clinton embarked on a multistate tour, talking himself hoarse, appearing in TV commercials for Obama, and quickly becoming Obama’s best and most persuasive advocate.

  In his cooler-headed moments, Bill drew several lessons from Hillary’s loss, each of which he was determined to correct the next time around. One was that she did not have enough money to compete over the long run. Two, she had violated one of his most well-known political rules: Campaigns were about the future. Hillary had become identified with the past. Third, Hillary had muddled key relationships with various constituencies—such as blacks, gays, and Latinos. He of course left out the fourth factor—his own contributions, or sabotage, depending on how you wanted to look at it. To the contrary, Bill saw his lack of control of the 2008 operation as the heart of the problem. Next time he was going to be the campaign manager, whether Hillary liked it or not. But that was a fight still to come.

  Biden would be a perfect conduit for the Clintons. At some point, it’s not exactly clear when, the former president approached Biden about brokering a deal for Hillary to join Team Obama.

  “If she comes in, I’ll watch out for her in the White House and make sure she’s given the power and the autonomy and everything else,” Biden reportedly told Clinton, according to sources.

  Biden promised that she’d be given free rein and that as secretary of state she would “own foreign policy.”

  By the time Bill Clinton hit the hustings for his enemy, Barack Obama, it was pretty apparent that Hillary’s next candidacy for president was already under way. The Clintons would not be blamed as party poopers or sore losers. In the worst-case scenario, she was a doable eight years away from the White House. Or in the best case, four years if somehow Obama managed to lose the general election.

  That tantalizing thought preoccupied Bill Clinton for the rest of the campaign. So much so that he did something no self-respecting politico would do in a presidential race—he flirted, quite obviously, with the enemy. In this case, that was the Republicans’ nominee, Hillary’s old friend John McCain.

  “During the 2008 campaign I talked to President Clinton on several occasions,” McCain tells me with a slight smile, as if realizing what he is about to let slip. “We talked about the campaign. We talked about various aspects of it.”

  McCain shied away from calling Clinton’s outreach “advice.” “It wasn’t ‘you should do this, you should do that,’ ” McCain says.

  “It was sort of ‘well, here’s where I think things are standing and here’s the issues I think you should emphasize.’ ” The conversations continued well into the fall, even after Clinton endorsed Obama at the convention. McCain recalls that Clinton called him to share thoughts about the 2008 financial bailout, which had led McCain to “suspend” his campaign against Obama and urge a legislative solution.

  “He’s a policy wonk and we would talk,” McCain says. “We talked about why the bailout was important and why, who the players were, who you could trust, you know, that kind of thing.”

  McCain stops just short of saying Clinton had hoped McCain would defeat Obama. “I can’t say he favored [my candidacy over Obama’s],” McCain says, “but I have to say that he wouldn’t be talking to me if he didn’t feel that he and I . . . that it would be helpful to have the communications.”

  McCain’s longtime aide Mark Salter confirms the two spoke on occasion during the last stages of the presidential campaign. Salter describes the conversations as Clinton and McCain talking about the state of the race.

  As late as September 2008, two months before what promised to be a close election, Bill Clinton was publicly gushing about the Republican. “The American people, for good and sufficient reasons, admire him,” Clinton told the women of ABC’s The View.34 “He’s given something in life the rest of us can’t match.”

  McCain’s loss that November left the Clintons with Plan B—a piece of the Obama administration all her own.

  The incoming president would give her a department to run, let her fly all over the world, and in the process keep her out of his hair. Hillary was now going into a bubble.

  7

  The Bubble

  “She made, I believe, personal judgment calls that turned out to be the wrong call and it cost people their lives.”

  —U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz

  On January 21, 2009, Hillary Clinton was confirmed as U.S. secretary of state by an overwhelming majority of senators, 94–2. The only two votes in opposition to her appointment came from two conservative Republican senators: David Vitter of Louisiana and Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Perhaps it was odd that none of the members of the Senate who had voted to convict President Clinton on two articles impeachment opposed Hillary’s nomination. But all of Clinton’s would-be opposition had been won over in the intervening years. Both Vitter and DeMint were sworn in as senators in 2005, and seemed to have little if no relationship with Hillary during their short overlapping times.

  “This nation has come together in a way that it has not for some time,” McCain said, praising the confirmation of Hillary.1

  Until January 22, 2009, Hillary Clinton had managed only two things of any major significance: her universal health-care plan, during the early days of her husband’s administration, and her 2008 presidential effort. Both, even her staunchest supporters would admit, were notorious disasters—practically from start to finish. So with her third time up to the plate, and with a chance to show her managerial bona fides, there was enormous pressure for her to succeed when she arrived for the first time at the State Department offices in Foggy Bottom to cheering employees.

  While running the department once led by Thomas Jefferson and George Marshall provides great prestige, it also poses uniqu
e challenges to even the most experienced diplomat: It’s a massive federal bureaucracy with a budget of over $45 billion per year, a staff of over fifty-eight thousand, and locations all over the world.

  As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was at first determined to do more than manage a large bureaucracy and improve her own image. For the top diplomat, the State Department is a great platform and Hillary Clinton was determined to make the most of it. According to sources, she made a genuine effort early on to push issues close to her heart, assert herself in meetings with other principals in the administration, and make her mark on the policies and priorities of Barack Obama’s presidency.

  Just as one would expect from a secretary of state, she immediately made plans to go abroad. But instead of a visit to Canada or Europe or to another traditional ally, Hillary decided to visit Asia—first Japan, then Indonesia and South Korea, before finishing in China. The entire trip was set up to show a “pivot” toward emerging allies in the East and to show that America under this new president would have different priorities.

  She’d join the press on the back of her airplane for an off-the-record conversation, which a participant described as surprisingly frank. Most principals even in technically “off-the-record” sessions know better than to dish and to go off talking points. They assume that eventually the conversation will be leaked. In Hillary’s case, she took some chances with the traveling State Department press corps. On her jaunt back across the Pacific, she was able to relax with a stiff alcoholic beverage. It was a goodwill gesture—one that won over a few in the press who were skeptical of her intentions in joining the Obama administration. But there was still much work to be done.

  Work that would focus on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then quickly pivoting to other areas of the world that the new administration wanted to focus on. “In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values. One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in the Asia-Pacific region,” she’d explain in an article in Foreign Policy a couple of years later. “The Asia-Pacific has become a key driver of global politics.”