THE POLITICAL ANIMALTHE POLITICAL ANIMAL
What happened in 2008 was that Hillary’s candidacy got out in front of any rationale for it, and the danger is that that’s happening again.
—David Axelrod
Over the course of many months, Bill Clinton had been charting a course that he believed would lead Hillary to the White House.
He took great pride in his reputation as “the best political animal that’s ever been in American politics,” as Charlie Rose once described him. Yet in typical Bill Clinton fashion, his grand plan for Hillary was a random collection of ideas—some of them workable, some of them not so workable, some of them zany, and some of them calculated to piss off Hillary.
For instance, one of his ideas called for Hillary to get rid of her pantsuits.
He had never liked that look on her.
“Toss them all in the fireplace,” he said, according to a close Clinton source.
But the more Bill complained about her pantsuits, the more Hillary was determined to wear them.
She always had a thing about men trying to force women to wear what men wanted. Like high heels and lingerie. It was a pet peeve since her college days.
She and Bill frequently clashed on the subject.
He made his “suggestions” about her wardrobe.
And she did the opposite.
Bill was also on Hillary’s case about her looks. She couldn’t do anything about the calendar—she’d be sixty-nine years old in 2016—but she could do something about the lines and sagging skin on her face. He wanted her to get a facelift.
But once again, Hillary had her own ideas.
She had no intention of going to a clinic, where she would be recognized and almost certainly photographed by someone with a smartphone. The media would jump all over the photos—and so would her political opponents.
Instead, Hillary asked a well-known New York plastic surgeon to come to her home in Chappaqua. After several consultations, she and the doctor agreed on a course of action. She cleared the house of servants and gave instructions to her Secret Service detail not to let anyone pass beyond the driveway gate. The plastic surgeon and his team then set up a mini–operating room in her home with the latest medical equipment.
“She had her cheeks lifted, and her wrinkles and lines Botoxed,” said one of Hillary’s friends in an interview for this book. “She had work done on her eyes as well as on her neck and forehead. She took it gradually and didn’t have anything drastic done, because she wanted to evaluate the changes as she proceeded. If it had started to make her look weird, she would have stopped it immediately. It was a pretty big deal and required multiple visits. It worked out well. You can see the subtle differences in her photographs.”
“To be really good at [politics] you’ve gotta like people,” Bill Clinton said. “You’ve gotta like policy. And you’ve gotta like politics. You’ve gotta have a pain threshold. You have to understand there’s a reason this is a contact sport.”
Hillary wasn’t good at politics because (1) she didn’t like people, and (2) a lot of people—nearly half the voting-age population of America—didn’t like her.
Her unlikeability manifested itself in several ways.
At the height of her book tour for Hard Choices, the editors of People put Hillary on the cover of their magazine. They expected to sell a million copies or more of the magazine; instead, the Hillary cover turned out to be People’s worst-selling issue of 2014.
Simon & Schuster paid Hillary a $14 million advance for Hard Choices. According to book industry sources, one way for the publisher to avoid taking a write-off, or “a bath,” would have been for it to sell 2,700,000 hardcover copies over two years. Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 80 percent of hardcover sales, reported that Hard Choices sold fewer than three hundred thousand copies. What’s more, her memoir was knocked off its short-lived perch atop the New York Times bestseller list by my book Blood Feud, which compounded her humiliation.
A WMUR Granite State poll from the University of New Hampshire, which was conducted a year before that state’s primary contest, showed that Hillary had started losing ground the moment she announced her candidacy; she trailed three of her potential Republican challengers—Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. Another University of New Hampshire poll revealed that just three in ten voters thought Hillary was the most likeable of the potential Democratic candidates.
She gave the other seven voters ample reason to find her unlikeable.
Her maladroit press conference at the United Nations, in which she defended her use of private e-mails, didn’t win her any converts. The consensus of opinion was that she came across as sanctimonious and hypocritical—not exactly attributes designed to win the hearts and minds of voters.
That press conference, reported New York magazine, “served to remind [people] of something many had forgotten: what an abominable candidate she can be.”
Many political consultants to whom the author spoke agreed with that judgment. They pointed out that Hillary’s two electoral victories—for a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2000 and 2006—were earned in a solid blue state against weak and underfunded opponents, Rick Lazio and John Spencer. When she had some real competition—from Obama in 2008—she lost.
The conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan opined that, unlike John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Hillary was not a natural “political athlete.”
“She’s like Pete Rose, who has to grind out every hit,” said Buchanan.
Hillary was prone to unforced errors, as she proved with her famous whoppers.
On Benghazi: “What difference at this point does it make?”
On her sky-high speaking fees: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke but in debt.”
On whether Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl deserted or was captured by the Taliban: “It doesn’t matter.”
On job growth: “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”
She also displayed a political tin ear.
At a Georgetown University speech, Hillary declared that Americans needed to “show respect for our enemies” and “empathize with their perspective and point of view.”
During the ensuing flap over her remark, Secretary of State John Kerry explained that Hillary wasn’t referring to enemies like the Islamic State, but “only” to adversaries like Russia. But Kerry, like Hillary, missed the point. Showing “respect” for Russia was what led Vladimir Putin to believe that America was in retreat; it encouraged him to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea.
It didn’t help Hillary’s likeability quotient when it became known that she not only demanded $250,000 to $300,000 per speech from cash-strapped universities and colleges, but she also demanded that they provide her with a spread of hummus and crudité in the green room backstage.
“Hillary still obsesses about money,” wrote Maureen Dowd, “a narrative thread that has existed since she was thwarted in her desire to build a pool at the governor’s mansion in poor Arkansas and left the White House with a doggie bag full of sofas, rugs, lamps, TVs and china, some of which the Clintons later had to pay for or return.”
As a campaigner, said Dee Dee Myers, who served as Bill’s press secretary, Hillary made the mistake of telling audiences what she felt rather than showing them.
“The presidency,” said Meyers, “isn’t all that powerful, except as the bully pulpit. It comes down to your ability to get people to follow you, to inspire. You have to lead. Can [Hillary] get people to come together, or does she remain such a polarizing figure?”
For an answer to that question, all you had to do was ask half the voters in the United States, who didn’t like Hillary.
In total contrast to Hillary, Bill was brilliant at politics because (1) he liked people, (2) they liked him, and (3) he treated all politics—even presidential politics—like local politics.
“He’ll show up at your birthday party in suburban Cleveland if he thinks you can be useful to him down the pike,” said one of his closest advisers. “Can you imagine the impact that has—his showing up at a middle-class home out of nowhere? You never forget it, and you tell everybody you know about it.
“These other guys in politics don’t get the power of that kind of thing,” his adviser continued. “The ripple effect it has politically over the long term. Bill does. He’s been doing that since he was in high school.”
Bill’s staff at the Clinton Library kept a massive computerized list of political operatives from the highest level to the precinct level all across the country. The list included people in solid red states, which Bill refused to cede to the Republicans. Along with their names, telephone numbers, and snail-mail and e-mail addresses were the names of their spouses and children. Bill made sure that a personal note with his signature went out on birthdays and anniversaries. And if the person who was celebrating was important enough, Bill thought nothing of getting on his plane and making a personal appearance.
There was a Yiddish word for Bill.
He was haymish—someone you could feel comfortable with.
And there was a Yiddish word for Hillary.
When it came to politics, she was a klutz.