All Too Human: A Political Education

by George Stephanopoulos

  Clinton's belief that the bill would end welfare as a political bogeyman and usher in an era of altruism struck me as a rationalization; his hope that a new Congress would restore the cuts seemed like wishful thinking. But a few weeks later at the Democratic convention, I faithfully repeated the talking points to help quell a rumored demonstration by liberal delegates over welfare reform. That was the trade-off. In return for a seat at that cabinet table, in return for the privilege of influencing issues you care about, in return for the rush of power and reflected glory, you defend the boss — fiercely, unapologetically, giving no ground. If you can't do it, you have to go.

  But I don't want to resign. Not before we win again. It was a close call. Who am I to judge? And Clinton knows a lot more about welfare than you do, George. Besides, he already came through on the budget and affirmative action, and we can't risk losing the White House again. You can't expect 100 percent. Resigning with an election so close is just self-indulgent.

  My own capacity for rationalization wasn't exactly underdeveloped, but most Democrats were making a similar calculation. The floor fight over welfare reform never caught fire. Democrats had to consider the alternative — a Republican president working with a Republican Congress — and they were too content to fight. With a resilient president riding to reelection on the back of a resurgent economy, this was a feel-good convention — a coronation. Nobody wanted to spoil the celebration.

  Not even Morris could spoil the fun. The man who at our first dinner had said “I don't want any publicity. Being a man of mystery helps me work better” was holding a coming-out party in Chicago. He was on the cover of that week's Time, and he was granting a steady stream of interviews in which he described his brilliant engineering of Clinton's comeback. My natural jealousy was moderated a bit by my belief that he did deserve his share of credit for Clinton's recovery, and by the fact that he was making new internal enemies every day. It wasn't just the media tour; he was going through another manic phase. In his zeal for total control, he tried to replace both Hillary's and Gore's speeches with his own rapidly dictated drafts — speeches so over the top that Harry Thomason quipped, “Dick's gone bad. Someone's gonna have to put him down.”

  Little did he know that Morris was taking care of that himself. I got my first inkling that something was up late Monday afternoon, the first full day of the convention. The two of us were at the headquarters hotel, waiting for a speech prep with Hillary to begin. She never arrived, but while we were waiting, Dick confided to me that he might be the subject of a nasty personal story in the Star tabloid. “It didn't happen,” he said, “but I think you should know that it's coming.” I'd been around long enough to know that “It didn't happen” wasn't exactly a denial, but I didn't ask what the “it” was. I didn't want to know the details because I didn't want to be blamed if they leaked, and defending Dick against the tabloids wasn't part of my job description. If the story was published, he was on his own.

  On Wednesday night at the convention center, Harold pulled me aside near the end of the night to say he'd heard a rumor that the next day's New York Post was going to run the Star's story on Morris and a prostitute. But he wasn't sure, and I was too tired to wait up for it. The president's acceptance speech was the next night, and I wanted to be fresh for the prep. Thursday morning, I got up at 6:30 and called Dick for our daily conversation about the overnight polls.

  “They're fine,” he said. “But I'm resigning.”

  He didn't have to explain. The story must have appeared and been every bit as bad as he'd feared. “We started out as enemies,” he said, “but now I really respect you.”

  “I'm sorry, Dick.”

  I didn't like Dick — hell, I hated him. I wanted him gone. But to face such a public disgrace on a day of such personal triumph seemed too cruel, too unusual, too Greek. No one should have to endure such a mythic turn of fate — even if it was his own fault. The feeling faded over the course of the day. As I learned the details of what he'd done — not just hiring the prostitute, but letting her listen in on his phone calls with the president — I became more angry at him for putting Clinton and our work at risk. But at Hillary's insistence, I tried not to show it. Fearing that Dick was troubled enough to commit suicide, she had issued strict instructions for all of us to avoid any public comment that might set him off.

  When I arrived at Clinton's suite for the speech prep, he was already at the dining-room table, scribbling on the speech drafts spread before him. Concentrating on his speech, the president didn't mention Morris. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed relieved, almost lighthearted. On top again, he didn't need Dick now; the win would be his alone. We worked through the day as if Morris had never existed, and I had a hint of what I would feel in our first residence meeting after Dick's departure. It was all so simple. Panetta took Dick's chair and gave a perfunctory, thirty-second “Now that Dick is gone …” speech. That was that. I was there. Dick wasn't. I had won. But Man, I thought, this is one cold-blooded business we're in.

  Two months later, two nights before Clinton's final presidential debate, a group of us were in the bar of the Albuquerque Holiday Inn reviewing the day's prep session over burgers and beer. Around midnight, an advance man found me to say the president was on the phone.

  “You doin' anything?”

  “No.”

  “Can you come up for a minute?”

  The encounter I'd been dreading. That morning, The New Yorker had published David Remnick's profile of me, in which I openly discussed moving on before the start of the second term. I had been candid with Remnick, in part because I wanted to lock myself into leaving. But I thought I had been careful enough to avoid creating spin-off news stories. Apparently not. My plans were all over CNN and the AP wire, and I hadn't yet talked to the president. It had seemed presumptuous, and I was chicken. I wanted to put off this conversation as long as I could. Now Clinton was calling me on it.

  When I entered the suite, he was sprawled on the bed in T-shirt and jeans, with the contents of his saddlebag briefcase — folders, briefing books, a couple of paperback mysteries, and a new hardcover by Gary Hart — spilled on the bedspread around him. I walked across the room to lean against the radiator on the far wall. CNN Headline News filled the awkward silence.

  “So, how's this Remnick article?”

  “It's not too bad,” I replied. But searching for more comfortable ground, I quickly changed the subject. “The prep went well today,” I said. “We're ahead of schedule. If you have a solid night Wednesday, the election is over.” This was what I knew how to do with Clinton — relate through work, a candidate and his staff. The talk turned to his next cabinet. I advised him to pick at least one Republican, and we discussed his top three picks for secretary of state: George Mitchell, Madeline Albright, and the ever-elusive Colin Powell. But after a few minutes, Clinton stopped me.

  “Now let's talk about you,” he said. “Do you really want to leave? Nobody around here can do what you do.”

  I had steeled myself for just this moment. Clinton's personal magnetism had less power over me now. Watching it work on others still gave me a kind of clinical thrill, but I liked to think that I had become more a student of his seductive powers than their subject. He foiled that defense by tapping into my need to feel indispensable and saying exactly the right thing: “Nobody around here can do what you do.” Then there was the fact that he was president. Early in our term, though I was still captured by Clinton's charisma, I hadn't had sufficient in-your-bones awe for the presidency itself— perhaps in part because we had beaten an incumbent. Over time, as I developed a more realistic view of Clinton the man, my respect for the office increased. My apprehension that night was that I wouldn't be able to say no to a president.

  But I was also grateful to Clinton — for the chances he had given me and the things he had taught me, for his intelligence and fortitude, for his commitment to public service, for coming through on the biggest issues and becoming a better pre
sident every day. And I was grateful that night because he didn't pull rank. After I told him about being treated for burnout, he suggested that I take a six-month sabbatical and then come back to work. Thoughtful, but that wasn't how the White House worked. The conversation drifted. After ninety minutes, I reminded Clinton that he needed his sleep and prepared to leave — relieved. The president of the United States had told me he needed me, but he hadn't commanded my service. All I could have hoped for. On my way out, he asked me to reconsider his offer. “Of course,” I said. But we both knew this was good-bye.

  Election day 1996, I slept in. Around noon, I threw on some jeans and a baseball cap for an anonymous walk around Little Rock. I wanted lunch at Doe's, and to wander down Main Street to see the War Room. The space had been rented out for a corporate reception — re-created down to the headset from my phone and the little white sign Carville had hung on the wall: “Change vs. More of the Same …”

  The late autumn haze carried me back to the day I first landed — to the mansion, their bedroom, that paint store where it all began. Clinton's allergies will be acting up. Man, that seems like a long time ago. So much has happened. Ugly sometimes. Didn't get all we wanted. But the country's in good shape, and we did some good things. … As I passed by the old train station, my reverie was interrupted by a shout: “Are you registered to vote in Little Rock?” A woman in a flowing white muumuu beneath a Medusa's tangle of dark hair rushed toward me with an offering. It was a business card with a caramel wrapped in gold foil stapled to the corner:

  VOTE FOR CONNIE HAMZY

  LITTLE ROCK CITY BOARD, POSITION 10 —

  “TO REPRESENT THE CONCERNS OF THE WORKING POOR.”

  I looked down at the card, then back at her face. Sweet, sweet Connie. My first bimbo eruption. A candidate for city council. I was getting out; she was getting in.

  Later that night, in the presidential suite of the Excelsior Hotel, I told Clinton about it. “Did she recognize you?” I shook my head. “Too bad, she might have flashed.” Roaring, he repeated every detail from their moment in the North Little Rock Hilton. It was safe to laugh now.

  Hillary was in the back bedroom, helping Chelsea get dressed. Just before I left for a victory lap with the network anchors, I knocked on her door. She peeked out, “Just a minute,” then came into the hall. Only the two of us were there, separated by a wall from the suite where the returns were being announced and Clinton was holding court. This was our private good-bye. She gave me a hug, then held me at arm's length for an extra second, a hand on each of my shoulders, her eyes shining.

  We smiled through the silence. Victory was vindication — even sweeter for her than for her husband. She had paid a higher price, taken harder hits, achieved fewer dreams. Now she'd have a second chance, and I wished her luck. She did the same for me. All the stresses and threats, all the suspicions and resentments, all the times the two of us had clashed because I blamed her for being too rigid and she blamed me for not being as “tough as Kennedy's men” — all that was behind us now. We had survived. We had won. All would be well.

  “I love you, George Stephanopoulos.”

  “I love you too.”

  Staff no more, I walked out the door.

  EPILOGUE: ON MY OWN

  It was the office, not the man. That was what the historians said, and for once the historians were right. Oh, what a place Washington was, when you were there on the inside. Right in tight, near the Oval Office, where it happened. He'd been there for eight years, an assistant, a President's man. Now he was on the outs. He hated being on the outs more than he hated anything. For a President's man habit died hard, and suddenly he was afraid.

  — Ward Just, “A Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C.”

  After four years, unlike Ward Just's character, I put myself on the outs. Maybe that's why I wasn't afraid. Grateful for the privilege of serving a president, relieved to be leaving in one piece, I left feeling as lucky as I had the day it all began. I would miss being on the inside, miss making decisions and trying to make a difference, miss the events that made history and the intimate moments when the White House felt like home. But I wouldn't miss carrying everything inside, and I wouldn't miss being an assistant. For the first time in my professional life, I wanted to be on my own.

  I moved to New York for a new career as a writer, teacher, and television commentator, and slowly adjusted to speaking publicly without first calculating Clinton's position or how it would play. Liberated from the crisis cycles of the White House, I learned how to better balance my life; over time, I stopped taking antidepressant medication. But habit dies hard. After a presidential press conference, I'd leave a congratulatory message with Betty Currie, hoping Clinton would call. When I defended him publicly, Clinton would return the favor by tracking me down. That was enough — twenty minutes of that familiar, sleepy hoarseness talking about the issues streaming through his mind. For the length of a phone call, I could pretend to be a president's man.

  Then, on a Sunday afternoon in September 1997, for the first time in months, I returned to the White House to visit Gene Sperling. We wandered around the empty West Wing and popped into my old office — Rahm's now — before stepping across the hall to the Roosevelt Room. Some visitors on a special tour peeked through the door at me with a look of recognition that said I belonged there, which only made me more aware that I didn't. Then Gene and I settled into a slouch perfected over hundreds of staff meetings: gazing at the ceiling with our necks nestled on the backs of our chairs and our knees crossed high against the edge of the wooden table. But our nostalgic talk was interrupted by an unmistakable series of high-pitched staccato beeps from the Secret Service station across the hall.

  I bolted upright in my chair, ready to work, as a uniformed agent reached into the room to close the four-inch-thick door facing the Oval's formal entrance. The president was in. My heart beat more rapidly. My stomach floated with butterflies, the kind you get when you're walking down the street and spot a girl you lost but still love a couple of blocks ahead.

  A year earlier, I would have walked into the Oval without thinking. During the year of my exile I never would have entered without asking. In each case, however, I would have known what was right at the time. My whole being was wrapped up in reading the rhythms of the White House and the moods of the man. I anticipated his needs and answered his questions before they were asked. I prided myself on being Clintonologist in chief. Need to know what's going on or advice on what to do? Come see me. That was the George that Gene knew best, so he couldn't understand why I was so flustered. To him, I was still Clinton's guy.

  But as I stared at the door that had melded seamlessly into the wall, I knew that wasn't true anymore. I didn't know what to do. Walking in on the president during one of his rare moments alone seemed presumptuous. Walking by without saying hello seemed rude. I was suddenly shy, and slightly afraid. This was not my place anymore. Clinton was still president, but I could no longer maintain the illusion that he was somehow my president in some special way. Not knowing what to do at that moment was the surest sign that I didn't belong.

  We went up to Sperling's office and talked for another hour. Clinton stayed at his desk and shuffled his papers the way he liked to do on Sunday afternoons. Then it was time to go. I had a plane to catch; Gene had work to do. I still hoped we would run into him; maybe I would poke my head into the Oval after all. But when we descended the single flight of stairs and peered around the corner, the door was open and the president was gone. So I returned my visitor's pass to the Northwest Gate and walked up Connecticut Avenue.

  That was how my story was supposed to end. But on Wednesday, January 21, 1998, it seemed to start all over again.

  Shortly before five A.M., I prepared to check out of the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. The night before I had given a talk at the University of Alabama that included my usual riff on the Clinton scandals. By the end of 1998, I confidently predicted, the president would win the
Paula Jones case and Ken Starr would close shop without finding any wrongdoing by the Clintons on Whitewater, Travelgate, or Filegate. Now I was rushing home to teach my weekly class on the presidency at Columbia. But when I reached the front desk, the clerk handed me a phone. My new employers at ABC News were on the line. A big story was breaking with allegations about the president and a former White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. They'd had sex. Clinton might have told her to lie. There were tapes. Starr was investigating. Get to a studio immediately. I asked for a fax of the story and went upstairs to put on my suit.

  That damn Newsweek rumor was true. The previous Saturday, while the president was being deposed in the Paula Jones case, my friends in the White House were worrying that the magazine was about to print something about Clinton and an intern. By the end of the day, Newsweek had told Rahm there was no story, and Rahm had told me that the president’s deposition was a home run. Another false alarm. The next morning to This Week, when my colleague Bill Kristol aired the intern rumor, I jumped down his throat and accused him of bottom-feeding from Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge, who had issued a late-night bulletin about Newsweek’s internal deliberations. We quickly moved to other topics, and I hoped that the intern story would be another example of a storm cloud that evaporated under scrutiny. Later, on my way to Alabama, I called Betty Currie from a pay phone at the Atlanta airport with a message for Clinton: “Hang in there, and take Arafat to the Holocaust Museum,” the other big story of the week.

  By Wednesday morning, there was no other story. In the cab to ABC’s Birmingham affiliate, I fixed on the Post headline —“Clinton Accused of Urging Aide to Lie”—the foraged through the story for exculpatory facts, logical leaps, and questionable assertions. But the telltale signs were all bad: Attorney General Reno had personally authorized Starr’s request to investigate “allegations of suborning perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice involving the president.” There must be some hard evidence. Clinton’s lawyer, Robert Bennett, denied “a relationship” between Lewinsky and Clinton but wouldn’t comment on whether the two had talked about her testimony in the Jones case. There must have been conversations between them. Lewinsky’s attorney, William Ginsburg strangely refused to deny that his client had had a sexual relationship with Clinton. Sbit, they must have bad sex. And there are tapes. Hours of them, “according to sources,” describing the affair in graphic detail, including some conversations in which Lewinsky recounted Clinton’s and Vernon Jordan’s “directing her to testify falsely in the Paula Jones case.”