This Town (25 page)

Like Holbrooke, Axelrod was being seriously worn down by the parasitic agents of the capital. For much of 2009 and 2010, the Washington genius set had determined that Obama’s main deficiency was Axelrod’s domain: a “communications problem.” Obama had engineered passage of historic legislation, rescued the economy from collapse, and was killing terrorists like mosquitos, yet was apparently doing a lousy job selling his success. Thus, Axelrod—the communications overseer and revered protector of the Obama message—was blamed for having “lost the narrative.” He took it hard and worried about his standing with the president.

Axelrod revered Obama, to a degree that he was sometimes teased as a lovestruck groupie. “I’ve heard him be called a ‘Moonie,’” joked Axelrod’s friend William Daley, the future Obama chief of staff. Some of the teasing would spill into ridicule and frustration, much of it disgorged behind Axelrod’s back (the Obama White House in general could be quite passive-aggressive that way). One big Axe critic was Anita Dunn, a top aide on the 2008 campaign who did a brief stint as the White House communications director in 2009. Dunn derided Axelrod to colleagues for being disorganized, hard to persuade about anything message-related, and reluctant to “push back” on the president in meetings.

Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, a close ally of Dunn’s, and Axelrod’s rival for first-among-equals status to Obama in the White House, would subtly undermine Axelrod by referring to him to the president as “one of the political guys.” Jarrett, on the other hand, viewed herself—not Axelrod—as a personal custodian of the president’s lofty motives and gifts. One high-level White House official dismissed Jarrett’s role in the White House as “the voice of purity.” Other detractors called her “the Night Stalker,” in part for the regularity with which she would join the president and first lady at the residence after work. Just as the president was special, Jarrett believed that she, too, was special in her role. She was “mindful of being more than just an aide,” said one high-level White House adviser. In an interview, Jarrett said her “first among equals” status with the president had been overstated and mischaracterized. “I think there is a mystique about our relationship that is not reality,” she told me. “I do realize that this has become Washington lore, and I think it’s perpetuated by people who may feel uncomfortable with the relationship we have.” Still, coworkers believed Jarrett could be jealous and protective of her special status.

After a gunman opened fire at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in June of 2009, killing a security guard, the FBI found personal information about Axelrod on the shooter. Axelrod was then granted Secret Service protection. Jarrett was also given protection (being important enough to merit a Secret Service detail has been a source of intra-office envy through many administrations). While a high-profile White House official—especially an African-American woman, such as Jarrett—could legitimately be considered a more likely target than most, several West Wing officials I spoke to were dubious there had been any special threats against her. They suspected, rather, that Jarrett asked the president to authorize a detail out of “earpiece envy.” “The person Valerie felt threatened by was Axe,” quipped one top aide. Jarrett, who declined to discuss the Secret Service arrangement, has dismissed that notion as ridiculous and offensive. She has maintained that the decision was not hers, and that being accompanied by agents is more of an intrusion than a perk.

Regardless, Obama’s allegedly close-knit team of advisers was very much a myth at this point. Dunn, who left the White House in late 2009 to run the strategic communications firm SKDKnickerbocker, was resented by some of her former West Wing colleagues over her willingness to represent clients whose agendas were at odds with that of the White House, which she was still advising and in close touch with (her husband, Bob Bauer, was President Obama’s White House counsel). For instance, Dunn was instrumental in helping Michelle Obama set up her “Let’s Move!” program to stop obesity in children. Then, as a consultant, she worked with food manufacturers and media firms to block restrictions on commercials for sugary foods targeting children. (In the two years after she left the administration, Dunn cleared every potential client with the White House deputy chief of staff’s office for approval, according to a high-level White House source; if anyone objected, Dunn would not take on the account.) Obama’s advisers, chief among them Axelrod, also believed that Dunn had fomented a great deal of internal division at the White House during her relatively brief time there. Many top aides also suspected Dunn of leaking anecdotes about internal doings that appeared in books published during the first term. Among those books were
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
by former
Wall Street Journal
reporter Ron Suskind and
The Obamas
by
New York Times
reporter Jodi Kantor. Both books included accounts that were publicly disputed by the White House in an orchestrated push-back effort that, according to sources familiar with the operations, Dunn played a major role in.

As viciously political as the above-it-all Obama World could be, it was still considered an affront inside to be seen as “too political” or “an operator.” Superior nonchalance, shrugging self-deprecation, and hardheaded wonkishness remained the preferred persona. To behave otherwise, “politically,” was to be like a typical Washington hustler, a throwback to the Clinton era: someone like Richard Holbrooke.

Finally, Holbrooke succeeded in getting on Axelrod’s calendar for the morning of December 10, 2010. The meeting was brief and to the point. He made his “ask” about seeing the president. Axelrod was noncommittal but not entirely discouraging. Before he departed, Holbrooke mentioned to Axe that it was noteworthy he was still in his job—and that Jim Jones was not.

•   •   •

F
riends of Dick were becoming alarmed about his health.

He was pushing seventy, under crushing stress, barely sleeping, and getting fat. He had acquired that disconcerting “Could drop dead at any moment” look that comes over frantically driven and out-of-shape men of a certain age. Washington is filled with these. Bloated and beet-faced. Russert was like this at the end. Ted Kennedy wore the Death Look for much of his last three decades. “It’s something you can’t do forever,” Axelrod said about the big Washington job. “Or it will kill you.”

Holbrooke was sweating and out of breath in his morning meeting with Axelrod. He accepted Axelrod’s offer of a cup of water, drank it, and then rushed off for a meeting with Secretary Clinton.

Clinton had also voiced particular worry about Holbrooke. She can become very maternal about personal health matters. As first lady, when young Chelsea was sick, Hillary always prepared for her a signature convalescent dish of applesauce and eggs. Numerous staffers over the years have stories about Hillary personally coordinating their medical care during health crises. Late in her husband’s second term, she quietly turned over much of her life to caring for her best friend, Diane Blair, who was dying of cancer in Arkansas.

Soon after he left the White House on the morning of December 10, Holbrooke showed up in Secretary Clinton’s seventh-floor suite at the State Department’s Foggy Bottom offices. He threw his jacket off and sat down, and his face suddenly became pained and purple. His blue eyes went pale. Blood rushed to his head. “Richard, what’s wrong?” the secretary asked. Holbrooke’s chest heaved and he placed his hands over his eyes.

“I don’t know,” said Holbrooke. “I’ve never felt this way before.”

Holbrooke walked on his own to the State Department’s clinic downstairs. The in-house physician was not there, and the wait for an ambulance was interminable—about ten or fifteen minutes, to the frustration of everyone, especially Holbrooke, who remained conscious but agonized. At one point his legs gave out and he fell to the hallway floor. When the ambulance finally arrived, Holbrooke was taken to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where Secretary Clinton had called her personal physician to expect his arrival.

There, Holbrooke was diagnosed with a torn aorta, often a result of high blood pressure. It would require immediate, elaborate surgery. News of Holbrooke’s collapse hit the wires and Twitter. As with every report of a famous person hospitalized, Holbrooke was said to be “in good spirits” (or, if unconscious, “resting comfortably”). Despite intense pain, he remained lucid, chatting with his doctors. One doctor urged him to try to relax, suggesting that he think about the beach or something. “I hate the beach,” Holbrooke said, according to his deputy, Dan Feldman, who was with him. Besides, Holbrooke said, he could not relax because he was in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Ending the war in Afghanistan—that would relax me!” Holbrooke said. After the remark was reported, it became fodder for critics of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. Either way, Holbrooke would be pleased that his fateful words would be a source of discussion and possibly imbued with historic weight. His archivist could sort it out later.

Holbrooke underwent twenty hours of surgery, an intricate last-resort procedure from which he would not awaken. Reports now characterized his condition as “grave,” which is a surefire signal to get the obits ready (no one comes back from “grave”). Hillary Clinton spent hours at the hospital, silently holding Kati’s hand. On the night of December 13, President Obama attended a holiday reception at the State Department—an annual event for the chiefs of diplomatic missions to the United States. Obama and Secretary Clinton both spoke and paid tribute to Holbrooke, and they also met privately with Holbrooke’s family while Christmas carolers regaled the partygoers. Later that night, Holbrooke died.

•   •   •

T
he news, while expected, still sent Russert-esque shock through This Town. A hugely present figure was suddenly absent. It resonated through a book party for David Eisenhower (who had written something about his grandfather) at Al Hunt and Judy Woodruff’s house, from which Andrea Mitchell would head immediately to cover the breaking news. Politico editor John Harris hailed Holbrooke as “a bucking stallion of ego” who did “not simply want to understand history, he wanted to gallop across its stage.”

Packs of bucking-stallion senators, diplomats, journalists, and protégés galloped over to GW for a final homage. Hillary Clinton went into chief comforter mode, herding Holbrooke’s staff down the street to the Ritz-Carlton bar for an impromptu “Irish wake.” They took over a corner of the bar and shared hours of Richard stories, Clinton staying until the end. Similar gatherings would break out in the next few days.

The big daddy of all Holbrooke send-offs took place, naturally, at This Town’s secular church, the Kennedy Center, where Richard and Kati had just attended the Kennedy Center Honors a week before his death. The grand venue’s full and proper name is: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. No mention of God here: the Performing Arts are deity at the red-walled opera house, down the hall from where Tim Russert was mourned and celebrated two and a half years earlier. Here, we would assess performances. The acclaimed American soprano Renée Fleming sang “Ave Maria” (beautifully) in tribute to Holbrooke, whose parents were Jewish but who was never observant himself. Fake palm trees adorned the stage, part of the set of
South Pacific
, Holbrooke’s favorite musical, which happened to be in mid-run at the Kennedy Center. Instead of a cross at center stage, there loomed a massive screen flashing a photo montage of Richard.

This was just the Pan-Cake makeup cluster that he would have orchestrated with great care: the guest list, the eulogists, the seating (some reserved, some not), the parking of the Town Cars, and the blueberry scones and salmon at the rooftop reception. “A testament to the know-everything, know-everyone machine of a man who was Richard C. Holbrooke,” said the next day’s account in the
Washington Post
.

Holbrooke’s Kennedy Center finale merited two presidents (Clinton and Obama), the VP, secretaries of state, foreign leaders, ambassadors, and network anchors. They were just the dignitaries Holbrooke would be looking for over your head if he happened to be stuck talking to you. The “D.C. scalp stare,” as it is known.

As a military quartet in red-and-blue uniforms played somber tunes in the lobby, Colin Powell was pulled aside at the metal detectors. Extra wanding. Raised his arms, spread his feet, the whole rigmarole. Arriving late was Madeleine Albright, the second Clinton-era secretary of state (succeeding Warren Christopher). She was the one who was given Holbrooke’s coveted State job in 1996 after Hillary lobbied her husband for a woman to get the position. Holbrooke held no grudge against Hillary, and fully expected that she would be the Democratic nominee in either 2004 or 2008. In the late nineties, Holbrooke began “honoring” Hillary at annual holiday parties at his and Kati’s Manhattan apartment, a tradition that continued through her time in the Senate. Matt Damon and Glenn Close and Robert De Niro would sing carols with the Henry Kissinger types whom Holbrooke liked to be around.

Holbrooke offered lavish toasts to the guest of honor. It went without saying that still-in-government Hillary could be more helpful to Holbrooke than her postpresidential husband. She had a favorite story about Holbrooke’s attempts to impress. She once made a passing remark to Holbrooke about her admiration for the Salvation Army—so passing that she did not remember saying it. But Holbrooke did, and at a future holiday party, to his great delight, the Salvation Army band came marching in to serenade her.

These stories were recounted after Richard’s death in the endearing vein of someone who lacked a basic embarrassment gene—or shame gene. During night flights for diplomatic missions, Holbrooke would change out of his suit and into bright yellow pajamas—“my sleeping suit”—which he often wore while briefing the press. The stories were told in the spirit of “You can’t help but love the guy,” even if some people very much could.