Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine (37 page)

The entire social issue shift Hillary engineered would also suggest another connection she was anxious to develop: one with younger voters, who were more socially liberal than their parents, and who used social media to follow politics. Hillary would try to tap into this at first by posting her video announcing her support for gay marriage on YouTube. She’d develop this outreach further by connecting to Twitter a couple of months later, in June. “Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD . . . ,” her snappy and impressive Twitter bio would read. It would remind young Americans who might not be as familiar with all her official posts of her credentials. It would also intentionally leave an air of mystery surrounding her with the three-letter acronym
TBD
. Her future, she wanted everyone to know, was To Be Determined.

Over the course of the next year, she’d pose for selfies with her daughter, Chelsea, share pictures of her travels, and tweet at celebrities. You know, she’d use social media . . . just as the kids do these days. It wasn’t any different from other politicians’ mimicking social media practices—but it was a new experience for Hillary, who had fallen behind while at the State Department. Soon she’d have more than a million Twitter followers.

She’d also use the medium to push out statements on various policy issues that arose. After a Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, she tweeted, “I am disappointed in today’s decision striking at the heart of the Voting Rights Act,” with a link to a longer statement from her and her husband on the Supreme Court’s decision.

That particular statement was part of something greater: a direct appeal to the black community. It’s a core constituency of the Democratic Party and one that broke for Barack Obama, the first black president, in the 2008 primary election. Ironically, it was Bill Clinton, long before most Americans even believed a black president would be elected in their lifetime, who was famously called “the first black president,” by author Toni Morrison. But signaling the shift away from the Clintons, she too would endorse Obama over Hillary and later explain, “I thought about voting for Hillary at the beginning. I don’t care that she is a woman. I need more than that. Neither his race, his gender, her race or her gender was enough. I needed something else, and the something else was his wisdom.”

Something like 90 percent of black voters support the Democratic nominee in normal presidential contests. These numbers went up to about 95 percent for Obama. In other words, looking at building support there made a whole lot of sense. Bill Clinton would personally go to great lengths to reingratiate himself with this constituency—one that had turned on him so sharply after he accused the Obama campaign of being a “fairy tale” and after he’d likened Obama’s presidential prospects to those of a black man who had run unsuccessfully for president before him—Jesse Jackson. The former president would pick up the phone to call members of the Congressional Black Caucus, like Maryland Democrat Elijah E. Cummings to see how his mother, whose name Clinton (of course) remembered, was feeling. “He has made an effort to reach out over and over again through the years,” the congressman told the
New York Times
, a sort of liberal bible.
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The newspaper reported that Hillary would make an “appearance before the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta in July, which she opened by offering condolences to the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was killed in Florida last year, and her voting rights address to the American Bar Association in August drew significant attention among black leaders.” Delta Sigma Theta, founded at Howard University, is an historic African American sorority.

The story of Bill Clinton’s phone call and Hillary Clinton’s remembrance of Trayvon Martin was many things—a rebuilding of a relationship with the black community and the
Times
. Both would be important allies as the Clintons looked at their legacy and began to eye the 2016 presidential race.

One of the reporters on the
Times
piece was Amy Chozick, a source not looked upon too keenly by old Clinton hands.

“And I just think this—you know, we have newspapers that have people devoted to doing nothing but covering a campaign that doesn’t exist. So then they have to decide to create stories. You know, we don’t need that. We need to focus—the American people have economic and other challenges. And our region and world have challenges. We should be focused on those things. And that’s what Hillary thinks too,” Bill Clinton would say, ribbing Chozick without naming her in an interview with Univision host Jorge Ramos.

Perhaps that’s why Ramos got what Chozick couldn’t: an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Bill Clinton.

But Ramos also offered something the
Times
reporter couldn’t: a chance to try to rebuild relationships with an ever-growing voting bloc—Hispanics.

“I think that we’re trying to pass immigration reform. The country needs it,” Clinton would tell Ramos, hitting on a major issue for many Hispanic voters. He’d bash Congress—always a safe bet, since their approval rating is consistently in the toilet—for not getting it done.

But Clinton would also suggest it might be hard to get it done soon. “Not this year, right?” Ramos asked. “I don’t know. Next year is the election year. Not this year—2013—2014 maybe,” Clinton replied.

The Clintons are usually able to use the press to their advantage—one way or another.

“The press is schizophrenic about Bill Clinton. The press was tough on Bill Clinton. They were tough on his personal foibles. They were tough on the whole Monica thing. Everything was a scandal. President Clinton, in his own unique way, turned that to his advantage by exhausting the nation with the discussion of what he did, and because everyone became so exhausted, they just wanted to move beyond it. It paradoxically helped Bill Clinton,” says one former White House press secretary in an interview.

These days, Hillary Clinton gets more of the schizophrenic coverage, while Bill Clinton enjoys much more flattering coverage since leaving office more than a dozen years ago. The differences are easy to explain: Hillary is still in politics, as she is obviously considered a presidential hopeful, while former president Clinton is not. The press tends to afford a special status to former presidents, letting them rehabilitate their legacy and pursue various philanthropic goals without much scrutiny, and President Clinton is no exception.

Numerous Clinton associates, those who have known the former president for decades, have raised this question in our interviews—each separately suggesting that Bill Clinton does not want Hillary Clinton to overshadow his place in history by winning the presidency herself.

“Everybody continues to talk about how badly he wants Hillary to run. Why would he want to be the first spouse?” asks a close associate of both Clintons, and who suggests that Bill actually dreads the prospect. “What’s he going to do? Live back in the White House and do the Christmas cards?” The former president, who likes to dominate any conversation, is all but certain to be frustrated being confined to the East Wing, kept out of cabinet meetings, and out of national security meetings in the Situation Room. A man who has spent the last decade doing pretty much whatever he’s wanted to do suddenly will have to have his movements, trips, and associations vetted and cleared by aides to his wife for fear of conflicts of interest.

What does all this portend for 2016? A former president deeply conflicted. On the one hand motivated by the altruistic thought that his wife deserves a shot at the presidency. And on the other prone to give in to his darker qualities—selfishness and self-destructiveness.

“He’ll work his ass off to get her elected,” one longtime Clinton friend suggests. Taking a sip of coffee, he pauses before qualifying his statement. “But in the back of his mind he would always be thinking, ‘Maybe I’d be better off if she weren’t elected.’ ” He smiles. “He could sabotage her. And he’d be like, ‘Oh, oops.’ And with him, honestly, it could be subconscious, but it’s there. If it’s conscious, if he’s purposely doing it, that’s some crazy shit.”

In light of the multitude of media reports about how badly Bill Clinton wants Hillary elected president, the speculation from the Clinton associate may seem farfetched, but upon closer examination it makes sense that, at a minimum, Bill Clinton has deep reservations about the role of doting first gentleman.

Bill is not the only problem for 2016. In fact, he might not even be the biggest. To some close observers that title now falls to Chelsea, who serves as Hillary’s closest confidante, final arbiter, referee, advisor, and shadow campaign manager. In some sense it doesn’t really matter who is named the official campaign manager for Hillary’s 2016 run—even though speculation is already rampant. He or she will be answering to the candidate and the candidate’s daughter (and the candidate’s husband).

As
Politico
reported in early 2014, “[J]ust about every close Hillary Clinton ally, asked to describe who is at the top of her organizational chart, gives the same answer: Chelsea. Exactly what that translates into is shrouded in a bit of mystery.” A 2016 campaign will make Chelsea de facto campaign manager.

“They’ve become beholden to her,” says a longtime Clinton family associate. “Patti Solis Doyle, when she messed up, she got fired,” he says, referring to a close friend of Hillary’s who was relieved as her 2008 campaign manager. “But you can’t fire your daughter. I mean this is unexplored territory here because all of a sudden, the person running the ship . . . you can’t get rid of her.” Chelsea Clinton has never come close to running a nationwide presidential effort where she must fend off attacks from all sides. As this family associate put it, Hillary may have to choose—between her family or the presidency. The choice she will make still isn’t clear.

The Clintons have worked hard to build relationships with key media outlets, especially since their defeat in 2008, and have often been hugely successful. George Stephanopoulos, who has been known to hold daily calls with Clinton aides, is stationed at ABC, where Donna Brazile is now a regular. (While Stephanopoulos has been ostracized and his relationship with the Clintons is complicated, recent appearances by President Clinton on the show indicate a kind of cooling.) Virginia Moseley, whose husband (Tom Nides) was a top State Department official under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is at CNN, where Paul Begala seems to be back. At Fox, there’s Doug Schoen and James Carville, who just signed on as a contributor. And of course Chelsea’s still under contract at NBC. Which means that practically all big network and cable television stations have Clinton cronies waiting in the wings. That doesn’t mean the channels will never air a negative Clinton story—but it does suggest that there will be a higher bar to air hurtful segments about Hillary Clinton than for probably any other potential candidate in the next race.

There’s more unprecedented outreach this time around, too. They’ve welcomed two reporters into HillaryWorld by giving them unprecedented access to people and aides associated with Hillary’s time at the State Department. It’s a way, it’s been reported, for this branch of the Clinton camp to tell
that
story in a book by the reporters—and get away from the
other
Hillary Clinton stories.

Of course, they didn’t just let anyone in. In what is being presented as purely coincidental, one of the reporters, Jonathan Allen, worked for Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz—a Democratic congresswoman from Florida. He now works at Bloomberg, having jumped ship from
Politico
. The other reporter, Amie Parnes, works at the
Hill
, a Washington-based political newspaper. Even ABC chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl panned their book—writing, “Mr. Allen and Ms. Parnes appear to have fallen in love with their subject.”
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Which would explain why ClintonWorld let them in in the first place.

Despite efforts to keep things under control, in the Clinton camp things can always spiral out of control, even for those who look most perfect and for those who appear most loyal. That is what happened to Huma Abedin in June 2011 when her husband got caught by conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart sending lewd images of himself to young attractive women across the country.
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The brash and obnoxious Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner lied about it, claiming at first to have been hacked.
10
Within days, the story only intensified and Weiner was forced to fess up. He resigned from Congress in shame within a month.
11

They had only been married for a year at that point—they had tied the knot the year before in a Long Island castle. Bill Clinton had officiated at the marriage.

But not long after getting caught sending the lewd pictures, other news came out: Huma was expecting the couple’s first child, a boy, who’d be born in December that year. Huma had hoped to use the birth of her child as a way to transition out of ClintonWorld. Well, not completely—her entire life and career were predicated on her close relationship with Hillary. But she saw how her comrade Doug Band had transitioned into starting his own business and making his own money and calling his own shots. And that was something that appealed to her after spending more than fifteen years at Hillary’s side.

The problem was her husband. “I think Huma was trying to separate the same way; the problem is she married a fucking douche bag. You know, I think she was trying to make that same transition that Doug made,” says a ClintonWorld associate. “She was transitioning out of State. She was trying to be an advisor but still make money on the side. Then her husband turned out to be the biggest fucking asshole in the world.”

After she gave birth to her son, Abedin did move back to their New York City apartment. Her boss, Secretary Clinton, gave her a special status—special government employee—through a program generally given to government workers to help them transition out of the private sector and into a high-level government position. Here it was being used so Abedin could have one foot in government while she looked for work elsewhere.