Bill Clinton

by Michael Tomasky

  “He showed up at the Pope County picnic in 1974”: Joe Klein, “Bill Clinton: Who Is This Guy?” New York, January 20, 1992.

  “He beat the living hell out of me”: Ibid.

  “It was the single dumbest mistake I ever made in politics until 1994”: Clinton, My Life, p. 265.

  Then one day in the spring of 1981: Ibid., p. 291.

  When he finally finished, thirty-three minutes had elapsed: The entire fiasco is available for viewing on YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvTRvTII40o, or search “Bill Clinton speech Democratic convention 1988.”

  “A little after four o’clock on the afternoon of April 6, 1989”: Al From, “Recruiting Bill Clinton,” Atlantic, December 3, 2013.

  “We’d leave from Little Rock or maybe Washington”: Author interview with Al From, November 9, 2015.

  “Throughout 1990 and 1991, the DLC plied [Clinton] with critical aid”: Kenneth S. Baer, Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), p. 8.

  2. THE COMEBACK KID

  “We have got to have a message that touches everybody”: Quoted in Nick Wing, “Bill Clinton’s Clinic: Passionate 1991 Speech Could Show GOP How to Revitalize a Party in Decline,” Huffington Post, May 24, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/24/bill-clinton-1991-speech_n_3332214.html.

  “he was the only candidate who had any real stake in its outcome”: Richard L. Berke, “Clinton Claims Solid, If Symbolic, Victory in Florida Democrats’ Straw Poll,” New York Times, December 16, 1991.

  “This is a marriage”: Clinton, My Life, p. 385. Years later, in his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, Clinton acknowledged for the first time (he was under oath) that he’d had an affair with Flowers.

  “I can’t remember if I used the word meltdown”: Author telephone interview with Stanley Greenberg, November 15, 2015.

  “What I didn’t realize at the time”: George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education (New York: Back Bay Books, 2000), p. 79.

  “In our own polls we were in third place”: Author telephone interview with Stanley Greenberg.

  “you might think David Duke was giving that speech”: Clinton, My Life, p. 411.

  delegates barked out such names as Archie Bunker and Martha Mitchell: Archie Bunker, of course, was the bigoted protagonist of Norman Lear’s All in the Family, then a new and sensational hit television show; Mitchell, the wife of Nixon’s attorney general and campaign chairman John Mitchell, made frequent and sometimes outrageous statements to the news media, earning the sobriquet “the Mouth of the South” and becoming the target of leaks from the Nixon campaign that she had a drinking problem.

  with little by way of a credible explanation: Perot said later that he quit because he had heard that the Bush campaign was planning on sabotaging his daughter’s wedding.

  “I think Bush couldn’t believe that this guy, this draft dodger, could really beat him”: Author telephone interview with Stanley Greenberg.

  3. THE NEW REALITIES OF POLITICS

  Clinton was the second choice of about half of Perot’s voters: That Perot cost Bush the election is a piece of conventional wisdom that has lived on ever since, repeated by conservatives and often accepted by liberals because it just sort of seems like it could be true, since Bush and Perot were both more-conservative-than-not (for their time) Texans. But the only study of the matter, based on Perot voters’ second choices, found that without Perot in the race, only Ohio would have shifted from Clinton to Bush, still giving Clinton a 349–189 electoral college margin. See, for example, E. J. Dionne Jr., “Perot Seen Not Affecting Vote Outcome,” Washington Post, November 8, 1992.

  “deserves the hatred of God”: Both Dole and Weyrich are quoted in David Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (New York: Crown, 2002), p. 147.

  “keeping this promise will cost you the military”: Stephanopoulos, All Too Human, p. 123.

  “You mean to tell me that the success of my program”: John Harris, The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006), p. 5.

  The 1993 deficit was 3.7 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product: Economic research of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “Federal Surplus or Deficit as Percent of Gross Domestic Product,” July 30, 2015, https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FYFSGDA188S.

  “If we didn’t get the deficit down substantially”: Clinton, My Life, p. 461.

  “When he asked how much time I’d spent on gays in the military”: Ibid., p. 520.

  The Clinton plan left marginal income tax rates the same: The Tax Foundation, “U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates, 1862–2013,” October 17, 2013, http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913-2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets.

  The budget included a 4.3-cent hike in the gasoline tax: See Jodie T. Allen, “The Biggest Tax Increase in History,” Slate, August 16, 1996, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/1996/08/the_biggest_tax_increase_in_history.html.

  “a major antipoverty initiative”: V. Joseph Hotz and John Karl Scholz, “The Earned Income Tax Credit,” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003, http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10256.pdf.

  “an honored place in history”: Clinton, My Life, p. 536.

  “As a result of these tactical retreats”: Joe Klein, The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton (New York: Broadway Books, 2003), p. 55.

  “At a cabinet meeting, [Bentsen] slammed his fist”: Harris, Survivor, p. 95.

  the results of a Gallup poll: “Gallup Poll Finds 46% Opposed, 38% in Favor of NAFTA,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1993.

  “My instincts were to release the records and fight the prosecutor”: Clinton, My Life, p. 573.

  4. THE LIMITS OF POWER

  “his campaign has not been able to produce any evidence”: “Where Was Clinton on the Gulf War?,” Chicago Tribune, August 2, 1992.

  “didn’t want to divide the NATO alliance”: Clinton, My Life, p. 513.

  “will not stay one day longer than is absolutely necessary”: Michael Wines, “Mission to Somalia: Bush Declares Goal in Somalia to ‘Save Thousands,’” New York Times, December 5, 1992.

  “we’re being pushed around by these two-bit pricks”: Harris, Survivor, p. 121.

  Osama bin Laden made a mental note: It is true that bin Laden marked Mogadishu in his mind. But according to Mark Bowden, the journalist who wrote the definitive account of the Mogadishu firefight, Black Hawk Down (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999), it is not true, as Clinton’s critics have asserted over the years, that bin Laden had dispatched al-Qaeda fighters to assist Aidid. See Mark Bowden, “The Truth About Mogadishu,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 2006.

  But over the course of the 1980s, things started to change: See, for example, the Centers for Disease Control, “Health Insurance Coverage Trends, 1959–2007: Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey,” National Health Statistics Reports 17, July 1, 2009, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr017.pdf.

  Senate Republican leader Bob Dole was telling him privately: Clinton, My Life, p. 547.

  “in a situation where on health care he never challenged it”: Harris, Survivor, p. 115.

  Bentsen personally handed Hillary Clinton a memo: David S. Broder and Haynes Johnson, The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (New York: Little, Brown, 1996), p. 163.

  “scathingly dismissed behind their backs”: Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 305.

  the changes proposed were indeed vast: The changes proposed were far more extensive than under Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act sixteen years later. To take the most obvious example, “Hillarycare” would have, over time, done away with employer-sponsored coverage entirely by shifting everyone into regional “health alliances.” Obamacare had dir
ect impact only on the so-called private market—that is, people who don’t have work-sponsored coverage and have to purchase it on their own, which is a small sliver of the overall market.

  they’d be finished in any bid for reelection: In the House, for example, the vote tally was 235 to 195 in favor. Fully 188 Democrats backed the bill, while 64 Democrats opposed it. About half of those 64 were white members from “gun states” where the NRA could hurt, and about half were liberals, mostly African Americans.

  “as good as we have a right to expect”: Helen Dewar, “Breyer Wins Senate Confirmation to Top Court, 87–9,” Washington Post, July 30, 1994.

  “Under the rules of the Senate”: Broder and Johnson, System, p. 522.

  “I was pushing the Congress”: Clinton, My Life, p. 612.

  5. THE PRESIDENT IS RELEVANT

  It was in May 1984: Klein, Natural, pp. 89–90.

  County officials responded by incorporating a new “city”: Stephanie Stokes, “How Atlanta Was Kept Out of Cobb County by a 10-Foot-Wide City,” WABE-FM, April 27, 2015, http://news.wabe.org/post/how-atlanta-was-kept-out-cobb-county-10-foot-wide-city.

  a South Carolina mother’s drowning of her two young sons: The woman’s name was Susan Smith; Gingrich’s quote was: “The mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change and the only way you get change is to vote Republican.” It later came out that Smith had been abused as a girl by a stepfather who was on the board of the local Christian Coalition.

  “Not the House”: Harris, Survivor, p. 150.

  The point was not lost on Clinton: Clinton, My Life, p. 629.

  He later reflected that if he’d dropped health care: See ibid., p. 631.

  “An independent counsel is selected”: Quoted in Sidney Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), p. 99.

  “Go for a head shot”: Quoted at Media Matters for America, “Liddy Advises Listeners: ‘[N]o Matter What Law They Pass, Do Not—Repeat, Not—Ever Register Any of Your Firearms,’” November 14, 2008, http://mediamatters.org/video/2008/11/14/liddy-advises-listeners-no-matter-what-law-they/146152.

  “By the time he was killed”: Clinton, My Life, p. 679.

  “that would amount to a Republican victory”: Harris, Survivor, p. 214.

  “Even if I drop to 5 percent in the polls”: Clinton, My Life, p. 682.

  “single most avoidable mistake”: Newt Gingrich, Lessons Learned the Hard Way: A Personal Report (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 45.

  “We made a mistake”: Clinton, My Life, p. 694.

  6. THE CULTURE WARS

  “Clinton’s decision-making process was never truly complete”: Klein, Natural, p. 149.

  promulgated a few down-the-middle guidelines: Stephen A. Holmes, “Clinton Defines Religion’s Role in U.S. Schools,” New York Times, August 26, 1995.

  He defended government racial-preference programs: John Harris, “Clinton Avows Support for Affirmative Action,” Washington Post, July 20, 1995.

  “predominantly performed on women”: Clinton, My Life, p. 706.

  “The Congress should not use the words ‘welfare reform’ as a cover”: Quoted in “Clinton Vetoes GOP Welfare Reform Bill,” Los Angeles Times, January 10, 1996.

  opened the meeting by asking simply, “What should we do?”: Harris, Survivor, p. 233.

  “self-consciously statesmanlike”: Stephanopoulos, All Too Human, p. 420.

  “This is a decent welfare bill wrapped in a sack of shit”: Harris, Survivor, p. 238.

  “If this administration wants to go down in history”: Quoted in Robert Gavin, “After a Long Struggle, Welfare Reform—Moynihan’s Pleas Ignored Amid Rush to Overhaul,” Newhouse News Service, August 11, 1996.

  “The president has made his decision”: Ibid.

  “scaled-down expectations in domestic policy”: Carl Cannon, “Clinton and Top Aides Set Goals for Second Term,” Baltimore Sun, January 12, 1997.

  7. HITTING HIS STRIDE

  “America’s awake”: Alison Mitchell, “Clinton Hails Drop in Deficit, Declaring ‘America’s Awake,’” New York Times, October 29, 1996.

  Median household incomes had gone up: “Median Household Income in the United States,” http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php.

  “the most permanent feature”: Phil Gramm, “Deceptive Budget Deal,” Washington Post, May 9, 1997.

  “accomplices in stealing $50,000 from the poor”: William Safire, “Partners in Crime?,” New York Times, May 30, 1996.

  “when and whether to announce”: Jack Nelson, “Starr Will Leave Whitewater Post to Join Pepperdine,” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1997.

  Safire led the charge: William Safire, “The Big Flinch,” New York Times, February 20, 1997.

  “concealment and destruction of evidence”: Sara Fritz, “Starr Gets More Time for Probe of Whitewater,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1997.

  these lawyers had come to see the suit: Jill Abramson and Don Van Natta Jr., “Quietly, a Team of Lawyers Kept Paula Jones’s Lawsuit Alive,” New York Times, January 24, 1999.

  “prove the pundits wrong”: Harris, Survivor, p. 211.

  “I pointed out that a declaration that NATO would stop its expansion”: Clinton, My Life, p. 750.

  “Clinton felt that he himself was leading an international movement”: Blumenthal, Clinton Wars, p. 308.

  8. THAT WOMAN

  “to check on the Asian fiscal crisis”: Francis X. Clines, “Clinton, in First for a President, Testifies in Sex Harassment Suit,” New York Times, January 18, 1998.

  “This could be a problem”: Harris, Survivor, p. 224.

  “I also came to understand that when I was exhausted”: Clinton, My Life, p. 811.

  “Well, bubeleh”: Michael Isikoff, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story (New York: Crown, 1999), p. 196.

  “There are lots of us busy elves”: Ibid., p. 182.

  against the standards of journalism in which he was trained: Ibid., p. 204.

  “first-class media hound”: David Plotz, “Susan Carpenter-McMillan: The Woman Who Ate Paula Jones,” Slate, September 21, 1997.

  “After Goldberg finished telling Tripp’s story”: Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), p. 339.

  “inchoate criminality”: Isikoff, Uncovering Clinton, p. 304.

  “Ma’am, you are in serious trouble”: Andrew Morton, Monica’s Story (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), Kindle version, location 324.

  “whether Clinton and his close friend Vernon Jordan”: Peter Baker, Toni Locy, and Susan Schmidt, “Clinton Accused of Urging Aide to Lie,” Washington Post, January 21, 1998.

  “as the military aide announced his name”: Hillary Clinton, Living History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 449.

  William Ginsburg, who instantly became a ubiquitous television presence: Ginsburg gave his name to an only-in-Washington phenomenon: after his moment in the spotlight, anyone appearing on all five major Sunday shows on the same day was thenceforth referred to as doing “a full Ginsburg.”

  “This is the great story here”: Blumenthal, Clinton Wars, p. 374.

  “After the story broke, I called [lawyer] David Kendall”: Clinton, My Life, p. 775.

  The president’s approval rating had risen to 73 percent: Blumenthal, Clinton Wars, p. 425.

  “one of the happiest days of my presidency”: Clinton, My Life, p. 784.

  “They have had me for twenty-seven years”: Ibid., p. 783.

  “a previously unknown group called the Liberation Army of the Islamic Sanctuaries”: James C. McKinley Jr., “Two U.S. Embassies in East Africa Are Bombed,” New York Times, August 8, 1998.

  “to be run out of office in the flood tide”: Clinton, My Life, p. 800.

  “it was unnaturally dark, with rain p
elting the windows”: Michael Waldman, POTUS Speaks (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 227.

  “You’re the one who got yourself into this mess”: Hillary Clinton, Living History, p. 468.

  “I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky”: Blumenthal, Clinton Wars, p. 465.

  9. UNBREAKABLE

  “Mr. President, we are going to run you out of town”: Harris, Survivor, p. 334.

  “I think the president did exactly the right thing today”: Quoted in Micah Zenko, “How Risky Was the Osama bin Laden Raid?,” Council on Foreign Relations, April 30, 2012.

  “would have been derelict in our duty”: James Risen, “To Bomb Sudan Plant, or Not: A Year Later, Debates Rankle,” New York Times, October 27, 1999.

  “credible military leader”: Keating Holland, “Most Americans Support Sudan, Afghanistan Strikes,” CNN.com, August 21, 1998.

  The word sex (or some variation thereof) appeared 581 times; the word Whitewater four times: Hillary Clinton, Living History, p. 475.

  “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned”: “Transcript: Clinton Speaks to Prayer Breakfast,” CNN.com, September 11, 1998.

  “Until it was measured by Kenneth Starr, no citizen”: “Shame at the White House,” New York Times, September 12, 1998.

  “Representative Hyde sought to strike a lofty tone”: Brian Knowlton, “U.S. House Votes, 258–176, for Clinton Impeachment Inquiry,” New York Times, October 9, 1998.

  Black turnout was especially high for a midterm election: According to figures compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, black turnout in 1998 was 39.6 percent, and white turnout was 43.3 percent. So white turnout was still higher, but it was down from 47.3 percent in 1994, the previous midterm election, while black turnout was just 37.1 percent in 1994. See Census Bureau, “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 1998,” P20-523RV.