Unlikeable (13 page)

CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 20

“WHEN YOU GOT IT, FLAUNT IT”
“WHEN YOU GOT IT, FLAUNT IT”

The campaigner in chief [Bill Clinton] is always more an asset than anything. He's good for money, he's good for strategy, and he's good for turnout. That's the holy trinity of good campaigning.

—Democratic pollster Jefrey Pollock

O
ne spring night, three family friends joined Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea for dinner in Chappaqua. Afterward, they carried their glasses of Chardonnay over to Bill's home office in the red barn.

As was his custom, Bill held forth about presidential politics and campaign strategy. He enumerated the things Hillary needed to do in order to win the presidency, and he ticked off each point on his fingers as he went along. One of the guests later provided a summary of what Bill said—some in paraphrases and some in direct quotes.

First, Bill told Hillary, you must protect your left flank in the primary campaign. Feed the base red meat. Income inequality.
Prison reform. Gay marriage. Climate change. Path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Paid family leave. Don't worry about looking like you're running against my pro-growth legacy and me. After you get elected, you can do whatever you want.

Second, this is going to be the most expensive race in history, so it's vitally important that you control the money machine. Forget campaign-finance reform and get in bed with a super PAC. Hammer those rich guys in the penthouses and mansions. Corner the big progressive donors so they won't fund O'Malley or, God forbid, Elizabeth Warren.

“Rake in the dough as fast as possible,” he said. “You don't ever want to run out of money like you did last time [in 2008].”

Third, hold on to Obama's support among blacks and Hispanics while galvanizing female voters to elect the first woman president. Women are more likely to vote than men are, and the female vote will decide the next election.

Fourth, “hire away Obama's best and brightest. It's the fastest way to capture the party apparatus.”

Fifth, “distance yourself from Obama. But don't ever look like you hate him. It'll piss off African American voters.”

Sixth, “you're good in small groups,” he said. “From time to time, show the press some ankle. But not too much.”

Seventh, “no one's got the credentials you've got. When you got it, flaunt it.” When we were in the White House, we balanced the budget, not like the jerks who came after us and ran up $18 trillion in debt. Make a sharp contrast between this administration and the past and
future
Clinton administrations.

“It's going to draw blood and make some members of the party crazy,” he went on. “There's going to be a massive blowback from the Obamas and their troops. But that's too bad. The strategy will work. And that's all that counts. You can't appear to be a continuation of the Obama doldrums. The difference between you and Obama is, he makes promises and doesn't deliver; you promise
and
deliver.”

Eighth, have some fun.

Bill stopped.

“What about ninth and tenth?” Hillary asked, half seriously.

“I haven't got to them yet,” he said to laughter around the table.

Bill then went down the list of Hillary's probable Republican opponents.

He hoped the Republicans would nominate Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who took on and beat the public-service unions in his state. Dick Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, would love a chance to get back at Walker. Trumka had promised Bill he'd spend hundreds of millions of dollars and put a vast army on the streets to assure a Hillary victory over her Republican opponent.

“I can count on Trumka,” Bill said. “People think that because the unions have been losing members they've been losing clout. But that isn't true. Over the past few years, the unions have spent more than $4 billion on political activity. And more than 70 percent of their members vote as their leaders tell them to.

“I've got the strongest relationship with the AFL-CIO that any politician's ever had,” he continued. “Obama has huge union
support, too, but they don't love him the way they love me. That's the difference. I advise Trumka on strategy. I take his phone calls. I invite him down to Little Rock. I'm always available to the guy. The unions will march with me to hell.”

Bill said Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, would be a tough opponent.

“Jeb could capture a chunk of the Latino vote,” Bill said. “He'd be strong in Nevada, Virginia, Colorado, and Florida. If he had [John] Kasich [the governor of Ohio] on his ticket, he'd be very strong in Ohio and the Rust Belt. That would be a big problem for us. But there's a big downside to Jeb. With Jeb at the top of the Republican ticket, that'll kill all the stupid talk about ‘Clinton fatigue.'”

The Republican who worried him the most, Bill said, was Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “He's young, Hispanic, and a good speaker,” Bill said. “He'd pose a generational challenge [to Hillary, who would turn sixty-nine in 2016] and a challenge for the Hispanic vote, which we need to win. But he's still largely unknown to the general public. We've got to destroy him before he gets off the ground.”

CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 21

DINNER WITH LIZ
DINNER WITH LIZ

[Hillary] has taken money from [Wall Street] groups, and more to the point, she worries about them as a constituency.

—Elizabeth Warren

B
ill Clinton had a recurring nightmare.

He told friends that in his mind's eye he could visualize Elizabeth Warren holding forth on a podium in a cavernous convention hall, her eyes on fire behind her rimless glasses, her voice soaring, sounding like she meant every word that came out of her mouth.

Unlike Hillary, who read woodenly from the text of her speeches, Warren was a brilliant speaker. Whether you liked her politics or thought they were loony, you had to admire her oratorical skill. She could pack the galleries and whip an audience into a frenzy.

Warren's opposition to big banks, the top 1 percent of wealthy Americans, and the Keystone XL Pipeline made her the sweetheart of Democratic lefties. No one sang the populist anthem the way she did. She won the Senate seat once held by the late Ted Kennedy—another impassioned orator and darling of the Left—thanks to millions of dollars in donations from outside Massachusetts, mostly from rich environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities like Ben Affleck, Cher, Barbra Streisand, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Warren said she wasn't interested in running for president.

Maybe she was and maybe she wasn't. But Bill didn't want Hillary to take any chances. She had been blindsided in 2008 when Ted Kennedy helped Obama steal the nomination from under the Clintons' noses.

Until now, Bill had dismissed the “Draft Warren” movement as a figment of the Fabian wing of the party. But he had loyal Clintonista spies scattered throughout the Democratic apparatus who informed him that Valerie Jarrett was holding secret talks with Warren in an effort to get her to run.

“I've heard from state committeemen about Obama's preference in '16,” Bill confided to a close friend. “And they tell me he's looking around for a candidate who's just like him. He wants to clone himself—to find his Mini-Me. And Valerie and Michelle have convinced the president that Elizabeth Warren is his Mini-Me.”

Sources close to the Obama White House did not challenge Bill's assessment. They said the president believed Warren would fight like hell to preserve the Obama legacy. He had authorized Jarrett to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw
her hat into the ring. With that in mind, Jarrett promised Warren tons of money and organizational support from the White House if she entered the primary campaign against Hillary.

Bill's spies also told him that several members of the Kennedy clan were wooing Warren, too.

Was it possible that the Draft Warren movement could suddenly ignite? If Hillary faltered in Iowa or New Hampshire, would Warren do a Bobby Kennedy and enter the race at the last moment with an army of true believers?

The odds were against it, but you didn't get to be Bill Clinton by leaving things to the whims of chance.

And so, when he and Hillary received an invitation from Robert Kennedy Jr. to visit the Kennedy clan in Hyannis Port, they jumped at the opportunity to do some fence mending.

The Clintons flew in a private jet to Barnstable Municipal Airport, where they were met by three Secret Service SUVs and a police escort. They were whisked off to the Kennedy Compound, where a catered buffet lunch was waiting for them under a large tent outside the President's House, which Teddy Kennedy Jr. had inherited from his father.

The Kennedy family was split down the middle over whom to back for the Democratic nomination. Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel, and their eldest son, former U.S. congressman Joe II, favored Elizabeth Warren, while environmental activist Bobby Jr. and his brother Max remained loyal to Hillary.

Despite the death of family patriarch Ted Kennedy, who succumbed to a brain tumor in the summer of 2009, the Kennedys still considered themselves the torchbearers of the Democratic Party. They saw an opportunity to repeat the kingmaker role they played in 2008, when Ted and Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama.

A sizeable contingent of the Kennedy family turned out for the Clinton lunch: Bobby and his fiancée, actress Cheryl Hines, Ethel, Joe II, Max and his sister Rory, Doug and Bobby Shriver, and Chris Lawford.

“Bill was in full campaign mode,” said a source who attended the lunch. “He made a point of talking to every member of the family, shook every hand, and remembered the names of everyone from the youngest to the oldest. Hillary was pretty reluctant about going for a sail on Ted Kennedy's old schooner, the
Maya
, but Bill told her that you couldn't visit the Kennedys and not go for a sail. The outing on the choppy waters of Lewis Bay and Nantucket Sound was pretty rough, and Hillary returned looking a little green around the gills.”

A week after the Clintons' visit to Hyannis Port, Joe Kennedy invited Elizabeth Warren to the family compound.

“Joe meant Liz's visit to be a counter-move to Hillary's,” said a Kennedy family member. “He wanted to expose Liz to the family to gain their support. And sure enough, she came to the compound breathing fire about the need to rein in corporate America.

“Joe thinks Hillary has too many ties with Wall Street,” this source added. “He loves Liz because she's a full-throated liberal like his Uncle Ted. She has Ted's voice—loud and angry and triumphant. Joe's talked to some of Liz's advisers and family members, and they are almost unanimous in hoping that she'll give it a try.”

But Warren expressed deep reservations.

“Liz said that she's flattered by all the attention and wants to continue the good fight for Teddy's memory,” a Kennedy family member said in an interview for this book. “But she says she just doesn't feel up to the grueling battle that a presidential campaign requires. She actually gets breathless when she talks about it.

“Liz is enjoying being in the Senate and has big plans for pushing progressive legislation,” this source continued. “It would take a major stumble from Hillary to make Liz change her mind. And even then she's not sure she's up for the battle.”

When the Clintons received word about Elizabeth Warren's powwow at the Kennedy Compound, they went into damage-control mode. They invited Warren and her husband, Harvard Law School professor Bruce H. Mann, to dinner at Whitehaven.

Hillary and Warren left their husbands in the house while they went for a womano a womano stroll in Rock Creek Park, which bordered the Clintons' property. It was a cool, pleasant evening, and the walk in the woods gave Hillary a chance to weigh Warren's intentions and feel her out to see if she could be bought off.

When the women came back, they washed up and sat down to dinner.

“They served Bill's favorite Italian food, creamed lobster over pasta, from the Filomena Italian Market in Georgetown,” said a source who was present at the dinner. “I didn't notice the wines because I wasn't drinking, but they looked like expensive Chiantis to go with the Italian food.

“Bill wasn't feeling well and he took only one bite,” this source continued. “He really looked bad—thin, pale, and in pain. He was testy and clearly uncomfortable. During dinner, Warren was guarded about her intentions. She said that doing her job in the Senate was keeping her busy.

“Bill's instinctive feeling, which he later shared with Hillary and a couple of friends, was that in her heart of hearts Warren wanted to run for president, but that, for all her bluster, she didn't have the stomach for it.”