DINNER WITH LIZDINNER WITH LIZ
[Hillary] has taken money from [Wall Street] groups, and more to the point, she worries about them as a constituency.
—Elizabeth Warren
Bill Clinton had a recurring nightmare.
He told friends that in his mind’s eye he could visualize Elizabeth Warren holding forth on a podium in a cavernous convention hall, her eyes on fire behind her rimless glasses, her voice soaring, sounding like she meant every word that came out of her mouth.
Unlike Hillary, who read woodenly from the text of her speeches, Warren was a brilliant speaker. Whether you liked her politics or thought they were loony, you had to admire her oratorical skill. She could pack the galleries and whip an audience into a frenzy.
Warren’s opposition to big banks, the top 1 percent of wealthy Americans, and the Keystone XL Pipeline made her the sweetheart of Democratic lefties. No one sang the populist anthem the way she did. She won the Senate seat once held by the late Ted Kennedy—another impassioned orator and darling of the Left—thanks to millions of dollars in donations from outside Massachusetts, mostly from rich environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities like Ben Affleck, Cher, Barbra Streisand, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Warren said she wasn’t interested in running for president.
Maybe she was and maybe she wasn’t. But Bill didn’t want Hillary to take any chances. She had been blindsided in 2008 when Ted Kennedy helped Obama steal the nomination from under the Clintons’ noses.
Until now, Bill had dismissed the “Draft Warren” movement as a figment of the Fabian wing of the party. But he had loyal Clintonista spies scattered throughout the Democratic apparatus who informed him that Valerie Jarrett was holding secret talks with Warren in an effort to get her to run.
“I’ve heard from state committeemen about Obama’s preference in ’16,” Bill confided to a close friend. “And they tell me he’s looking around for a candidate who’s just like him. He wants to clone himself—to find his Mini-Me. And Valerie and Michelle have convinced the president that Elizabeth Warren is his Mini-Me.”
Sources close to the Obama White House did not challenge Bill’s assessment. They said the president believed Warren would fight like hell to preserve the Obama legacy. He had authorized Jarrett to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw her hat into the ring. With that in mind, Jarrett promised Warren tons of money and organizational support from the White House if she entered the primary campaign against Hillary.
Bill’s spies also told him that several members of the Kennedy clan were wooing Warren, too.
Was it possible that the Draft Warren movement could suddenly ignite? If Hillary faltered in Iowa or New Hampshire, would Warren do a Bobby Kennedy and enter the race at the last moment with an army of true believers?
The odds were against it, but you didn’t get to be Bill Clinton by leaving things to the whims of chance.
And so, when he and Hillary received an invitation from Robert Kennedy Jr. to visit the Kennedy clan in Hyannis Port, they jumped at the opportunity to do some fence mending.
The Clintons flew in a private jet to Barnstable Municipal Airport, where they were met by three Secret Service SUVs and a police escort. They were whisked off to the Kennedy Compound, where a catered buffet lunch was waiting for them under a large tent outside the President’s House, which Teddy Kennedy Jr. had inherited from his father.
The Kennedy family was split down the middle over whom to back for the Democratic nomination. Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, and their eldest son, former U.S. congressman Joe II, favored Elizabeth Warren, while environmental activist Bobby Jr. and his brother Max remained loyal to Hillary.
Despite the death of family patriarch Ted Kennedy, who succumbed to a brain tumor in the summer of 2009, the Kennedys still considered themselves the torchbearers of the Democratic Party. They saw an opportunity to repeat the kingmaker role they played in 2008, when Ted and Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama.
A sizeable contingent of the Kennedy family turned out for the Clinton lunch: Bobby and his fiancée, actress Cheryl Hines, Ethel, Joe II, Max and his sister Rory, Doug and Bobby Shriver, and Chris Lawford.
“Bill was in full campaign mode,” said a source who attended the lunch. “He made a point of talking to every member of the family, shook every hand, and remembered the names of everyone from the youngest to the oldest. Hillary was pretty reluctant about going for a sail on Ted Kennedy’s old schooner, the Maya, but Bill told her that you couldn’t visit the Kennedys and not go for a sail. The outing on the choppy waters of Lewis Bay and Nantucket Sound was pretty rough, and Hillary returned looking a little green around the gills.”
A week after the Clintons’ visit to Hyannis Port, Joe Kennedy invited Elizabeth Warren to the family compound.
“Joe meant Liz’s visit to be a counter-move to Hillary’s,” said a Kennedy family member. “He wanted to expose Liz to the family to gain their support. And sure enough, she came to the compound breathing fire about the need to rein in corporate America.
“Joe thinks Hillary has too many ties with Wall Street,” this source added. “He loves Liz because she’s a full-throated liberal like his Uncle Ted. She has Ted’s voice—loud and angry and triumphant. Joe’s talked to some of Liz’s advisers and family members, and they are almost unanimous in hoping that she’ll give it a try.”
But Warren expressed deep reservations.
“Liz said that she’s flattered by all the attention and wants to continue the good fight for Teddy’s memory,” a Kennedy family member said in an interview for this book. “But she says she just doesn’t feel up to the grueling battle that a presidential campaign requires. She actually gets breathless when she talks about it.
“Liz is enjoying being in the Senate and has big plans for pushing progressive legislation,” this source continued. “It would take a major stumble from Hillary to make Liz change her mind. And even then she’s not sure she’s up for the battle.”
When the Clintons received word about Elizabeth Warren’s powwow at the Kennedy Compound, they went into damage-control mode. They invited Warren and her husband, Harvard Law School professor Bruce H. Mann, to dinner at Whitehaven.
Hillary and Warren left their husbands in the house while they went for a womano a womano stroll in Rock Creek Park, which bordered the Clintons’ property. It was a cool, pleasant evening, and the walk in the woods gave Hillary a chance to weigh Warren’s intentions and feel her out to see if she could be bought off.
When the women came back, they washed up and sat down to dinner.
“They served Bill’s favorite Italian food, creamed lobster over pasta, from the Filomena Italian Market in Georgetown,” said a source who was present at the dinner. “I didn’t notice the wines because I wasn’t drinking, but they looked like expensive Chiantis to go with the Italian food.
“Bill wasn’t feeling well and he took only one bite,” this source continued. “He really looked bad—thin, pale, and in pain. He was testy and clearly uncomfortable. During dinner, Warren was guarded about her intentions. She said that doing her job in the Senate was keeping her busy.
“Bill’s instinctive feeling, which he later shared with Hillary and a couple of friends, was that in her heart of hearts Warren wanted to run for president, but that, for all her bluster, she didn’t have the stomach for it.”