Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas (13 page)

In the upcoming presidential election, Bill Clinton had two quite legitimate—and often warring—interests. On the one hand, he wanted to take credit for Obama’s reelection. On the other, he could see the advantages to Hillary and the Clinton Brand if Obama lost, which would allow Clinton to grab control of the Democratic Party.

In his heart, he wanted to see Obama lose. But that was mere emotion. Logic, reason, and the promotion of the Clinton Brand all argued the opposite case—that he go all-out to help Obama defeat Romney.

These two sides of Bill Clinton would continue to war with each other throughout the election campaign—and well beyond.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE PLUM ROLE

W
ith the approach of the Democratic National Convention in the late summer of 2012, it looked as though Bill Clinton’s secret wish to see Obama lose might indeed come true.

The economic news had turned sour again. The jobless rate was stuck at over 8 percent, and had been for the past forty-two months. The Federal Reserve released data showing that median family net worth shrank to levels not seen in twenty years. Romney was surging in the polls, and it began to look as though he could beat Barack Obama in the November election.

Panic spread throughout the Democratic Party establishment.

“We will face an impossible head wind in November if we do not move to a new narrative, one that . . . focuses on what we will do to make a better future for the middle class,” former Clinton
adviser James Carville and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg wrote in a widely circulated memo.

“The Obama campaign should make it clear whose fundamental fault the economic problems are, and they’ve chosen not to do that,” said former Democratic Party chairman Don Fowler.

“Democrats have to know that the president is up against a well-financed opponent in a tough political environment,” said campaign strategist Bill Burton, a former White House aide. “If everyone doesn’t join the fight, [Obama] could be defeated.”

Faced with these prophecies of doom, Obama’s advisers looked for a Hail Mary play, some dramatic deed or event that would turn things around and save them from defeat. Gradually a consensus developed that the upcoming Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, was the answer to their predicament. If they played their cards right, the convention would give them the bounce they needed to reignite the Obama campaign. Three days in Charlotte would be their salvation.

As they began to put together the show in Charlotte and draw up a list of speakers, the drumbeat inside the campaign grew louder and louder for one man, Bill Clinton, who was viewed as an iconic figure by the party faithful.

The most outspoken advocate for giving Bill Clinton a major role in the convention was, once again, David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign strategist. Plouffe had long been aware that, despite the
mainstream media’s upbeat Obama coverage, things were not going well for Obama. On the eve of the party’s presidential convention, Democrats had outspent Republicans four to one and had poured more than $200 million into negative commercials against Mitt Romney, and yet Plouffe’s internal polls showed the race to be a dead heat, with Romney beginning to pull ahead in some critical swing states.

What was more, Plouffe had reason to worry about the trend lines in the remaining months of the contest. The Romney campaign had been far more effective in raising money than the Obama campaign, and from now until November it would be Romney, not Obama, who would have the financial advantage.

Finally, Plouffe had to admit that the Obama campaign’s strategy of talking about everything but the economy wasn’t working, especially after Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin joined the Republican ticket as the vice presidential nominee and turned Medicare and budget deficits into GOP talking points. With the consumer confidence index tumbling to its lowest level in almost a year and household income continuing to fall as well, Obamanomics was widely perceived to be a failure. A whopping 56 percent of registered voters disapproved of the job Obama was doing on the economy.

Someone had to make the case at the Democratic National Convention that Obama could fix the economy—and it couldn’t be Barack Obama.

Enter Bill Clinton, who had presided over boom times and balanced budgets in the 1990s and was the most admired Democrat in the country. David Plouffe argued that Clinton was essential to a successful convention bounce.

There was only one problem: Barack Obama was dead set against featuring Clinton at the convention. The last thing he wanted to see was Clinton standing at the podium of the convention hall in Charlotte and sucking all the air out of the place. He rejected the notion that he needed to turn to a former president who had been impeached (though not convicted) for perjury and obstruction of justice by the House of Representatives. It was tantamount to saying that he, Barack Obama, couldn’t win on his own. That he was a loser. He couldn’t do it, and he wouldn’t do it—and he wasn’t alone in his objections. First Lady Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett weighed in on the discussion, arguing strenuously against offering Clinton a plum assignment at the convention.

“If we’re going to let Clinton speak at all,” Valerie Jarrett said, “let’s relegate him to a minor, non-prime-time role when the TV cameras are turned off.”

In late August, the Republicans ran into bad luck. Hurricane Isaac skirted Tampa, Florida, the site of the Republican National Convention, slicing a critical day off the three-day program and bumping a video biography of Mitt Romney from primetime TV. To make matters worse, Clint Eastwood was rolled out at the last minute and delivered an incoherent monologue to an empty chair, stealing the headlines and Mitt Romney’s show. Then, as Newsmax’s Christopher Ruddy wrote, “primetime keynoter Chris Christie barely mentioned the nominee or Obama in a
speech that sounded like the New Jersey governor was pumping his re-election.” Even before the Republican convention was over, it was clear that it had turned into a fiasco.

The Obama White House was ecstatic. The Republicans’ pain was the Democrats’ gain. It was just the opportunity that David Plouffe and his campaign staff had been praying for. They would put on a bigger and better show when it came their turn in Charlotte.

However, there was a major sticking point. Bill Clinton sent word to the White House that he would accept nothing less than the all-important nominating speech on the second day of the convention, a role normally reserved for the vice president. And he threatened to boycott the convention unless his demands were met.

No one had to remind Barack Obama of the risk he would run by granting Clinton his demands. What if Clinton veered off message? What if Clinton used his allotted speaking time at the convention to extol his own virtues over those of Obama? What if Clinton became the hero of his own speech?

But under the insistent urging of David Plouffe, Obama finally relented. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He agreed to permit Bill Clinton to give the nominating speech during prime time.

On July 25—six weeks before the start of the convention—Obama called Clinton from Air Force One and offered him the choice speaking role at the convention. It was one of the rare instances in which Obama didn’t listen to the counsel of Valerie Jarrett.

And he dreaded the consequences of his decision.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE ILLUSIONIST

B
ill Clinton set to work on his convention speech in his home office, which was located in a converted red barn just a stone’s throw away from his Dutch Colonial house on 15 Old House Lane in Chappaqua. This time Hillary wasn’t around to play her customary role as her husband’s sounding board; she was in Asia, tending to business as secretary of state, and staying as far away from the partisan battles as possible. This wasn’t her time; it was Bill’s. Her time would come later.

Over the years, Clinton had promoted a myth about the writing of his speeches. “He wanted even his top staff, his intimate associates, all to believe that his work was one man’s creation—his own,” Dick Morris and Eileen McGann noted in their book
Because He Could
. However, like all modern presidents, Clinton had always had considerable help assembling and writing his
speeches, and this proved to be the case with the convention speech as well. Several Clinton speechwriters and aides, including former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta and Washington power broker Lanny Davis, weighed in with their ideas, which Clinton incorporated into his drafts.

On his desk were a quiver of sharpened number 2 pencils, a box of Sharpie black markers, and a stack of yellow legal pads. Curled up at his feet was his chocolate lab, Seamus. Peering down from the rafters of the barn was a cigar-store Indian, a souvenir from one of the former president’s trips. The bookcases that lined the walls groaned with well-thumbed biographies of famous men who had gone before him. A voracious reader with a photographic memory, Clinton could cite whole passages from these books, many of which he hadn’t opened in years.

He had always yearned for a prominent place in the grand parade of history—to be ranked as a rightful successor to such transformational presidents as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan. As he later admitted to a friend, he was aware that his convention speech would be judged as his most important formal address since leaving office a dozen years before. And he was distressed by the thought that, for all his efforts to reinvent himself, he might not be up to the challenge and that, as a result, his enemies would be proved right in contending that he had been nothing more than a fair-to-middling president.

According to those who knew him best, Clinton’s greatest self-indulgence was not women; it was self-pity. They said he frequently talked about how unfairly he had been treated by his enemies. He referred to ancient political battles from ten, twelve,
even twenty years earlier as though they had taken place last week. He spoke of his old political wounds as though they still bled. Despite his immense post-presidential popularity, he found it hard to believe that he had won his way back into the good graces of the American people. Had they really forgiven him for his Oval Office dalliance with that woman Lewinsky? He was never sure.

Those who helped Clinton draft the convention speech said he imbued it with almost magic powers. If he got the speech right, he told them, it would help reelect Obama in 2012, lay the groundwork for Hillary in 2016, and bring about a Clinton Restoration. He invested the speech with more importance than anything he had attempted since leaving office. He would show everyone that he ranked up there with the all-time greats.

There were those in the media who doubted that Clinton would dare to use his speech to overshadow Obama at the convention.

“[Clinton] is savvy enough to know that he is there [at Charlotte] to help win Obama’s reelection,” wrote Dan Balz, a senior political correspondent at the
Washington Post
. “But overshadow the president? Obama is no slouch when it comes to big speeches. However Clinton performs, the big speech in Charlotte will still be Obama’s.”

But those who doubted that Clinton would try to overshadow Obama didn’t know the Big Dog. The truth was, Clinton was not prepared to cede pride of place to anyone—not even to Barack Obama at Obama’s own convention. When it came time to compare
his
nomination speech with
Obama’s
acceptance
speech, Clinton (whose Secret Service detail had nicknamed him Elvis) had every intention of being crowned the King.