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

by Daniel Halper

  “He’ll work his ass off to get her elected,” one longtime Clinton friend suggests. Taking a sip of coffee, he pauses before qualifying his statement. “But in the back of his mind he would always be thinking, ‘Maybe I’d be better off if she weren’t elected.’ ” He smiles. “He could sabotage her. And he’d be like, ‘Oh, oops.’ And with him, honestly, it could be subconscious, but it’s there. If it’s conscious, if he’s purposely doing it, that’s some crazy shit.”

  In light of the multitude of media reports about how badly Bill Clinton wants Hillary elected president, the speculation from the Clinton associate may seem farfetched, but upon closer examination it makes sense that, at a minimum, Bill Clinton has deep reservations about the role of doting first gentleman.

  Bill is not the only problem for 2016. In fact, he might not even be the biggest. To some close observers that title now falls to Chelsea, who serves as Hillary’s closest confidante, final arbiter, referee, advisor, and shadow campaign manager. In some sense it doesn’t really matter who is named the official campaign manager for Hillary’s 2016 run—even though speculation is already rampant. He or she will be answering to the candidate and the candidate’s daughter (and the candidate’s husband).

  As Politico reported in early 2014, “[J]ust about every close Hillary Clinton ally, asked to describe who is at the top of her organizational chart, gives the same answer: Chelsea. Exactly what that translates into is shrouded in a bit of mystery.” A 2016 campaign will make Chelsea de facto campaign manager.

  “They’ve become beholden to her,” says a longtime Clinton family associate. “Patti Solis Doyle, when she messed up, she got fired,” he says, referring to a close friend of Hillary’s who was relieved as her 2008 campaign manager. “But you can’t fire your daughter. I mean this is unexplored territory here because all of a sudden, the person running the ship . . . you can’t get rid of her.” Chelsea Clinton has never come close to running a nationwide presidential effort where she must fend off attacks from all sides. As this family associate put it, Hillary may have to choose—between her family or the presidency. The choice she will make still isn’t clear.

  The Clintons have worked hard to build relationships with key media outlets, especially since their defeat in 2008, and have often been hugely successful. George Stephanopoulos, who has been known to hold daily calls with Clinton aides, is stationed at ABC, where Donna Brazile is now a regular. (While Stephanopoulos has been ostracized and his relationship with the Clintons is complicated, recent appearances by President Clinton on the show indicate a kind of cooling.) Virginia Moseley, whose husband (Tom Nides) was a top State Department official under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is at CNN, where Paul Begala seems to be back. At Fox, there’s Doug Schoen and James Carville, who just signed on as a contributor. And of course Chelsea’s still under contract at NBC. Which means that practically all big network and cable television stations have Clinton cronies waiting in the wings. That doesn’t mean the channels will never air a negative Clinton story—but it does suggest that there will be a higher bar to air hurtful segments about Hillary Clinton than for probably any other potential candidate in the next race.

  There’s more unprecedented outreach this time around, too. They’ve welcomed two reporters into HillaryWorld by giving them unprecedented access to people and aides associated with Hillary’s time at the State Department. It’s a way, it’s been reported, for this branch of the Clinton camp to tell that story in a book by the reporters—and get away from the other Hillary Clinton stories.

  Of course, they didn’t just let anyone in. In what is being presented as purely coincidental, one of the reporters, Jonathan Allen, worked for Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz—a Democratic congresswoman from Florida. He now works at Bloomberg, having jumped ship from Politico. The other reporter, Amie Parnes, works at the Hill, a Washington-based political newspaper. Even ABC chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl panned their book—writing, “Mr. Allen and Ms. Parnes appear to have fallen in love with their subject.”8 Which would explain why ClintonWorld let them in in the first place.

  Despite efforts to keep things under control, in the Clinton camp things can always spiral out of control, even for those who look most perfect and for those who appear most loyal. That is what happened to Huma Abedin in June 2011 when her husband got caught by conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart sending lewd images of himself to young attractive women across the country.9 The brash and obnoxious Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner lied about it, claiming at first to have been hacked.10 Within days, the story only intensified and Weiner was forced to fess up. He resigned from Congress in shame within a month.11

  They had only been married for a year at that point—they had tied the knot the year before in a Long Island castle. Bill Clinton had officiated at the marriage.

  But not long after getting caught sending the lewd pictures, other news came out: Huma was expecting the couple’s first child, a boy, who’d be born in December that year. Huma had hoped to use the birth of her child as a way to transition out of ClintonWorld. Well, not completely—her entire life and career were predicated on her close relationship with Hillary. But she saw how her comrade Doug Band had transitioned into starting his own business and making his own money and calling his own shots. And that was something that appealed to her after spending more than fifteen years at Hillary’s side.

  The problem was her husband. “I think Huma was trying to separate the same way; the problem is she married a fucking douche bag. You know, I think she was trying to make that same transition that Doug made,” says a ClintonWorld associate. “She was transitioning out of State. She was trying to be an advisor but still make money on the side. Then her husband turned out to be the biggest fucking asshole in the world.”

  After she gave birth to her son, Abedin did move back to their New York City apartment. Her boss, Secretary Clinton, gave her a special status—special government employee—through a program generally given to government workers to help them transition out of the private sector and into a high-level government position. Here it was being used so Abedin could have one foot in government while she looked for work elsewhere.

  “The new status made her a special government employee, which was tantamount to being a consultant,” according to the source, whose information was confirmed by two other staffers familiar with the matter. “Multiple sources told Politico Abedin did work for other clients, which a friend of Abedin said totaled four, including the State Department, Hillary Clinton, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and Teneo, the firm cofounded by former Bill Clinton counselor Doug Band,” Politico would report.12

  Around the same time, Weiner was hoping to hop back into politics with a run for mayor of New York City. It’s a coveted slot: the head of the largest American city. And one that Weiner had his eyes on for at least a decade.

  It was a brilliant move. “If he runs, and even if he loses, he comes in a respectable second—if he makes a run at it and comes in second in a race of like how many people? And then he’s not the guy who everyone remembers as taking creepy dick pics and tweeting them to people. Then it will be, ‘Oh, he ran for mayor and came in second,’ ” a former aide told me. “That’s why it’s brilliant that he’s running.”

  But something happened that caught ClintonWorld and Abedin completely off-guard. Weiner hadn’t given up sending lewd pictures via text message to women around the country. And one of the recipients in particular decided to use the dirt she had on Weiner to try to parlay that into her fifteen minutes of fame. Which she did—to really remarkable success.

  Weiner’s run was over. His life was a joke. And Abedin looked to be the second part of that joke, especially when she joined Weiner at a press conference, where she looked hurt, confused—and loyal to her man.

  The Clintons wanted nothing to do with Weiner, with whom they were furious . . . mainly because the scandal looked in some ways like another
scandal the Clintons had for years been trying to get over: the Monica Lewinsky affair.

  “They don’t want anything to do with him [Anthony Weiner]. They don’t want to be around him. I mean, she and her job needs to be the priority,” said a Clinton aide who had worked closely with Hillary, Abedin, and Weiner.

  “She’ll divorce him,” the aide speculated last year.

  The Clintons were petrified the entire time that it would be brought up. “I think that it’s just too close to home. Like if they were close to him, everyone would be talking about it like, ‘Oh, the Clintons had their own problems.’ Lewinsky would be in every single article. . . . You look at it now, it’s never mentioned,” said the aide before Weiner got caught in the second, and most detrimental, sexting scandal.

  That’s when, as the aide suspected, Lewinsky’s name began to be brought up and people would compare Abedin to her mentor, Hillary Clinton. Just like Hillary she had stood by her man during a sex scandal. Now they had even more in common than before—public humiliation.

  In reality, Abedin’s been able to avoid divorce—at least for now. Weiner slipped away from public view. And Abedin did, too, when her boss Hillary took some time off after the State Department and before her own book launch in the summer of 2014.

  The one major consequence for Abedin has been that she wasn’t able to break away from ClintonWorld to start her own career in the way Doug Band was. Without someone directly pushing her out and without Weiner in view, it was hard to make a clean break—and she’d be damaged goods on the consulting market if some sort of relationship with Hillary were not in place.

  Instead, she’d be forced into rehabilitation, to be at Hillary’s side for at least another couple of years, and maybe even during a presidential run in 2016.

  If there’s one serious threat to Hillary Clinton’s presidential primary campaign in 2016, it’s the left wing of her party. They are the ones who abandoned her in 2008 for Barack Obama. They are the ones she overlooked when she voted for the Iraq War and started trying to broaden her appeal to general election voters.

  She is determined not to take them for granted again. That’s why, on January 1, 2014, H. Clinton and B. Clinton, as the name cards labeled the former president and (perhaps) future president, sat atop a stage for the swearing in of the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio.

  De Blasio was elected mayor in what many considered a progressive wave of strident liberalism returning to the Democratic Party. He unabashedly tapped into the spirit of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who pitted the 99 percent against the rich, elite 1 percent of the U.S. population.

  Dressed in a long, shapeless dark overcoat, Bill Clinton had been asked to administer the oath of office to his former regional director at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager for her statewide run for the U.S. Senate more than a dozen years before. Even Huma Abedin was on hand, though her husband, who had humiliated himself and his family in his primary run against de Blasio and others for the coveted office, was not.

  David Axelrod, one of Obama’s closest political advisors, took notice and said that President Clinton’s “role” in the ceremonial inauguration “may reassure the Left” in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. Axelrod would also try to draw another lesson and suggest that Clinton’s very presence was a “signal to the elite that new Mayor’s agenda is not ‘radical.’ ”

  It would also be another sign (following Bill Clinton’s boffo 2012 Democratic National Convention speech) that the Clintons were the most revered political guests to have on hand at top events. (By contrast, President Obama was on the other side of the nation that day, vacationing in Hawaii. His presence did not appear to be missed.)

  In having Clinton officiate the ceremony, there of course was a glaring irony: The first modern president to be impeached after he lied to investigators looking into allegations of sexual harassment, Bill Clinton was there to administer Bill de Blasio’s oath that he would faithfully uphold the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States and New York. Journalist Matt Drudge would take to Twitter to note, “Rehabilitation of Clinton crosses into Looney Tunes. Contempt of court, law license suspended 5 years, impeached! Now swearing in NYC mayor?”

  But in fact it was a sign that the Clintons had successfully graduated from rehab. They were back.

  Clinton, in a perfectly Clintonian manner, would be one of the only speakers to go out of his way to praise de Blasio’s predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whom he would credit with leaving New York City in better condition than when he arrived a dozen years before. “He made the city stronger and healthier than he found it,” Clinton said of the mayor.13 The line stood out, as all the other speakers before him had avoided directly mentioning Bloomberg—they would only criticize the state of the city and say that better days, under de Blasio, were ahead.

  But the soft touch by Clinton would suggest something else: The Clintons would work to bridge the gap from the radical left (de Blasio) to the middle (Bloomberg). It wasn’t just something they’d work toward in the future; it was something they claimed to have done since entering public service more than three decades before.

  Bloomberg, once a nominal Republican, appeared genuinely to appreciate the praise (as would his longtime communications director, Howard Wolfson). As for Hillary, she remained a silent presence throughout the appearance, though she joined her husband and dutifully stood for photo ops with the newly sworn-in officials.

  But Clinton would use the moment to appeal to the left, too. “I strongly endorse Bill de Blasio’s core campaign commitment that we have to have a city of shared opportunities, shared prosperity, shared responsibilities,” said Clinton, who lives outside the city limits. Some speculated that it was the most Clinton had talked about income inequality in years.

  Clinton would also applaud de Blasio’s diverse family. “He represents with his family the future of our city and the future of our country,” Clinton said. “You know, with all respect to the television show, they’re our real modern family.”

  It was a big moment for de Blasio. “Thank you, President Clinton, for your kind and generous words. It was an honor to serve in your administration, and we’re all honored by your presence here today. And I have to note that, over twenty years ago, when a conservative philosophy seemed dominant in our nation, you broke through—and told us to still believe in a place called Hope,” de Blasio began his inaugural address, turning back to face President Clinton, who quickly realized that with the mayor’s glance the cameras would pan to him, seated between Hillary and Governor Andrew Cuomo. The former president reached across his wife’s back and eased his hand on her shoulder, pulling her tight, as the crowd (and Mrs. Clinton) applauded him.14

  “Thank you, Secretary Clinton. I was so inspired by the time I spent on your first campaign. Your groundbreaking commitment to nurturing our children and families manifested itself in a phrase that is now a part of our American culture—and something we believe in deeply in this city: ‘It Takes a Village.’ Thank you, Secretary.”

  Hillary’s book It Takes a Village preaches the power of the community—and how important it is to work together toward a good cause.

  And with the newly inaugurated mayor, there was a clear sign that through hard work, determination, skillful politics, and brute force, Bill and Hillary Clinton have themselves built a community of friends and allies, new and old, across the political spectrum, and even in the financial capital of the world.

  That is how the impeached President Clinton was invited to New York City on that cold Wednesday last January to administer the oath, even though he himself had failed to adhere to his own oath of office after being sworn in as president of the United States. And it is how Mrs. Clinton will be able to use the village—her village—to help make her the next president of the United States.

  As they sat before New York’s first Democratic mayor in two decades, Bill and Hillar
y Clinton were happy. They were right where they wanted to be—at the center of the world’s attention. The comeback was almost complete.

  Acknowledgments

  Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn—and the great team they’ve assembled at Javelin—made this possible. From start to finish, like shepherds living with the smell of sheep, they provided the idea behind this book, outstanding representation, and tremendous assistance in every possible way.

  I’m grateful to Adam Bellow and HarperCollins for having faith in this project. Adam’s perceptive ideas and sharp edits vastly improved the idea of this book and, ultimately, the final copy. I’d also like to thank Eric Meyers for helping throughout the editing process.

  Everyone I work with at the Weekly Standard was helpful and supportive. In particular, I’m especially thankful to Bill Kristol, the boss, for giving me a job—and for offering advice and allowing me to take the time I needed from work to make this book possible. Mike Warren, John McCormack, Ethan Epstein, Jim Swift, Geoffrey Norman, Maria Santos, and Jeryl Bier made my life much easier by covering for me at work. Additionally, Fred Barnes, Richard Starr, Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash, Steve Hayes, Vic Matus, Terry Eastland, Nick Swezey, Grace Terzian, Catherine Lowe, and Claudia Anderson gave me wise counsel and went out of their way to be helpful. And thanks to Lou Ann Sabatier.

  They say that reporters are only as good as their sources, so I’m especially thankful to the many, many people who went out of their way to sit for interviews, chat on the phone, respond to my emails, and otherwise point me in the right direction. Many sources requested anonymity, so I’ll stop short of naming most of them. But Ambassador Richard Carlson was outstanding—and a riveting storyteller. Thanks also to Lanny Davis, Jerome Marcus, Michael Medved, David Shuster, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Jason Chaffetz.