All Too Human: A Political Education (17 page)

The long, low room was more compact than it looked on television. A bank of video cameras on tripods anchored the back, and every movie-theater seat in front was filled. Photographers crouched on the floor by the podium, and the aisles were stocked with an assortment of staff and other spectators. An attractive older woman standing off the side wall looked just like Lassie's mom — because she was. After retiring from television, June Lockhart had moved to Washington and become a regular in the White House press room. She just liked to watch. The rest of the world could tune in live on CNN.

What they saw that day was a White House press secretary fall flat on his face.

It opened well enough. I read a statement about the president's getting down to work. Helen Thomas, the red-haired UPI reporter who had covered every president since Kennedy, started with a soft-ball. “Are there any more executive orders to be signed today?”

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “I don't believe there are any more today, Helen.”

Then the real questioning began.

Q: “How about all of these stories on the lifting of the ban on homosexuals in the military?”

How about you guys give it a rest and report decisions we've actually made? I know, it's too good to let go: sex, a fight with the military, gays feeling betrayed, a crisis right out of the box. If you reporters weren't pumping it so much, maybe real people wouldn't think it's the only promise we're trying to keep. But we can't get Nunn and the Joint Chiefs to give us a break yet, so I have nothing to say
.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “I think the president intends to end discrimination against homosexuals in the military … and it would be very soon — probably within the next week, but not today.”

Q: “George, would the president like Zoe Baird to offer to withdraw her nomination?”

Well, duh. Of course he would, wouldn't you? We're sucking wind on our first day with a candidate for attorney general who broke the law. But she says she told Warren Christopher about it before Clinton chose her, so it's
our
fault — and she doesn't want to quit without clearing her name. We're stuck
.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “No, he thinks she'll make an excellent attorney general. …”

Q: “If Mrs. Baird decides to withdraw her name, would the president accept it?”

In a heartbeat. I wish that's what I was announcing right now
.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “Right now, Mrs. Baird is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and President Clinton continues to believe she'll make a good attorney general. …”

Damn. They caught that “right now”; everyone's writing it down. They smell blood. Hope that doesn't make Zoe fight back harder
.

Q: “Did Mr. Clinton understand fully before naming her as his nominee for attorney general that she had employed illegal aliens for this long period of time?”

Bingo. The $64,000 question. Wish I knew the answer. He says no. Christopher says yes. Christopher probably mentioned it, but who knows exactly what he said or how Clinton heard it? All I know is that Zoe is saying publicly that she told us, so we're screwed either way. If we didn't know, we're incompetent hacks. If we did and appointed her anyway, we're unethical elitists. Some choice: I can't blame it all on Zoe; the president's not ready to accept responsibility and move on; but if I dump it in Christopher's lap, it will hurt his credibility as secretary of state. Gotta punt
.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “Again, I don't know the exact nature of his discussions on this. …”

Nice try. But they were just getting warmed up. This was the heart of the matter, the old Watergate question: What did the president know and when did he know it? I didn't know and couldn't say. But I
did
know that I was dying out there — a fact confirmed by the flop sweat pouring out from under my arms and across my chest. A trickle started to stream down the side of my face, but I was afraid to wipe it away, certain the image would be flash-frozen into a metaphor of the new administration under siege. The only relief I got was halfway through the briefing, when someone asked if I was enjoying my first day with the press in the White House.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “It's not bad. It's a little tough.” (Laughter)

They're
laughing
at me. Jerks. I'm a joke my first day on the job
.

Then we got to what was
really
bothering them: the closing of the door. We had decided to close off the corridor connecting the press room to the rest of the West Wing, which meant that reporters would no longer have walk-in privileges to the press secretary's office — my office — on the first floor. They were confined to the basement, and they were pissed.

Helen Thomas led the charge. For more than thirty years she had started her day a little before seven
A.M.
by planting herself outside the press secretary's office and asking him a question as he walked through the door. Now she couldn't do that anymore. With a voice that sounded then like the Wicked Witch of the West's, she went on the attack.

Q: “Are you going to continue to block us from going up the steps?”

You guys are being such babies about it that I wouldn't mind. But I'm not your problem; Hillary is. She and Susan Thomases cooked up this plan to move you to the Old Executive Office Building so we could reopen the indoor pool that used to be right below your feet before Nixon made this the press room. Barbara Bush told her we should show you guys who's boss right from the start. Easy for her to say; she doesn't have to deal with you anymore. Closing the door was our fallback position
.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “Well, right now we're just figuring out how to structure all of the offices upstairs. … I mean, there are often changes between administrations. …”

Q: “Not like that.”

Q: “Are you going to block us from going up the steps to your office?”

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “We will review any of these kinds of plans with you before we do any—”

Q: “What does that mean?”

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “That's exactly what it means. We're reviewing everything right now.”

And I hope we change our minds tomorrow. I don't want to go through this again. Clinton seems to be on my side. He asked me again this morning why we were closing the door. Um, have you talked to your wife about this, Mr. President? She says you wanted to be free to walk around without reporters looking over your shoulder
.

Q: “You've done it. You just said you were going to review it with us.”

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “For the time being, we're doing it before we make any permanent decisions. We'll be discussing this with you.”

Q: “Well, I want to tell you that I've been here since Kennedy, and those steps have never been blocked to us, and the press secretary's office has never been off limits. Ever.”

Helen was letting me know who was really in charge. I may have been working for the new president, but she was part of the institutional presidency. She could wait us out, and she intended to win.

My untenable positions on Zoe and the press office were made worse by the fact that I wasn't prepared with simple facts and a few anecdotes to fill the reporters' first-day columns. Better preparation wouldn't have stopped the bad stories, but it would have helped soften the blow: Talk about how the president and the first lady feel on their first day; throw in a little color on the president's first night in the residence and first morning in the Oval Office; bring Tony Lake, the national security adviser, into the briefing room for a backgrounder on the ongoing confrontation in Iraq. But no, I wanted to do it all by myself, and I wasn't ready. When a reporter saved me from myself by saying thank you after twenty-seven minutes of pounding, Helen shouted, “Welcome to the big leagues,” and I hustled out of there with my head down like a rookie knocked from the mound in the first inning of his first game.

Only hours before, I had gone to bed feeling like a world champion after a round of inaugural balls capping off the headiest week of my life.

We had arrived in Washington on Sunday of inaugural week and gone straight to Blair House, the president's guest house. A handsome hostess with silvery blond hair and a continental accent greeted me at the door and offered me tea as if I were one of the guests they were used to — royalty, a head of state — not just one of the staff. Only a handful of us were invited to stay with the Clintons at Blair House. As the butler ushered me up to the second floor, I pocketed the gilded card that carried my name, spelled correctly, in an elegant calligrapher's script. Closing the door, I lay back on the feather bed and luxuriated in the feeling of being one of the chosen.

But for the next couple of days, I didn't spend much time in that room. Inaugural week was a manic mix of public celebrations and private chaos. The Sunday we arrived, there was Hollywood pageantry on the Mall and a parade across Memorial Bridge to ring a replica of the Liberty Bell. Later that night, we were back at Blair House for another speech revision. A small room on the third floor had been set up with a TelePrompTer and podium to simulate the scene on the West Front of the Capitol. As usual, Clinton's speech was far from done. Whoever managed to wander in — friends, family, the caterer — could have a say on the new president's first words. He'd recite a few lines from the podium, then we'd talk about them — and talk about them some more. The speech was getting longer by the hour.

The next day I paid a visit to my predecessor and former adversary, Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. The campaign had been bitter, but he was friendly now, and the untroubled way he slumped in his soft chair gave him the air of a man who was ready to go. I understood for the first time how losing the White House might seem like a relief and made a mental note to think about how to prevent it when the time came for us to compete for a second term. Marlin offered advice about maintaining perspective and told me to remember that the press was less of an enemy than it seemed. But he probably knew I couldn't hear him then, that this was a lesson I had to learn for myself. So before he left for his last briefing, he simply opened the closet and let me in on a White House tradition — the bulletproof vest. Inside the pocket was a note from every press secretary to the man who succeeded him.

At Monday night's inaugural gala, the backstage scene was straight out of a Robert Altman movie, with Elizabeth Taylor wrapped in an elaborate boa, Aretha Franklin leading her courtiers like a Nubian queen, and even Michael Jackson, wearing white gloves, dark glasses, military dress, and a pet monkey on his shoulder. But the spectacle barely registered on me because I was in desperate search of Zoe Baird. Her nomination was already on life support, and I needed some answers for the press.

But that wasn't our only problem: The speech was still a mess. A military sedan with a sergeant at the wheel was assigned to me for the week, and the minute the show was over I rode back to Blair House. By that time, I cared about the length of the speech as much as the substance. Though Clinton's August convention address had been full of information voters needed to know about him, it had also run on for more than an hour, evoking memories of his interminable nomination of Dukakis in 1988. Another rambling effort would send a signal of indiscipline and self-indulgence. The Inaugural Address had to be different: crisp, concise, Kennedyesque.

Our process couldn't have been less like Kennedy's. Legend has it that JFK reviewed his Inaugural Address alone in his bath while puffing on a cigar. Our whole team slogged through another all-nighter. Adrenaline and anxiety were fueling Clinton, but the rest of us started to sag. From his folding metal chair facing the mocl-podium, the vice president-elect fought to keep his chin from sinking into his chest, but it was a losing battle. Every few seconds Gore would jerk awake, then fall back asleep — as we all should have been at 4:30 in the morning on the biggest day of our lives.

At seven
A.M.
, President Bush's friend and national security adviser, General Brent Scowcroft, arrived for his final official briefing This was it, the transfer of power, awesome and ordinary all at once One minute, Clinton was grumbling about getting up early and fretting about his speech. In walked Scowcroft, a slight man in a rumpled raincoat and fedora who at that moment looked more like an accountant than a general. But the contents of his briefcase made all the difference — the instructions the new president would need in case of nuclear attack. In less than an hour, another dramatic mood change. Scowcroft slipped out of Blair House and into the street with tears reddening the rims of his eyes. The man who would soon command the most powerful military force in the world emerged a few minutes later, silent and more somber than I'd even seen him.

Then we went to church, where my father had the honor of delivering a public prayer at the ecumenical service for America's new president. Watching from the balcony in the back, I saw the president nod his head to the rhythm of my father's reading and I started to cry — tears of gratitude, joy, and pride. Over the course of those early days, I was numb from so much happening so quickly. But seeing my family and friends swirl through the events of the week made me appreciate the moment and understand how big a deal it was. I was feeling it through them, through the sparkle in my mom's eye as she talked about the parties she'd been to the night before, through the smile on my uncle's face. Cancer had cost him much of his strength and all of his hair, but he wouldn't miss this. For him, a lifelong liberal Democrat, this inauguration would be once in a lifetime.

For me, it was still a job. After church, it was back to Blair House for one more speech prep. Then Clinton and Hillary left for the White House, and my girlfriend, Joan, and I headed up to Capitol Hill, with me holding Clinton's copy of the Inaugural in my hands. That's when the transfer of power started to hit me more personally. Pennsylvania Avenue was closed, but our official car was waved through for the mile-long ride. The day was bright and bone chilling, but the sidewalks were already packed. As we drove down the avenue in a one-car parade, I looked up and saw the Capitol dome, the most heart-stopping architecture in Washington, the sight that had inspired me as a young intern. Now it was where I would start my new life, a life centered on the
other
end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in what I hoped would be the real center of power.