Read All Too Human: A Political Education Online
Authors: George Stephanopoulos
“I'm really glad you wrote that letter,” as if he had never mentioned it before. “That Woodward book tore my guts out, and I didn't handle it completely well,” he continued. “We all made mistakes. We hired too many young people in this White House who are smart but not wise.”
Pretty fair description of me.
Although he couldn't quite do it directly, the president was both acknowledging my errors and absolving me of them. “Mr. President,” I responded, “I don't know what to tell you. I saw a bad thing coming and I thought this was the best way to stop it, but I was wrong.”
“Yeah, you did your best,” he concluded. “But that Woodward's an evil guy.”
I left the Oval perplexed but enormously relieved. As always, though, the respite was short-lived. Three days later, on December 6, I hit bottom and felt as if I were hanging on to my job by what was left of my fingernails. It started at 6:15
A.M.
in Harold Ickes's office. As Harold sipped Irish Breakfast from a mug with the tea bag still floating on top (whether it was frugality or taste, Harold always used his tea bags twice), we talked about what was shaping up to be a typical Clinton day, one in which the nomination of Bob Rubin for treasury secretary would be balanced off by the news that Webb Hubbell was pleading guilty to charges of mail fraud and tax evasion. Harold also reported on what he knew about the various White House reorganization rumors, and when I told him that I'd had a heart-to-heart with the president, he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Yeah, the president mentioned it. He said, ‘George finally fessed up on the Woodward book.’”
Whatever it takes. At least he got the message.
But I soon discovered that any lingering presidential suspicion was the least of my problems. Looking out for me again, Pat Griffin called me up to his office to fill me in on what he was hearing on the Hill. “George, I feel about you the way I feel about my wife,” he said. “When I'm afraid something bad is going to happen to her, I want to protect her, but I feel powerless and it drives me crazy.” He then told me that some Republicans on the Hill had decided to make me a target. “D'Amato hates you and wants to bring you down,” he said, which he could do by convening more Whitewater hearings now that he was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Pat added that their focus groups showed that I was exactly the face Republicans wanted people to think of when they heard the words “Clinton White House.” I sent the message that we were too young, too liberal, and too big for our britches, and they were going to do everything they could to reinforce the message. That explained why the new Speaker was gratuitously repeating my name in interviews, saying things like Stephanopoulos “scowls in meetings” and that I should return to my “dacha.”
That also explained why, the day before, Leon had been so angry at me when the
Post
quoted me calling the Speaker “irresponsible” for making his outrageous accusation that 25 percent of the White House staff “had used drugs in the last four or five years.” I didn't feel I had a choice, because Devroy had called me on deadline when she couldn't get anyone else to respond. When I walked into the staff meeting that morning, I was expecting to be congratulated for a good save; instead I got reamed out in front of the whole room. Pissed, I went right back at Leon, saying that I had checked first with the counsel's office and his deputy. Only after talking to Pat did I realize that, in his own way, Leon was trying to protect me. We worked it out, but I couldn't fool myself into thinking that everything was OK when his instinctive response to getting unfairly attacked was to blame me for defending us. Maybe I
was
becoming more trouble than I was worth.
But my most direct hit of the day came later that afternoon, when the president met with a contingent from the Democratic Leadership Council. I wasn't part of their camp, and now some of them saw an opportunity to correct what they considered a “liberal tilt” in the White House. The ringleader was their outgoing president, Congressman Dave McCurdy, who blamed Clinton for his failure to win a Senate bid in Oklahoma. At the DLC convention, McCurdy called the president a “heavy burden” and said that “while Bill Clinton has the mind of a New Democrat, he retains the heart of an old Democrat.” In the president's presence, he wasn't quite as bold. Talking to Clinton but looking at me, he took his shot: “Mr. President, with all due respect to George, you need to have serious personnel changes. The only way the American people are going to believe you've changed is if you show the change.”
Pat muttered “cocksucker” under his breath. I couldn't breathe. Clinton just ignored it, which was better than the alternative. Like Clinton, I was lucky in my enemy. If someone was going to call for my head, who better than a bitter, out-of-work congressman who was publicly attacking the president? But this was another first I could have done without: When I imagined working in the White House, I never thought that one day I'd be sitting in the Oval Office watching someone try to get me fired. By the time I returned to my office and heard from Heather that Rush Limbaugh had devoted fifteen minutes of his show to attacking me, there was nothing to do but laugh — and contemplate payback. Later, I found a fragment of a Republican newsletter in my in-box and taped its frayed edges to the center of my desk: “… it will take not just a comeback but a miracle for Bill Clinton to win in 1996. …”
Just seeing the words made me feel better; they had the power of a lucky charm. Little did I know that Bill Clinton had been reaching into his past to retrieve a talisman of his own.
W
here is that cocksucker?
I knew what Harold was thinking. We were finishing our drinks on the curved banquette by the second-floor landing of Kinkead's, his favorite restaurant. It was 9:30
P.M.
, and our guest still hadn't arrived. Although this felt like a transparent power play, I didn't have the standing to complain. I needed this meeting, and showing up late was a trick I'd often used myself. Pleading an uncontrollable schedule was one of the perks that accompanied a place in the president's inner orbit (
“You know what he's like, just wouldn't stop talking. …”
). On that night, May 17, 1995, no one flew closer to the sun than the man we were meeting.
I sat on Harold's left, by his good ear. What our tardy dinner partner would say didn't much interest him. He'd heard it all before. Not me. Aside from an accidental after-hours encounter in Betty Currie's office, I'd never really met the man. Twenty minutes passed. Harold threatened to leave. I said we should order. Dick Morris then appeared at the top of the stairs and promptly excused himself to find a phone.
He was the dark buddha whose belly Clinton rubbed in desperate times. I didn't really know that then. I didn't know much about Dick at all. When I first joined Clinton's team, Morris was just another unsavory figure from Clinton's past, an ex-adviser with a grudge and a story. A few times in 1992, I knocked down a Morris-related rumor about Clinton's 1990 campaign — something about how Clinton had coldcocked Dick on the porch of the governor's mansion. Aside from a single reference in October 1993 to a poll conducted by his “old friend,” Clinton had never mentioned Dick's name in my presence.
In late 1994, however, I had picked up an unfamiliar frequency in Clinton's monologues. Keeping track of the president's information flow was part of my portfolio, and I always tried to decipher what I heard him say through the filter of what he'd read and who he'd seen. If I knew the source of a command or question, I could usually figure out how to handle it. But monitoring Clinton's phone calls was nearly impossible. He called all sorts of people at all hours of the day and night, and would often pass on new thoughts without revealing his sources — a kind of blind market testing. A few times that fall, I could tell that someone new was wiring his way into Clinton's brain. The president would wander through my back door during his “phone and office time,” saying, “I was just talking to someone. …” He would then recite a fully developed revision of his stump speech, propose a brand-new script for the DNC ad campaign, or launch into an extended critique of the political advice he was getting from Stan Greenberg and the rest of our consultants. His running theme was the need for a “centralized strategic process,” coupled with a plan to raise “twenty to twenty-five million dollars” to finance a steady stream of generic Democratic ads on cable television. After the election, as Clinton withdrew from those of us on staff, the clues were silent but still visible, like the boldly inked crib sheets the president slipped out of his folder during meetings. Or the anonymous calls announced by Betty Currie that Clinton would take in the privacy of his study. Or the yellow Post-it notes left by his phone, reminding him that “Charlie called.”
“Charlie” was Dick's code name. The president had engaged him to run a covert operation against his own White House — a commander's coup against the colonels. The two of them plotted in secret — at night, on the phone, by fax. From December 1994 through August 1996, Leon Panetta managed the official White House staff, the Joint Chiefs commanded the military, the cabinet administered the government, but no single person more influenced the president of the United States than Dick Morris.
As Dick's power grew, mine receded. I still participated in White House policy meetings; I still helped prep the president for press conferences and other public appearances. My office wasn't moved, and my title stayed the same: senior adviser to the president for policy and strategy. But I was a presidential strategist in name only.
The estrangement from Clinton that I began to fear in 1994 became more pronounced in 1995. My word could no longer tip the balance of a decision; I was no longer the morning flak catcher, the master interpreter of Clinton's mood, or the ultimate authority on what he would do. Clinton would occasionally take my suggestions on minor tactical matters. But after the 1994 debacle, the president didn't fully trust me or my judgment.
When I was honest with myself, I couldn't really blame him. I was part of the team that had failed. But it still hurt, and I wanted to fight my way back, certain there was too much at stake, both personally and politically, to just pick up and leave. Instead, I picked my spots — working with the Democrats in Congress to run a guerrilla campaign against the Republican budget, the heart of their “Contract with America,” and volunteering within the White House to manage a review of federal affirmative action programs. If I was no longer a trusted adviser, no longer defined as “by his side,” at least I'd work on the issues that mattered most to me.
Tonight's dinner was part of the president's evolving effort to integrate Morris into the official White House operation. For most of the winter they had met alone. Then Clinton had introduced Morris to the vice president and convened weekly political strategy meetings in the residence with Gore, Leon Panetta, and Leon's two deputies, Harold Ickes and Erskine Bowles. I was excluded, which was killing me and my pride.
Yeah, '94 was a disaster, but it wasn't all my fault. I'm still the only staffer here who's been through an entire election cycle. Besides, how can I even pretend to myself that I'm the president's strategist if I don't attend the strategy meetings?
Both Harold and Erskine let me know that Dick was constantly undermining me with the president, telling him that I was too liberal and too much of a leaker to be part of the team. But although Clinton didn't want me in too close, he didn't want me too far away either. I wouldn't have been there that night if Clinton had wanted to totally freeze me out. If I was worthy of a summit, I still had some juice. But Morris had far more — and it showed.
When he returned from the phone, I got my first good look at Dick. He was a small sausage of a man encased in a green suit with wide lapels, a wide floral tie, and a wide-collared shirt. His blow-dried pompadour and shiny leather briefcase gave him the look of a B-movie mob lawyer, circa 1975 — the kind of guy who gets brained with a baseball bat for double-crossing his boss. But his outfit was offset by the flush of power on his pasty face. I knew
that
look — the afterglow of a private meeting with the leader of the free world. For some reason, however, Dick seemed a little nervous. When he first spoke, his hands fluttered just below his chest and his voice vibrated his saccharine greeting. “I am
soo
happy to meet you. I have been
soo
impressed by your work,” he said, bowing into the table. “I know Bill
soo
well, so I know how hard your job was in the last campaign. Watching from the outside, I could imagine how hard it must have been on the inside. And I really want to thank you for winning the last election — so
I
can win the reelection.”
Spare me the unctuous bullshit, you insincere prick. You've been trying to get me fired for months.
Of course I didn't say that; all I squeezed out was my own false note of thanks. To me, Dick's flattery was a form of condescension, the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head.
Now go away, kid, you bother me.
After all, he was the one who really knew “Bill,” who had the intimate, long-term relationship that I couldn't presume to challenge. An hour ago, he was the one in the family quarters of the White House while I was working out in the OEOB's basement gym. That final line said it all: “I really want to thank you for winning the last election, so I can win the reelection.”
Oh, so that's why I did it. Thanks for clarifying.
But beneath Dick's grandiosity was a childlike transparency that might have touched me if I hadn't been so jealous. His greeting betrayed a tendency to say things that political operatives like me might think but not speak because they're not seemly and not really true — like the notion that “we,” rather than the candidates, are the ones who really win elections. I noticed at once that Dick was missing a gene: He literally had no shame. At the moment, though, I was focused on the message Morris was sending to me — that my experience was merely a brief chapter in Clinton's political saga, and my time had passed.