Unlikeable (18 page)

CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 30

“A HYDRA-HEADED BEAST”
“A HYDRA-HEADED BEAST”

Bill doesn't talk about a Hillary presidency; he talks about their presidency.

—Anonymous

B
arack Obama was asked at a press conference: “Mr. President . . . my question to you is do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this Congress?”

Obama tried to laugh off the insinuation that he was no longer relevant. Quoting Mark Twain, he said the rumor of his demise was exaggerated. But there was no denying the fact that though Obama might be sitting in the Oval Office, Bill and Hillary Clinton had seized control of the political party of which he was the titular head.

Power over the Democratic National Committee (DNC) gave the Clintons unfettered access to the party's money and
organization, and, just as important, the final say over the rules and regulations for the upcoming primaries.

As the front-runner for the nomination, Hillary wanted to participate in as few debates as possible so that she could limit her exposure. The head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz—a one-time Obama acolyte who had transferred her loyalty to the Clintons—was more than happy to oblige. The DNC indicated that there would be just four primary debates in 2015 (in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada) and only a handful in 2016.

By contrast, there were more than twenty debates during the Democratic primary in 2008—the last time the nomination was up for grabs.

As the day of the first debate approached, the level of tension in Whitehaven, Hillary's home in Washington, was palpable. According to people who spoke directly with Hillary, she and Bill considered the upcoming election to be their last hurrah, and
they were worried sick that Hillary was going to blow the campaign and destroy the family brand.

The tension gave rise to continual arguments.

“They have always been a family that engages in spirited debates,” said a close Clinton source who witnessed many of these arguments firsthand. “Nobody is afraid to be a contrarian or to argue against the conventional family wisdom. That's why they have shouting matches on a regular basis.

“Chelsea has grown up with parents with hot tempers,” the source continued. “She's as clever and analytical at arguing both sides of a question as her dad, and she's as volatile as her mom.

“Chelsea gets angry at her father for bullying her mother. Then she gets equally angry with her mom for not taking her dad's advice. It's almost like a family sitcom, except that this family intends to carry on like the characters in the TV series
Shameless
when they get to the White House.

“There's an air of palace intrigue among the three Clintons. They don't completely trust each other. Bill felt blindsided when Hillary brought Donna Shalala in as the CEO of the foundation. He's always been distrustful of the relationship between Hillary and Donna. They have a chemistry that makes Bill suspicious about their motives. He's deceitful by nature, and he assumes everyone else is disloyal, including his wife and daughter.

“Chelsea doesn't like her husband, Marc, cozying up to Bill, which he does all the time. She's jealous of anyone who gets between her and her father. Marc has always felt like the odd man out in the family, and he tries to ingratiate himself with Bill. Hillary is worried that Marc's financial dealings aren't always entirely kosher, and she's ordered a couple of her aides to keep an eye on Marc and report back to her what he's up to.

“Hillary and Bill obviously love their daughter, but they're not comfortable with all of Chelsea's activities. To them, it looks like Chelsea's installing people loyal to her at the foundation, squeezing out Hillary and Bill's people, and that Chelsea intends to establish a coterie of loyalists in Hillary's campaign as well. She's declaring herself as an independent force.

“The relationship among the three of them is extremely complicated. Chelsea's been a good sailor throughout her life, grinning and bearing it while her parents sailed through a sea of scandals and troubles. As a result, she's built up a huge stack of chits with her parents. And she's clever, very clever at leveraging her power with them.

“Hillary's campaign is a hydra-headed beast with different factions vying for control. Bill and Hillary have separate visions of what a new Clinton presidency would look like. Hillary has a long shopping list of incremental good things that can be done for social welfare, immigration, and school reform. Bill has a grand vision of changing the world through big proposals on the international stage.

“Maybe these disparate visions can be made compatible. But I don't think anybody who knows the Clintons sees that as realistic. Hillary may be the boss of bosses, but her husband and daughter are going to control their own teams. The potential for clashes among them is inevitable. I wouldn't want to be Hillary's campaign manager. He's going to have an impossible job.”

Hillary had other, even more urgent reasons to be tense and anxious.

The scandal surrounding her use of a private e-mail server had escalated out of her control: the matter had been referred to the FBI for investigation, and for the first time in her life, Hillary faced possible criminal charges. According to several close Clinton
sources who were interviewed for this book, Hillary was frightened and furious and defiant all at once.

CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 31

“IT'S GONE WAY TOO FAR”
“IT'S GONE WAY TOO FAR”

No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.

—Neil deGrasse Tyson

B
arack Obama could hardly contain his excitement.

“When I get to Ethiopia,” he said one summer evening during dinner in the family quarters of the White House, “I'm actually going to touch the bones of Lucy.”

He was referring to his upcoming trip to Africa and the 3.2-million-year-old fossilized bones of
Australopithecus afarensis
, the most complete skeleton of an early human ancestor ever discovered.

Lucy was often called “the grandmother of humanity,” and Obama was thrilled that she had been found in Africa, which he considered to be his ancestral home, and that he would be the first American president to handle Lucy's bones.

However, his dinner companions—Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett—did not share his excitement. Neither of them planned to accompany the president on the Africa trip, and in any case they were more interested in talking about a far more pressing issue than Lucy's bones.

They were preoccupied with Hillary Clinton, her mounting scandals, and her race for the presidential nomination.

According to sources who spoke directly with Jarrett about the dinner conversation, she raised the dreaded possibility that Obama might be forced to support Hillary if none of the other Democratic candidates could rough her up in Iowa and New Hampshire and knock her out of the primary race.

Obama shook his head and said, “I can't get behind that woman and I refuse to spend time with Bill.”

Valerie Jarrett gave Barack and Michelle Obama an update on Hillary practically every night of the week.

The Obamas were obsessed with Hillary's cascading e-mail scandal. They pressed Jarrett for information. They wanted to know everything—Hillary's poll numbers, how she was coping, what Bill was up to, how Hillary intended to escape from the e-mail trap of her own making.

While Jarrett gave her briefing, the president paced, his head bowed, deep in thought. Jarrett was happy to see Hillary in trouble. Obama wasn't so sure. He felt a great deal of animosity
toward both Clintons, and he smiled when Jarrett told him of Hillary's latest travails, but he didn't want to see the Democratic Party lose the White House.

“It's all her own fault,” he repeated over and over, according to sources who spoke to Jarrett. “Bill should have advised her better. He should have made her goddamn behave, follow the rules.”

“There's nothing we can do now about any of this,” Jarrett said. “It's going to be in the hands of the Justice Department. You can't be seen to interfere. It's gone way too far.”

Barack plopped down in a chair and let out a sigh.

“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he said. “Just goddamn dumb.”

Jarrett disagreed.

“It's not dumb,” she said. “It's arrogance. The Clintons think the rules don't apply to them. Bill's even said so in exactly those words.”

Jarrett then raised the possibility that Obama could give Hillary a presidential pardon at the end of his term if she was facing criminal charges.

But Obama was noncommittal on the subject of a presidential pardon.

Jarrett said she was operating on the assumption that Hillary was going to falter during the nominating process and that the White House needed to have an alternative in place before it was too late.

“I'm trying to light a fire under Joe [Biden],” she said. “Joe's loyal. He'll listen to you and take your advice. Unlike Hillary, he's
faithful and dependable. He knows he owes you big time. A win by Joe would be confirmation that you've had a successful presidency.”

Obama looked at Michelle.

They were both smiling.

“Get to work on Joe,” Obama told Jarrett.

EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE

THAT OLD CAR SMELL
THAT OLD CAR SMELL

[John F.] Kennedy was, whether for good or bad, an enormously large figure. Historically, he was a gatekeeper. He unlatched the gate and through the door marched Catholics, blacks, and Jews, and ethnics, women, youth, academics, newspersons, and an entirely new breed of politician who did not think of themselves as politicians—all demanding their share of the action and the power in what is now called participatory democracy.

—Theodore H. White,
The Making of the President, 1960

F
orty-eight years after JFK's assassination, which many historians mark as the moment America lurched to the left, a new cultural revolution is convulsing our country.

Today, America is witnessing upheavals in communications, technology, globalization, demographics, popular entertainment, financial markets, industry, and commerce. And all of this is having a profound impact on how we order our lives—what we consider morally right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, normal and abnormal.

A “new normal” is sweeping across America, turning long-accepted standards and codes of behavior upside down.

         
•
    
Support for same-sex marriage has doubled over the past decade to 60 percent.

         
•
    
A majority of Americans support the legalization of marijuana.

         
•
    
In many communities, the police, not the criminals, are considered the problem.

         
•
    
The percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly 8 percentage points in the past seven years.

         
•
    
Nearly a quarter of all Americans describe themselves as atheists, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”

         
•
    
In less than thirty years non-Hispanic whites will no longer make up a majority of Americans.

         
•
    
More than half the births to women under thirty occur outside marriage.

“Has American culture become gross, coarse, vulgar?” writes author Stan Latreille, expressing the feelings of perhaps a majority of Americans, or at least a majority of those over the age of forty. “If I say yes, I no doubt will be dismissed as an old fogey. Well, I do say yes, so there. And if you disagree, I say you are blind, deaf, zoned out or just plain stupid.”

Examples of the coarsening of America abound.

         
•
    
Kim Kardashian is celebrated for balancing a champagne glass on her rear end.

         
•
    
Bruce Jenner, once the picture of masculinity, is canonized for being castrated.

         
•
    
Summer's Eve feminine-care company runs a video on its website and YouTube showing a talking vagina.

And Americans themselves seem coarser, grosser than previous generations.

         
•
    
The average American woman now weighs the same as the average American man did in the 1960s.

         
•
    
Tattoos—once limited to sailors and members of biker gangs—now disfigure more than a third of all Americans under the age of thirty.

         
•
    
Nearly a third of those under thirty have a body piercing someplace other than the lobe of their ears.

         
•
    
Within living memory, men wore ties to baseball games; today many people dress, even at work, as if in imitation of Shaggy from
Scooby-Doo
.

         
•
    
According to a study from professors at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and the Thunderbird School of Global Management, employees are now twice as likely to experience rude behavior at an office as they were in 1998.

Conservatives have every reason to be alarmed by the decline in American appearance and behavior, manners and morals. Along
with the Roman orator Cicero, we say, “
O tempora, o mores
,” which translates to “Alas the times, and the manners.”

“I am glad that I'm not raising kids today,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told
New York
magazine. “One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can't go to a movie—or watch a television show for that matter—without hearing the constant use of the F-word—including, you know,
ladies
using it.”

Fifteen years ago, Jacques Barzun, the brilliant conservative cultural critic and historian, wrote a book titled
From Dawn to Decadence
in which he lamented the direction in which our culture was headed.

         
The cruel, perverse and obscene [is] more and more taken for granted as natural and normal. . . . The attack on authority, the ridicule on anything established, the distortions of language and objects, the indifference to clear meaning, the violence to the human form, the return to the primitive elements of sensation, the growing lists of genres called “Antis” . . . have made Modernism at once the mirror of disintegration and an incitement to extending it.

Things have gone downhill since then. Conservatives rightly fear that decadence will lead to the fall of the United States just as surely as it led to the fall of Rome.

Meanwhile, the chasm between conservatives and liberals grows wider by the day. We live in a house divided. This profound
difference between people on the Right and Left will have to be managed with diligence if our country is not to fragment and fall apart. Great leadership will be required. This, not income inequality, is the moral issue of our time.

Thus, it is altogether fitting and proper to ask: Is Hillary Clinton the woman for these times?

Can she, as George H. W. Bush once promised to do, make this a “kinder, gentler nation”?

Can she, as George W. Bush described himself as governor of Texas, be “a uniter, not a divider”?

Can she reverse America's decline?

Is she fit to lead?

Barack Obama for one certainly doesn't think so.

He believes that voters will be looking for a “fresh start” when they go to the polls in 2016.

“I think the American people, you know, they're going to want—you know, that new car smell,” he told
This Week
's George Stephanopoulos.

It didn't take a high-paid political consultant to parse the president's meaning. To him, Hillary Clinton represents that
old
car smell.

Many of the people I interviewed for this book found themselves agreeing with Obama on the subject of Hillary's staleness.

It would be easy to dismiss this point of view if only conservatives expressed it. But liberals I spoke with seemed almost as
nervous as conservatives about the prospect of placing the honorific “Madame President” in front of Hillary's name. Even among those who said they planned to vote for her, many acknowledged that she was a badly flawed candidate whose lack of accomplishments, serial scandals, absence of shame, unlikeability, and clumsiness as a campaigner could doom her designs on the presidency.

“Nobody wants to go to a fund-raiser and get another picture with her,” a jaded Hollywood supporter of Hillary told the
New York Times
' Maureen Dowd. “But we have to figure out how to get her [to the White House].”

“The joke circulates in Hollywood,” Dowd continued, “that Hillary is like Coca-Cola's Dasani water: She's got a great distribution system, but nobody likes the taste.”

“It's a long record going back over decades of questionable ethical practices,” said former Rhode Island governor and U.S. senator Lincoln Chafee, the longest of long shots in the Democratic primary scrum. “People groan when I bring up Whitewater and all these things, the Rose Law Firm records; it seems like it never stops. Now, we are into the tenure of secretary of state and the emails and of course the Clinton Foundation donations at the same time the State Department is making critical decisions, combined with some of those donations by the Clinton Foundation. It's just too close and too many ethical questions.”

Hard numbers backed up Chafee's concern about Hillary's integrity. As soon as she announced her campaign for president, an NBC/
Wall Street Journal
poll reported that her “unfavorables” jumped six points. She fared even worse among younger
Democratic voters.
Her “favorability” with that cohort had dropped by 15 percent since 2007.

Virtually all of the Democrats I talked to said that Hillary would benefit from some healthy competition in the primaries. They yearned for Elizabeth Warren, either because she, unlike Hillary, was, in their estimation, “the real thing,” or because she would make the Democratic primaries a true contest. These Democrats were despondent when Warren withdrew from the race, leaving Bernie Sanders, the former socialist mayor of the People's Republic of Burlington and current U.S. senator from Vermont; Martin O'Malley, the tax-and-spend former governor of Maryland; and the aforementioned former liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee as the last men standing. None of them appeared to be up to the challenge of toppling Hillary.

It wasn't only rank-and-file Democrats who harbored uneasy feelings about Hillary. As readers will remember, influential figures in the Democratic Party—elected officials, party bosses, and big donors—were also voicing reservations about Hillary, although they did so sotto voce so Hillary wouldn't hear. This anti-Hillary sentiment was especially alive and well in the White House, where the ruling triumvirs—Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and Michelle Obama—were working overtime to undermine Hillary's chances.

The Obamas had a powerful ally in Elizabeth Warren, who seemed bent on making mischief for Hillary and the Clinton legacy.

“Warren has suggested that President Bill Clinton's administration served the same ‘trickle down' economics as its Republican
predecessors,” wrote David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and now a senior editor at the
Atlantic
.

“Warren has denounced the Clinton administration's senior economic appointees as servitors of the big banks.

“Warren has blasted Bill Clinton's 1996 claim that the era of big government is over and his repeal of Glass-Steagall and other financial regulations.

“Warren has characterized Hillary Clinton herself as a conscienceless politician who betrayed her professed principles for campaign donations.”

Warren's strategy was clear: she wanted to force Hillary to renounce her “centrist” past and move further and further to the left.

And the strategy was working.

“[Hillary] is so terrified of losing Iowa, and she is so terrified that even if she wins the Iowa caucuses that some liberal does well enough to wound her that it will hurt her chances, that's forgetting the fact that there's a general election to come if she's the nominee,” said Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin. “She's terrified of the left and it's showing on a range of issues. Wall Street won't hold her accountable to it but she, I think, is creating a lot of trouble for herself and it's only just begun.”

Hillary was beginning to sound like Warren's ventriloquist dummy.

Did Warren declare, “The game is rigged”?

Hillary said, “The deck is stacked” in favor of the rich.

Did Warren say drastic measures had to be taken to tackle income inequality?

Hillary said that saving the American economy from disaster would require “toppling” the 1 percent.

Did Warren favor paid family medical leave?

So did Hillary.

Did Warren call for a constitutional amendment to outlaw “big money” in politics?

So did Hillary.

Did Warren want to double the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour?

Mega-dittos from Hillary.

“On the party's favorite issue of income inequality, Clinton is the poster child for what Democrats believe is wrong with the United States,” wrote Ed Rogers, a contributor to the
Washington Post
's
PostPartisan
blog. “If she is the Democratic nominee in 2016, how will the party standard bearer rationalize her gargantuan haul of cash over the past few years? How can she reconcile her past with her platform?

“There are a lot of questions that Clinton will have to answer. . . .