Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine (2 page)

The duo at the top have different lines of authority within the company. For the past decade, for example, Bill was in charge of bringing in the money. His net worth alone is said to be over $100 million. Hillary improved the family’s political fortunes in the Senate and then the Obama administration. These various responsibilities have allowed them to live comfortably, even happily, as well as to lead largely separate lives with different aides, different entourages. Differences in temperament, style, and their involvement in various scandals and indiscretions have tested their partnership, but both concluded that the sum is stronger than its individual parts. Their myriad efforts share a singular goal: to help the Clintons profit, politically and financially, from their various endeavors. To improve, in effect, the company’s value, or its stock price.

“It’s the most unusual but very productive relationship,” former senator Joseph Lieberman tells me in an interview. Lieberman, of course, was selected as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 largely due to his very public condemnation of Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The denunciation by the respected Democrat, an Orthodox Jew, allowed a conflicted Gore to put some distance between himself and the scandal. Years later, even Lieberman seems surprised by the strength and endurance of the Bill and Hillary partnership—one, notably, that outlasted that of Al and Tipper Gore. Lieberman tells me of overhearing a phone conversation between the two, during which Bill greeted his wife with “Hi, sweetheart” and they chatted amiably about their respective activities. It seemed a marvel to him, especially after all the scandals, the adultery, the gossip. “You go through different chapters in a marriage,” he notes with a shrug as we sit together in his New York City office. “But they seem very devoted to each other.”

Former Clinton nemesis Newt Gingrich puts it more clinically when I interview him on the same subject. “She married him because he was going to be somebody,” he tells me in his Arlington, Virginia, office, expressing a common view among Republicans. “And he married her because she’s going to help him be somebody. And they decided to be somebody together. And it’s been a mutually beneficial relationship.

“They must have at some point had a very tough period of talking through—what the ground rules are, and how they relate to each other. [Daniel] Yankelovich used to have a formula he called ‘the giving and getting strategy’: What do I give, and what do I get for it. . . . Clearly they reached a very clear agreement on how they would operate and what they would do.”

Ever the college professor—he taught at what was then West Georgia College before entering politics—Gingrich even offered me title suggestions for this book. “I think the title’s already been used, but in a sense,
The Power Couple
almost begs to be the title of something about the two of them.” Later, he reflected, “He wouldn’t have survived without her. So maybe the title is
Mutual Survival, Mutual Prosperity
.”

In this mutually beneficial partnership, only one other person is allowed to cast a decisive vote. As this book will detail, their daughter, Chelsea, over the years has slowly emerged as Clinton, Inc.’s tough and ambitious senior vice president. As her parents age and they look far into the future, Chelsea’s portfolio expands by the day. Recently, for example, she was added to the masthead of the Clinton Foundation, which was rechristened the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation in 2013. She is poised to take over the family business one day.

After Chelsea comes a large and varied board of kibitzers and advisors who run the gamut from well-known figures such as James Carville, Paul Begala, and Rahm Emanuel to lesser-known personalities such as Maggie Williams, Huma Abedin, and Cheryl Mills. Those who offer total loyalty to the Clintons, defend them in the press, and help them solve problems are rewarded—with attention, financial assistance, connections, and access.

One omnipresent Clinton backer is Lanny Davis, a friend of the Clintons since their shared law school days. Within the Clinton circle, Davis has something of a notorious reputation of one who frequently talks to reporters without authorization and trades on his decades-long associations, not only with the Clintons but with George W. Bush, another friend of his from their days together at Yale. Many Clinton insiders send me to Davis for quotes and gossip, labeling him a “self-promoter” and a gadfly. Davis is in fact a very likable presence, earnest and apparently sincere in his devotion to the former first couple. In his office, adorned with accouterments from his associations with the Clintons and Bushes, he offers this: “I think [Hillary] was destined for public service since the first time I met her.” He adds helpfully, “That’s on the record.”

Those kinds of quotes are acceptable in ClintonWorld. Others leave Clinton associates vulnerable to a company purge. As in any good corporation, investors in Clinton, Inc. jealously guard the company brand and police insiders who might put it at risk. “They have an infrastructure,” a former Clinton cabinet official tells me, insisting that he be quoted without attribution. “A political infrastructure, political consultants, a press infrastructure, a business infrastructure.” And they have a network of spies, informants, and enforcers.

All of which leads to a note about sourcing for this book. Wherever I could I have tried to quote sources on the record. In many cases, however, I have agreed to quote prominent Clinton aides on background, or without attribution. I approached many of them at the outset with a liability, my work as a writer and editor for the
Weekly Standard
, which was rightly seen as a right-of-center magazine often critical of the Clintons. As a result, many people were initially reluctant to speak to me.

“Write something interesting and surprising that will not be as predictable as what the
Weekly Standard
has become,” former White House press secretary Mike McCurry advised me. “I used to read it with great interest and even contributed a letter to the editor once. But the conservative critique of Obama . . . and I fear what will be said of Hillary Clinton . . . will be predictably snarky, and designed to add to the current polarization of our politics rather than figuring out how to overcome it. Write something that will make conservatives say, ‘You know, I never thought I could see that in Bill/Hillary Clinton but this made me think . . .’ ”

The subtext of course is that my book was intended to be unflattering of the Clintons. In some ways, the reporting has borne that out. But as I’ve learned more about Bill and Hillary (and Chelsea), a more complicated portrait has emerged of each of them that is sometimes sharply at odds with their public personas. The private Hillary, for example, is warmer, more likable, and in some ways sadder than her public persona suggests. She’s the more sympathetic and relatable one. Her biggest asset and her biggest vulnerability are one and the same: her husband. Contrary to his emotive Bubba persona, the private Bill Clinton is colder, more calculating, and more compulsive. Many people love his company, at least over the short term, yet he lacks real lifelong friends in a way his wife doesn’t. His charm is legendary but has its limits. Clinton, for example, long admired Arkansas senator J. William Fulbright. A Fulbright relation told me that the senator was never fooled by the aspiring and self-serving politico—who was once the senator’s driver. He related a story at Fulbright’s funeral, in which then-President Clinton insisted on inserting himself into a Fulbright family photo. The suggestion was that the famously fatherless Clinton was clumsily still trying to form ties that existed only in his head. It should be noted that I made repeated efforts to interview both Bill and Hillary Clinton for this book. In one letter sent, I wrote, “I want to give the former President Clinton the chance to answer some of the questions that have been raised by employees, friends, and aides and to give him a platform to put things in context.” The Clintons’ “story deserves to be told. And I’d like to interview President Clinton in order for him to have his say—and in order to get his take.” (Through spokespersons, the Clintons ignored my requests.)

Over time, I have managed to meet with a large number of people within the Clinton orbits, including a number of friends, colleagues, and aides who dealt with Bill and Hillary and Chelsea on a daily basis. I have had the opportunity to review thousands of pages of documents collected by political operatives, private investigators, and legal teams never disclosed to the public. And I’ve conducted dozens of interviews with Clinton aides, past and present, former cabinet officials (who served in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations), and a fair number of onetime Clinton adversaries. This has not always proved an easy task. Nearly everyone in Washington has a Clinton story, or two, or two hundred, but many are afraid to air them publicly or on the record, out of fear of retribution or attack from ruthless Clinton aides and their media allies. This is often true these days, contrary to conventional wisdom, even of Republicans.

Among the first to feel the sting of Clinton attacks is former aide George Stephanopoulos, who in 2000 published a critical and unauthorized memoir about the Clintons, which won their fierce condemnation and enmity. Stephanopoulos’s bracing assessment of the Clintons and himself was a bit too bracing for them. The book included lines such as “I came to see how Clinton’s shamelessness is a key to his political success, how his capacity for denial is tied to the optimism that is his greatest political strength. He exploits the weaknesses of himself and those around him masterfully, but he taps his and their talents as well.”
10
While there is not much damage that can be a done to a multimillionaire and well-liked TV personality—Stephanopoulos is now of course the anchor of ABC’s
Good Morning America
—the pain inflicted on Stephanopoulos has been more personal. After publication of his memoir, he lost a number of friendships that were important to him. Though some longtime friends such as Emanuel and Carville still talk with him regularly, the Clintons themselves have proven unforgiving, according to several close associates of Stephanopoulos with whom I spoke.

“We had a big staff reunion and the Clintons invited everyone no matter how disgraced they were,” a former Clinton press aide recalls. “And George was one of the few people that somehow didn’t make that list.”

To this day the ABC News host is trying to gain their forgiveness while Bill Clinton in particular seems to take joy in denigrating his former aide in private settings.

“Bill still hates him,” says a source.

A similar psychological toll has taken hold of Bill Richardson, who took the risk of endorsing Barack Obama over Hillary in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Bill Clinton has never forgiven him, and that clearly stings Richardson.

“He has no interest in healing the breach,” Richardson told me during an interview. “I think that sends a message to me that every relationship that he has is mainly about him and not about the other person. . . . He expects total loyalty. It’s his way or the highway in the end in a relationship. I wish his forgiveness, his spirit of forgiveness were there and apparently it isn’t.”

The personal loss hurts the most. “I just want to hear him say, ‘I love you’ again,” Richardson wrote.
11

Even former vice president Al Gore has paid the price for his break with the Clintons over his 2000 loss, which Gore blamed in part on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Though he and Clinton had a faux reconciliation a few years back, “it’s still really bad,” a close friend says. Gore to this day is all but a nonfactor in the Democratic Party, and rarely consulted by the Clintons.

In contrast to his wife and according to people who know him well, Bill Clinton has few personal friends. “He has cyclical friends, transactional friends,” says one close associate, people who circle in and out of his orbit without forming long, meaningful connections. Two exceptions during his postpresidential life were billionaire Ron Burkle and a young aide named Doug Band. Both have since felt the dark side of a friendship with the former president.

Burkle used to treat Clinton to rides aboard his private Boeing 757.
12
But as the
Daily Beast
reported in 2010, Clinton has consistently been “badmouthing” Burkle in Democratic circles after a business deal between the two went bad, with Clinton accusing his former friend of owing him $20 million. Burkle told
BusinessWeek
that entering a partnership with Clinton was “the dumbest thing I ever did.”
13

And throughout much of 2013, Doug Band has been the recipient of scores of attacks on his character in newspapers and magazines, such as the
New York Times
and the liberal
New Republic
, for his alleged role in the financial mismanagement of Bill’s various enterprises. “[C]oncern was rising inside and outside the [Clinton] organization about Douglas J. Band, a onetime personal assistant to Mr. Clinton who had started a lucrative corporate consulting firm—which Mr. Clinton joined as a paid advisor—while overseeing the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation’s glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities,” the
Times
reported in a lengthy piece in 2013.
14
Former Clinton aides tell me that the attacks have been “hypercoordinated.”

As for Hillary, a book released in 2014 reported on her State Department “enemies list” of those who didn’t support her campaign in 2008 and merited punishment.
15
Though that revelation won a number of headlines, it in fact was not actually all that new. It already was commonly known in Washington that her State Department blackballed Obama political appointees who’d worked against her in 2008. The new revelation only underscored what is well known among Democrats in Washington, D.C.: You cross the Clintons at your peril. They are watching you.

A source tells me that Bill Richardson, the former ambassador to the United Nations and former secretary of energy, was blackballed by the Clinton team from having any serious role in the Obama administration. And that Hillary’s aides, or Hillary herself, blocked an effort by Obama to appoint the veteran diplomat to negotiate the release of an American held hostage in North Korea. Bill Clinton was sent instead.