Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine (29 page)

Obama has no more elections in which he will run. No more opportunities to see his name on the ballot, make his case to voters, and push his favored views and positions. All that is left are the remaining years he has in office and the ability to help choose a successor best able to carry forward his vision. Electing a Republican in 2016 would repudiate his vision, perhaps dismantle it. That wouldn’t do. For Obama not to think about who could replace him as Democratic Party leader would be political malpractice.

Obama’s was hardly a unique circumstance. In 2000, Bill Clinton cast aside his own misgivings about the maladroit and wonky Gore to champion his cause. To this day, he is baffled why Gore refused to run as if he were seeking a third Clinton term. And why he refused to allow Clinton to campaign for him—even in states like Arkansas, where he might have been able to make a difference—perhaps the
decisive
difference.

The 2004 move by Kerry to rebuff Clinton’s suggestion that he pick his wife is still a source of tension between Kerry and Clinton—and perhaps the main reason the current secretary of state, Hillary’s successor, is still scared of Bill Clinton, according to a former diplomat who knows Kerry well.

In 2008, George W. Bush swallowed his concerns about his onetime enemy, John McCain, gauging him the best possible choice to win that year’s election. He knew McCain would cement in place his Afghanistan and Iraq policies and in effect demonstrate that the voters didn’t dislike Bush as much as the polls seemed to indicate. But just as Bill Clinton was kept away from the Gore campaign in 2000, Bush was considered too toxic to be seen too often on the campaign trail in 2008. The most help he could provide, the McCain people determined, was to be close but not too close.

In 2016, Obama faces the same decision—a search for someone who will keep his pet projects in place, whose election would serve as a vindication of sorts of his record. If a Republican succeeds him as president, that person will almost certainly work to enact his party’s number-one political priority—the repeal or neutralization of Obama’s signature health-care plan. A Republican victory would look like the voters had turned against the increasingly unpopular Obama, that Obama might even have fatally damaged the Democratic brand. Barack Obama, a proud, even vain man, does not want that as his political epitaph. He needs someone who can solidify his legacy. And so he needs someone who will not treat him like he is a scandal-ridden Bill Clinton or a trigger-happy George W. Bush. Someone who can win.

Of course, Obama would not want people to see it this way. He probably does not want to see himself that way. Petty politics—well, he might think that is beneath him. Successors, party unity, legacies—those were the sorts of things that
a Washington insider
worries about. Not him. His aides were equally emphatic, assuring reporters and biographers how little he cared about party succession. He was neutral in the potential rivalry between Hillary and Biden, or whatever other Democrat might want to run. It didn’t matter to him. That he would involve himself in the contest in any way would be “inconceivable.”
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This is the line being fed to political reporters to this day. It is of course demonstrably untrue.

In a clear affront to the sitting vice president—again something Obama could easily have stopped—Mrs. Clinton has been
publicly
blessed by those closest to the president.

One of the most notable signals came from an unlikely source, the usually discreet David Plouffe, who is often considered “[t]he architect of Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign,” as the
Washington Post
put it, with “one of the best political minds in the Democratic Party.” Obama himself praised to the sky his political handler by calling him, after he secured election in 2008, “the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best—the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.”

So it was altogether startling that Plouffe would say such nice things not about Obama’s running mate Joe Biden but of his rival—Hillary Clinton.

“I think all of us who went through that primary just have the highest degree of admiration for her. She obviously would be an enormously strong candidate if she decided to run; we’ve got others obviously who will look at it certainly if she doesn’t. But it’s too soon to know,” said Plouffe at a public event.
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“She is in both parties right now by far I think the most interesting candidate, probably the strongest candidate. But she has right now the opportunity to take some well deserved and rare time for her with her family and figure things out.”

Calling her the “strongest” candidate was an enormous vote of confidence—and one that made the sitting vice president, Joe Biden, look particularly weak, since Plouffe ostensibly worked for Biden, too, when he was at the White House.

Plouffe made the comments toward the beginning of 2013 at a public event in New York City at the 92nd Street Y. And while he said that he wouldn’t work for her campaign, that’s not to be taken as a slight—those who’ve engineered winning presidential campaigns (from James Carville’s 1992 win with Bill Clinton to Karl Rove’s 2000 and 2004 wins with George W. Bush), it’s basically unprecedented for winners to come back for a second time with a completely new candidate to achieve something they’ve already achieved.

But that doesn’t mean top political advisors don’t have a keen insight into politics—and doesn’t mean they can’t and won’t help from the sidelines. So that means that when David Axelrod, the strategist who helped bring the young state senator from Illinois to the White House and helped to shape the president into the man he is now, says something, Democrats will listen. “[S]he is an indefatigable candidate and very, very powerful, and she’s only stronger now for having four years of I think splendid leadership,” Axelrod recently said. “I think she’d be in a very, very strong position.”
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Even President Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has been publicly touting Hillary. “I’m behind Hillary if she runs. And I think she will, but that’s up to her. If she runs, I’m in,” Emanuel said. That by itself might not be considered too surprising: Emanuel served in President Clinton’s White House and has always remained close to Hillary Clinton, as well as to key Clinton insiders like James Carville and Paul Begala.

Except Rahm, who has been referred to as “The Godfather” by websites like the
Drudge Report
, now has a political machine of his own: It came with his election to mayor of Chicago, which position he secured shortly after leaving the Obama White House. And some close to him think he might be gearing up himself for a run. “I don’t know, because you can’t tell what Hillary does and how she’s viewed. She gets her first right of refusal. That’s not to say other people will look at it, but it’s clear, she gets first right of refusal. People like Rahm. I think they’ll look at it depending on what she does,” says a former cabinet member who served in the Obama administration with both Hillary Clinton and Emanuel.

But this friend of Rahm’s pulls back a little when I push him on whether the Chicago mayor would really run. “Rahm and I talk on a very regular basis. We still talk about once a week and he and I are just very good friends. He is still focused on trying to . . . he’s got fiscal problems in the city and he’s really focused on being mayor and he’ll run for reelection and that’s really what he’s focused on. I mean, if you were asking my opinion, I’ve never had an in-depth . . . the things that Rahm and I talk about are what’s going on in the city.”

“Absolutely not,” Rahm told CNN when asked whether he was interested in pursuing a bid for the White House. “I have no interest.”
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Regardless, plenty of other Obama minions are going all in behind Hillary. Obama field director Jeremy Bird has signed up with the Ready for Hillary super PAC. And the lanky campaign manager for President Obama’s reelection campaign, Jim Messina, has already joined Priorities USA, the leading super PAC behind President Obama in 2012, which is now positioning itself for a possible Clinton White House bid in 2016.

That super PAC was run last election cycle by Paul Begala, a key Clinton aide since the very beginning of President Clinton’s rise to national prominence. Begala would be expected to remain involved in the super PAC as it positions to get behind Hillary. Some say that the Clintons, fearing a more amateurish super PAC, specifically implored Begala to get more involved with Priorities USA. “The PAC would act as the centralized pro-Clinton advertising wing,” news outlets reported.
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Stephanie Cutter, another top Obama advisor, who is now a public relations specialist, trading on her close ties to Obamaland, and a cohost of CNN
Crossfire
, told reporters, “If Secretary Clinton runs, she’ll be the nominee—the first female nominee of either party.”
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The media has taken notice. “Three of the president’s former political hands have all but declared publicly Clinton the Democratic nominee if she runs,” reported
Politico
’s Maggie Haberman. “It at times has been a cringe-inducing—even if unintended—diss to the man who was on the Democratic ticket with Obama less than a year ago, Joe Biden.”

Then of course there are the moves that are being made by Obama himself. First was the
60 Minutes
segment. But even after Hillary left office, Obama has gone out of his way to keep Hillary and her husband, Bill, close.

There was the summer lunch at the White House in 2013, carefully choreographed for the press. At President Obama’s invitation, Hillary and Obama dined on grilled chicken and pasta jambalaya, along with a salad. They sat outside at a table set for two. A photo of the lunch was released by the White House—something the White House wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t wanted to be asked about it.

“As you know, over the course of the last four years, and as much as has been written about over the last four years how Secretary Clinton and the president have developed not just a strong working relationship but also a genuine friendship,” said a White House spokesman. “And so it’s largely friendship that’s on the agenda for the lunch today. So it’s not a working lunch as much as it is an opportunity for the two who saw each other on a pretty frequent basis over the course of the last four years to get a chance to catch up.” When asked whether they’d be talking about work, the spokesman replied, “The purpose of the lunch was chiefly social, but given that the president and Secretary Clinton worked on [Middle East peace] pretty closely together over the course of the last four years, I’d be surprised if it didn’t come up.”
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“I bet Joe Biden loves this,” one former White House speechwriter joked in an email to me at the time. Indeed, if Obama wanted to dispel the idea that he was showing preference to Hillary, he could have invited Biden along. Or closed the lunch to the press.

Hillary tried to ease the tension by having breakfast with Biden the next morning—but that sort of missed the point: that Obama was going out of his way to publicize a meeting with Hillary, not that she had accepted the president’s request for a lunch date.

On November 20, Obama offered Bill Clinton the nation’s highest honor—the Presidential Medal of Freedom—and again, it was something he did not have to do. In the East Room of the White House, the same place Clinton’s official portrait had been unveiled a decade earlier by George W. Bush, Obama awarded the highest civilian honor to the president who had been impeached for not telling the truth to sexual harassment investigators.

“We honor a leader who we still remember with such extraordinary fondness,” Obama said in his public remarks. He painted the portrait of Bill Clinton that the former president loves best—the devoted mama’s boy who cares about nothing more than helping the poor and downtrodden. As Obama put it, “[Bill] still remembers as a child waving goodbye to his mom—tears in her eyes—as she went off to nursing school so she could provide for her family. And I think lifting up families like his own became the story of Bill Clinton’s life. He remembered what his mom had to do on behalf of him and he wanted to make sure that he made life better and easier for so many people all across the country that were struggling in those same ways and had those same hopes and dreams. So as a governor, he transformed education so more kids could pursue those dreams. As president, he proved that with the right choices you could grow the economy, lift people out of poverty, shrink our deficits, and still invest in families, health, our schools, science, technology. In other words, we can go farther when we look out for each other.”
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Bill Clinton appeared deeply affected.

“This year it’s just a little more special because this marks the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy establishing this award,” Obama said. As a youngster, Clinton came to Washington to meet his hero, John F. Kennedy. The photo of a dashing young Clinton shaking the hand of the liberal hero would often be exploited during Clinton’s own ascendancy to the White House—with the photo linking Clinton to Kennedy and implying that Clinton was destined to be president of the United States.

That day, November 20, would be an entire day with the Clintons by Obama’s side. After the ceremony, the Clintons and the Obamas, the president joined by his wife, Michelle, took the short trip in the official motorcade across the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery. There the foursome laid a large wreath at the grave of John F. Kennedy, America’s thirty-fifth president, who had been assassinated five decades earlier in Dallas, almost to the day.

It was a chilly November day. Dressed in long overcoats, the four would place their hands over their hearts as a military bugler played taps. The White House pool reporter would note that taps was played “to the accompaniment of clicking cameras,” a sound the Clintons must have been pleased to hear.

“This afternoon, Michelle and I were joined by President Clinton and Secretary Clinton to pay tribute to that proud legacy. We had a chance to lay a wreath at the gravesite at Arlington, where President Kennedy is surrounded by his wife and younger brothers, and where he will rest in peace for all time, remembered not just for his victories in battle or in politics, but for the words he uttered all those years ago: ‘We . . . will be remembered . . . for our contribution to the human spirit,’ ” Obama would say that evening at a dinner at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., to honor recipients of the award, the third public appearance he would make with the Clintons in less than twelve hours.
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