From the minute I declared in ’03 that I was running, critiques of my voice, clothes, and demeanor were daily occurrences. Newspaper editors often chose photos where my mouth was open, as if I were yelling. I was asked about the brand of the pantsuits that had become my uniform, about whether never having married or had children made me unable to understand the concerns of regular Americans, and about whether the country was ready for a female president. But still, this was all a kind of ambient sexism; though I thought I’d been initiated, I hadn’t.
In a field of eight Democratic candidates, I came in sixth in Iowa, by which point, with Super Tuesday six weeks away, I was rapidly running out of money. The campaign was alternately demoralizing and inspiring—demoralizing because the small turnouts made me realize how much work I needed to do to ever have a shot at winning, inspiring because when I actually spoke to people I always remembered why the work was worth it. Plus, by the time of the Iowa caucuses, I’d stood on a stage five times for debates with my male opponents. Hadn’t the seed been planted, even if the plant would take another eight years to flower?
But knowing 2004 was the foundation for the future didn’t make watching the New Hampshire primary returns at my Manchester headquarters, which was a storefront in a strip mall, any less dispiriting than Iowa had been. On such nights, interacting with my own staff felt almost socially awkward. We as humans tend to look away from the explicit failures of others, and my staff and volunteers’ discomfort over the course of the evening was palpable. As the night wore on, our exchanges grew increasingly terse and factual—I’d received just 5.4 percent of the state delegates, then 5.1 percent of the state delegates, then 5.2 percent of the state delegates—and, along with Theresa and Greg Rheinfrank, I retreated from the headquarters’ open space to a private office in the back before reemerging to speak to about thirty supporters around nine o’clock. I said I planned to keep fighting.
The next morning, in the parking lot of Manchester’s Hilton Garden Inn, a CBS News correspondent named Pierre Bouce, who was standing next to a van with a film crew, said, “Senator, can we steal a minute of your time?” It was an overcast fifteen degrees, and my team and I were on the way to the airport and then on to a rally in Phoenix. I think Pierre had approached me spontaneously; I wasn’t much of a get at this juncture.
When the camera was rolling, Pierre said, “Last night was rough for your campaign. How are you feeling now?”
I said, “As I told supporters, I’m really focused on Super Tuesday. I’ve met so many voters who are looking for solutions and who trust me as an experienced, reasonable voice to lead all Americans.”
“Realistically, your chances at this point—” Pierre paused and motioned for me to respond.
I’ve always found nonquestion questions lazy, as if the speaker can’t be bothered to specify the last few words and expects the subject to do the work of transforming vague verbal gesturing into cogency. Or maybe it’s that this nonquestion was, if accurate, insulting, but for once I didn’t take the bait. I just gazed at Pierre.
“A lot of people look at you and wonder why you’re running,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Do a lot of people wonder that?”
Seeming unperturbed, he said, “I think they do.”
“You see—” I paused. “I prefer questions like ‘What’s your vision?’ Or, ‘What will your leadership bring to the presidency?’ This more fundamental question, this request for self-justification—Pierre, why do you think it is you ask that of me but not of my opponents? Why wouldn’t I run for president? I’ve been a senator for two terms. I love this country, and I’m committed to making it even stronger and more equitable for everyone.” I could have stopped there; as the record reflects, I did not stop there. I added, “Sure, I could have gotten married and had kids. I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies, and had teas. But what I decided to do was fulfill my profession. The work that I have done as a professional, a public advocate, has been aimed to assure that women can make choices, whether it’s a full-time career, full-time motherhood, or some combination.”
Many, many news clips and articles sprang from those thirty-one words, those three sentences that started with Sure and ended with profession; the sentences flanking them on either side were rarely included. Running for president actually hadn’t made me a household name, but my comments in New Hampshire did. Through the jokes of late-night television hosts and the talk show roundtables and the think pieces in newspapers, I was introduced to America, and it was as a supercilious, antifamily bitch. A female columnist for The Wall Street Journal declared that due to my various off-putting qualities, my campaign would only make elections harder for women candidates in the future. A mother of three in South Carolina told Time magazine, “I was planning to vote for Hillary Rodham, but now that I know she thinks I have nothing better to do than throw tea parties, I’ve changed my mind.”
Even as I experienced self-doubt, the furor made me determined not to drop out for the very reason that I didn’t want to seem as if I’d been driven from the race by fear or weakness. By the skin of my teeth, which is to say, thanks to a PAC called Hillary for America that was funded almost single-handedly by Bitsy Sedgeman Corker, I made it to Super Tuesday. One day later, I announced at a press conference in Chicago that I was ending my bid and throwing my support behind Dick Gephardt.
Sometimes I look back and think that I was bound to blurt out an ill-considered remark at some point and if it had happened later, it probably wouldn’t have caused less damage. Or perhaps it would have—perhaps the public would have been more familiar with me and the remark would have represented a smaller fraction of the sum of what they knew of my identity. Sometimes I wish I’d left my room at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester just a few minutes later that morning, that I’d been constipated or spilled coffee on my pants. Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.
It was Greg’s idea to send cookies to the political desks at the big three networks and certain cable channels. I also not only appeared on-air on a late-night television show holding a platter of cookies, but I even, after a ten-minute argument with Greg, did so wearing an apron. That is, he won the argument.
In the moment, that morning in New Hampshire, I could feel a shift in the air: the contained glee of the reporter, the contained dismay of Theresa and Greg, standing outside the shot. I knew right away that I’d screwed up, though I didn’t know how extreme the consequences would be, and presumably neither did Pierre or my staff.
As if any of it was in my control by then, I added, “And now I’d like to get back to talking to voters in Missouri and South Carolina and Arizona about the things they really care about, like how we can balance the budget for all Americans.”
Pierre nodded with a faux earnestness that did not conceal his excitement about the unexpected and juicy morsel I’d just bestowed. He said, “Thank you, Senator Rodham, for your time.”
Iowa
April 27, 2015
10:44 A.M.
We shot the clips outside the ethanol plant in Mount Joy, Iowa. The job of my video director, Ellie, who was twenty-six, was to capture or just stage anything funny, heartwarming, or inspirational on the campaign trail and share it in the hope that it would go viral.
By 10:30, I had donned a green hard hat, toured the plant, met with senior employees and hourly wage workers alike, affirmed my commitment to the federal renewable fuel standard, and posed for two hundred selfies. In the parking lot, before my team climbed back in the van, Ellie filmed me on her iPhone, with the plant’s tall white tanks and columns visible in the b
ackground. I still wore the hard hat.
In the first video, I said, “Hello, Iowa. I’m here at Mount Joy Renewables, and it’s great to see up close just how corn can help all of us reduce greenhouse gas emissions!” In the second, I said, “Does this hat make me look corny?” In the third, which I ad-libbed, I said, “Does this hat make me look on fleek?” The previous day, in the van, Diwata had used the phrase keeping it 100, the meaning of which I had absolutely no idea, which had led to a discussion of other millennial terms. At the ethanol plant, when I said “on fleek,” everyone on my team, even the security agents, burst into laughter; that was the only video that didn’t require more than one take.
2005
The next time I saw Bill was at a glitzy party in Manhattan celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of a culture-and-fashion magazine. This was in September 2005, a little less than a year into my third Senate term and eighteen months after my first presidential bid. Once again, the room was thick with prominent people of all stripes, most of whom made politicians seem frumpy—Hollywood actresses, Olympic athletes, Grammy-winning musicians—and then, just a few feet from me, chuckling with the mayor of Los Angeles, there was Bill. He was completely white-haired and the slimmest I’d ever seen him, including as far back as our law school days. I wondered if he could be sick, but there was also a cheer about him that made me almost sure he wasn’t. He’d recently left the web services provider and become a partner at a venture capital firm in Menlo Park.
This time, I was the one who approached him. When his eyes landed on me, he beamed. “Hillary!” he exclaimed and threw his arms around me with such enthusiasm that I feared spilling champagne on his jacket. I could swear that with that hug, he transferred a bit of his giddiness into me.
The mayor of Los Angeles was soon swept up in another conversation, and it was just Bill and me. He said, “So, one of us might end up in the White House after all.” Because of how loud and crowded the party was, we had to speak into each other’s ears; his breath was warm and champagney, as, presumably, was mine.
I said, “How come you didn’t tell me that running for president is kind of hard?”
He laughed. “But kind of exhilarating, too, right? Everyone should do it at least once. Sometimes I’m tempted to try again, then I think about the dickhead Republicans and gotcha journalists, and I think, Fuck ’em all. I assume you’re in for ’08, though. ’04 was just your dry run, yeah?”
“You know,” I said, “a long time ago, a wise man once told me that the way you can tell if someone is truly thinking of running for president is that she’ll never admit it until she announces.”
“Ha!” he said. “Touché!” He looked truly delighted. “Hey, who’s your Silicon Valley bundler? Have him call my assistant, and we’ll set something up. I’d love to help.”
Even after our pleasant interaction in Jackson Hole seven years earlier, I hadn’t asked Bill for money. But for him to offer, and at this golden juncture in his own career—I was genuinely appreciative. I said, “It’s Danny Welch, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am. What’s your assistant’s name?” We both pulled out our BlackBerries, and he said, “And when you’re next in the Bay Area, will you let me buy you dinner?”
“Would it be calling your bluff if I told you I’ll be in the Bay Area in two weeks? I’m speaking at the law school at Stanford.”
“Fabulous. I’ll have Raj make a reservation for us somewhere. Who are you here with tonight?”
“My deputy chief of staff, Theresa Ramirez. You actually met her in Jackson Hole.”
“Sure, sure.” He nodded. “From Philly, right? Oldest of six sisters?” Truly, he was remarkable; I could do this because I prepared, but he could just do it.
“Is Evangeline here?” I asked.
“You haven’t heard? We’re divorced.” The expression on his face could have been discomfort, mild amusement, both, or neither.
I said, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
With unmistakable mischief, he said, “You know what else I remember from that night in Jackson? That was some damn good prime rib they served, which I say with the nostalgia of a vegan.”
“You can’t be serious.”
He held up his right hand. “As God is my witness.”
I said, “Is it insensitive to say I’m more surprised that you’re vegan than that you’re divorced?” But he didn’t have a chance to respond because a large man, a man almost as tall as Bill, had just appeared and inserted himself between us. The man’s back was to me, and the first thing I noticed was his golden hair. The second thing I noticed, after I’d taken a step back, was that he was Donald Trump. I had never met him. “Bill Clinton, it’s good to see you,” he said in a loud voice, and the two men shook hands vigorously and at length.
Warmly, Bill said, “Donald, how are you?”
“When are we playing golf? You come to my club, we’ll play. It’s a beautiful club, it’s newly reopened, everyone who plays there says it’s the nicest course they’ve ever seen.”
Bill and Donald were still shaking hands. Then Bill set his arm around my shoulder and said, “Donald, this is Senator Hillary Rodham, who I know you know ran for president.”
Donald turned and squinted at me, his expression undisguisedly evaluative. He did not attempt to shake my hand. Instead, skeptically, he said, “President of what?”
“The United States,” I said, and because his expression was unchanged, I added, “I’m a U.S. senator representing Illinois.”
“And she does a terrific job,” Bill added. “A true leader in the Democratic party.”
“Every day, people beg me to run for president,” Donald said. “I think about it seriously, very seriously. I’d be the greatest president this country has ever seen. But do I want to? I don’t think I do.”
I wondered if he was kidding, offering up some parody of male egomania, but it didn’t seem he was. I said, “Well, no one should run for president if they don’t want to,” and I could feel a current of amusement between Bill and me.
“If I did run, I’d win,” Donald said. “No one could do a better job.”
Theresa had caught my eye and held up her right hand, signaling that she wanted to introduce me to someone; at the same time, a photographer had just taken a candid shot of Bill, Donald, and me and was asking for a posed shot in which I stood between the two men, as if we all were great friends. I was so much shorter than both of them that I felt a bit like a child. As the flash of the camera went off again, a gorgeous woman in her twenties who wore a black strapless gown slit up to her thigh—she was an actress I recognized but didn’t know the name of—walked behind the photographer. On one side of me, I felt Bill perk up, and on the other side of me, Donald said, “That’s very nice, isn’t it?” Then he answered himself. “Yes, it is. It’s very nice.”
Bill said to me, “I’ve gotta go say hello to Henry Kissinger—Hillary, see you in a couple weeks?”
“I’m counting on it,” I said, and he leaned in and down to kiss my cheek.
Donald did not bid me farewell, but as Theresa approached, I heard him say to Bill, “Come to my beautiful golf course. You won’t believe how beautiful it is.”
It occurred to me only later, when the assembled guests were watching a beloved rock star perform his greatest hits while we ate panna cotta with berry sauce, that I’d been told in the span of five minutes by two different men that running for president wasn’t worth their time.
Iowa
April 27, 2015
11:40 A.M.
Ellie had posted the “on fleek” video from outside the ethanol plant on social, as my team referred to it, while we rode in the van to Muscatine; by the time we arrived at the community college less than an hour later, the video had been viewed more than four hundred thousand times on seven platforms, but instead of seeming excited, Clyd
e, Diwata, and Ellie were visibly nervous. “You think it’s doing more harm or good?” Clyde asked Theresa.
“Shouldn’t it be clear?” I said. “What do the comments say?” Anyone with any public identity and a modicum of savvy knows, of course, that you don’t read the comments except when you do.
Ellie was scrolling rapidly on her phone. She said, “The take on it is like—”
But she paused, and it was Diwata who finished the thought. “They’re calling you out on trying too hard, like hipster grandma. They don’t get that you’re making fun of yourself.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Is that because I don’t have a sense of humor?”
Diwata passed me her phone, open to the Snapchat app, where the comments included just no and cringing/crying with laughter and Is ANYTHING less on fleek than hills rods in iowa? Followed by three emojis of a face squeezing its eyes shut and sticking out its tongue.
Ellie was looking from Theresa to Clyde as she said, “Should we—”
Firmly, Theresa said, “Let’s not overthink it. And anyway, the toothpaste is out of the tube.”
2006
One afternoon when Theresa and I were riding the Senate monorail to the Capitol in order to attend the markup of a bill, I noticed that her face looked flushed and swollen. When I asked if things were all right, she said in a tight voice that she and Bryan, her longtime boyfriend, had decided over the weekend to break up. I said, “Should I ask why or would you rather not get into it?”
“He wants to get married.”
“And you don’t?”
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