When she was around, Rodham sat at a desk next to Clinton’s and left a vivid impression on the campaign staff. She wore jeans or brown corduroys to work, sported big square eyeglasses, and walked around carrying pads of yellow paper. Volunteers coordinator Joyce Sampson, then a housewife married to a University of Texas law professor, was “in awe of young women like Hillary who went to law school.” Mark Blumenthal, the hippie-dippie radio man, found her to be aloof but intelligent. Bebe Champ thought Rodham was “not particularly warm but businesslike—she focused on what she was interested in and shut other things out.” Rodham treated Ruthie Fischer “like a little sister—she worried that I wasn’t going out enough and that I was putting too much into the election.”
Taylor Branch welcomed Rodham’s presence. He found it easier to talk to her than to Clinton about “more reflective things” such as the collapse of his marriage and the meaning of life. “Bill and I talked business. We laughed. We talked personalities, but we never sat down and philosophized. I was feeling rootless, unhinged, and it was easier to talk to Hillary about those things than to Bill.” Betsey Wright also felt more comfortable with Rodham. The two women would sit under the blazing Texas sun at the massive limestone pool at Barton Springs, or across town at the airport waiting for a plane to come in, and talk for hours about the need for more women in politics. “It was a nascent feminist movement then. We had both read Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer. And I’d just come off the heady experience of Sissy Farenthold’s campaign in Texas,” Wright re-called later. They reinforced each other’s ambitions. Rodham thought that Wright’s political experience in Texas would be valuable to other women around the country. Wright believed “that women were the ethical and pure force that American politics needed” and considered Rodham a perfect candidate to lead the movement. “I was less interested in Bill’s political future than Hillary’s. I was obsessed with how far Hillary might go, with her mixture of brilliance, ambition, and self-assuredness. There was an assumption about all the incredible things she could do in the world.”
It was not at all certain during their Texas days that Rodham and Clinton would stay together. They did not see each other exclusively and appeared on the verge of splitting up at least once. San Antonio labor leader Franklin Garcia, a charismatic figure around McGovern headquarters, a fearless organizer and a soothing mystic, helped patch things up. “Franklin, I just want to thank you. You really saved our relationship,” Clinton said to Garcia one night at Scholz’s. The couple argued heatedly, yet they also shared a deep passion, according to Roy Spence. “They shared a passion for the dream—the dream of being in politics, of sharing the business of politics.”
THE Watergate break-in, which had entered the political stage in 1972, seemed to have negligible effect on how the public viewed the presidential race. The public lack of interest in Watergate troubled Branch and Clinton, but it did not slow them down. One night at their apartment, they talked for hours about why they could not stop working. It was, according to Branch, the only concentrated philosophical discussion he and Clinton had during the months they worked together. “I thought it odd and curious that even though the polls showed very early it was over, we worked just as hard—we were obsessive. We decided that an awful lot of it had to do with the war. We thought the war would go on four more years, particularly the bombing, if Nixon won. Playing for those stakes made it important. Plus we always had this sense that a huge scandal might break at any moment, making the election close and Texas critical, so we couldn’t relax.”
There was no prospect of relaxation in any case. The Texas campaign was in constant turmoil as it tried to deal with historic political forces that it could not control. One such force was the growing disaffection of conservative southern Democrats with the national party, as symbolized by John Connally’s embrace of Nixon. Connally’s Democrats for Nixon group, funded largely by money from the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), was running full-page advertisements attacking McGovern on defense, busing, taxes, and welfare. The dilemma for the McGovern forces was how to repudiate Connally and his crowd without alienating Texas Democrats who had not yet abandoned the ticket. It was a fine line.
When the Texas staff learned that Connally was planning to host a lavish fund-raiser for Nixon at his Floresville ranch, they saw it as a chance to mock the fat-cat ostentation of that event by staging a populist-style tamales-and-beans fiesta for McGovern on a nearby courthouse lawn. Branch and Clinton presented the counter-rally proposal to the Washington staff, which promptly rejected it. McGovern had absorbed too much criticism for his one-thousand-dollars-for-everyone welfare proposal, the Washington staff argued, and a scraggly tamales-and-beans affair might give the impression that they were engaging in class warfare. Gary Hart told them it was important for the campaign not to seem marginal. Clinton and Branch persisted, however, supported by their seasoned Texas advisers, White and Armstrong, who thought the tamale fiesta fell into the category of a classic Texas populist event. Since McGovern would not go, they tried Sargent Shriver. They pitched the idea to him during his next visit in the state. He “thought it was a great idea,” and put it on his schedule.
Threats and counterthreats laced with obscenities flew between the Texas coordinators and the home office in the final stages of the Floresville advance work. The hostility was real but evanescent, the sort of profane give-and-take that seeps into most such relationships, where state coordinators demand more candidate time and money while the national staff tries to keep a larger strategy in force. Branch had worked out an agreement that expenses for the rally would be shared by Texas and Washington, but Washington’s money was slow in arriving. The Texans were short of homegrown cash and often resorted to dramatic gestures to squeeze some out of the national office.
On the morning of the rally, Branch called Washington and said, “If your advance guy doesn’t have your half when I get there, you might as well not send Shriver.” Branch in fact had the necessary funds in his trunk. Steve Robbins and Tony Podesta, who had opposed the idea in the first place, exploded at the threat. “We’re gonna have your ass, Taylor, you fucking incompetent! We’re gonna get you fired for this!”
“You couldn’t fire me,” Branch screamed back. “You couldn’t find anybody else to agree to take this goddamn job!”
Washington came up with the money.
On the night of September 22, Clinton watched Sargent Shriver, the patrician Democratic nominee for vice president, his coat off and shirt-sleeves rolled up, mingle with fifteen hundred people, die-hard McGovern-Shriver supporters and hungry locals in search of a meal, who had assembled on the lawn of the Wilson County Courthouse at a people’s party where the food and drinks were free: ten thousand tamales, three thousand pounds of beans, four thousand jalapeño peppers, trash cans full of peanuts, and two hundred and forty gallons of beer.
A few miles away, guests were arriving at John and Nellie Connally’s contemporary stone frame and glass ranchhouse. Their long driveway was lined with limousines and a private airstrip hummed with helicopters and private jets. Among the wealthy Democrats for Nixon in attendance were oilmen, manufacturers, and university regents, even Johnson’s former Air Force One pilot, sporting a—Nixon Now—button. Chrysanthemums floated in Big John’s pool. On the front lawn, under an orange and yellow awning, outdoor tables shone with crystal and silver settings. President Nixon and his wife and four hundred guests dined on roast beef and black-eyed peas.
For every Texas Democrat who publicly followed Connally into the Nixon camp, there were more who remained silent. Ten members of the state Democratic executive committee refused to sign a petition endorsing the top of the ticket. In San Antonio, officials at Democratic party headquarters would not talk to local McGovern campaign officials. Clinton spent much of his time on the telephone sweet-talking reluctant party regulars or going out on the road to see them in person. He studied the politics of each county, paying careful attention to the various facti
ons. “When he arrived there was a feeling that Texas was such a vast state that no outsider could possibly learn who was enemies of whom, but after a while, mention a name or an event and Bill knew more about it than you did,” Bebe Champ said later. “If you went to this town you had to see so-and-so. He was so easy to talk to, people would tell him stuff, and he remembered it. He was so likable, people tried to help him not stub his toe.”
Clinton got away from the Austin office whenever possible, often heading south to the Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio, where he fell in love with Tex-Mex food and became addicted to the mango ice cream at Menger’s Hotel, or east to Houston, where he studied political organizing at the side of Billie Carr. Carr wore a “Liberal and Proud of It” button and distributed “Billie Carr—Bitch” namecards. She first took sides when her parents brought her to the 1928 Democratic Convention and pinned an Al Smith button on her diaper. From the day in 1952 when Governor Allan Shivers boasted to her, “Young lady, I have this state in the palm of my hand,” Carr had looked upon conservative Democrats as her mortal enemies and fought them at every opportunity. She had loyal followers, but even among fellow liberals she had her share of enemies. Her detractors complained that she was not a team player. Some people in the McGovern campaign complained that she had the best mailing list of liberal activists in the state but was reluctant to share it. Anne McAfee, one of Carr’s liberal antagonists in Austin, accused her of using the list to wield power. The reason Clinton had to visit Houston so often, McAfee charged, was that he was “courting Billie to try to get the list.” That might have been part of it. Clinton’s dealings were usually played out on two or three levels at once. Another reason could have been that he and Carr enjoyed each other’s company. Carr, a rugged, heavyset woman eighteen years older than Clinton, reminded him of some of the independent women of Hope and Hot Springs, including his mother. She loved politics as a way to meet people, and it was that interaction as much as ideology that drove her—a lot like Clinton.
“Bill liked going out and shaking hands. He liked the meetings before meetings and the meetings after meetings. He liked to eat and drink,” Carr recalled. They would drive around in Carr’s yellow Chevrolet to organizational gatherings of only ten or twelve people, sometimes only the host and a close friend or two. It was retail politics at its extreme. On many nights as they drove back from a meeting, Clinton would tell her the life stories of everyone who had been in the room. “I swear he would get everybody’s life story before he left. You couldn’t get him away from talking to people and listening to them even then.” At larger party functions Clinton would often be approached by Carr’s enemies, who said it was unwise to place her in a visible position. “Well, I understand you have problems with Billie,” Clinton said at one such confrontation. “But Billie is working hard for us. We need you, too. What can you do for us?” Clinton never demoted her or tried to hide her.
One day while they were eating lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Houston, Clinton told Carr about his future plans. “I’m gonna tell you something and you’re gonna laugh,” Clinton said as he devoured a plate of enchiladas. “As soon as I get out of school, I’m movin’ back to Arkansas. I love Arkansas. I’m goin’ back there to live. I’m gonna run for office there. And someday I’m gonna be governor. And then one day I’ll be callin’ ya, Billie, and tellin’ ya I’m runnin’ for president and I need your help.”
“Oh you are, are you?” Carr replied.
THE longer the campaign went on, the more it became obvious to Taylor Branch that he and Clinton had different political temperaments. To Branch, the campaign began to seem like “an endless fight over who got what.” There was great sensitivity about which group or leader seemed to be getting preference. “We were always doing the wrong thing. If I did something for one group, others would complain.” The low point for Branch came one afternoon in Houston when he was attending a black political event near the airport. Black leaders, led by state Senator Barbara Jordan, who was running for Congress and had just been named vice-chair of the state party, were upset that Chicanos had been granted a meeting with McGovern while blacks had only been able to meet with Shriver. “They were furious for pure status reasons,” Branch recalled, “and told me that they would disendorse the ticket unless I diverted McGovern’s plane and brought him to Houston.” Branch told Jordan he would see what he could do. He excused himself from the gathering and called Steve Robbins and Tony Podesta, the schedulers. He explained the situation, but they told him the demand was ridiculous: there was no way they could divert the plane. Branch returned to the meeting and told Jordan that he had tried to persuade Washington to bring McGovern to Houston, but they had decided that diverting the plane was out of the question.
Jordan turned on Branch, he later recalled, and with her slow, precise, stern phrasing, she declared: “The reason that you did not get the message across with sufficient clarity so that they could understand the message is because you … young man … are a racist!”
Branch felt intimidated and upset. “I made your position as clear as possible,” he said. Then he called Washington again. McGovern could not go to Houston immediately, but it was agreed that he would visit the black group soon—“and in the end,” Branch remembered, “they had the meeting.”
But if Branch asked himself, “Is this really worth it?,” Clinton thrived. Branch concluded that “he was more interested in the game than I was, that’s the heart of the matter. He liked what we were doing. He liked those meetings. He absorbed backbiting better than I did.” Soon enough Clinton became renowned for his ability to settle factional disputes. Pat Robards, who worked at the Austin headquarters but came out of the fractious San Antonio region, saw that “every time a war broke out among ethnic groups, they would have certain demands and Bill would mediate between them all.” The key to Clinton’s success, according to Branch, was his ability to study the personalities of the people he was dealing with and determine what it took to get along with them, where their weak spots were, who was lazy, who was committed. “He was Johnsonian in that sense—knowing how to read personalities.”
In the final month, the Texas campaign turned from mere chaos and clamor to outright farce. Clinton spent more time in the Rio Grande Valley, where the ticket at least had a chance of carrying a few counties. In Shriver’s last visit to the valley, his plane could not leave·, it was trapped on the runway for three hours as a pilot flying solo got disoriented in the foggy airspace above the airport, forcing the control tower to suspend operations as they tried to talk him down. Clinton knew that Shriver’s delay could have serious consequences at his next destination, Texarkana, where Roy Spence had a television crew waiting amidst the crowd to film a final fundraising commercial that they hoped might evoke John Kennedy’s boisterous rally there at the end of his 1960 campaign. But the fiasco in the valley prevented Shriver’s plane from arriving in Texarkana until well after midnight. By that time most of the crowd had gone home. Spence shot the commercial anyway, staying up all night to edit it so that the crowd appeared large and buoyant.
The spot was a rousing appeal for East Texans to stand tall with the party of Roosevelt, Wright Patman, Sam Rayburn, and LBJ. They were urged to send donations to a post office box in Austin. A few days after the spot aired, in a heady burst of optimism, Branch and Clinton walked to the downtown post office with a troop of colleagues from the headquarters, expecting to discover a stack of envelopes filled with checks. The post office box was empty. They returned the next day, and again it was empty. After that, an embarrassed Branch went alone. The following week, he discovered one envelope. He brought it back to the office and had the staff gather around for the ceremonial opening. “With great fanfare” and high expectations, Branch opened the package. Inside was a piece of toilet paper smeared with human excrement and a note declaring that the contents reflected what East Texans thought of George McGovern.
Yet paradoxically in those final weeks, as the evidence mounted that
Nixon would be reelected in a landslide, the national McGovern campaign was awash in money. The direct-mail fund-raising operation was generating an astounding 25 percent return in a field where 3 percent was considered average. “We had this huge cadre of people who were desperately committed to George McGovern and thought he was the messiah who would end the war in Vietnam,” recalled Tony Podesta. “It was like a Ponzi scheme in the end. We couldn’t count the money fast enough.” One night a McGovern adviser in the Washington office noticed thirty canvas bags in a back room amid various debris. “What’s in those bags?” he asked. Trash, he was told. He opened a bag and found it stuffed with envelopes containing checks and cash—hundreds of thousands of dollars that might have gone straight from the hearts of true believers to the incinerators of the nation’s capital. The money instead was sent out to targeted states, including Texas.
“It was unbelievable. It was not smart money, but emotional money,” according to Roy Spence, who spent as much as he could on Texas media buys. Spence’s partner, Judy Trabulsi, camped out at the Western Union office in Austin, a telephone in one hand, buying time on radio stations and simultaneously wiring them payments. Two nights before the election, Bebe Champ drove by the Sixth Street headquarters. The lights were off, but she stopped to see if anyone was inside and found the front door open. She walked past the reception area and down the hall to Clinton’s office, where a small desk lamp provided the only light. Clinton seemed startled when Champ appeared at the doorway. She asked him what he was doing. The answer was in the dimness: Stacks of money were piled on his old wooden desk, cash that had come in from Washington for get-out-the-vote efforts on election day. Clinton was sorting it: this pile for San Antonio, this for Houston, this for the Valley. “I’ve got to get all this money out of here by tomorrow morning,” he said.
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