Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine (14 page)

Contrary to the general impression of Clinton as the flawless charmer, his seemingly endless need for attention and approval, particularly from those who don’t like him, can sometimes backfire in dramatic fashion.

“These two old Jews are walking down the street.” The former president, always eager to please, was grinning as he retold a favorite joke to a group, which included some prominent Republicans, in 2003. Clinton was at the Turf Club at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course on Preakness Day with Doug Band, Jon Bon Jovi, Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich, other well-heeled celebrities, and his host for the day, Frank Stronach, an auto parts billionaire.
13

Clinton, who couldn’t resist knowing everything about everything, offered reporters his prediction for the race—the New York–bred Funny Cide. He made the choice, he said, “In deference to the junior senator from New York.”

As he made his way to a table of Republicans, which included Tucker Carlson and his father, former U.S. ambassador Richard Carlson, Clinton could not help trying to ingratiate himself. How to do it? Well, his audience being Republicans, Clinton apparently assumed that anti-Semitic jokes were totally appropriate and welcome.

As the joke begins, everyone around the table looks dubious.
Where is he going with this?
Surely the former president of the United States is not about to tell an anti-Semitic story in front of people he hardly knows. This, of course, is exactly what he does, according to a number of the people present.

Clinton’s story about “two old Jews” takes them to a Catholic church, where they encounter a big sign reading, “Be a Catholic. We’ll pay you a hundred bucks.” One of the Jews, whom Clinton names Abe, says, “Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. For a hundred bucks I’ll do anything.” He tells his friend to wait outside. If he does, the friend gets half of the money.

Clinton describes Abe going into the church, meeting with priests, and learning the traditions of the Church. “Son, you’re now a Catholic,” the priest tells him.

Abe collects the hundred dollars and walks back outside, where his friend is waiting. “Hey! Look at the new Catholic here,” the friend declares. “You got my money?”

Abe shakes his head. “You fucking Jews,” he says. “It’s all about the money, isn’t it?”

As the former president laughs, the others offer weak smiles. No one wants to offend him. So Clinton goes on to tell a complicated anti-gay joke, involving a hermit living in a cabin in Arkansas. “The joke was really weird,” says one of the attendees, who couldn’t recall the details with any specificity. The former president has long seemed visibly uncomfortable about gays, according to acquaintances. Once the president spotted a male acquaintance and complimented him facetiously about wearing a pink tie. The acquaintance replied, “Thank you, Mr. President, I wore it just for you.” Clinton was silent for a long moment. He looked frazzled, then furious. The gay-tinged repartee “made Clinton nervous,” a participant in the conversation recalls.

Doug Band was no better at making strangers feel comfortable that afternoon at the racetrack. “You know there’s this model,” he said. “The press is saying Clinton’s fucking her.” He looked offended. “I’m the one who’s fucking her.” (The model Band was bragging about was Naomi Campbell, whom the
Washington Post
would tie the aide to a few years later.)

As Band holds forth, Clinton walks back to the table with another awkward recollection.

“You’ll remember I had that trouble with Gennifer Flowers,” Clinton tells the stunned guests. Of course, they all remember. “The day the scandal broke, we were having a meeting and James Carville came running in and told us that Gennifer Flowers is holding a news conference, right now to say all these things about me.”

Clinton continued, “Carville comes in. He says, ‘She’s saying all these bad things, all these terrible things about you. And claiming that she had an affair with you and so forth.’ ” The tableful of people listening to Clinton had no idea where he was going with the story. “Well, Stephanopoulos fell on the ground,” said Clinton, referring to his former aide and now ABC News personality George Stephanopoulos. “George fell on the floor. And he curled into the fetal position and he started crying. ‘It’s over. It’s over. We’re done, you know. You’re going to destroy us and all that.’ So Carville kicked him.”

As the guests looked on amazed, Clinton lapsed into a pretty good imitation of Carville’s well-known Cajun drawl. “Carville said, ‘Get up, bastard, stop doing that. What’s the matter with you, you stupid motherfucker?’ ”

In Clinton’s version of the story, Stephanopoulos then gets up. “And he’s sniffling and he’s all upset,” Clinton told the group. “And Carville says, ‘We’ll weather this, we’ll take this on, we’ll do whatever.’ ”

Clinton finished the story with a smile. The group of strangers was stunned that Clinton would go out of his way to trash his former aide in such a manner. Some, however, had their theories for his motivation—that Clinton was still feeling vengeful over the memoir Stephanopoulos wrote about his tenure with the Clintons.

“He laid George Stephanopoulos out,” one participant recalls. “It made him look like a little girl. Clinton used that phrase, saying he was even crying like a little girl.”

The recklessness of Clinton’s jokes and comments was perhaps rivaled by his behavior that day. At least two participants at the event confirmed a story involving Clinton and a woman often linked to him in newspapers and magazines over the years—Canadian politician Belinda Stronach, the daughter of Clinton’s host that afternoon, Frank Stronach.

In June 2003, the
Vancouver Sun
reported that “Stronach, [then] 36, and Clinton, [then] 57, have been spotted together on at least three other occasions, including a private dinner last July when he was in Toronto to honour rock and roll legend Ronnie Hawkins. Over the past six months, the two have dined together at the Democratic governors’ conference in Baltimore as well as a Democratic fund raiser in California.” The newspaper noted that spokesmen for both Clinton and Stronach insisted the relationship was not romantic.
14

In 2008, as Hillary made a bid for the White House,
Vanity Fair
also alluded to Clinton’s questionable relationships with women, naming specifically the actress Gina Gershon and Stronach. The propriety of the Clinton-Stronach relationship was also alluded to in the
New York Times
in 2006 under the headline “For Clintons, Delicate Dance of Married and Public Lives,” which stopped short of accusing the former president of adultery. “Several prominent New York Democrats, in interviews, volunteered that they became concerned last year over a tabloid photograph showing Mr. Clinton leaving B.L.T. Steak in Midtown Manhattan late one night after dining with a group that included Belinda Stronach, a Canadian politician,” the
Times
reported.
15

Clinton insiders date their first meeting to 2002, when Stronach was married to a Norwegian speed skater named Johann Olav Koss. With rumors of the Clinton-Stronach relationship already making the rounds in elite social circles, what Clinton did next, in the view of witnesses, seemed ill-considered at best. According to former ambassador Carlson, Clinton drove off with Stronach, described as an attractive woman wearing a tight, short skirt and displaying what an attendee called “a ton of cleavage.”

Belinda didn’t bother to tell her father that she was leaving with Clinton, and according to Carlson, “her father was freaked out. He was running around, upset she wasn’t there.”

The two returned just before the first race.

Such behavior was anything but charming. Indeed, it demonstrated, as the
Times
warned, Clinton’s penchant for interfering with his wife’s political ambitions: “Just as it is difficult to predict how voters would feel about Mrs. Clinton as a presidential candidate, Clinton advisors say, it is hard to foresee how they would judge the Clintons’ baggage in the context of their third White House bid.”
16

“Mr. Clinton is rarely without company in public,” the
Times
went on to note, “yet the company he keeps rarely includes his wife.”
17
At around that same time, ironically enough, Hillary Clinton was on the Senate floor defending the institution of marriage during debates over gay marriage legislation.

“I believe that marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman. I have had occasion in my life to defend marriage, to stand up for marriage, to believe in the hard work and challenge of marriage,” Hillary said on the floor of the Senate on July 13, 2004, discussing a constitutional amendment regarding marriage and her support for the Defense of Marriage Act.

“So I take umbrage at anyone who might suggest that those of us who worry about amending the Constitution are less committed to the sanctity of marriage.”

As the 2004 election dawned, Bill Clinton was still making every effort to ingratiate himself with Republicans, so much so that he had taken to comparing his administration to that of the business-friendly Dwight D. Eisenhower. Many liberal Democrats bought that argument, too, and the backlash gave rise to a progressive movement that saw a primary reason for existence in countering the Clintons’ studied moderation and chumminess with big business and Wall Street.

Running as a candidate of the left, Vermont governor Howard Dean criticized the Clintons, though in veiled terms, as “the Republican wing of the Democratic party.”
18
The attacks were said to have infuriated Bill Clinton, newspapers reported at the time. Though Dean did not win the Democratic nomination that year, his liberal supporters yearned for another candidate to challenge what increasingly came to be seen as the Clinton Democratic establishment.

Still suffering from middling approval ratings, Hillary took a pass on the 2004 race against the incumbent Bush. In truth, it wasn’t her move entirely. Clinton pleaded with John Kerry to select Hillary Clinton as his running mate. But he was rebuffed.

“I think she looked at it,” a former Clinton aide tells me in an interview, “and saw that it wasn’t a really good shot. They saw that they didn’t really want to take on an incumbent, you know. Because taking on an incumbent is harder.”

The deciding vote appeared to have come from Chelsea Clinton. According to published reports, the former first daughter urged her mother to keep her promise to New York State voters that she would serve a full Senate term if they elected her. At that point, Hillary, if she was seriously entertaining it at all, firmly closed the door on a run.
19

Besides, Bill was already working on an important side project in the Clintons’ charm offensive—one that promised to offer heavy dividends. He sought to make the Bush family, perhaps his most notorious political enemies, his new allies. And he succeeded in a historic fashion, changing the Clintons’ political fortunes dramatically.

4

Seducing the Bushes

“For their own reasons, the Bush people thought having Clinton with his father would be clever. They’re right. The consequence may be a Hillary Clinton presidency.”

—Newt Gingrich

If Clinton hoped to rehabilitate his image, and by implication Hillary’s, an improbable bonhomie with his most well-known adversaries would be an excellent beginning.

Just before 1 a.m. on December 26, 2004, tsunamis six stories tall crashed into the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and about a dozen other nations. The tsunamis’ cause was an oceanic earthquake registering magnitude 9.0, and its effect was massive devastation and death. More than two hundred thousand people died, and millions more were left homeless. Survivors needed medical care in the short term and an almost unimaginably costly rebuilding effort in the long term. In between, something needed to be done to stave off famine and the spread of disease.

Governments and private citizens across the globe were quick to promise tremendous amounts of aid—including a pledge of $350 million from the United States. But how to channel it all? How to minimize waste and make sure the money found its way to the people who could do the most good? And, since it would take about $10 billion to rebuild what the tsunamis had destroyed, how to raise enough?

The answer, President George W. Bush decided, was to put his father and his predecessor in charge. They had the gravitas. They excelled at fund-raising. And neither would be distracted by a day job. Both men immediately agreed to W.’s request to head the relief mission, and in February 2005 they spent four days in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives—an island nation that had lost 62 percent of its gross domestic product. Clinton saw in the trip an opportunity to help not just the wrecked region, but his family’s political fortunes as well.

“Being next to Herbert Walker Bush was good for Clinton,” says John McCain, who has observed both men up close for decades. “Bush 41 always had an unimpeachable reputation. I mean service in World War II; you know all the things that he did.” Clinton could only benefit from the proximity.

The psychology of the elder Bush is not complicated. Despite his later efforts to model himself a Texan, the elder Bush grew up an aristocratic Connecticut Yankee, in a land of country clubs, prep schools, and noblesse oblige. Bush’s maternal grandfather founded golf’s Walker Cup, and his father, Prescott, was a United States senator. Their country-club set prizes graciousness, good manners, and kind gestures, even small ones.

The old man “is the last of the great gentlemen,” an admiring former aide to the senior Bush tells me.

“We all love Bush 41,” John McCain says fondly. “He and Gerald Ford, both losers, were viewed in my life as two of the nicest people that inhabited the White House.”

Trained by his mother to demonstrate modesty and embrace service, Bush the elder is susceptible to graciousness as well as flattery. Greenwich, Connecticut, was a world where such messy things as ideologies were nuisances. A place where big ideas were dwarfed by small kindnesses and the proper showing of deference.

Bill Clinton’s wooing of the senior Bush thus began with the friendliest of arguments. As the former opponents flew together on an Air Force Boeing 757 toward South Asia, they argued over which ex-president would get to sleep in the lone bed. Bush, whose patrician politeness was the closest thing he had to an ideology, insisted Clinton should take it. Clinton wouldn’t hear of it. Touched by this act of selflessness, Bush would later say, “That meant a lot to me.”
1

In truth, it wasn’t that big of a sacrifice. As an aide later told me, Clinton ended up playing cards all night with Bush’s chief of staff.

Clinton’s “good son” act continued at every stop, when Clinton would respectfully wait at the bottom of the plane’s steps while the octogenarian Bush slowly descended. Clinton knew and at every opportunity abided by the code of chivalry Bush followed—the unwritten rules of small gestures, tactful words, and signs of respect passed down from Prescott Bush and his wife, Dorothy Walker Bush, to the heirs of their dynasty.

The senior Bush was smitten. As he would later gush to presidential chronicler Hugh Sidey, “I thought I knew him; but until this trip I did not really know him. . . . He has been very considerate of me.”
2

To be sure, on the tsunami trip Clinton wasn’t always on his best behavior. He talked too much for Bush’s tastes, and he was always running late—a true taboo in BushWorld. He also hit on Lani Miller, the redheaded White House aide whom Clinton couldn’t resist telling, “You remind me of my first girlfriend.” It was interpreted as a pickup line, not a literal comparison. Before Bill Clinton’s trip to South Asia with George H. W. Bush, he was held in unreserved contempt by many—perhaps most—Republicans, but after the trip and the many pictures and footage of the two former enemies hand in hand amid carnage and disaster, Clinton’s approval rating climbed.

In 2005, Clinton and the man who once called him a bozo
3
went to the Super Bowl together. The former rivals went golfing together. Bush’s chief of staff told a visitor to Bush’s Houston office that when Clinton underwent a follow-up heart surgery in March of that year, Bush was “deeply, deeply, personally disturbed by it.” The visitor, who did not know Bill Clinton well, insisted, “That wasn’t for show. I mean, the old man was just pacing, and it was like a family member had gone under the knife.”

Like a true member of the Bush family, Clinton spent part of his summer vacation that year with his new friend at Bush’s compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. He even took up Bush’s habit of letter writing—at least in his own way. Ever the ribald, Clinton sent Bush a cartoon depicting the younger Bush making a statement opposing gay marriage. The next frame showed Clinton and Bush 41 sitting on a couch holding hands. In the cartoon, Clinton says, “George, maybe we’d better cool it.”
4

Pope John Paul II, eighty-four, was nearing the twilight of his historic papacy, one that hastened the end of the Cold War and left him a reputation as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. He had survived two assassination attempts, battles with cancer, and other illnesses, and time was finally taking its toll. He had slowly been dying for years.

It was early 2005, and Jim Nicholson, a trim, mustachioed Coloradan, was ending his stint as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, a position to which he had been appointed by George W. Bush in 2001. The low-key ambassador, a West Point graduate and highly decorated Vietnam veteran, had been recalled to Washington to serve as Bush’s secretary of veterans affairs.

But before his departure, Nicholson made a final visit to the frail pontiff at the Apostolic Palace, which housed the pope’s luxurious private apartments in the Vatican. The palace, construction of which began in 1589, consists of a series of buildings that house the pope and his offices, as well as other administrative staff.

“It was a really personal visit,” Nicholson tells me, clearly moved. “To thank me for the work I’d done there.” As they met in a sitting room adorned with soft green high-back chairs, the Holy Father experienced trouble breathing. Suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he barely spoke above a whisper. Nicholson would be the last U.S. ambassador to be acquainted with the legendary pontiff.

On April 2, 2005, in that very apartment where he met with Nicholson, the Holy Father died. Ever cognizant of the Catholic vote—an obsession among Bush political advisors like Karl Rove—as well as deeply respectful of the pontiff’s contributions in the Cold War, the president himself decided to attend the pope’s state funeral. As the most recent U.S. ambassador, Nicholson was an obvious choice to accompany Bush, and he boarded the flight along with the First Lady, the prolific Catholic writer Michael Novak, and Bush’s two immediate predecessors: Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. Jimmy Carter chose not to accompany the delegation aboard Air Force One. This was all for the best, since both Bushes and Clinton had little personal regard for the Georgian.

For Nicholson, a devout Catholic, the trip undoubtedly conjured a wealth of emotions. It was almost incidental that the flight also offered Nicholson his first encounter with his onetime nemesis, Bill Clinton.

From 1997 to 2001, the entirety of Clinton’s tumultuous second term, Nicholson had served as the Republican National Committee chairman. In that time, on radio and television, the Colorado lawyer was the chief Republican spokesman against the Clinton administration. And the mild-mannered westerner had taken to his job with relish. With the 2000 election approaching, Nicholson took memorable aim not only at Clinton, but also his would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore.

One of the more famous encounters occurred after Nicholson authorized advertising on a massive billboard situated across the street from Gore-Lieberman campaign headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. The billboard displayed a giant photograph of Gore embracing Clinton beneath a Gore quote that had labeled Clinton “the greatest president ever!” In 2000, at the nadir of Clinton’s personal popularity and as the Monica Lewinsky scandal continued to be a drag on Gore’s fortunes, the billboard proved a major irritant to Gore campaign staffers, who were greeted with it every time they drove into work. It also outraged the famously petulant vice president, who was offended and embarrassed by Clinton’s private behavior and longed to keep his distance. “[Gore] was just so upset about the Lewinsky matter and angry about it,” Joe Lieberman tells me in an interview, “not just because he disagreed with it, but because I think he felt that it was going to hurt him in the campaign.” The billboard was just another reminder of the scandal and the toll it might have on Gore’s personal fortunes.

“[Gore] tried to use the muscle he had in Tennessee to have it taken down,” a grayer Nicholson remembers, when I visited recently with him in his law office in downtown Washington, D.C. “The outdoor advertising company said they were getting a tremendous amount of pressure.” Nicholson finally relented, knowing that the removal of the sign would lead to another burst of publicity, and more fury from the Gore campaign. In addition to harassing Gore, Nicholson had at one point or another accused Clinton of dishonesty, corruption, shamelessness, pursuing “a legacy of vengeance,” and of “practicing the politics of personal destruction.”

Now, in the spring of 2005, aboard Air Force One as it jetted toward Rome, Nicholson and Clinton met eye to eye. To those who haven’t been on the presidential plane, it might seem like a vast fortress in the sky. Large it is, but not so large that VIPs don’t cross paths rather easily. This was exactly what happened with Clinton and Nicholson as they made their way down the narrow, tan-carpeted corridor.

“Ah, Nicholson, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” said the former president. He looked trimmer than he did during his time in office. His hair, overdue for a cut, was almost completely white.

“Hello, Mr. President,” Nicholson replied.

“For four years you did nothing but beat me up,” Clinton said, with a chuckle. He remembered specifically a vacation with Hillary in the summer of 1999. “Every time we turned on the TV or the radio, I had to hear you beating up on me.”

Nicholson is not a visibly emotional man, and he took Clinton’s ribbing in stride. “That was my job, Mr. President.”

“I know,” Clinton replied with a smile, as if to say,
That’s politics. All part of the game
. Always eager to forge a connection, Clinton referred to a close mutual friend who lived in Denver. “[Jim] Lyons is always telling me you’re a good guy.”

“Good to know,” Nicholson replied.

“Anyway,” Clinton added, leaning in toward the former ambassador, “you can make all this up to me by telling me who the next pope’s going to be.”

“Oh, Mr. President,” Nicholson said, with a slight turn of his head, “the Holy Spirit’s not talking to me about that.” Which, in fact, was not wholly accurate.

Nicholson did have thoughts on the matter, detailed ones. As part of their duties, every ambassador regularly assesses candidates who might replace the current head of state. And Nicholson, a seasoned political operative and a committed Catholic, had a keen sense of the politics and intrigues behind a papal succession. But he saw no need to share any of this with Bill Clinton.

“Aw, come on,” Clinton pressed.

“Sorry,” Nicholson replied. Shortly thereafter, the two parted company. At least for the moment.

A few hours later, Nicholson found himself in a senior officials’ compartment aboard the plane with Clinton, both the current and the former Presidents Bush, and a few other very senior aides.

Clinton and the Bushes were chatting amiably when seemingly out of the blue, Clinton turned to his successor. “George, make Nicholson tell us who the next pope’s going to be.”

George W. Bush, in his usual blunt, to-the-point way, quickly put his former envoy on the spot. “Do you have anything on that?” he asked Nicholson.

“Yes, I do, Mr. President,” he replied, addressing his boss and now giving a straight and forthcoming answer.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think it’s going to be Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.”

“Really?” Clinton interjected. His tone betrayed surprise—and skepticism. “It won’t be Ratzinger; he’s a German. They’ll never elect a German pope.”

The ambassador doubled down, insisting it was his best guess from what he’d been hearing.

“No,” Clinton said, although he seemed to be dwelling on the possibility in his head. “Why do you think so?”

“Because he is the dean of the College of Cardinals. He is a very highly respected, well-known theologian. He’s been in the job as the keeper of the faith, in the Dicastery for the Propagation of the Faith in the Curia. He’s known worldwide. He is very respected. He doesn’t want the job, he wants to go to Bavaria and play the piano and read and take walks and pray. He’s also going to preside over all these ceremonies that we’re flying to this morning.”