The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" (4 page)

Valerie. Valerie. Valerie. It will, to borrow from Kissinger, “have the added benefit of being true.”

CHAPTER 3

What to do about Bill, Now and Later

This is the question you face every day, but you must make one choice about how to deal with it and how to answer it in public, and then stick with that answer. Announce your decision and—at least until the end of the campaign—stand by it. Repeat it often. Make sure you have provided the voters clarity. They can accept whatever you decide, but not ambiguity on what everyone knows is a core issue.

With regards to Bill, you have three choices.

You can tell people he will have no role other than that which you served in his administration: a trusted advisor handling ad hoc matters as needed, perhaps as an emissary to the Middle East, or as a companion to Barack and W in raising funds for the inevitable disaster relief efforts.

You could also tell them that Bill will have a defined role and then define it. Again, you might make good use of him as your Secretary of State—unusual, but perfectly acceptable. And very few talented people will accept the job anyway given Bill’s penchant for the spotlight and his almost certain thrusting of himself into every controversy.

Finally, you can say he will effectively be co-president, much as Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan once briefly negotiated such a plan when Ford had defeated Reagan for the 1976 GOP nomination and was attempting to hold the future president in the then-current president’s arc of influence.

You should make your choice of options one, two or three based
solely on what increases the likelihood of your election. Without winning, it is all academic. After winning, it can be changed. On election night, if you would like, though that would not be prudent assuming you want a second term. If you carry any secret desire to humble him as he once humbled you, it will have to be on election night 2020, not election night 2016, and by then your grandchild (perhaps grandchildren, may you be so blessed) will probably hold you back from that—and Chelsea’s future as well. You can write a book, one to be published only when your youngest grandchild is 30, if you want to humble him.

But as for getting elected, it seems to me that your best choice is your third choice, for this is what a crucial part of the electorate will want, and while some will resent it—hard-left feminists, for example—they will have no choice but to accept it and learn later that the perfect exercise of the feminist ideal is to use the man to win the office, then use the man to keep the office and indeed change the office in a way he never could or did. To surpass his “achievements,” and by not a small margin—that will satisfy the feminists, and history.

So, how to tell people of your intention on this score? A formal speech, one that people will refer to even as they refer to, say, George W. Bush’s “We meet here in the middle hour of our grief” speech at the National Cathedral following the attack of 9/11, or FDR’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” or Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech as a candidate for the vice presidency in 1952 or RN’s “Great Silent Majority” speech in the middle of the Vietnam War. The speech in which you announce Bill’s future role should be associated with a place and given at a time in the campaign—early fall of 2015, or even later, say January 2, 2016—when it does not seem a desperate move, but a calculated one.

I suggest Seneca Falls for obvious reasons. At the place where women gathered to launch their demand for political equality, you will speak about sharing power with a man, even though a well-crafted address will leave no doubt about who will be in charge.

And I suggest a specific time: about a month before the first ballot is cast in Iowa soon after the New Year’s Eve hangovers are gone and
the media bigs are back behind their desks. The mess Barack has made of nearly everything requires that you show a willingness to do new things, bold things, and the practical consequences of this timing will be to impact—indeed overwhelm—all other political messaging cresting towards the new election season. If you announce beforehand that the new year will begin with a new speech about a new approach, all of December will be frozen and not just by the weather and ordinary holiday activities. Every political reporter will be asking “What will she do with Bill?” By promising them an answer at a set time, you will effectively freeze the campaign for a crucial period of the time. But the timing is only a bonus. The real benefit is in the many messages you will deliver that night.

On that day—announce the speech and reserve the venue for 8 p.m. eastern—have an aide first enter and place a chair next to the lectern from which you will speak to a crowd of all women and from which you will not move until the end of your remarks, and then have the aide exit. Allow the commentators to chatter and anticipation to build. Then enter alone to sustained applause. Bask in it. Glory in being a woman in Seneca Falls on her way to the nomination.

At the end of the applause, thank the audience. Then smile and simply say, “No, this chair isn’t for Clint Eastwood,” and allow the laughter and standing ovation to roll on and on. When it quiets, say the chair is for the most important man in my life and the man who reclaimed two term presidencies for the Democrats for the first time since FDR, Bill Clinton.”

Then Bill will enter to rapturous applause, you two will embrace, kiss and wave. This will bring the house down, and you should hold the moment as long as possible.

Then, with Bill still standing next to you, you say “Have a seat honey.” He will look abashed, people will shriek with laughter and applause, and then as only the master theater man could, Bill will look amused, shrug his shoulders, tilt his head to you and sit. He will not say a word this night.

And here are the words I think you should speak:

“Friends, I have come here, to this place, to briefly address a very large question: What should a woman do with her husband when she is the president and he has been the president?

“It is a serious question, going as it does to a central principal of American constitutional government: accountability. The Framers intended one man—and it was most definitely a man then—to be accountable for the operation of the executive branch. If he failed, he was to be impeached. My husband has some experience with that process. (Nervous laughter to be expected. You smile and so does he.)

Now, I am seeking that office, and believe of all Americans I am best prepared to exercise its duties. One has to believe this to run for the job or one is irresponsible. The job is too great, the times too dangerous, to seek the office for reasons of vanity or gain or simple fame. You have to believe that you are the best qualified eligible person on the planet.

“It may be that Bill or Barack are better qualified than I to hold this job again. This possibility is one reason why, as you have heard me say in another place, that I will seek the repeal of the Constitution’s two-term limit, never intended by the Framers, but put there by Republicans jealous of FDR after that great American’s death. We needed FDR in 1944. We could have used Bill in 2000. Oh, could we have used Bill in 2000? But neither Bill nor Barack are eligible, and I believe myself more qualified than my friend Joe and my other friends who seek the job. The voters will decide.

“But Bill here gives me a particular advantage that I wish to discuss today as well as a source of some concern for many Americans. They do not like him, in some cases. For others, they like me more than Bill and feel Bill will overpower my views. They worry that I will be overshadowed or somehow diminished.

“Let me tell you straight out. I will be president and not Bill. But he will be the second most powerful person in the government—more powerful than my vice president, more powerful than
my secretary of state, more powerful than my attorney general or the leaders of my party in the Congress. In this flat, firm declaration I am leveling with you and I hope you honor this candor with consideration of my argument.

“Bill simply knows more about governing in a constitutional manner than anyone else I know well enough to rely upon with absolute certainty of straightforward advice and with an absolute guarantee that he will be there when I need him. President Obama has served nobly and well, and his family deserves the time he owes them now. His daughters are no doubt going to be as happy as Chelsea was when her dad finally got to be a full-time dad to her, even though college loomed. I know I can rely on President Obama for advice.

“And I know I can rely on President Bush for the same. We do not often agree. But we do agree on the greatest men and women of this country, the extraordinary bravery and sacrifice of the men and women who serve it, and of the need for strength abroad and principled, transparent decision-making at home. President Bush can ride a mountain bike better than I, but I think I can deliver the average speech with a touch more flare than he. We will see. He is a friend, though not a political ally. And if I am inducted into the presidents’ club, I will call on him.

“Strong women do not fear the advice of strong men, or of strong women. Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Michelle Obama—each of these amazing women never hesitated to seek the best counsel as they made their way through intensely challenging public lives.

“And neither will I, which brings me back to Bill.

“Bill will in fact be a co-president in all but title and official duties. If I am elected, Bill won’t be able to sign—or veto—bills Congress sends me, or to order even one troop to take one step. But he will be my right arm and my very strong right arm. He will speak for me, and if and when he gets that speaking wrong (and that will surely happen as no one truly can channel another’s thoughts 24/7), I will correct the record but be clear in doing so that Bill Clinton
remains my right arm, far above my other advisors, far above the role any First Spouse has filled, save perhaps Edith Wilson when she acted in secret.

“There will be no secret acting here. I am leveling with you now so that no one can later say I did other than this. My Seneca Falls speech on Bill will be a reminder to you all that when I send him to sit opposite Vladimir Putin or any other world leader, he does so with an authority unique in American history at least since Harry Hopkins traveled the globe for FDR. And that will be a very good thing.

“Thank you and see you in Des Moines!”

CHAPTER 4

The Islamist Radicals and Your Response

Would that you could collect and burn every copy of Lawrence Wright’s
The Looming Tower,
the most important book written since 9/11 about 9/11, by a credentialed man of the left and superstar of
The New Yorker
. The book is a triple indictment of your candidacy.

First, it illumines in minute detail the many and repeated failures of your husband to see the growing threat looming throughout his presidency. The evidence of al Qaeda’s plans was always there in the open, declared repeatedly by bin Laden and Zawahiri—published openly, repeated often and with emphasis. Your husband’s national security “team” was as inept and toothless as his legal and political team arrayed against Ken Starr was brilliant and ruthless. All of his incompetence comes flowing out in an accelerating avalanche of damning detail. 9/11 was his fault. Wright knows it. Any reader of
The Looming Tower
knows it.

Of course not many Americans have read it, even though it won the Pulitzer, even though Wright is a man of the left, as credentialed as possible for left-wingers given his lofty perch at
The New Yorker.
How he came to write this book-length indictment has never failed to surprise me. His integrity must be absolute. How your husband must hate him for constructing this damning narrative.

But that is only the first part of the problem the book presents. The second part is that it was in print and highly praised before you began your tenure at State. Everything you needed to know was there, in print,
in every bookshop in America. If you have ever read this book, you have given no sign. You aren’t much of a reader to begin with, especially not of books with the name Lewinsky in the index. Wright does not dwell on that unfortunate affair or the pain it caused you, but his integrity obliged him to note that many in the Muslim world judged your husband’s orders to attack Sudan and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the African embassies bombings to be an effort to simply divert attention from his mistress’s exposure.

However uncomfortable some sections are, the book is so necessary and so compelling and so available and so praised that for you not to have read and absorbed its lessons—well, that is the second strike. You avoided learning what needed to be learned after 9/11, even though you represented New York, even though you lived in DC, even though you accepted the job of secretary of state. Malpractice on this level is stunning. How could you allow yourself to be so careless about the inner workings of one of our five deadliest enemies (the others being Iran, the PRC, Russia and North Korea)? Sunni fundamentalism expressed in taqfiri jihadism is frightening, but you swore an oath. If the public becomes aware of your laziness in responding to the attacks of 9/11 and in preparing to lead Foggy Bottom, it will be hard to defend.

The third strike is your pathetic response to the Arab Spring in Egypt, Libya and throughout the Arab world. You really did act the fool.
A video?
When we deal with responding to Benghazi later, we can cover in more detail that specific collapse of credibility, but
The Looming Tower
lays bare your ignorance of the enemy as late as September of 2012.

So, what to do?

First, of course: read the book, a few times. Know the names. Master the narrative of Qutb and bin Laden. Have at your fingertips the specifics of the missed opportunities to foil the 9/11 attack. Understand and be able to recount all of the many dysfunctions of your husband’s regime.

Now, here is the key. Invite Wright to dinner, and in the presence of
some friendly journalists. Off the record, of course. But let it be known that you know his work. Co-opt the New York media elite even more profoundly than they already are co-opted by demonstrating an attachment to work of the caliber of Wright.