Unlikeable (4 page)

But now, it appeared that Bill's days of wine and roses might be over. He was going to find it harder to solicit donations from his foreign friends—something he enjoyed doing and was very good at. And from now on, he'd have to look over his shoulder before he climbed aboard a G650 private jet with a posse of pretty things.

Life was going to get rough for the old reprobate.

Which made him all the more ambivalent about Hillary's presidential ambitions.

When it came to Bill Clinton's true intentions, it was hard to read the tea leaves.

For instance, during one of Bill's appearances on the
Late Show with David Letterman
, Dave asked the former president if he would move back into the White House if Hillary won the election in 2016.

“If she wins the election,” Bill replied, “the chances are 100 percent I'll move back.”

Then he added, “If—wait, wait—if I'm asked.”

“You may not be invited back,” Dave joked.

“My experience is that since I left the White House, when a president of either party asks, you say yes,” Bill said. “So I hope I'll be invited.”

But according to one of Bill's trusted legal advisers who was interviewed several times for this book, Bill's line of thought was not as simple as that.

“Bill told me that if Hillary is elected president, he wasn't going to give up his other interests and take up residency in the White House, the way first ladies have traditionally done,” the adviser said. “He'll continue spending a good amount of time at his penthouse in Little Rock. He'll continue to travel on foundation business. And he'll spend time in Haiti, which is still a mess
and something he very much wants to make right. He is worried about his legacy with Haiti.

“He is also going to travel to Africa on his AIDS initiatives,” the adviser continued. “He'll personally visit pharmaceutical corporations to work on getting cheaper or free AIDS medications for the worst hit countries. He'll continue to make speeches. He's going to lecture at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.

“It's a very ambitious schedule that doesn't include sitting around the White House. Of course, he'll be there often. He's going to have a sock drawer there. He'll attend state dinners when it seems appropriate. But he's planning to not hover around so that people aren't sure who is president. He's going to back off and let Hillary be president.”

If Bill didn't intend to be a permanent resident in the White House in the event Hillary won the presidency, who would take on the traditional responsibilities of the first lady?

“There is a social function to the first lady's role, and that will not go away,” said Susan Swain, coauthor of a history on first ladies. “It is important to have somebody in that role. The best guesstimate with the Clintons is that Chelsea Clinton would take over that role.”

So which was it?

Would Bill move back into the White House?

Or stay away for long stretches of time?

Maybe Bill didn't know the answer himself. He often said things that he didn't mean but that suited his purpose when he said them. It didn't matter if he was caught in a contradiction or
an outright lie. Like Hillary, he was shameless, a person without a moral center. He could pursue two opposing objectives at the same time without feeling a twinge of guilt. For instance, he could treat Barack Obama as his sworn enemy
and
deliver a rousing speech for Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

If Hillary became president, Bill might very well refuse to play the game of first gentleman, as his adviser said.

Or he might lay claim to Hillary's old office on the second floor of the West Wing and renew the Clintons' warped version of their contract with America: two for the price of one.

CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4

INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY
INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

—William Shakespeare,
As You Like It

T
oward the end of April 2015, Bill and Hillary summoned their top advisers to a crisis meeting at Chappaqua.

It was time to scramble the jets.

When the long-awaited launch of Hillary's presidential campaign finally occurred, it was nearly scuttled by a tsunami of scandals: Benghazi . . . exorbitant speaking fees . . . deleted e-mails . . . dodgy foundation fund-raising . . . special business favors from the Obama administration and the Clinton Foundation for Hillary's brother.

Instead of getting a bounce from her road trip to Iowa and New Hampshire in her cutesy Scooby Doo van, Hillary was losing
in some matchup polls with potential Republican challengers in critical swing states.

Several old Clinton hands made the trek to Chappaqua for the meeting, including John Podesta, Bill's former chief of staff, and James Carville and Paul Begala, the top strategists of Bill's 1992 presidential campaign. When they arrived at the Clintons' Dutch Colonial house on 15 Old House Lane, the garden was blooming with neat rows of pink tulips, and the swimming pool was uncovered after the long, bitter winter.

The Clintons were waiting for them in the den along with Huma Abedin, Hillary's alter ego; her chief of staff Cheryl Mills; and a smattering of close personal friends. The atmosphere, according to one of the participants who was interviewed for this book, resembled an Irish wake—a mix of gloom over Hillary's troubles and good-natured banter.

All three of the TV sets were tuned to the news from Baltimore, where rioters had torched buildings and cars and looted a CVS pharmacy. The phone was constantly ringing with updates from the scene of the violence. One of the calls came from Elijah Cummings, the African American representative from Maryland's Seventh Congressional District, who was in Baltimore observing the mayhem and reporting back to Bill.

Huma handed the phone to Bill. He was sipping red wine, which his cardiac specialist had told him was good for his heart condition.

As he listened, Bill smiled and gave Hillary the thumbs-up sign.

As he hung up the phone, he said, “That was good news from Elijah.”

Bill explained that the rioting denizens of Baltimore had just given Martin O'Malley, one of Hillary's rivals for the nomination, a rough time. The former Maryland governor had cut short a trip to London and Dublin and returned to Baltimore, where he had once served as the city's mayor. But as he walked the streets, hoodie-wearing agitators heckled and booed him. The rioters blamed O'Malley for the aggressive zero-tolerance police tactics that, they charged, had led to the death of a black man named Freddie Gray and touched off the riots.

“Baltimore isn't local; it's the number one issue for the [party's] base right now,” Bill said. “They care that their young men are the constant target of police violence. They don't care about Hillary's goddamn e-mails. If O'Malley comes after us, we've got to make sure we get that message out. He let the police get out of control. Encouraged the violence against African American youth. That's devastating for O'Malley.”

Suddenly, an expression of pain crossed Bill's face, and he sat down on a sofa. He patted a pillow with the Seal of the President of the United States and tugged at the muscles in his neck, as though he were trying to ease the pain. Hillary came over and sat next to him. She took his hand and rubbed it.

In a moment, Bill seemed to recover. He began to talk about the upcoming presidential election.

“I'm not sure how much good I can do,” he said. “I'm not mad enough. I don't hate the people that'll be in the race enough.
You have to have that hate to knock them out. I'm tired and weary.”

Everyone knew that Bill Clinton was not a well man.

On the TV screen, he looked haggard and drained of energy. His complexion ranged from sallow to cadaverous. His cheeks were hollow. His shirt collar hung around his neck. His hands trembled. He had trouble getting words out. He was sixty-eight years old—by today's standards, still middle aged—but he looked and acted like an old man.

When he wasn't performing for the public—when he let down his guard in private—he looked and acted even worse.

He took long naps. He chose to sit rather than stand, to ride rather than walk, to nibble rather than eat. He talked incessantly about his mortality, about what was in his last will and testament, about how he had been dealt a bad hand in his DNA. He had a history of heart disease on his mother's side of the family going back several generations, and his cholesterol level was through the roof.

Up until ten years or so ago, he had been in denial about his health. He ate and drank whatever he wanted, exercised only sporadically, and let himself go to seed. He was more than fifty pounds overweight.

In 2004, Doctor Allan Schwartz, a cardiologist at New York– Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center, warned Bill that he was a walking time bomb; an angiogram revealed that he had arterial
blockage of 90 percent in several places. He was a candidate for a massive heart attack. It was only then that the former president faced up to reality and agreed to undergo quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery.

He became a vegan (though he ate salmon and had an occasional omelet) and adopted a plant-heavy diet in the hope of reversing his heart disease.

Six months later, however, he was rushed to the hospital for another operation—this one to remove scar tissue and fluid from his left chest cavity. Then in 2010, after complaining of chest pains, he was taken by ambulance to New York–Presbyterian/Columbia, where two coronary stents were implanted in the coronary arteries that carried oxygen to the heart.

In the late spring of 2013, Doctor Schwartz informed Bill that there was further deterioration in the function of his heart. His heart disease was progressive. There was little Bill could do about it except cut back on his hectic schedule and get more rest.

But shortly after being given that depressing prognosis, Bill heard that his friend, ninety-one-year-old Henry Kissinger, had undergone successful heart-valve replacement surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Bill flew to Boston to see Kissinger's doctor, the eminent cardiologist Timothy Edward Guiney.

Could Doctor Guiney save his life?

Guiney was not optimistic. During Bill's three emergency operations, parts of his heart muscle had died. At Bill's age, new heart blockage could occur at any time and it might prove fatal.
It was an open question whether he could stand the rigors of Hillary's presidential campaign.

That summer after Bill saw Doctor Guiney, he and Hillary rented a home in Sagaponack, a resort village on the East End of Long Island. The $11 million house sat on three and a half acres and rented for $200,000. The Clintons took along their three dogs—Seamus, an old chocolate lab; Tally, a poodle; and a stray puppy named Maisie.

Bill liked to sit by the pool, sip a fresh vegetable drink, and let his legs dangle in the heated water while he schmoozed with friends.

“Everybody thinks I'm about to die,” he said one day. “They're already trying to bury me. But I'm not going anywhere until we get back in the White House. That's going to happen. It's true that the news from the doctors hasn't been all that good. But I'm going to stick around and surprise everybody.”

Hillary was naturally worried about Bill. But she was also concerned about her own mounting health issues.

Blinding headaches frequently plagued her, and she constantly worried that she was developing another blood clot on her brain. There were incidents on the campaign trail when she felt faint and nearly swooned. Those incidents were kept secret.

The last time she fainted, in 2012, she was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told her that she had a right transverse venous thrombosis, or blood clot, between her brain and skull.
Her doctors informed Hillary that she had an intrinsic tendency to form blood clots, and that she had to take an anticoagulant and be carefully monitored for the rest of her life.

Another thing that concerned her was the trembling in her hands. This had been going on for some time, but the condition seemed to be getting worse. She consulted a neurologist, who told her it was nothing to be overly concerned about, but to keep an eye on it and have periodic checkups.

“She's been a strong soldier through many political campaigns, but the trembling in her hands really concerns her,” her friend said. “For the first time since I've known her, she's showing self-doubt about her strength and vitality.

“The recent stuff in the papers about her brother Tony's dodgy financial deals really got to her,” the friend went on. “She says that all presidents and their wives have crazy brothers who embarrass them, and that she's no exception. But Hillary's never had any control over Tony. He's been a repo man and taken other questionable moneymaking jobs. Tony's definitely one of the things that keeps Hillary awake at night.”

Hillary was having trouble sleeping. She woke up frequently and found it hard to get back to sleep. Her insomnia worried her because it sapped her energy just when she needed it the most for the campaign.

“She is exhausted and depressed a lot of the time,” one of her friends said. “She has been offered Ambien and Lunesta by her doctors. She had taken those medications in the past, but she said they made her less sharp the next day.”

In an effort to divert attention from Hillary's escalating e-mail scandal, her campaign released a report in late July 2015 on her medical condition from her personal physician, Doctor Lisa Bardack.
According to Doctor Bardack, tests revealed “a complete resolution of the effects of the concussion as well as total dissolution of the thrombosis.”

But that was not the whole story. In fact, Hillary's uncertain health had forced her to cancel several meetings and cut back on her campaign schedule. She swore to friends that her doctors couldn't find any definitive problem, but Bill believed she was in denial and was ignoring what could be life-threatening symptoms.

Bill was so concerned that he asked a well-known cardiologist to review Hillary's medical records. After looking over her cardiograms and X-rays and other records, the cardiologist recommended that Hillary travel with a full-time physician who would keep her under constant observation.

“Most politicians are reluctant to be monitored by a doctor because they fear that if the results are leaked to the press, the information might harm their chances of election,” the cardiologist said in an interview for this book. “But doctors are discreet. And in Hillary's case, it is very important that she be monitored on a daily basis. Her symptoms—the fainting—are very worrisome, especially for someone of her age. I have a lot of experience with political candidates and have seen the toll that the stress of a campaign can take. It's stressful for young candidates, and for older ones like Hillary, it's beyond belief.”