[Hillary] will defend, I know, her own record for herself. It’s not my job to do it.
—Secretary of State John Kerry
None of this took Hillary by surprise.
According to a high-ranking State Department official, Secretary of State John Kerry had let Hillary know on the QT that Valerie Jarrett was out to sabotage her campaign for the White House. Kerry said Jarrett had ordered investigators to do a thorough review of Hillary’s State Department papers, and the investigators were also interviewing Foreign Service officers in a hunt for incriminating evidence against Hillary.
There were several reasons that might have explained why Kerry gave Hillary a heads-up.
First, he had mixed feelings about Jarrett. When Kerry was a senator, Slate ranked him as the most vain member of that body, and it wounded his amour propre that Jarrett had not put him forward as Obama’s first choice to replace Hillary at State. Instead, Jarrett pushed the nomination of UN ambassador Susan Rice, a close personal friend of both Jarrett and First Lady Michelle Obama. But Rice was sidelined after she appeared on five Sunday talk shows and falsely blamed the deadly attack at the U.S. mission in Benghazi on a “spontaneous” demonstration fomented by an Internet video mocking Islam.
What’s more, it was Hillary who introduced Kerry at his confirmation hearing in the Senate. And when Kerry took over at Foggy Bottom, he gave a shout-out to Hillary.
“So here’s the big question before the country and the world and the State Department after the last eight years,” Kerry said. “Can a man actually run the State Department? As the saying goes, I have big heels to fill.”
But all had not been sweetness and light between Kerry and Hillary.
“When Kerry made a comment in 2006 that students should study hard ‘and if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq’—something he said when he was considering another presidential bid—Clinton was quick to publicly criticize him,” reported the Boston Globe. “In 2008, Kerry endorsed Barack Obama over Clinton.”
So why was Kerry going out of his way to curry favor with Hillary?
Political insiders suggested that Kerry was trying to stay on good terms with both sides in the Clinton-Obama feud. He needed Obama’s support to carry out his job as secretary of state, a cabinet post he had wanted ever since he lost the 2004 race for the presidency. But he was also keeping an eye on the 2016 race—just in case Hillary faltered.
“Kerry is focused on creating a legacy for himself as secretary of state—and he’s thinking a lot more about Iran than he is Iowa,” the Boston Globe noted. “But while he would not challenge Clinton in a primary, he still harbors some presidential ambitions.
“‘If she imploded . . . I gotta believe that this would be something that at least would cross Kerry’s mind,’ said one Kerry confidant. ‘I’ve never wanted to be president. But my gut tells me it’s hard to lose that lustfulness.’”
The Clintons had a fifth column of friends in the media who confirmed what Kerry had told Hillary.
“My contacts and friends in newspapers and TV tell me that they’ve been contacted by the White House and offered all kinds of negative stories about us,” one of Bill’s friends quoted him as saying. “The Obamas are behind the e-mail story, and they’re spreading rumors that I’ve been with women, that while Hillary was at the State Department she promoted the interests of people and countries who’d done favors for our foundation, and that John Kerry had to clean up diplomatic messes Hillary left behind.”
But for all of Bill’s anger, he and Hillary were in a quandary about what to do.
If they directed their attacks on Obama, the first black president, they risked alienating the base of the party—blacks, Hispanics, single women, young people—whose support they needed in the coming primaries and general election. On the other hand, how could they allow the investigations of Hillary’s tenure at the State Department to go unanswered?
The sticky situation weighed heavily on Hillary.
“She’s grinding her teeth at night again,” said a friend. “She has a plastic mouth guard so that she doesn’t damage and wear out her teeth. And she and Bill are drinking more than usual. When they’re out on the campaign trail, they’re all right. It’s during lulls in the action that the pressure gets to them.”