All Too Human: A Political Education (55 page)

“I don't know that I can stay either,” he replied. “I've been doing budgets for a long time, and the way we're going now just isn't right.”

“I guess I'd leave too,” I said, tentatively. Neither one of us could believe, I think, that the president would actually stick to Dick's schedule. It wasn't really possible to produce a new budget over the Memorial Day weekend, and we didn't think Clinton would propose it over the opposition of his entire economic team. Still, we couldn't be sure. When Leon left, I called Laura Tyson to commiserate over how the National Economic Council process had been corrupted. “No, George,” she said. “I feel sorry for you. You went through the whole campaign. Now it's all going down the drain.”

My next stop was Erskine, who said he was leaving the White House by the end of the summer. His wife had just been promoted, and it was his turn to take care of the kids. Besides, he added, “this situation can't last much longer.” By that, of course, he meant the trouble with Morris. Erskine was Dick's official control officer. But even though he generally agreed with the Morris approach on the budget, Bowles said he felt like “taking a shower” every time he dealt with him. Before I left, Erskine showed me the memo Morris had already faxed him that detailed the agreements we'd reached on the budget. Though overstated, it was a surprisingly fair summary. Just in case, Erskine asked me to speak directly to Clinton.

But the president didn't really want to hear it. While noting my arguments on his pad, he set his jaw when I argued that we wouldn't be ready and it wouldn't be wise to go on Tuesday. “We have to move quickly. We have to move quickly,” he insisted. “We're losing the spin war on the budget.” Then Harold and the vice president joined us, and the president seemed intent on getting me out of there. “I agree with a lot of your points, but I want the option of going on Tuesday. I want all the numbers.” Clinton's impatience was a sign that I was winning the argument; he'd have been more solicitous if the decision were going against me. But we still had to go through the motions. OMB would spend the weekend crunching numbers, and our budget group would meet with the president on Monday, Memorial Day.

A lurid lightning storm enhanced the surreal quality of our late-holiday-afternoon meeting in the Oval. Despite a weekend of all-nighters, the OMB analysts hadn't completed the options paper for the president, but we were still laboring under the fiction that he would present a full budget to the country the next night. Clinton pressed the issue, and Gore joined in, suggesting that the president cancel his Thursday trip to Montana if we couldn't be ready by Tuesday.
There's a plan. We're bombing Bosnia, but we scrap the president's schedule to propose a budget that doesn't exist.
I couldn't resist the bait. It's one thing to cancel a presidential trip for a national security crisis, I responded, but doing it for another flip on the budget would send the signal that this was another knee-jerk reaction and not part of a well-thought-out plan.

“That's fine,” Gore shot back, “if all you care about is a news story. We're trying to change our strategy. This is a dynamic process. We've lost the game. The Republicans have called our bluff, and we don't have any cards without a budget.”

“It isn't nearly over yet,” I said, risking several months of peace with Gore. “All they've done is set goals, not a line-by-line budget. We haven't had enough patience to let the strategy sink in.” Even as I made my case, however, I had my doubts. The vice president had been on board all along, insisting that the Republicans had to have a “rendezvous with reality.”
Maybe I
am
wrong here — and it sure looks like I'm going to lose.

But when Bob Rubin inveighed against an announcement that couldn't be backed by credible numbers, the president retreated. He started rehearsing each side's best case out loud, and our decision meeting became a discussion group.
In his heart he knows we can't go tomorrow. Now
he's
buying time.
The only decision we made before going home that night was to convene again the next day. It turned out to be a rolling session during which cabinet secretaries Bob Reich, Ron Brown, Richard Riley, and Donna Shalala all lobbied against further cuts. When each secretary's policy concerns were taken into account, we were a good $100-150 billion short of reaching balance. But the most important new voice at the table belonged to Hillary. This was her first appearance at a meeting of the economic team since the defeat of health care, and she had a purpose. The health care reforms of the budget still didn't meet the president's condition of reforming Medicare and Medicaid “only in the context of overall health care reform,” and she wanted more time to fix them. But to avoid appearing at odds with the president in this semipublic setting, she made a cagier case for delay.

“If our administration had any message discipline,” she argued, “the president could give the speech this week. Instead of getting sucked into a debate on the details, everyone could just say, ‘You heard what the president said last night; that's what we're going to do.’ But we don't have that kind of discipline, so we have to wait.”

Brilliant.
She defeated the president's position by playing into his prejudice, echoing his perennial complaints about staff loyalty and our inability to communicate a clear message. As the day wore on, Clinton began to argue the virtues of delay, even asking me to retrieve a newsletter by Republican analyst Kevin Phillips praising our “shrewd” budget tactics. “The spotlight on the GOP's proposals,” Clinton underlined, “will be harsher than voter reaction to the president for not compromising.” By the close of business, he had agreed to put off any announcement for at least a week — a good day's work for our side.

Of course, if Dick's theory was right, we'd just lost the election. “
It has to be next week, or we lose them forever
.” Manic at the setback, he struck back — at me this time. The next morning, Erskine showed me an irate fax that Morris had sent to the president disputing the decision. “P.S.,” he had added, “I know who the leak was on the
Time
story,” referring to an article that week critical of Morris and, by implication, Clinton. “It is a person I have been talking to of late, and I have tacit confirmation from the reporter.”

“
Tacit confirmation from the reporter.” What the hell does
that
mean
? I offered to show Erskine my call sheets to demonstrate that I hadn't even talked to
Time,
but he told me not to worry. “Just hang in there,” he said. “Keep standing up like you've been doing in these meetings. If the president wants you to leave, you'll be gone. Until then, do your job.” More good advice, but I wasn't taking anything for granted. First I swore my innocence to Evelyn Lieberman, Hillary's deputy chief of staff, who promised to approach the first lady. Then I buttonholed Harold, Leon, and McCurry to do the same. Since Woodward, living under suspicion had become my chronic condition, but I couldn't afford a flare-up. The charge was particularly dangerous right then because we knew that Ann Devroy was working on a big story in which she would label the White House a “portrait of confusion on budget issues.” Somebody would take a hit, so Morris had launched a preemptive strike.

But when that story appeared, our artificial crisis in the White House was overshadowed by the real one in Bosnia. Captain Scott O'Grady's F-16 had been shot down by a Serb missile, capping a week in which Bosnian Serb forces had taken more than three hundred United Nations peacekeepers hostage because NATO had dared to retaliate for the Serbian shelling of Sarajevo. In a commencement address at the Air Force Academy two days earlier, the president had said he was prepared to send U.S. ground troops to assist in a “reconfiguration” of these UN forces — a shift from our previous policy that ground troops would be used only to evacuate the peacekeeping forces or enforce a peace agreement. Twenty-three thousand U.S. troops were being redeployed to the region, and the prospect that we'd get drawn into a Balkan ground war looked more likely than ever.

The ensuing uproar on Capitol Hill caused half the National Security Council to run for cover. Secretary of State Christopher and Defense Secretary Perry both complained to the president that Tony Lake hadn't adequately consulted them on the policy change, a charge Tony denied. Morris was apoplectic: “Eighty percent of the country is against sending ground troops to Bosnia!” When he discovered that the president was devoting his Saturday radio address to the subject, Dick faxed in last-minute language that led the president to depart from the approved NSC text and ad-lib twice that the reconfiguration scenario was “highly unlikely.” Not surprisingly, the next day's stories emphasized another Clinton flip-flop.

For the next week, we continued our behind-the-scenes budget struggle, but the country was focused on the Balkans. Congress debated the wisdom of sending ground troops, criticized our failure to retaliate for the downed pilot, and passed amendments condemning Clinton's policy. Sketchy reports from Bosnia hinted that Captain O'Grady was still alive, hiding in the hills and sending signals to his rescue team. Morris didn't stop pushing for the budget speech, but with so much else going on, it wasn't hard to stall.

We did, however, make time for
Larry King Live.
In honor of King's tenth anniversary on the air, he was invited to the White House for the “first ever” joint television interview with a sitting president and vice president. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but by the night of the show no one on staff was rushing to own it. You couldn't predict what King or his callers would ask, and the way things were going, who knew how Clinton would answer?

Once Clinton and Gore were wired up in the old library, Mark Gearan and I settled on the couch in Mike McCurry's office to watch the show. We toasted the opening with drinks from Mike's corner bar, and the first few minutes went so well that Gearan joked about how glad he was to have proposed the interview. After a sluggish section on the Waco debacle, he reconsidered, suddenly recalling that it had been my idea. But Clinton and Gore were having a good time, and it seemed as if we had nothing to worry about. With a minute to go, Mike asked me what I thought.

“It was pretty good, I guess.”

“Pretty good? You're crazy, George, it was a home run,” and he proceeded to tease me with a story from election night 1992. As a BBC election-night commentator, McCurry had told the British audience that Clinton's victory speech was the first time during the whole campaign that he'd seen the Clinton people smile.

Fair shot. I do get too dark.
But before I could say anything, King was signing off: “Thanks, guys. You don't want to do a Brando close, do you?” Months before, Marlon Brando had said good night by kissing Larry full on the lips. The scene was still being replayed in promotional shots, and we had actually warned our bosses that Larry might try for a kiss. No problem. Gore deflected the request with a simple “Just a handshake,” a vice president doing his duty. Then came an offscreen grunt.

We all froze, unsure of our ears. King confirmed it: “Oh, let me — here — President Clinton does Brando. Do it once. …”
No, no, don't.
He did. As the camera zoomed in for a close-up, the president of the United States cleared his throat, puffed his cheeks, and plugged
Larry King Live
in the voice of Don Corleone.

“See, Mike,
that's
why we looked so worried all the time.”

We walked back to the residence, cracking up but also saddled with a small dilemma. While the overall interview was OK, the clip on the morning news was sure to be Clinton's Brando impression. Not as bad as discussing his underwear on MTV, but hardly a presidential moment, and it would be replayed again and again in future advertisements for
Larry King Live.
How could we warn Clinton without insulting him? If we came down too hard, it would only upset him — and there was nothing we could do about it now. But if we ignored it and acted like everything was great, we'd have no credibility in the morning. As the president cheerfully removed his makeup with a Handi Wipe, he asked me how it had gone.

“Well,” I said. “Strong answers on Bosnia. Made news on terrorism like you wanted. Decent on Waco and movie violence. You avoided any
big
mistakes, but, umh … you know …”

“What?”

“You may get a little too much attention on this Brando thing. It was a
good
Brando, probably too good. The morning shows won't be able to resist it.”

Clinton screwed up his face as if I'd just served him sour milk and turned away in search of a second opinion.
Don't sell me out, guys. I need some backup here.
Mike came through, saving me from the charge that I was just being my usual pessimistic self by affirming that Clinton doing Brando would be the news.

It could have been worse. To our relief, when King had asked about the budget, the president made no new promises, saying only that he would address the subject at “the proper time.” In the days following the King interview, we arranged for Gephardt and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle to make personal pleas for sticking with our strategy. And in their private meetings, Clinton assured them he wouldn't make a solo move. But over the course of the week, our other arguments for delay began to fall away. Another round of policy meetings and some creative accounting
had
allowed us to hammer our counterbudget into reasonable shape, and it wouldn't get any better with time. The gradual release of UN hostages and the dramatic rescue of Scott O'Grady calmed the sense of crisis in Bosnia — at least for us, at least for now. And the praise Clinton received for the bipartisan spirit of a joint New Hampshire “town meeting” starring him and Newt Gingrich renewed his faith in the promise of “triangulation.”

Morris finally had his win. At 8:45 on Tuesday morning, June 13, Vice President Gore held a conference call with the heads of the television networks to request a prime-time slot that night for the president to present a balanced-budget proposal to the nation.