The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" (23 page)

HH: All right, last question, it’s a two-parter, Karl Rove. Can she be beaten by a Republican? And when will the super PACs begin to hammer her as the Democrats hammered Romney in 2012? How early will they open up on her with the big guns in media and social media, etc.?

KR:
Let me take the second part of that first. They will begin to open up, or they should begin to open up when she becomes a candidate and not before, because most of the American people, the people that are going to
have to be reached, are people who are paying not much attention to politics, and will not pay a lot of attention to politics until next year. But once she becomes a candidate, they will begin to pay more attention to her, and to things that are being said about her. Having made that point, though, I’d say this. She’s not a federal office holder. So they’re going to all have to go out and raise 527 money in order to attack her. That’s going to be hard in 2015, because a lot of the people who are willing to write checks to Super PACs are going to be more interested in writing checks to the Super PAC of their favorite candidate for president for the Republican presidential nomination. The first question, though, that you asked is the important one—can we beat her. And the answer is yes. However, here’s the big question mark for Republicans. Will they be able to be articulate and optimistic and hopeful conservative vision for the future of the country that causes people to say you know what, I know what you’re running for. We’re really good at knocking around Obama. And there’s going to be a role for doing that. We’re going to be really good about knocking around Hillary. And there’s a role for that. But at the end of the day, simply being the best person to knock around Obama, or to knock around Hillary, is going to be insufficient to either win the nomination, or more importantly, to win the general election. They’re going to, you know, look, Ronald Reagan spent some time in 1980 kicking around Jimmy Carter. But he spent an inordinate amount of time sharing a vision of what he thought America’s promise and possibility was. And he talked about it, and sometimes in very specific fashion. You and I both remember it, Kemp-Roth. He was out there talking about supply side economics in 1980, as well as kicking around Jimmy Carter for presiding over an economic debacle. That’s an important lesson for us. We win when we have an optimistic and positive conservative agenda that causes people to say I know what you’re going to do. We can attack them, but that serves as an entry point to discuss our values and views, and to draw people to us, not simply push them away from the opposition.

With David Axelrod:

HH: But speaking about the Secretary of State for just a moment, what did Secretary of State Clinton accomplish when she was secretary of state?

DA:
Well, I think that you, a lot of what the President was working on was also her work. So as I said, you know, we went around the world and worked
very hard to cobble together a coalition against Iran. She was very much a part of that effort. I know that she comes under attack now on the issue of the reset. But the reality is that in the first two years of the president’s administration, when Dimitri Medvedev was the president of Russia, there was a different opportunity, and we took advantage of that opportunity in terms of arms treaties and a whole range of other issues that were good for this country. It is unfortunate that President Putin has decided to take the kind… his country backward. But both President Obama and Secretary Clinton deserve credit for the advances that were made in that period.

HH: Now you’ve been advising Hillary for years, though—all the way back to 1992. It was a revelation to me in [Axelrod’s memoir]
Believer
that you advised against her infamous milk and cookies appearance, right?

DA:
Well, you know, what happened was I was informally advising the Clinton campaign at the time, and Bill Clinton came into Chicago, and I was involved in putting the debate negotiations together in the primaries. He was debating Jerry Brown. And Jerry Brown went hard after Bill Clinton about what would later become known as the Whitewater issue, and drew Hillary into the discussion. And there was a very vituperative exchange, I’ll say, between Clinton and Brown in which Clinton said you know, you can say whatever you want about me, but you aren’t even worthy of being on the same stage with my wife. And after the debate, there was a meeting, because the next day, both Clintons were due to campaign in Chicago, and my suggestion was that he go out alone, because if she were there, it would elevate that debate exchange. And I was overruled on that, and I was sort of a minor player. I was an interloper, so I didn’t have the ability to make a very strong argument or winning argument. And she went out and she did make that comment. That was unfortunate, and something that dogged her for some time after that.

HH: It’s going to do her, too, in this next campaign. But since you’ve given her advice before, you know her so well, you know her record at State, and you’re the message maestro, you’re the guy who crafts the 30-second pitch, how is she going to craft her 30-seconds on what she did at State? What’s she going to say?

DA:
First of all, Hugh, I think she’ll have plenty to say what she did at State. She just wrote a whole book on it. But this election is going to be, as every election is, where you’re going
to take the country? Where do you want to take the country? What is the future going to look like? And I think the greatest imperative for her, and frankly, every candidate, and I know Marco Rubio probably was talking about his views about the American middle class on our program—this is the fundamental issue of our time. Are we going to create an economy in which work pays and which people who work hard can get ahead? That value is honored, and or are we going to be a country where people work harder and harder just to try and keep up?

HH: Well, I’ve got to argue with your premise, David Axelrod, and I want to use the authority of David Axelrod to do so. On Page 194, this is the most important page in
Believer
, you reproduce your late 2006 memo to the president, then-Senator Obama, about running for president. And you write, “The most influential politician in 2008 won’t be on the ballot. His name is George W. Bush. With few exceptions, the history of presidential politics shows that public opinion and attitudes about who should occupy the Oval Office next are largely shaped by the perception of the retiring incumbent. And rarely do voters look for a replica. Instead, they generally choose a course correction, selecting a candidate who will address the deficiencies of the outgoing president.” So it’s not as you put it, it’s about being not Obama. So what are the…

DA:
But Hugh, I think, let’s separate this out, because a lot of this has to do with the style and approach of a president. You know, one of the reasons Barack Obama got elected was because there was a sense that George Bush was too Manichean in his thinking, too bombastic, saw the world in terms of black and white, didn’t see the gray, and people wanted a president who could. And they also wanted a president who was very much outside of the system, who would challenge Washington in a way that they felt Washington needed to be challenged. I think that the prism is a little bit different in 2016 because of what I said. I think that they will, people will choose someone who has different qualities than Barack Obama. And I think the candidate they choose will be someone they see, someone who they feel can master the system in Washington, operate in the system in Washington, not necessarily, you know, operate apart from the system in Washington. They’re going to choose someone who is a little less nuanced in their thinking than the President, more direct in their approach or perceived as more direct in their approach. I actually think that’s a climate that is much better for Hillary Clinton than it was in 2008, because her qualities are not Barack Obama’s qualities. They’re friends, they agree on issues, on many issues, but they have
different approaches and different backgrounds and experiences. And I think that her profile is much better for 2016 than it was for 2008.

HH: Well, you’re taking one for the team there. But I’m telling you,
Believer
has got a, it’s like a game plan for going after Hillary. You talk about “Hillary unchained,” how Hillary was “affronted,” Hillary and Bill using the race card, playing the old, Southern, white Democrat after the South Carolina primary when Clinton said “no big deal…” He didn’t say it, you write [of Bill Clinton’s attitude about Hillary losing South Carolina to President Obama], “No big deal, the black guy had won the black primary” [and] “Hillary was baggage you didn’t need as veep.” This is like a gift to the Republicans, David Axelrod.

DA:
Well, if they think it is, and I hope they buy it and read it in large numbers, I really don’t think of it that way. The one thing that I’ve said, Hugh, publicly is that you know, Hillary Clinton was an ineffective candidate in 2007, because she was kind of cocooned in this presumption of inevitability, and very cautious. And once we won the Iowa Caucuses, she was a different candidate and a different campaigner. She threw the caution away. She was much more visceral in her campaigning. She connected very well with people. Her sense of advocacy came through very clearly. And she herself was more revealing of herself. My strong feeling is that if she is that candidate, she can do well. If she’s the first candidate, if she retreats back into the cocoon of inevitability and is cautious, then she’ll have a much harder time.

HH: Can Elizabeth Warren beat her?

DA:
I don’t think Elizabeth, I know Elizabeth Warren well, and my strong feeling is she’s not going to run. I think she’s trying to influence the direction of the party, and you have more influence as a potential candidate than you do if you take yourself out. So she’s allowing, she’s sticking to this language of I’m not running for president, and titillating people with it, because it gives her more leverage. I don’t think she would beat her. I have high regard for Elizabeth. I don’t think she would beat her. Look, look at the polling, Hugh. Hillary is probably as well-positioned within her own party as any open seat candidate has been in our lifetime. And you know, she’s going to have to go out and work for it. If she assumes anything and doesn’t go out and work for it, and earn it, and make her case and present her, a rationale for a candidacy that resonates with people, then anybody is vulnerable under those circumstances. But you know, I know the team she’s assembling. I have
a high regard for them. I have some sense of the kind of thinking she’s doing. I think she’s going to come out of the gate very strong.

HH: But then you’re saying, you have to be saying, I don’t mean to corner David Axelrod, I can’t corner David Axelrod. You’re saying that Elizabeth Warren is the candidate that Barack Obama was, because Barack Obama was in the same position vis-à-vis Hillary in 2007, and he beat Hillary, and you’re saying Elizabeth Warren couldn’t beat Hillary?

DA:
No, what I’m saying is that 2007 was, is not 2015 or ’16. There was a dominant issue within the Democratic Party in 2007 and 2008, and that was the war in Iraq. Obama had opposed it, Hillary had voted for it. That gave him an enormous edge in the race. This is a different time. And so there isn’t that kind of galvanizing issue, particularly if Hillary comes out of the box, as I expect she will, talking very clearly about how to buttress the middle class, how to create greater opportunity, how to restore the value that says if you work hard in this country, you can get ahead.

HH: I’m going to try a third time, though, but you’re the message guy. How does she capture what was, in my view, a completely achievement-free four years at the Department of State? How do you give me 30 seconds that avoids the reset button, the collapse in Egypt, the Libyan fiasco, the Syrian civil war, the drift with our relationship with Israel, the utter chaos that’s become America in the world? How does Hillary escape that anchor?

DA:
Well, she’ll make her case, Hugh, but as I said, I think there are lot if, there are number of other important advances that she had on her watch, which ended four years ago, that went to helping put together the international coalition in the midst of the financial crisis, putting together international coalitions around arms control, making sure that we had supply routes open so our troops could be resupplied in Afghanistan. There were a wide, you know, she dealt with a broad number of issues on which we had success. And you know, she’ll make that case. I do not believe, and you know, and I invite, you know, if folks on the other side want to try, they should. This race is not going to be about that. This race is going to be about the economy, about whether you can be a middle class person in this country and get ahead, whether you can be a striving person who is not well off, poor, and can work hard and make something of your life. That’s what this is about. We’ve got a profound challenge, and every developed economy has that
challenge today because of the changing nature of the economy, technology and globalization. We either rise to that challenge or we’re going to have great, great disparities of opportunity in this country. And that fundamental value that is the American value, that if you work hard, you can get rewarded for that work and get ahead, is going to be in jeopardy.

HH: You know why I smell weakness there, David Axelrod, is because you have such a command of detail. You wrote at one point that when you picked the voiceover for Spanish ads in the Chicago mayoral race, you found a Colombian-accented spokesperson so as not to upset the Puerto Rican voters on the north side, or the Mexican voters on the south side. That’s on Page 90. And when I read that, I realized you know the detail. This is granular. And if you can’t get Hillary to 30 second ads on State Department, she’s lost. And you can’t do it, because no one…