Partner to Power

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Partner to Power Page 22

by K. Ward Cummings


  On February 25, a month after its establishment, the task force was sued by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. AAPS argued that the deliberations of such an important public issue as health-care reform, which involved such a large swath of the economy, should not be closed to the public. They sued for the opportunity to shape any resulting legislation.

  Hillary had convinced those around her that to open her reform efforts up to debate would only slow down the process. She argued that the interest groups would have a chance to make their views known after the draft legislation was complete. Besides, she urged, groups like AAPS were just organs of the Republican establishment, and, since Democrats held the reins in both chambers, there was no need to be bipartisan on the front end. The Republicans would just have to grin and bear it until the draft was done. Then they could criticize the bill all they wanted.

  AAPS also expressed concern that the First Lady, someone unaccountable to the voters, should have control over such an important government initiative. President Clinton had gone to pains to assure Americans that he was in complete charge of the health-care effort, but his promises were not enough. Everyone knew who was really in charge.

  The following month, a district judge ruled that the proceedings of the task force must be open to the public.28 An exception was noted for any work product generated specifically for the advice or personal use of the president, but all other informational matters, including the identities of the participants, had to be made public.

  As details about the task force began to emerge, and the medical community came to understand the full scope of Hillary’s ambitions, they were alarmed. Pooling their resources into a well-funded and carefully organized campaign, they focused on convincing the American public that the Clintons intended to destroy health care as they knew it.

  The Health Insurance Association of America bypassed the administration and went directly to the American people with a slick TV campaign in which they introduced the public to “Harry and Louise,” a fictional married couple who sat at the kitchen table after dinner struggling to understand the details of Hillary’s health-care proposal. The ads accomplished what Hillary, despite her energetic efforts, could not: they explained the reforms to the public in simple, easily digested terms. Each night, during commercial breaks in their favorite shows, American families listened as “Harry and Louise” discussed the most troubling details of the Clinton plan.

  As opposition to the bill grew, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, a Democrat, suggested to Hillary that she could ease the bill’s passage by attaching it to the budget bill the president was currently drafting. Budget bills face comparatively less scrutiny in the congressional legislative process. Given the growing opposition to Hillary’s bill, Gephardt thought it was far too controversial to pass as a stand-alone measure—even in a Democrat-controlled Congress. Inserting the bill in the president’s budget would avoid a filibuster in the Senate, thereby easing its passage in the House. Hillary agreed. She conveyed the suggestion to the president, who understandably hesitated, fearing the safety of his own bill. Seeing that this was probably her best option, Hillary persisted. She might have succeeded in convincing him had Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia not rejected the idea out of hand on the grounds that it would violate his famous “Byrd Rule.”

  The “Byrd Rule” is a long-standing tradition governing the treatment of budget bills. Under the rule, such bills, unlike other pieces of legislation, do not require the support of sixty senators to compel a floor vote. Instead, only a simple majority is required. But the Byrd Rule also mandates that such budget bills may not include “extraneous” matters—provisions that lay outside the purview of the committee of jurisdiction. Given that health-care legislation flowed through a different committee than the Budget Committee, Senator Byrd interpreted Hillary’s bill as non-germane. He threatened to oppose any effort to attach Hillary’s bill to the president’s budget. His threat destroyed her best chance to move the legislation intact and without having to compromise on any of its elements.

  As Hillary weathered the disappointing news, the “Harry and Louise” train kept chugging along, picking up converts along the way. To counter its popularity, Hillary came up with the idea of fashioning her own campaign, in the form of a nationwide bus tour modeled on the Freedom Rides of the civil rights movement.

  The Health Security Express was actually a series of coordinated bus tours commencing in different regions of the country and timed to coincide with the congressional floor debate on the health-care bill. Cabinet officials and even the president himself spoke at the rallies, but at each stop, they encountered better-organized protesters rallying against them. During one of the tours, a bus funded by AAPS trailed Hillary’s bus, stopping wherever she stopped. This embarrassed her, as it was intended to, to the point where she canceled some of the rallies.

  Even with such well-organized opposition, health-care reform might still have succeeded, given the number of viable bipartisan alternatives proposed by others at the time. A spate of sympathetic congressmen and senators came forward with their own versions of Hillary’s plan that, though they covered fewer people than Clinton intended, would have been a good start.

  Not only did Hillary refuse to support the alternatives, she vilified their proponents for even suggesting that compromise was necessary.29 For Hillary, it was all or nothing. Believing she held the moral high ground, with the long-term interests of the nation at stake, she refused to even meet on the subject. When an offer was made to cancel the “Harry and Louise” commercials in return for a place at the negotiating table, she refused.

  So, in the summer of 1994, almost two years after the initiative began, health-care reform died unceremoniously. Not only did the biggest, highest-profile initiative of the fledgling Clinton Administration go down in flames, it became a rallying point around which Clinton’s Republican enemies organized to take back the US House of Representatives. This key defeat would introduce a series of painful disappointments for the Clintons in the years to come—including an effort to impeach the president.

  Though Hillary was the lead, the failure of the health-care initiative was as much the president’s fault as it was her own. Even though it was his name on the legislation and his legacy at risk, the president might have done more to persuade Hillary to commit to the compromising necessary to save the project. Master politician that he was, he certainly recognized early on that the initiative was in danger, but he could not seem to change course or rein in Hillary’s outsized ambitions.

  Perhaps he was unwilling to challenge his wife at a time when they both were under attack from so many outside forces. Troopergate, Travelgate, Whitewater and the death of their friend Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster were just a few of the difficulties they labored under to craft the bill. So many pressures on them as individuals, as a married couple and as a political partnership must have made it difficult for Bill to trim his wife’s sails.

  Outside pressures were only part of the reason the Clintons’ reform effort failed. The challenges they faced as a married couple also took a toll. The first year of the administration was filled with political and strategic missteps, the provenance of which might be directly traced to the dysfunction in their personal relationship.

  Clinton devotees are notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to the Clintons’ marriage, but Dick Morris, the controversial politico and one of Bill Clinton’s closest behind-the-scenes advisers in Little Rock and later in Washington, let some details escape. His personal observations on the Clintons’ relationship offer valuable insights into how the pair operated and related to each other.

  In his description of the Clintons, Morris suggested that guilt was a driving psychological influence in their marriage: guilt on Bill’s part for his seeming inability to restrain his hormonal urges and Hillary’s use of guilt as a means of control. The Clintons described by Morris were two emotionally stunted individuals who used demonstratio
ns of love as others might use currency. If Bill Clinton needed someone, according to Morris, he would shower that person with attention. Otherwise, he could be elusive and emotionally distant. Morris believed Hillary’s psychology responded to this emotional roller coaster—perhaps because of a similarly parsimonious nature in her own father. Morris also thought Hillary craved coming to Bill’s rescue:

  I think the big frustration of their marriage is that she’s married to the most elusive, withholding, anal-retentive man you can imagine. He uses denial of affection as his method of getting people to do what he wants them to do—the ones he’s close to—rather than to praise or give affection. I believe that it’s a relationship in which she is…addicted to him. And she adores him. She’s the best thing that ever happened to him. But he’s very remote. And when he requires rescue she gets more attention, more affection, more love, more of the caring that I believe she craves from him, and also more power than she otherwise would get.30

  Bill must have known that his complicated relationship with his wife affected his ability to manage her effectively and dispassionately as a member of his staff. But when she requested to helm his health-care initiative, he could not deny her.

  Hillary’s goal was a noble one: to make health care more affordable and available to the majority of Americans by combining federal and state participation with private-sector involvement. She hoped the end product would be a less costly and more efficient form of Medicare or Medicaid, covering everything from mental health to prescription drugs. Convinced the public was with her, Hillary charged forward, ignoring criticism even from within her own ranks. Refusing to kiss the rings of Washington power brokers and freezing out the media, she enveloped herself and the president in an echo chamber.

  Though Hillary was in effect an employee of the president, in his eyes, he and Hillary were equal halves of a whole—“two for one.” Not only did he believe she was partially responsible for his ascendency, on more than one occasion, he admitted that he believed Hillary was the one with the real talent in the relationship. Their experiences together had reinforced his belief that her participation in his career was a major reason for his success. This is to say nothing of the numerous times she literally pulled him back from ruin. And, of course, she was the mother of his child. Viewed from that perspective, Bill owed Hillary far too much to have any real hope of effectively managing her the way he might manage another staff member.

  It also did not help that Bill was by nature conflict-averse. As mentioned, Hillary was drawn to a fight, whereas Bill preferred to find common ground in a conflict. This difference in their personalities served them well as long as they functioned as a team, but whenever they were up against each other, this dynamic put Bill at a disadvantage. He may have been reluctant to criticize Hillary’s role on the health-care task force for fear of igniting an argument.

  Making matters worse for Hillary, the president’s senior aides were equally reluctant to challenge the First Lady. Health Secretary Donna Shalala, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentson, Communications Director George Stephanopoulos and Chief of Staff Mack McLarty all had major concerns about the initiative, but they quickly learned never to openly express doubts about Hillary’s leadership, for fear that she might turn on them. Instead, the president’s economic advisers voiced their concerns in private. They complained that Hillary’s reform bill was “[b]loated with over-regulation, too ambitious in concept and too difficult to maneuver politically.”31 Even in the face of these strong criticisms, the president would not act—perhaps out of a sense of loyalty to his wife.

  The size and scope of the legislation turned out to be major impediments to its success, but those problems were minor in comparison to the strategic miscalculations the Clintons made. All legislation bears flaws of some kind, but it might still become law if it is deftly maneuvered through the legislative process. Hillary made two crucial mistakes in this area from the start.

  The first was her insistence on secrecy. Hillary justified her secrecy by insisting that in order to keep the process efficient she needed to conceal the debates, the identities of the participants and details of the meetings. On paper, secrecy may have seemed wise. Hillary was trying to prevent her opponents from getting information they might use to attack her. But, in the process, she unwittingly denied her allies in Congress the information they needed to buttress her defense.

  Hillary’s second crucial mistake was to be insensitive to the strategic reality that she needed to include Republicans in the shaping of the bill. Although many Republicans were against health-care reform, there were some who sympathized with her mission, and their support could have been mobilized to soften the opposition among their colleagues as well as among the few Democrats who opposed the bill.

  Of course, the president had to accept some of the blame for how things turned out. Had he been a better manager and insisted that Hillary concede at key points along the way, he might have been able to salvage a stopgap solution, laying the groundwork for a gradual expansion of their plan later. Yet he supported the ring of secrecy Hillary created around herself and approved tactical decisions that his political instincts must have recognized were errors.

  All presidential partnerships have their difficulties, but husband-and-wife teams in the White House bear a special set of challenges that can hamper the effectiveness of this special partnership. Having worked so successfully with Hillary in Arkansas, the president expected the same fluidity to exist in Washington. But DC is not Little Rock. If there is truth in President Barack Obama’s comment that the presidency accentuates the qualities—good or bad—of the person who holds the office, the same might also be said of a president’s relationships.

  IV

  Hillary Rodham Clinton: Partner to Power

  The act of criticizing the president for permitting his wife to play too prominent a role in his policymaking may go back as far as Abigail Adams, the nation’s second First Lady and arguably the first to function in the role as it is understood today.

  Most of the assistance Abigail provided her husband was discreet. She would give him thoughtful advice behind the scenes or in their correspondence. In the days when John Adams was serving in the Continental Congress, for example, Abigail would include in her letters to him news about how the people in Massachusetts were viewing his efforts in Philadelphia. She would help interpret the local news for him and offer ways he might use the information to inform his conduct in the Assembly. She continued to act as his “eyes on the ground” when he was appointed ambassador to Paris. Later, when Adams became president, he consulted Abigail on his appointments, allowed her to read and comment on secret diplomatic dispatches and involved her in important domestic-policy decisions. Abigail was a leading influence, for example, on Adams’s decision to support the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts.

  By the 1840s, the public was more receptive to First Ladies openly advising their husbands. But, had the public been fully aware of the extent of the working partnership between President James K. Polk and his wife, Sarah, they might not have been so welcoming. From the very beginning of Polk’s career, Sarah was involved in all aspects of his political life. When he ran for Tennessee governor and the US House of Representatives, she was his closest campaign adviser. In the White House, they literally worked side by side in the 1845 equivalent of the Oval Office. Polk later confessed that he rarely consulted his cabinet on issues; he relied instead on Sarah. One of their greatest achievements together was the expansion of US borders to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific—absorbing the Oregon, California and Texas territories along the way. Sarah was also the president’s chief surrogate. She represented him at so many official and political events that his vice president, George Mifflin Dallas, once complained that she had more influence in the nation than he did.

  In the early 1900s, politicians’ wives were expected to actively and publicly support their husbands’ careers, but Nellie Taft was more engaged than most. William How
ard Taft probably would not have become president without her. It was true he was ambitious, but he would in all likelihood have been just as happy if he had never been elected president. His wife pushed him and took charge of his career, facilitating his election to the office. After his stints as secretary of war and governor of the Philippines (both jobs he had not actively sought), Taft considered retirement, but Nellie saw an opportunity to capitalize on his national profile. In a private meeting, she pressured outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt to support Taft’s nomination for the presidency. Roosevelt agreed, and once Taft was elected, Nellie scaled back her involvement in his political affairs and settled into the more traditional role of a First Lady.

  In the 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt was often regarded as the most influential First Lady in history. Hillary Clinton has many times been compared to Eleanor Roosevelt, even by her husband (see the opening quotation of this chapter). Like Eleanor, she ended up in politics because of the man she married, and both women were dedicated to social causes. But the Roosevelts were not a White House team the way Bill and Hillary were. Times when the Roosevelts worked closely together politically were rare.

  The first First Lady in the modern era to play an open and indisputably consequential role in the political affairs of a sitting president was Rosalynn Carter. President Jimmy Carter once said of his wife: “There’s very seldom a decision that I make that I don’t first discuss with her…very frequently, to tell her my options and seek her advice. She’s got superb political judgement. She probably knows the human aspects of the American people and their relations to the government better than I do. We have an absolutely unconstrained relationship, an ability to express our doubts and concerns to each other.”32 In a first for a presidential spouse, Carter appointed Rosalynn his special envoy to Latin America. In addition to helping ensure good relations with the region, Rosalynn was charged with encouraging Latin American leaders to improve their human-rights records. Carter leaned on her much the same way Polk had leaned on his wife. They discussed many major presidential decisions—especially on domestic affairs—and met at the end of each day and during their weekly lunches to discuss Carter’s work. Rosalynn’s sphere of influence spanned the domestic as well as the international. She headed a mental health commission for the president and even attended and advised him during the Camp David Accords. Her role as one of Carter’s key advisers was not welcomed by all Americans. Although most had no idea that she sat in on cabinet meetings and participated in the negotiations at the Mideast peace talks, during her well-publicized tour of Latin America some accused her of overstepping her role. They questioned her qualifications and wondered why she was involved in such an important way in the country’s foreign policy. Perhaps because of those criticisms, the First Ladies who followed her tended to stick to the more traditional aspects of the role. That is, until the Clintons arrived.

 

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