The Truth About Hillary (29 page)

Of course, this “new Hillary” was an illusion, for if she was elected president, it would be
déjà Clinton
all over again. Bill Clinton would return with Hillary to the White House for a third and fourth term.

“She would make an excellent President,” Bill said, “and I would always try to help her.”
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And along with Bill would come Harold Ickes, Susan Thomases, James Carville, the pollster Stan Greenberg, and the usual Clinton suspects. The culture of concealment and decep- tion that had infected the American presidency during the years of Bill Clinton’s administration would be back in full swing.

“With the Clintons, like it or not—and I do not, much—we are in the middle of a primal American saga and the important

Gearing Up
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part is yet to come,” wrote
Time
magazine’
s
Lance Morrow. “Bill Clinton may be merely the prequel, the President of lesser moment—except, so to speak, as the horse she rode in on. Do not underestimate Hillary Clinton’s ambition, or her destiny. It is no small thing.”
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Eight years as copresident was not enough to satisfy Hillary’s ambition, or her destiny. Hillary wanted
eight more years,
which would give her a total of sixteen years in the White House—the longest incumbency since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Hillary thought her chances were good enough to begin assembling her Old Girl feminist network. She created a na- tional political operation—not in her home state of New York, but in Washington, D.C. Her most impressive hire was Ann Lewis, the former White House communications director and political director of the Democratic National Committee.

“While Mrs. Clinton lost some of her feminist edge in the White House,” wrote Ben Smith in the
New York Observer
,
“
she’s kept it behind the scenes, and the women around her, like Ms. Lewis, remain sharply aware that men continue to dominate politics.”
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But not for long if Ann Lewis had anything to say about it. “If you think of politics as a sport,” she said, “it is likely to be

male-dominated. Politics is: Can you get the job done. Do you understand how important this is to people’s lives? It’s not run- ning across an end zone and doing a little victory dance.”
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Without fanfare, Hillary set up a below-the-radar campaign headquarters in the offices of the Glover Park Group, a power- house political consulting firm that had been founded by two longtime Clintonistas, Carter Eskew and Joe Lockhart. Hillary dispatched three of her most trusted advisers to work at Glover Park: Gigi Georges, who previously served as state director for

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Hillary’s Senate campaign; Howard Wolfson, who served as com- munications director of that campaign; and Patti Solis Doyle, who was national political director of HILLPAC.

But despite all the presidential talk, Hillary stayed focused on her next big hurdle—the Senate reelection campaign in 2006. Her fellow New York senator, Chuck Schumer, had recently won reelection by an astounding 71 percent, and Hillary hoped to match that number, or do even better.

Republican leaders had conflicting views about how to deal with Hillary in 2006. Most of them wanted to knock her out of the political ring once and for all. But they were not convinced there was a candidate who could beat her in New York, which had become a solid blue state—and, thanks to a huge influx of minorities, was getting bluer by the day.

Some conservative Republican analysts toyed with an in- triguing idea. Since they were not so sure that defeating Hillary in 2006 was the best strategy for 2008, perhaps they should give her a bye in New York. Their reasoning went as follows:

Nobody was more reviled in Republican circles than Hillary Rodham Clinton. Allowing her to win an easy reelection to the Senate would grease the skids for her presidential prospects. And if Hillary became the Democratic presidential nominee, she would be the
perfect instrument
to rally the Republican base, and fill Republican coffers.

For their part, Democrats saw other dangers for Hillary lurking in the shadows of 2006.

“If she is our best hope for a woman to be President some day—and I believe she is—another run for the Senate from New York is not necessarily the best way to get there,” said Hilary Rosen, former president of the Recording Industry Association of America, and an influential Democrat. “She’s just going to have to keep talking about all of the issues of the [liberal base]

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for the next two years, whereas if she weren’t running, she would be able to dictate the agenda.”
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Hillary and her kitchen cabinet did not agree with this as- sessment. Hillary had three goals in 2006: first, to win reelection by the biggest possible margin as a way of establishing her vote- getting potential; second, to use the Senate campaign to test her presidential themes; and third, to burnish her image in the American heartland.
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“Upstate [New York]—that’s [like] the Midwest,” said one Clinton backer. “That’s Cleveland and Detroit. The themes that will be tested in [New York], we’ll see how they work also on a national level.”
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Charles Cook, the head of the highly respected nonpartisan report that bore his name, thought Hillary could use a couple of more years of seasoning. For one thing, she needed some serious political dermabrasion in order to remove the scar tissue that had accumulated during the Clinton presidency.

“Hillary is still a polarizer,” Cook said. “There is a big chunk of people who would never vote for her under any circum- stances. The people who will never listen to her or give her a chance are still 30 to 40 percent of the electorate. . . .

“But in this highly polarized environment,” he continued, “Hillary has the advantage that she can hold onto 45 percent of the Democratic voters better than any other Democrat. That means she only has to target 5 to 6 percent of the swing vote.”
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Joseph Mercurio, a veteran Democratic political consultant, believed that Team Hillary had one of the best ID (voter identifi- cation) and GOTV (get out the vote) operations in the country.
16
“The National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC)

is now one of those unheralded groups, from the Democratic- left-labor perspective, that ‘brings you the government, or top- ples it,’ as political consultants like to joke,” wrote Mercurio.

248 THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY

“NCEC has analyzed every election district, every precinct, in every neighborhood in the country. They analyze for candidates the history of voting patterns in minute detail, e.g., which voters turn out and how various Democrats did in each election in every district. This is the kind of vital information you need for hard-core field operations that turn an election. . . .

“[In 2000], the Democrats’ coordinated campaign used an updated version of this plan, with new data from NCEC. Gigi Georges brilliantly employed those statistics to mount this . . . field operation. They ID’d Hillary’s favorables and tagged voters who were ‘hostile’ to her. Consequently, Team Hillary had the ability to surgically communicate with targeted voters with the message they needed to hear. It was a top-of-the-line direct mail and phone campaign that worked.”
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Nixon’s Disciple

H

illary Clinton didn’t invent the art of political packaging; it came into vogue well before she ap- peared on the scene.

Starting with the presidential campaign of 1960, the new medium of television radically transformed politics, and made it easier than ever to market a candidate like a product. John. F. Kennedy, a shameless adulterer, was sold to the public as a scrupulous family man. And in 1968, after losing to Kennedy and failing in his bid to become governor of California, Richard Nixon underwent an extreme makeover at the hands of advertis- ing executives and public relations specialists.

In his obituary of Richard Nixon, the
New York Times
’s

R. W. Apple Jr. recalled the former president’s protean quality. “Again and again,” wrote Apple, “Mr. Nixon reinvented

himself—so much so that people talked and wrote about ‘the new Nixon’ and ‘the new, new Nixon.’ ”
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Now, as Hillary gathered her forces for an assault on the presidency in 2008, she was prepared to adopt the strategy that

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250 THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY

had been used so brilliantly by Richard Nixon. She was going to reinvent herself as “the new, new Hillary.”

“The supreme irony,” noted Barbara Olson, “is that this 1960s liberal . . . has become ever more darkly Nixonian in her outlook and methods—though without Nixon’s knowledge, states- manlike substance, and redemptive Quaker conscience.
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“President’s Nixon’s ‘enemies list’ ignited a political fire- storm when it became public,” Olson went on. “But . . . Hillary’s creation of a taxpayer-funded political database created scarcely a ripple from watchdogs of civil liberties. . . . Such an idea—no less than the raid on Vince Foster’s office or the accumulation of FBI files for a White House blackmail database—could only come from the mind of someone who thinks like Nixon. And it apparently did—from Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nixon’s disciple of hardball politics.”
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What will the “new, new Hillary” look like?

Just as “the new, new Nixon” emerged sunny and smiling from the dark, brooding larva of his former self, so Hillary will metamorphose into the opposite of “the old Hillary.”

Was “the old Hillary” a congenital liar who misled the coun- try about everything from Whitewater to Monica?

“The new, new Hillary” will come across above all as . . . sincere.

Was “the old Hillary” a hypocrite who disguised her arro- gance and ambition under a cloak of moral sanctimony?

“The new, new Hillary” will give the impression of being . . . the genuine article.

Did “the old Hillary” favor massive retaliation against her enemies?
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“The new, new Hillary” will behave as though she is . . . forbear- ing and open-minded.

Did “the old Hillary” frequently explode in fear-induced fu-

Nixon’ s Disciple
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ries, and curse her friends for not fighting hard enough to de- fend her?

“The new, new Hillary” will appear as (shades of Richard Nixon!) . . . sunny and smiling.

Was “the old Hillary” identified with abortion rights and gay marriage?

“The new, new Hillary” will talk about . . . God, prayer, and the need to be tolerant of people who are opposed to abortion and gay mar- riage.

Did “the old Hillary” look upon Howard Dean as her most serious rival for control of the Democratic Party?

“The new, new Hillary” did nothing to block Dean’s election as chairman of the Democratic National Committee . . . because Dean’s high-decibel left-wing rhetoric makes Hillary seem more like a cen- trist, and allows her to run against the Democratic Party’s discredited establishment.

Like all such political makeovers, however, Hillary Clinton’s will be only skin deep. Beneath the surface will be the same con- trolling, combative Park Ridge little girl who bloodied Jim Yri- goyen’s nose for disobeying her and giving away one of her baby rabbits.

The comparison between Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon can be pushed only so far. Whereas Nixon sought power in large part to overcome his
low
self-esteem, Hillary seeks power because she has unrealistically
high
self-esteem. With Hillary, we are dealing with a woman whose need for dominance is far more pathological than Nixon’s.

What does that say about the kind of president Hillary might make?

A useful framework for evaluating Hillary’s temperament as a predictor of her presidential performance is provided by Stanley

252 THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY

Renshon, the author of a classic study,
The Psychological Assess- ment of Presidential Candidates
.

Ambition, Renshon says, is a form of “healthy narcissism,” and the key to achievement. “Some children, however,” he points out in a passage that seems especially relevant to Hillary Clin- ton, “. . . retain their sense that they are different, special, enti- tled and ultimately not to be limited by conventional boundaries. “These are people whose . . .
ends therefore justify any means.

Often this leads to a tendency to cut corners, to be less than forthcoming, to portray things always in the best light (in keep- ing with their own high views of themselves and their mo- tives) and to be ready to bend the rules when it comes to their convenience. Such persons are vulnerable to getting into legal trouble.”
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Psychologists aren’t the only ones who can provide us with useful clues to the kind of president Hillary would make. There is also the testimony of those who have had the opportunity to see her in action up close and personal.

“My two cents’ worth—and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993–1994—is that Hillary Rodham Clin- ton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life,” writes Bradford DeLong, deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury during the first Clinton administration. “Heading up health-care reform was the only major administra- tive job she ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. . . .

“Hillary Rodham Clinton,” he continues, “has already flopped as a senior administrative official of the executive branch—the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be any- thing but an abysmal President.”
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