They say politics makes strange bedfellows, and for Bill and Hillary Clinton that could not be more true. In Sally Bedell Smith's new book, “For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years,” she examines the Clinton marriage, revealing that their unique relationship is held together by a love of political power. Here's an excerpt:
From Chapter One
TIME: “John Kennedy said that after he was elected, he began to think in terms of who it was he had to have in the room when he made the really big decisions. For him, that was Robert Kennedy. Who is it for you?”
With that simple one-word reply in December 1992, Bill Clinton adumbrated the complications that would bedevil his presidency.
It showed his intention to expand his election victory — which he won with a mere 43 percent of the vote — to encompass Hillary, as if she had been on the ticket, too. Bill was giving her primacy even above his vice president, Al Gore, a formidable politician with far greater experience.
The President-elect was feeling understandably buoyant, and at such moments he could be incautious, saying more than he intended to. He was Time’s “Man of the Year,” and he was stating what was obvious to him and to Hillary.
Bill and Hillary had been using the first-person plural since his initial run for governor in 1978, when Bill told The New York Times, “Our vote was a vindication of what my wife and I have done and what we hope to do for the state.” They were such a “working unit” in Arkansas that they became known as “Billary” — a term of disparagement as well as admiration. The areas in which they deferred to each other, their private roles, their spheres of political expertise, the way they presented themselves to the public — all these were set during Bill’s long years as governor. So, too, were the habits and rhythms of their marriage: her tolerance of his philandering, for example, and his delegation of responsibilities to her. As in any marriage, each partner had domains of primacy. These arrangements traveled with them during the long campaign of 1992 and into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Bill Clinton’s run for the presidency was a triumph of political skill, luck, intelligence, deception, resilience, and sheer endurance. It was a flawed victory in some crucial respects. His behavior had created doubts about his character, and he antagonized many potential allies. National political reporters were dazzled by Bill and Hillary’s talent but also disillusioned by their apparent disingenuousness and inability to be forthright about themselves and their plans for the presidency. The Clintons were deeply shaken by the scrutiny of the press, an experience that colored their view of Washington and those responsible for telling their story. Bill doubtless would have lost the election without Hillary’s unyielding support when his character was under attack. Her rescue of his candidacy had enormous public consequences, as it made him beholden to her in ways that pervasively influenced his administration’s policies.
When Bill began thinking about running in early 1991, George H. W. Bush’s approval ratings were hovering around 70 percent in the aftermath of the successful Gulf War. But with his sensitive political antennae, Bill picked up softness in that support. It was a time of uncertainty, economic weakness, and anti-incumbent sentiment. Bill was also reaching a point of diminishing returns in Arkansas; John Brummett, a savvy Arkansas political columnist, said Bill had been bored with his job since 1987. When he was reelected in 1990, he had faced stronger opposition than before. “The voters were getting tired of him,” said political analyst Michael Barone. “For the Clintons it was up or out.”
Bill caught some lucky breaks when his strongest potential rivals among moderate Democrats — Tennessee senator Al Gore, New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, and Delaware senator Joseph Biden — decided not to run. The most formidable liberal opponent, New York governor Mario Cuomo, was the favored candidate, but Bill calculated that he could skillfully position himself for the 1996 campaign if Cuomo won the 1992 nomination and lost the general election. Bill got lucky again when Cuomo announced in December 1991 that he would not run, which left a small field of opponents Bill later described as “less than compelling.”
He shrewdly styled himself as a “New Democrat” who could broaden his appeal to include independent voters and Republican moderates by shifting away from the Democratic liberal orthodoxy that had consistently lost elections. As chairman of the Washington-based Democratic Leadership Council since 1990, he advocated ideological flexibility and a smaller but more open government that would provide opportunity for those who assumed responsibility — welfare recipients who took vocational training and found work, for example. Bill was in a sense turning the New Deal legacy around. Franklin Roosevelt had sought to use government regulation to save capitalism from its worst excesses. Bill was advocating a plan to rescue progressive government by using market forces to encourage economic growth.
The whispers about his reputation for womanizing continued, however, and Bill needed Hillary’s steadfast backing to fend off potential assaults. In July 1991, he told her that he had been called by Roger Porter, a Bush Administration official who had jokingly invited him to join the Republican party two years earlier. Bill recounted to his wife that Porter — a “mild-mannered policy wonk” who later taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government — had told him that the Bush White House feared a Clinton candidacy and warned the Arkansas governor to “cut the crap” because the Republicans would “do everything we can to destroy you personally.” Hillary took this threat as the opening shot in a declaration of war and later told the tale to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post as evidence of a concerted effort by the right wing to bring them down. The story became such an article of faith to the couple that Bill repeated a more elaborate version in his own memoir thirteen years later.
But the conversation never happened, according to Porter, who consulted phone logs and his “meticulous diary” to back up his emphatic denial. “Bill Clinton started telling other people about this phone call,” said Porter. “Human beings are interesting. When they tell something enough, they begin to believe it even though it is not true. It was the story about what was behind Hillary’s belief in a vast right-wing conspiracy. A lot of Bill Clinton’s life is moving people by telling stories that help them see things the way he wants them to. If truth is a casualty, it is for a good cause, in his view.”
In his own vivid account, Bill insisted that after their conversation that summer, “I never heard from or saw Roger Porter again until he attended a reception for the White House Fellows when I was President.” In fact, Bill phoned Porter several days after his victory in November 1992 “to talk process.” According to Time magazine’s Dan Goodgame, Bill “quizzed Porter on his 1980 book, Presidential Decision Making,” which recommended setting up a group similar to the National Economic Council — one of the Clinton Administration’s most noteworthy accomplishments. Robert Rubin, the designated head of that council, also received advice about White House operations from Porter — hardly the behavior of an antagonist out to destroy a Clinton presidency. As Bill continued to mull his candidacy, he sought out Henry Cisneros, the former Democratic mayor of San Antonio who several years earlier had disclosed an extramarital affair and later reconciled with his wife out of duty to his family. “You have handled it the right way,” Bill told Cisneros. “You are now bulletproof. Nobody can come back at you.” Recalled Cisneros, “He discussed it as a political problem: I offered a model for how to do it — versus the morality of the situation.”
Late in the summer of 1991, Bill was playing hearts with a group of friends in Little Rock when one of them asked how he would deal with the rumors about his extramarital activities. “Hillary and I have talked about it, and we know how to handle it,” Bill said. “Hillary is very strong. We know what to do.” Early in September, Hillary told Frank Greer and Stan Greenberg, two of their top strategists, that the “pervasiveness” of the rumors posed a danger and that their approach would be “acknowledging that past without confessing to it.” Bill and Hillary thought they defused the issue two weeks later by telling a group of Washington reporters, “Our relationship has not been perfect or free from difficulties, but we feel good about where we are ... We intend to be together 30 or 40 years from now.” Shortly afterward, Bill officially entered the race.
In an effort to divert attention from personal matters, Clinton campaign aide George Stephanopoulos memorably said, “Specificity is a character issue this year.” He meant that Bill should be judged on the particulars of his policies, but the description became ironic as Bill’s penchant for hairsplitting and dissembling about his private life emerged as defining flaws. Once, during a debate with former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas, a rival moderate, Bill sputtered, “You’re always perfect,” to which Tsongas replied, “Not perfect. But I am honest.”
Tsongas’s riposte was one of the few times an opponent got the better of Bill, who was by widespread agreement the most gifted politician of his generation. He was a natural, with all the advantages of an extrovert born in a southern culture that emphasized human drama. Even in his youth, he ran for office so relentlessly that he earned the nickname “Billy Vote Clinton.” He was a rare combination of powerful intellect and animal instinct, a man who loved policy and people in equal measure. He was an effortless optimist who “carried springtime in his breast pocket.” He drew energy from his audiences “like a helium balloon,” said his close friend Terry McAuliffe. “He grows with the crowd and loves it.” He reveled in storytelling, much of it hyperbolic. His great political gift was an easy comfort with anyone, whether head of state or farmworker. His charm was undeniably egocentric: he wanted his performance to be appreciated and admired. “He is always evangelizing for the church of Bill,” said Arkansas journalist Max Brantley.
When working a crowd, Bill would lean forward and move in close to individuals, a maneuver that could be disconcerting because he invaded the other person’s space. The “full intensity Clinton,” as Robert Reich called it, was above all physical. He usually began with a conventional handshake, extending his right hand, which had remarkably long, tapered fingers — more suited to a pianist or a surgeon, Hillary noted. Or he would confer a special status by using both hands in an antlike clasp. Whether in the company of a man or woman, Bill couldn’t resist grabbing elbows or biceps — “basic, reflexive moves,” observed political reporter Joe Klein, indicating “he is interested in you. He is honored to meet you.”
When asked a question, he often responded with a question, which instantly flattered his interlocutor. He knew how to pause and let words sink in, and then took care with his answers, emphasizing points of agreement. He would convey his pleasure with an enormous nonstop smile and a disarming comment. Or he might create an opening by unexpectedly summoning a singular personal detail. The second time he saw Sandy Robertson, the founder of the influential Robertson Stephens investment bank, Bill said, “How’s your house with the clipper-ship timbers?” recalling that Robertson lived in the oldest house in San Francisco. The intimacy was a mirage, but as Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter pointed out, “He wasn’t pretending to enjoy superficial relations with people. This is what he liked. It is sincere phoniness. He gets energy from the rope line.”
The pollster Stan Greenberg identified the “powerful impression that Clinton listens to people” as the “strongest element” of his character. Yet astute observers could see other forces at work. “When you are talking to him, you feel you are here, and he is operating on various other frequencies and tunes you in from time to time,” said Anthony Williams, who was mayor of Washington, D.C., for the last two years of the Clinton presidency. While Bill was always eager to hear and synthesize information, he liked to talk more than to listen. “He has the narcissist’s gift of making conversation about him feel like conversation about you,” wrote Benjamin Barber.
But the way he talked was an invaluable political tool that combined academic and emotional intelligence. He had an unusual capacity to speak about complicated issues such as globalization in lucid and simple language, with an informality that prevented him from seeming preachy or pedantic. Another essential talent was his ability to read an audience and convert their fears into optimism. “After he had framed his policy discussions, he could feel the vibe,” said Eric Liu, who worked as a White House speechwriter in the first Clinton term and was Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor in the second. “He was so good at enabling people in the room to hear him without throwing out defenses and filtering out what he was saying. This is the essence of a great communicator. The shorthand for this was ‘I feel your pain.’ He tried to find out who you were in the audience and give you a sense that he was like you.”
Hillary understood not only that the political process replenished her husband but that the intensity of crowds was “overwhelming” to her. Her staff members knew that she could be depleted by campaigning and adjusted her schedule accordingly. “She needed more rest and more time to get ready,” said one of her husband’s aides. Her political style diverged from Bill’s in many ways. She could be highly effective, but she suffered by comparison to him.
Despite her combative personality, she was more naturally reserved in the arena, standing ramrod straight, with perfect posture. While he would lunge to meet people, she tended to wait for them to approach and greet them with a firm handshake. Her cooler persona discouraged the sort of tactile familiarity that he welcomed. Little had changed since the day in 1973 when Arkansas lawyer Webster Hubbell first saw Bill “holding court” in the middle of a group of strangers while Hillary perched nearby on a rock, studying. Two decades later, at the end of a Washington fundraiser for the Democratic Leadership Council shortly after Bill was elected president, Hillary sat patiently backstage while her husband mingled with the crowd for more than an hour. “For Bill Clinton politics is the fun part,” said Terry McAuliffe. “She loves the issues in an intellectual way ... If Hillary could be reading policy papers and debating with specialists, she would be happy.”
Nor did she have what Max Brantley called “Bill’s catholic tastes.” She preferred to associate with those she found intellectually stimulating or who shared common ground. “She would devote her time to people who interested her and were useful,” said Brantley. With her friends and staff, Hillary could be funny and casual, but with large groups she was likely to be stiff and formal. She worked hard at meeting and greeting, though she often appeared dutiful rather than joyful.
Excerpted from “For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton” by Sally Bedell Smith. Copyright © 2007 Sally Bedell Smith. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.