12.Fenster, FDR’s Shadow, p. 205.
13.Alfred Smith, Up to Now; an Autobiography (New York: Viking, 1929), p. 288.
14.Roosevelt, My Parents, p. 93.
15.James Roosevelt gave Howe the lion’s share of the credit for getting FDR back “on his feet” politically. He wrote in his memoirs about his parents: “When father was stricken and later when it became clear that he had a long, hard road to any sort of recovery, I am convinced he would have dropped from public life completely had it not been for Louis Howe. Father was too busy with his fight for his life to think of his political future. It’s easy now to look back and see that just up the road was the governorship and then the presidency. It was all but impossible then. He had a modest background, and unsuccessful vice presidential candidates generally fade fast into obscurity. It was Louis who decided that the exposure of the campaign, even one they were bound to lose, would be beneficial” (Roosevelt, My Parents, p. 76).
16.Patrick Anderson, The President’s Men; White House Assistants of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), p. 10.
CHAPTER FIVE: HARRY TRUMAN & CLARK CLIFFORD
1.Harry S. Truman, letter to his sister, November 14, 1947.
2.The need for policy synthesizers grew out of a change in leadership as a result of the increasing size of the government and of government programs. In Clifford’s case, the function was associated with the responsibilities of the White House counsel. Later, the responsibilities would be folded into the functions of the chief of staff.
3.David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 614.
4.Clifford also played an important leadership role in Truman’s political campaign affairs—something Marshall would have been fully aware of.
5.Journalist Bill Moyers included Clifford among the influential politicos he interviewed for his 1980s television show A Second Look. Viewers got a sense of the theatrical quality of Clifford’s communication style: Clifford used all the elements of communication, from inflection to body language, to add authority to his comments. Even at his advanced age (Clifford was eighty-three at the time) his gifts were apparent. See A Second Look, directed by Bill Moyers, “Former Presidential Advisor: Clark Clifford,” aired May 28, 1989, on PBS, available online at http://billmoyers.com/content/clark-clifford/ (accessed September 20, 2017).
6.David McCullough, Truman, p. 616.
7.Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 12.
8.Ibid., p. 13.
9.Ibid., p. 12.
10.Ibid.
11.Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (New York: Berkley Press, 1974), p. 32.
12.McCullough, Truman, p. 47.
13.At the very moment that Truman’s press announcement publicized US recognition of Israel, the UN was about to consider a resolution to put the city of Jerusalem under trusteeship. Truman’s release was simple: “This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.” See Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman 1945–1948 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), pp. 384–85.
14.Taking the job would drive Clifford deeply into debt. His solution for making his financial ends meet would be frowned upon today and might even violate ethics. According to Clark Clifford biographer John Acacia, Alfred Lansing, a wealthy St. Louis businessman, subsidized Clifford’s White House salary throughout his service to Truman. In total, Clifford received $35,000 from Lansing—almost $350,000 in today’s dollars. Clifford also received personal loans from DC lobbyist George Allen totaling $20,000, or $200,000 in today’s dollars. See John Acacia, Clark Clifford: The Wise Man of Washington (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p. 162.
15.It is clear from the interviews of Steelman and others conducted for the Oral Histories Project by the Truman Presidential Library in the 1960s that Clifford and Steelman were not friends and that their rivalry was real. Steelman’s own interviews suggest an intent to correct the record about the Clifford legend. Transcripts of the interviews are available and searchable by name at https://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/oral_his.htm.
16.Maintaining control over the national security elements of the government had been particularly frustrating for Truman’s predecessor, FDR.
17.Acacia, Clark Clifford, pp. 57–58.
18.Although for years Clifford claimed the credit for the report, which was so well done that it significantly influenced how the US government as a whole viewed the Soviets, it is now widely accepted that George Elsey wrote it with little aid from Clifford. Truman asked Clifford to prepare for him a report to explain the rising influence of the Soviets, and Clifford assigned the task to Elsey. When Elsey had completed a comprehensive study of US-Soviet relations, he handed it to Clifford, who made only cosmetic changes before presenting it to Truman. Clifford took immediate credit for the work, first in a note to Truman and later in a succession of interviews across decades. He acknowledged Elsey as a contributor but took full credit for its organization and writing. Elsey remained quiet about his true role for years, in probable deference to Clifford’s growing power. But by the late 1990s, Elsey began to claim the credit he deserved.
CHAPTER SIX: DWIGHT EISENHOWER & SHERMAN ADAMS
1.Patrick Anderson, The President’s Men; White House Assistants of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), p. 35.
2.The job of chief of staff has become a sobriquet for the right hand to the president, but it did not start out that way. John Steelman, who was unofficially the first White House chief of staff, might be confused today with the secretary of the cabinet—a sort of traffic cop regulating the flow of paper between the White House and the various agencies. Eisenhower’s conceptualization of the role was the first example of the sweeping administrator we think of today. Adams and Eisenhower reimagined the Steelman role as a right-hand man to the president—not just an administrator, but an all-encompassing figure with oversight of everything within the president’s reach. The role would see later changes that would ultimately weaken the position, but the all-powerful “right hand” connotation would endure for decades.
3.Dr. Snyder was one of the president’s closest friends. He started working for the Eisenhower family in the 1940s when Dwight asked him to look after Mamie, who suffered from the effects of valvular heart disease. When Eisenhower was elected president in 1953, he brought Snyder with him to the White House. Critics had major reservations about Snyder in the role of presidential physician. They thought at seventy-three he was too old for the job and that his lack of experience and out-of-date training disqualified him for the post.
4.Charles Lasby, Eisenhower’s Heart Attack: How Ike Beat Heart Disease and Held onto the Presidency (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1997).
5.Lasby devotes the introduction of his book to the story of how he discovered the cover-up about Eisenhower’s illness. As he tells it, he was researching a book idea about how men under extraordinary stress—like presidents—can suffer a serious heart attack and yet survive to continue in their stressful jobs. His research took him to the papers of Dr. Howard Snyder at the University of Wyoming and to Eisenhower’s medical files. It was while reviewing Snyder’s notes on the heart attack that he discovered Snyder’s “shocking misdiagnosis.” Ibid., pp. 1–5.
6.Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2013), p. 15.
7.Ibid., p. 124.
8.See William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874–1932 (New York: Bantam Books Trade Paperback Edition, 1983), p.
34.
9.The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer helps explain the far-reaching impact of Eisenhower’s covert actions in Iran, Vietnam, Guatemala, and Indonesia.
10.In addition to an overall negative impression of politicians, Eisenhower harbored concerns about Nixon’s general lack of experience and what he often referred to as Nixon’s intellectual immaturity.
11.In essence, the press release laid out how the federal government would function without its chief executive at the helm. In just three short paragraphs, Dulles covered all the issues that might pose difficulties for him in Eisenhower’s absence.
First, we see Dulles’s assurance to the public that the cabinet is of sound mind and good intentions: “After full discussion of pending matters, it was concluded that there are no obstacles to the orderly and uninterrupted conduct of the foreign and domestic affairs of the nation during the period of rest ordered by the President’s physicians.”
Then Dulles secures Adams’s removal from Washington: “Governor Sherman Adams, the Assistant to the President, will leave for Denver today and will be available there, in consultation with the President’s physicians, whenever it may become appropriate to present any matters to the President.”
Finally, Dulles ensures that no other cabinet officials will interfere with his work, while also securing their cooperation if he needs their help: “The Policies and programs of the administration as determined and approved by the President are well established along definite lines and are well known. Coordination of the activities of the several departments of the government within the framework of these policies will be continued by full cooperation among the responsible officers of these departments so that the functions of the government will be carried forward in an effective manner during the absence of the President.”
12.According to his memoirs, Adams recognized the fact that Dulles was the obvious originator of the release and that its true intent was to “vigilantly protect his position as the maker of foreign policy.” Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York: Harper, 1961), pp. 185–87.
13.Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990).
CHAPTER SEVEN: RONALD REAGAN & “THE TROIKA”
1.President Ronald Reagan at the Gridiron Dinner, Washington, DC, March 28, 1987.
2.Lou Cannon, President Reagan: His Rise to Power (New York: Public Affairs, 1991), pp. 158–59.
3.Bob Schieffer and Gary Paul Gates, The Acting President (New York: E. P. Dutton Books, 1989), pp. 90–91. Also see Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1982).
4.Colin Powell, My American Journey: An Autobiography, with Joseph E. Persico (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 395–96.
5.Stephen Knott and Jeffrey Chidester, At Reagan’s Side: Insiders’ Recollections from Sacramento to the White House (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), p. 136.
6.Nancy Reagan, My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 106.
7.Knott and Chidester, At Reagan’s Side, p. 136.
8.Schieffer and Gates, The Acting President, pp. 78–79.
9.The actual memo with Baker and Meese’s handwritten notes can be found in Schieffer and Gates, The Acting President, p. 83.
10.James Baker: The Man Who Made Washington Work, directed and written by Eric Strange, aired March 24, 2015, on PBS.
11.Laurence Barrett, Gambling with History: Ronald Reagan in the White House (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), p. 230.
12.Fred I. Greenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton (New York: Free Press, 2000), p. 120.
13.Smith would write a series of important articles starting in 1981 for the New York Times describing the leadership of the White House during Reagan’s tenure. The lengthy articles would eventually form the backbone of his book The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York: Ballantine, 1998).
CHAPTER EIGHT: BILL CLINTON & HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
1.Gail Sheehy, “What Hillary Wants,” Vanity Fair, May 1992, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/1992/05/hillary-clinton-first-lady-presidency.html (accessed July 22, 2017).
2.William Henry Chafe, Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012), pp. 225–28.
3.“Our key hypothesis about the power seeker is that he pursues power as a means of compensation against deprivation. Power is expected to overcome low estimates of the self, by changing either the traits of the self or the environment in which it functions” (Howard D. Lasswell, Power and Personality [New York: W. W. Norton, 1948], p. 39).
4.Of course, Lasswell’s theory might also be applied, to some degree, to the political partnerships of people who are not married to each other, like Wilson and House or Roosevelt and Howe. But one must make allowances for the fact that such relationships do not include the assumption of “equality” that often accompanies a marital relationship. Political partnerships based on marriage, like the Clintons’, often involve additional pressures that partnerships such as the Wilson/House arrangement do not encounter. Therefore, while Lasswell’s observations might apply to the Wilson/House partnership, they may not apply in the same way.
5.Carl Bernstein, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 63.
6.Ibid., p. 84.
7.Ibid., p. 140.
8.Ibid., p. 12.
9.Ibid., p. 14.
10.Ibid.
11.Roger Morris, Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), p. 115.
12.Bernstein, A Woman in Charge, p. 15.
13.Ibid., p. 23.
14.Ibid., p. 26.
15.Ibid., p. 12.
16.Unnamed author, “The Class of ’69,” Life, June 20, 1969, vol. 66, no. 24. Incidentally, Hillary’s future partner on the president’s health-care reform taskforce, Ira Magaziner, was profiled in the same article.
17.Biographer David Maraniss paints an unflattering portrait of Virginia Clinton in his book on Bill Clinton: “Virginia Clinton layered her face with makeup, dyed her hair black with a bold white racing stripe, painted thick, sweeping eyebrows high above their original position, smoked two packs of Pall Mall cigarettes a day, bathed in a sunken tub, drank liquor, was an irrepressible flirt, and enjoyed the underbelly of her resort town, with its racetrack and gaming parlors and nightclubs” (David Maraniss, First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995], p. 13).
18.Ibid., p. 32.
19.Ibid., p. 38.
20.Ibid., p. 313.
21.Chafe, Bill and Hillary, p. 91.
22.Ibid.
23.Amy Chozick, “The Road Trip That Changed Hillary Clinton’s Life,” New York Times, October 28, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/us/politics/hillary-clinton-road-trip.html (accessed November 5, 2017).
24.Ibid.
25.American Experience, season 24, episode 3, “Clinton,” directed by Barak Goodman, aired February 20, 2012, on WGBH/PBS, Boston.
26.Bernstein, A Woman in Charge, p. 167.
27.Almost every American president in the twentieth century has been involved with health-care reform in some way. Theodore Roosevelt was the first to publicly advocate for reform. He included the idea as a part of his party platform when he ran against President Taft and Governor Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 general election. FDR pursued health-care reform for years, first taking up the issue when he began work on his Social Security plan and later by convening a national health-care conference to recommend legislation. President Truman’s reform efforts were thwarted by Southern Democrats, who thought reform might lead to desegregation, and Eisenhower tried to create a federal fund to supplement the resources of private insurers with the goal of broadening the number of groups they insured.
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson added to their list of legislative priorities the goal of insuring the elderly and the poor. Kennedy�
��s efforts failed; Johnson’s did not. Presidents Nixon and Carter proposed their own comprehensive health-insurance plans. Both men ran out of time: Carter lost reelection, and Nixon resigned early in his second term. Even the great Ronald Reagan can be said to have carried the ball a few yards when he proposed that states pay more for the care of the elderly and the poor. When he passed the ball to his successor, President George H. W. Bush, he dropped it. It did not matter—Bill Clinton came to Washington determined enough for the both of them.
It is no surprise that Bill and Hillary would devote so much of those first years to the pursuit of such a noble mission. They came of age in the time when John F. Kennedy was asking every American to make sacrifices for the public good.
In the 1960s and ’70s, Bill and Hillary did not just dress and act like hippies, they thought like hippies too. Of the pair, Hillary possessed the stronger social compass. While Bill was traveling and thinking about what he would do once he finally ran for office, Hillary was working on women’s and children’s rights. Bill cared about social matters, of course, but it was Hillary who was a committed devotee. By steering Bill’s energies toward issues of social import, Hillary lent a moral aspect to what might have otherwise been read as naked ambition on Bill’s part. In Little Rock, the pair settled upon the goal of improving the educational infrastructure of the state. In Washington, they chose health care.
28.On March 10, 1993, US District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Hillary was not a government employee, and, for this reason, ruled that the meetings of the task force she chaired must be held in public whenever it convened meetings for the purpose of gathering information. Staff-level working groups were permitted to continue meeting in private, but other meetings, it was ruled, must be public.
29.Chafe, Bill and Hillary, p. 214.
30.Bernstein, A Woman in Charge, p. 276.
31.Ibid., p. 309.
32.Carl Sferrazza Anthony, First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power, vol. 2 (1961–1990) (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 276.
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