Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (44 page)

The foundation’s long-standing effort to assist small businesses in Harlem, since renamed the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative, had provided pro bono assistance valued at $14 million to entrepreneurs across New York City—and meanwhile had launched an Earned Income Tax Credit Awareness program that helped survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and nine other cities obtain $10 million worth of assistance. Promising new projects were getting under way, such as the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative, seeking to improve the lives of small farmers in Rwanda and Malawi.

Looming over all the initiatives was CHAI—still an inspiration for many of the foundation’s projects—which employed more than five hundred staff and volunteers around the world in late February 2007. Over the course of four years, CHAI operations had expanded urgently, spurred by a sense of crisis; by 2007, nearly seventy countries were purchasing medicine through its consortium, which had negotiated sharply reduced prices on forty treatment regimens and sixteen diagnostic tests. With Clinton’s personal intervention, CHAI had succeeded in penetrating China and India, persuading those governments to act against AIDS before the epidemic overwhelmed them.

During 2006, Magaziner had focused CHAI on children with AIDS, a subset of victims that was inexplicably neglected. Negotiating a drastic cut in the annual price of antiretroviral medicine per child from $567 to only $54, CHAI’s pediatric program had doubled the number of children receiving treatment in thirty-three countries. With fresh financial assistance from UNITAID, CHAI’s drugs were reaching 135,000 children, or two thirds of all the children getting treatment in the world. Over time, said Stephen Lewis, U.N. Special Envoy for AIDS, this program would “keep hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, of children alive who would otherwise die.”

CHAI had embarked on a new program to rebuild the health system in Rwanda, under the direction of Paul Farmer, and a pilot program in Tanzania to reduce the cost of malaria treatments, which would reduce the price of effective drugs from $10 per dose—far beyond the reach of most people there—to less than 50 cents. Thousands of Tanzanians had already obtained medications for themselves and their children. With CHAI’s technical assistance, the central government had appropriated a new subsidy for every Tanzanian child under five to receive malaria treatment if needed.

More than 1.5 million people were receiving AIDS treatment supported by CHAI in early 2007—and with the efforts of the Global Fund, PEPFAR, and UNITAID, all strengthened by CHAI’s impact on the pharmaceutical marketplace, the world was finally combating the pandemic in a systematic and serious way.

Behind the foundation’s record of achievement, however, was an escalating bureaucratic battle between Ira Magaziner and Clinton’s senior staff, particularly Doug Band. At a meeting in Chappaqua during the fall of 2006, Band and others had gone so far as to urge the former president to “curtail” or even dismiss his old friend, whom they suspected of attempting to take over the foundation. Clinton, who considered Magaziner one of the smartest, most creative, and hardest-working people he had ever met, summarily rejected that recommendation. But his demand that they all find a way to get along had not ended the conflict.

The likelihood of Band and Magaziner working smoothly together was never great; their differences were too obvious and grating. For instance, Magaziner’s irreverent habit of addressing Clinton as “Bill” rather than “Mr. President”
irked Band, who considered protecting the former president’s dignity among his chief responsibilities. To him, Magaziner’s uninvited informality reeked of presumption if not disrespect. Band tended to be short with anyone who violated this sense of propriety, and his flashes of temper had earned him a tough reputation.

Determined as he was to maintain an aura of statesmanship around Clinton, Band expected proper attire and demeanor in the office. Magaziner, with his unruly gray hair and rumpled suits, no necktie, usually looked as if he had just completed a long sojourn on an airplane—which very often he had. He was unwilling to take direction, let alone criticism, from someone so much younger and less experienced.

Their contrasting styles reflected more substantial disagreements over how to run the foundation. After years of ad hoc administration, Band wanted to impose organizational rigor, strategic planning, and uniform procedures that would encourage growth while avoiding fiscal and programmatic pitfalls. Magaziner continued to operate CHAI from suburban Boston, in a space that was formerly a dentist’s office, beyond the reach of the foundation’s main offices in Harlem and Little Rock. He bridled at such controls. To him, CHAI’s success depended on his ability to function nimbly, without burdensome managerial restrictions.

Barrages of emails and memos flew between the two sides, filled with complaints about Magaziner’s failure to consult or even inform foundation colleagues when he contacted donors on behalf of CHAI, when he made commitments that implicated foundation resources in other countries, when he hired or fired personnel, and when he spent money.

One such critique of Magaziner, written in early 2007, ran to eleven angry single-spaced pages. Another letter, addressed to Clinton from Lindsey, upbraided the CHAI chairman for alienating major donors and claiming credit for big donations that others had actually arranged. Dueling memos to Clinton from Band and Magaziner argued, to cite only one example, over who had fostered the foundation’s close relationship with Bill and Melinda Gates; the Microsoft billionaire had become one of the foundation’s most generous supporters.

Even worse, in Band’s view, was Magaziner’s repeated pattern of making promises that were impossible for Clinton to fulfill. He regarded Magaziner as a poor manager, operating without transparency
or communication, hiring inexperienced young people, micromanaging them, and then driving out anyone who challenged him. While he inspired great loyalty among some CHAI employees, others found him “terrifying.” One who had worked closely with him before being pushed out said he ran the organization “by the seat of his pants.”

What troubled Band the most, however, was the feeling that unlike him, Bruce Lindsey, and nearly everyone else in Clinton’s orbit, Magaziner didn’t seem to put the former president’s interests and image first. By Band’s most important standard, personal loyalty, he felt that Magaziner didn’t measure up. And Magaziner’s approach to management left the organization exposed to potential trouble.

Painfully aware of the turmoil swirling around him, Magaziner felt increasingly resentful. His own efforts to raise money received too little credit—much of the foundation’s fundraising capacity was based on CHAI’s success, anyway. He sometimes threatened to quit and take CHAI with him—tantamount to staging a coup—because he found working with Band so difficult and unpleasant.

Behind all the anger and distrust, Band and Magaziner couldn’t completely suppress a certain respect for each other’s work. In a mutually indignant email chain, Band praised Magaziner’s “great strategic vision” without a trace of sarcasm; in his reply, Magaziner acknowledged the creation of CGI as “a great accomplishment and your vision and drive made it happen. . . . You are a smart and talented guy. You work very hard. You are capable of being very gracious, friendly and charming when you want to be. . . . But those are not the parts of your personality that we see most often now.”

Every few months, these ongoing disputes would become so rancorous that Clinton would have to step in to establish a truce. By early 2007, however, Magaziner had accumulated a budget deficit of at least $9 million, a number that would ultimately rise to almost $24 million—all of which had to be covered by the foundation’s general revenues. CHAI had raised programmatic funds, but not enough operating money. Clinton couldn’t ignore the financial misdemeanor, especially because he was trying to establish a significant rainy-day reserve fund and, eventually, an endowment of $250 million. Without stricter cost controls, he would never meet those objectives.

The wrangling between Magaziner and Band was symptomatic of a
larger problem: how to maintain the entrepreneurial spirit of the foundation’s early years with the fiscal rigor, forward strategy, and organizational structure essential to achieving its global ambitions. Within the foundation, Band’s opinion that Clinton should rein in Magaziner was widely shared.

Toward that end, Bruce Lindsey sent a memo to Clinton in March 2007, setting forth ideas to better integrate Magaziner into the overall structure despite his resistance. His two projects, CHAI and the Clinton Climate Initiative, would be required to report monthly data on staffing, management, finances, development, and communications to Lindsey and other senior staff. The memo even hinted at closing down Magaziner’s operation in the Boston suburbs and moving its functions to the offices in Harlem and Little Rock.

What followed was a tense telephone conversation between Clinton and Magaziner, during which the former president demanded change and his old friend pushed back, hard. They hung up without reaching any agreement.

Having predicted that Barack Obama might become the most competitive challenger to Hillary didn’t make the Illinois senator’s sudden rise any less irritating to Bill Clinton. He considered Obama, a freshman with little experience in government and almost none in foreign affairs, both poorly prepared and arrogant. While Hillary was constantly criticized for ambition, Obama was seen as charming and cool. Nobody in the press, complained Clinton, showed any interest in the way that Obama played both sides—touting his opposition to the war in Iraq for progressive audiences, while telling the “serious people” in Washington that he might have voted for Bush’s war resolution in October 2002—a time when, luckily for him, he was still a state legislator. Instead, the media stoked liberal anger over Hillary’s Iraq vote.

As his wife’s campaign unfolded, those who observed Clinton closely saw his unconcealed frustration. But by wading into the Democratic primary, his aides worried he would stain his status as an international statesman. If engaging in primary politics was unavoidable, it was also un-presidential. The question was whether the damage could be limited.

His wife’s
campaign staff viewed him as an asset—a formidable strategist, spellbinding orator, prodigious fundraiser, political shepherd—and an irritant. His loquacious charm could spill over into excessive chatter about himself and his presidency. When they were scheduled together on a trip to Iowa over the Fourth of July, the staff fretted over how to manage them, where to send them—and whether he would keep his introductions of her short, sweet, and to the point.

“Yeah, okay guys,
I got it
,” Clinton sighed after five separate lectures from Penn and her other top staffers, according to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s
Game Change
. “I’ll try not to screw it up for her too bad while I’m out there.” He didn’t screw up, sticking to the script at the brunch and rally in Des Moines, the barbecues in Davenport, Waterloo, and Cedar Rapids, and the big parade in Clear Lake.

Except for the days he was overseas, his 2007 monthly schedules were strewn with his wife’s initials: “HRC Wkly Donor Calls,” “HRC Event/Miami,” “HRC Event/Aspen,” “HRC Event in Destin, FLA,” “Hold for HRC in New Hampshire.” One exception was July 23, when Hillary debated Obama and John Edwards in Charleston, South Carolina. He was away on his annual Africa trip, meeting with the president of Tanzania in Dar-es-Salaam.

In contrast to 2006, when he had spent 80 days abroad—visiting 53 foreign cities in 32 countries—and 84 days in U.S. cities, his 2007 schedule showed 44 days abroad, and 121 days spent visiting 150 U.S. cities (not including several trips to Washington and Little Rock). Rarely did Clinton’s 2007 calendar reflect any involvement in campaign strategy sessions or conference calls, however. One of his aides later recalled, “Basically, we just went wherever they told us to go.”

Dispatched to locations across the country by his wife’s handlers, Clinton tried to make the best use of his travel time. When he wasn’t reading, he spent many airborne hours scribbling his thick longhand into notebooks—not just tweaking speeches, but working on a new book. After the massive sales and worldwide barnstorming tour for
My Life
, the former president and his publishers at Knopf had been eager to formulate a fresh idea.

Inspired by the remarkable success of the Clinton Global Initia
tive, they eventually came up with a concept to be titled
Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World
. Justin Cooper remained Clinton’s literary collaborator, a role he was well trained to fulfill while overseeing trip logistics and advance, whether they were working together during a long flight or in the Chappaqua barn. The book’s purpose was to “democratize CGI” by creating a new, inspirational platform for citizen philanthropy, from the lemonade stand to the sustainable corporation.

Published in September, just before CGI’s third annual conclave,
Giving
struck many reviewers as an exercise in cheerleading rather than analysis, with praise lavished on any altruistic act—the plucky child picking up litter as well as the kindly billionaire financing scholarships and microloans. By highlighting organizations and activities addressing every conceivable problem, from hairpieces for kids with cancer to peace in the Mideast, the book gently argued that there is a charitable niche for everyone and that happiness depends more on giving than taking. The dozens of examples blurred into a fuzzy panorama of good feeling, proving Clinton’s homily: If only everybody gave money or time, this would be a different world.

The most compelling sections detailed his own efforts, including a concise explanation of the theory and practice that made CHAI successful and a moving recollection of his work with former President Bush to raise money for the communities wrecked by the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. (For the frontispiece, he chose a photograph of a beautiful baby named Basil, born with HIV in Thailand, whose life was saved by a Clinton Foundation clinic with pediatric medicine provided by UNITAID.)