CHAPTER 6

What Happened to Hillary

When I’m out and about around the country, people like to ask me who of the people I’ve met in politics I admire the most. In the past I’ve demurred and hedged and talked about President Clinton and some other remarkable people I’ve known. Today the obvious answer to that question is Hillary Clinton. However much I admired her at the beginning of the campaign as a person, that admiration has grown and grown for a thousand reasons—her grace under pressure, her ability to deal with disappointment, and so on.

Before I lay out my criticisms, and I have quite a few, I’m reminded of a comment by a very astute and acclaimed observer of the American political scene who spoke at my class at Tulane—he said, and I quote, “Hillary was the better candidate, but Obama had the better campaign.” In the end, she couldn’t make up for the lack of preparation, planning, and, well, not having a comprehensive strategy.

Four moments decided the fate of Hillary’s campaign, in my mind.

If Barack Obama the human being was born on August 4, 1961 at 7:24 p.m., Barack Obama the presidential candidate was born at 12:50 a.m. on October 11, 2002. That is the day, the hour, and the minute that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted to go to war in Iraq. That vote sank Kerry in 2004, and it sank Hillary in 2008. Hillary’s vote for the war was the impetus for Obama to run against her. That vote was the single most important factor in her defeat.

Second would be the precise moment, whatever it may be, that it became clear that Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, suffered fatal confusion on the subject of delegates. He denies it, but it’s a poorly kept secret that Mr. Penn did not understand how California delegates are allocated in the Democratic primary. California, dear readers, is not a winner-take-all state. Mark Penn’s strategy hinged on Hillary gaining all of California’s 370 pledged delegates when she won the California primary rather than forfeiting 166 delegates to Obama and gaining only 204. That’s a pretty spectacular error.

The third moment was 6:30 p.m. on December 15, 2007, the Saturday before the Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton. President Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, Justin Cooper, and myself, along with two Secret Service agents, were driving from a fund-raiser in Palm Beach to Miami Beach. Terry McAuliffe matter-of-factly stated the campaign had only enough money left to buy television through New Hampshire and South Carolina—that’s it. Iowa had already deteriorated for Hillary at that point. The former president and I had the same unprintable reaction. We called someone else familiar with campaign finances who confirmed what Terry McAuliffe said. Our panic was fully justified—they couldn’t fund the field in eleven caucus states and the campaign had spent $10 million through Iowa already.

The fourth date was when my friend and then Democratic Congressional Caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel asked me to talk to a group of Democratic congress people about the political climate. It was Monday, April 14, 2008. Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina were just quickly approaching. A group of about fifteen gathered at the Monacle—a mix of African-American and white southern congressmen and women.

The conversation began on the congressional prospects for the fall. But naturally, the conversation quickly turned to the presidential contest. Several of the members asked what I thought of the battle ahead. Everyone knew I was for Hillary, but everyone knew I’d shoot straight with them, too.

I stated simply that I thought Hillary would have a better chance against John McCain in the general election for a variety of reasons. Almost all agreed. But these same superdelegates proceeded to say that they’d be for Obama for one reason or another in the end, mostly because they didn’t want to split the party.

So there we were, Hillary with momentum after a few big wins, headed for a couple of wins in the near future, and they were going to be for Obama regardless.

I left dinner that night with a very pessimistic outlook for Hillary. Superdelegates and party leaders accepted that she was the stronger general election candidate, yet they were going to Obama. It put her campaign in a very difficult predicament. I suspect that she was hearing the same reactions on her phone calls and in her meetings with other superdelegates across the country.

As a general rule I hate campaign postmortems, but it’s so Bushian to say we shouldn’t look back, just forward, and not examine what happened or what could have been as opposed to what was. I think in many ways her achievement was utterly remarkable.

The most staggering achievement of the 2008 campaign, short of Obama’s fund-raising, was that Hillary came back from eleven defeats. Quickly name another politician who’s done that; or take all the time you want. You still won’t be able to do it. She performed much better than Obama in the later stages of the campaign. She did win, by most accounts, probably twenty-four out of twenty-six debates. A total of 18 million Americans voted for her.

Aside from those five major points, I’d note just a few other structural and strategic issues with the Clinton campaign:

• 1. It’s the spending, stupid.
  Complete lack of financial discipline, as evidenced by the fact that they spent $77 million before the Iowa caucus.¹
• 2. The “inevitability” strategy was just plain dumb.
  It played into a preexisting perception among many voters, and literally all of the media, that she felt that she was entitled to the nomination. To me that does not constitute an either appealing or uplifting message. Apparently no one else was enticed either.
  I had hoped that early on they would make the election about something bigger than Hillary. I’m a one-trick pony on this topic, but energy—both the kinds we consume and the amounts we consume—would seem to me to be something that voters would have found refreshing and appealing. I can refer you to other parts of this book, numerous Democracy Corps memos, and past books that I’ve written, that have spoken about this issue extensively.
• 3. You attract more reporters with honey than vinegar.
  The Clinton press strategy was flawed. They concluded that the press didn’t like them and decided therefore they were going to aggressively push back as much as possible.
  It has to be said, the Clinton campaign was right. The press didn’t, and still doesn’t, like Hillary. I know a lot of people in the press, and I have never heard anyone try to claim that the press was not vehemently anti-Hillary in general. I have certainly heard journalists defend their own coverage, but it is an acknowledged fact that the press enthusiastically favored Senator Barack Obama.
  But the campaign made a bad situation awful instead of riding it out or making it, well, less bad. I will defend their general observation that the press hated them and liked Obama, but I can’t defend their strategy of engaging in a war with the press.
  They could have made the situation better. They should have engaged the press, been more available, had a better attitude toward them, and dealt with them on an up-and-up basis. Instead, their attitude was, you need us more than we need you.
  When Clinton fell behind, this bit those in the campaign in the ass. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, but they could never stop showing their contempt for the press, and the press could never stop showing their contempt for Senator Clinton. I don’t think anyone in the press wants to revisit the primary, because everyone knows what the truth is. The truth is, they didn’t like her and she didn’t like them.
• 4. There was no one in charge.
  I wasn’t involved in the campaign. I didn’t have a position. I wasn’t paid by it. I was a supporter, a contributor, and an admirer only. But until later in the campaign, no one had clear authority. It was a campaign where it was easier to get something stopped than get something done. They could have had better established lines of authority.
• 5. They didn’t have a Plan B.
  Plan A was that she would win Iowa and New Hampshire and everything would be fine. They didn’t have a Plan B. They came up with one pretty fast, and actually finished a lot better than Obama did; but the Clinton campaign’s decision not even to try in some caucus states was indefensible.

While I’m talking about Hillary, I have to address a question her critics ask me unfailingly: If her campaign was so badly run, how could you think she’d be a better president? The only answer is: Bush had a well-run campaign. The kind of campaign you run doesn’t have much to do with the type of president you’d be.

A Word About Bill Clinton

I have gladly and proudly defended President Clinton. When he did something wrong, my simply stated, oft-repeated answer was that he was a good man who did a bad thing.

About the primary and the summer to follow I can write that he’s a good man who didn’t do a bad thing. The charges being played out in the media during the primary were idiotic. I have no idea what the problem with Clinton was in the primary. Best I can tell, the only sin he committed was that of vigorously and enthusiastically supporting his wife. Granted, from time to time, his vigor and enthusiasm detracted from her getting her message out, but that’s a matter for the Clintons to settle.

And while we’re on Bill Clinton, let me state that his legacy is clear. Under the Clinton administration, we experienced unprecedented levels of prosperity. America was a nation respected around the world. His legacy is the highest end-of-office rating of any president since World War II, when Gallup started tracking those numbers.

I hardly believe that a vigorous defense of his wife is going to affect that legacy very much.