Living History (17 page)

I loved Chelsea’s growing assertiveness, though it wasn’t always convenient. Around Christmas, 1988, I went duck hunting with Dr. Frank Kumpuris, a distinguished surgeon and good friend of mine, who invited me to join him, his two doctor sons, Drew and Dean, and a few other buddies at their hunting cabin. I hadn’t shot much since my days at Lake Winola with my dad, but I thought it would be fun. That’s how I found myself standing hip deep in freezing water, waiting for dawn in eastern Arkansas. When the sun rose, the ducks flew overhead and I made a lucky shot, hitting a banded duck. When I got home, Chelsea was waiting for me, outraged to wake up and learn that I had left home before dawn to go “kill some poor little duck’s mommy or daddy.” My efforts at explaining were futile. She didn’t speak to me for a whole day.

Although Bill decided not to run in 1988, the nominee, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, asked him to give the nominating speech at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta. It turned into a fiasco. Dukakis and his staff had reviewed and approved every word of Bill’s text ahead of time, but the speech was longer than the delegates or the television networks expected. Some delegates on the floor began yelling at Bill to finish.

This was a humiliating introduction to the nation, and many observers assumed Bill’s political future was over. Eight days later, though, he was on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Sbow, making fun of himself and playing his saxophone. Yet another comeback.

After Bill was reelected Governor in 1990, Democrats across the country approached him once again about running for President. That encouragement reflected the assessment that George H. W Bush was out of touch with most Americans. Although Bush’s popularity remained astronomical in the aftermath of the Gulf War, I thought his performance on domestic issues―particularly the economy―made him vulnerable. I had realized how unfamiliar President Bush was with many of the problems facing America when I spoke with him at an Education Summit he had convened of all the Governors in Charlottesville, Virginia, in September 1989. As the wife of the Democratic co-chair of the Summit for the National Governors Association, I was seated next to President Bush at a grand dinner held at Monticello. We enjoyed a cordial relationship and had been around each other many times at the White House or the annual Governors meetings. We talked about the American health care system. I said we had the best system in the world if you wanted a heart transplant but not if you wanted a baby to survive his or her first birthday.

Our rate of infant mortality at that time placed us behind eighteen other industrialized nations, including Japan, Canada and France. President Bush was incredulous and said, “You can’t be right about that.”

I told him, “I’ll get you the statistics to prove it.”

He replied, “I’ll get my own.”

The next day, during a meeting with the Governors, he slipped Bill a note: “Tell Hillary she was right.”

This time I believed Bill should carefully consider whether to run. In June of 1991, he attended the annual Bilderberg Conference in Europe, which brought together leaders from all over the world. After listening to Bush Administration officials defend their policies, he called to tell me how frustrated he was with their prescriptions for economic growth and nearly everything else. “This is crazy,” he said. “We’re not doing anything to get the country ready for the future.” I could tell as much from the tone of his voice as his words that he was seriously thinking through the arguments he would make if he decided to run. He had enhanced his national standing through his work in the National Governors Association, and his record in Arkansas on education, welfare reform and economic development was considered a success. When we attended the annual Governors Conference in Seattle in August, I was not surprised that a number of his Democratic colleagues told him they would support him if he was serious about running.

After the conference, Bill, Chelsea and Itook a short vacation to Victoria and Vancouver, Canada, to talk over what he should do. Chelsea, now eleven, was significantly more mature than she had been four years earlier and ready to offer her opinions. She and I agreed: Bill could be a good President. Luckily, the primary campaign would be shorter and more focused than usual because Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was running, which meant Bill could bypass the Iowa caucus and go straight to New Hampshire. He already had spent time there setting up a DLC chapter, and he thought he could compete against Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts for the “new Democrat” vote. As Bill discussed the pros and cons with us, he assured Chelsea that his schedule would include all of her important dates, like the annual Arkansas Ballet performance of The Nutcracker, and that we would still go to Renaissance Weekend over New Year’s like we always did. I could not have predicted all that would happen, but I believed Bill was prepared on the substance of what needed to be done for the country and how to run a winning political campaign.

We figured: What did we have to lose? Even if Bill’s run failed, he would have the satisfaction of knowing he had tried, not just to win, but to make a difference for America.

That seemed to be a risk worth taking.

I got a hint of what it took to survive a presidential campaign in September 1991, when I bumped into Hal Bruno in a hallway of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Bruno, a veteran television producer and a casual acquaintance, was in town to check out potential presidential candidates during the fall meeting of the Democratic National Committee.

He asked me how it was going.

I must have looked bewildered. “I don’t know. This is all new to me. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Just this,” he said. “Be very careful who you trust. This is different from anything you have been through before. Other than that, try to enjoy the experience!”

It was sage advice, though it would be impossible to run an undertaking as complex and pressured as a presidential campaign without trusting an awful lot of people. We started with the array of friends and campaign professionals we knew we could rely on.

As soon as he decided in September to enter the race, Bill contacted a skeletal crew of advisers to help him launch his candidacy. Craig Smith, a longtime aide, left the Governor’s payroll to work on operations until a full-fledged campaign could be assembled, and he then became its Director of State Operations. On October 2, 1991, many of Bill’s advisers were in Little Rock to help him shape his announcement speech scheduled for the following day. The scene of creative chaos in the mansion that night would be typical of the entire campaign. Stan Greenberg, the pollster, and Frank Greer, the media adviser, along with Al From, the President of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and Bruce Reed, the DLC’s Policy Director, huddled around Bill all day and into the night, trying to get him to finish his crucial speech. Bill made phone calls, read through his previous speeches and dove into trays of food laid out on the table. Chelsea, eleven years old and a budding ballerina, jetted between rooms and pirouetted around her father and our guests until her bedtime. At four in the morning, the speech was done.

At noon the next day, in front of the Old State House in Little Rock, a reenergized Bill Clinton stood with Chelsea and me before a bank of microphones and TV cameras and declared his intention to run for President. His speech laid out his emerging critique of the Bush Administration. “Middle-class people are spending more time on the job, less time with their children and bringing home less money to pay more for health care and housing and education. The poverty rates are up, the streets are meaner and ever more children are growing up in broken families. Our country is headed in the wrong direction, fast. It’s falling behind, it’s losing its way, and all we’ve gotten out of Washington is status quo paralysis, neglect and selfishness … not leadership and vision.”

The campaign he wanted to run would be “about ideas, not slogans” and would offer “leadership that will restore the American dream, fight for the forgotten middle class, provide more opportunity, demand more responsibility from each of us and create a stronger community in this great country of ours.” Behind his rhetoric were the specific plans that Bill would present during the course of the primary campaign to persuade Democratic voters that he had the best chance to defeat President Bush.

The mainstream media didn’t give Bill much hope of making it through the primaries, let alone being elected President. He was initially dismissed as an obscure if colorful outsider, handsome and articulate but, at age forty-six, too young and inexperienced for the job. As his message of change caught on with potential voters, the press―and President Bush’s backers―started to take a closer look at Bill Clinton. And at me.

If the first forty-four years of my life were an education, the thirteen-month presidential campaign was a revelation. Despite all the good advice we had received and all the time Bill and I had spent in the political arena, we were unprepared for the hardball politics and relentless scrutiny that comes with a run for the Presidency. Bill had to make the case nationwide for his political beliefs, and we had to endure exhaustive inspection of every aspect of our lives. We had to get acquainted with a national press corps that knew little about us and even less about where we came from. And we had to manage our own emotions in the glare of the public spotlight, through the course of an increasingly meanspirited and personal campaign.

I relied on my friends and staff to help us through the rough patches. Bill put together a terrific team, including James Carville and Paul Begala, who had masterminded Harris Wofford’s election to the Senate from Pennsylvania in 1991. James, a Louisiana Cajun and ex-Marine, bonded with Bill immediately; they both relished their Southern roots, adored their mamas and understood that presidential politics was a contact sport. Paul, a talented Texan who occasionally had to serve as a translator for Carville’s rapid-fire patois, embodied a passion for populism and commitment to civility, no easy feat. David Wilhelm, who became campaign manager, was from Chicago and intuitively understood how to win the contest for delegates on the ground, person by person. Another Chicagoan, Rahm Emanuel, had sharp political skills and a genius for fundraising, and became the finance manager. George Stephanopoulos, a Rhodes Scholar and aide to Congressman Richard Gephardt, figured out how to respond instantly and effectively to the political attacks and to seize the offensive with the press. Bruce Reed, also a Rhodes Scholar, who came to the campaign from the Democratic Leadership Council, had a gift for expressing complex policy ideas in simple and compelling language and was instrumental in articulating Bill’s campaign message. The DLC and its founder Al From were essential to the development of Bill’s policies and message in the campaign.

Bill and I also relied on a dedicated team from Arkansas including Rodney Slater, Carol Willis, Diane Blair, Ann Henry, Maurice Smith, Patty Howe Criner, Carl and Margaret Whillock, Betsey Wright, Sheila Bronfman, Mack and Donna McLarry and so many others who put their lives on hold to elect the first President from Arkansas.

I had begun to assemble my own staff as soon as Bill announced his candidacy. This was a departure from protocol, in which the candidate’s staff controls his wife’s schedule and message. I was different-something that would become increasingly apparent in the months ahead.

The first person I called for help was Maggie Williams, then in a Ph.D. program at the University of Pennsylvania. Maggie and I had worked together at the Children’s Defense Fund during the 1980s. I admired her skills as a leader and communicator and thought she would be able to handle with aplomb whatever happened. Although she couldn’t come on fulltime until late 1992, she offered advice and support throughout the campaign.

Three young women who started working for me in the campaign became invaluable and stayed with me through the eight White House years. Patti Solis, a politically active daughter of Mexican immigrants, had grown up in Chicago and worked for Mayor Richard M. Daley. She had never done scheduling in a presidential campaign, and I had never had anyone tell me what I had to do and where and when to do it, but Patti turned out to be a natural as my scheduler, juggling the challenges of politics, people and preparation with intelligence, decisiveness and laughter. She ran my life hour by hour for nine years, becoming a close friend and valued adviser on whom I still rely today.

Capricia Penavic Marshall, a dynamic young lawyer from Cleveland, was also the daughter of immigrants―her mother from Mexico and her father a Croatian refugee from Tito’s Yugoslavia. When she saw Bill on television giving a speech in 1991, she decided she wanted to be involved in his campaign and worked for months rounding up convention delegates in Ohio. Finally she was hired onto my staff to do advance work, primarily a young person’s game and a premier educational experience in politics and in life. Capricia took to advance like a pro, and despite an unfortunate first trip where she was waiting for me at the wrong airport in Shreveport, we hit it off. Her good-humored grace under pressure served her―and me―well when she became the White House social secretary in Bill’s second term.

Kelly Craighead, a beautiful former competitive diver from California, was already an experienced events planner when she became my trip director, which meant she oversaw my life on the road. Everywhere I went over the next eight years―around the block or around the world―Kelly was by my side. Her slogan, “Fail to plan, plan to fail,” became one of our campaign mantras. No one worked harder or longer hours to iron out every last detail of any trip I took. Hers was a demanding and exhausting job, requiring the combined talents of a general and a diplomat. She also had a lot of insight, dedication and spunk. Knowing that she was looking out for me gave me comfort and confidence on even the hardest days throughout the White House years.

In addition to all the young people who signed on to help, Brooke Shearer volunteered to travel with me. Brooke, her husband, Strobe Talbott, and her entire family had been friends of Bill’s since he and Strobe were Rhodes Scholars together. As soon as Bill and I became a couple, they became friends of mine. And their sons became close to Chelsea.