The first debate was held on April 26, 2007, on the campus of South Carolina State University, a black land-grant institution in Orangeburg and the site of a deadly protest during the civil rights movement. On the day of the debate, there was a festive air at the college. MSNBC was broadcasting live from the campus throughout the day. Representative James Clyburn, the newly installed African-American House Democratic whip, had graduated from South Carolina State and had fought to bring the debate to his alma mater. Clyburn had not taken sides in the Democratic battle, but he would later play a critical role when he clashed with Bill Clinton over racial issues.
The debate confirmed that the Democratic field was deep and experienced. Edwards, Biden, Dodd, and Richardson more than held their own, but all eyes were on Clinton and Obama, and there was one striking moment between them. Toward the end of the night, moderator Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, turned to Obama and asked, “Senator Obama, if, God forbid a thousand times, while we were gathered here tonight, we learned that two American cities had been hit simultaneously by terrorists, and we further learned beyond the shadow of a doubt it had been the work of al-Qaeda, how would you change the U.S. military stance overseas as a result?”
Obama began running through a checklist: Make sure there was an effective emergency response. Check with the intelligence agencies to see if there are other threats. Check to see who might have carried out the attack “so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network.” What we can’t do, he added, is “alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast. Instead, the next thing we would have to do, in addition to talking to the American people, is making sure that we are talking to the international community. Because, as has already been stated, we’re not going to defeat terrorists on our own.”
It was a legalistic response, and at first blush there was little to quibble with—until his rivals were asked the same question. Edwards said, “The first thing I would do is be certain I knew who was responsible, and I would act swiftly and strongly to hold them responsible for that.” Richardson didn’t even get the question, but volunteered, “I would respond militarily, aggressively,” he said. “I’ll build international support for our goals. I’d improve our intelligence, but that would be a direct threat on the United States, and I would make it clear that that would be an important, decisive military response, surgical strike, whatever it takes.”
Clinton was equally militant. “I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate,” she said. “If we are attacked and we can determine who was behind that attack, and if there were nations that supported or gave material aid to those who attacked us, I believe we should quickly respond. Now, that doesn’t mean we go looking for other fights. You know, I supported President Bush when he went after al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. And then when he decided to divert attention to Iraq, it was not a decision that I would have made had I been president, because we still haven’t found bin Laden. So let’s focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them.”
The debate moved to other topics, but Obama clearly understood what had happened. When his next question came, he returned to the issue of a new terrorist attack. “One thing that I do have to go back on, on this issue of terrorism,” he said. “We have genuine enemies out there that have to be hunted down. Networks have to be dismantled. There is no contradiction between us intelligently using our military, and in some cases lethal force, to take out terrorists, and at the same time building the sort of alliances and trust around the world that has been so lacking over the last six years. And that I think is going to be one of the most important issues that the next president is going to have to do, is to repair the kinds of challenges that we face.”
Obama knew he had flubbed the question. Long after, with the nomination in hand, he could laugh it off. “I still remember the first debate,” he told us, “where Brian Williams asks what are you going to do if we get attacked, and I’m thinking, well, first thing I have to do is make sure everybody is okay and make sure we’ve got emergency services in place. Then I’m going to talk to my intelligence folks and figure out do we know how this was done and then I’m going to consult with my allies to let them know. So I’m going through this stuff [and] by the time I get to the third step, the time was up, and I think Hillary was next and she said, ‘I’m going to bomb those folks.’” At this point he started laughing hard. “And you could see . . . it was a disaster.”
This was exactly the contrast Clinton’s advisers had hoped to draw—one candidate prepared and ready to serve as commander in chief, the other tentative, hesitant, lawyerly but not strong and forceful in his leadership—more interested in multilateralism than in protecting the United States of America. The next day, Clinton’s team jumped on Obama, issuing a statement that drove home their talking point without directly mentioning him. “Hillary was the candidate,” her campaign said, “who demonstrated that she would know how to respond if the country was attacked.”
The debates continued to establish Clinton’s dominance. In New Hampshire in early June, she calmly deflected criticism from Edwards. The next month in South Carolina she again drew a sharp contrast with Obama when he unexpectedly pledged that, as president, he would willingly meet with the leaders of such rogue nations as Iran and North Korea without preconditions during his first year in office. “Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year,” Clinton interjected. “I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse.”
This looked like another Obama gaffe. Flying back to Washington that night, Penn urged Clinton to keep pressing Obama. The following day, her campaign recruited former secretary of state Madeleine Albright to lead the attack against Obama. But Clinton also took matters into her own hands—to the surprise of many of her advisers. During a telephone interview with reporter Ed Tibbetts of the Quad City Times in Iowa, she launched a personal attack on Obama, telling Tibbetts, “I thought he was irresponsible and frankly naïve.”
By midsummer, Clinton’s team, which had worried about the debates, had come to a dramatically different conclusion. “They have clearly been our friends in a big way—that no one expected,” Wolfson said. Another Clinton adviser explained, “I’d argue she’s doing herself more good through these debates than any other single thing in the campaign.” But he knew that the string might not continue indefinitely. “One of these days she’s going to screw up, and you guys are dying for her to screw up just for the story line,” he told us one morning shortly before Labor Day. “She can’t keep winning these things over and over again.”
As Labor Day approached, the Clinton machine continued to hum. Iowa would be challenging; that was clear to all. But at her national headquarters, the main focus was on national trends and numbers. She maintained a healthy lead in the national polls. Her campaign was being described as a juggernaut, her prospects for the nomination almost inevitable. She was miles ahead of Obama and everyone else on the issue of who had the experience to be president. Obama’s only opportunity, her advisers concluded, was if he were able to transform the change issue into a weapon that could stop her momentum. Her campaign intended to deny him that opportunity and targeted the Labor Day weekend as the time to launch a new strike—by turning the change issue against him.
It was warm and sunny when she and Bill arrived in Concord the day before Labor Day, only the second time the Clintons had campaigned together. In a rare change of pattern, the campaign chartered a press plane (though she and her husband would be on their own jet). Press aides alerted reporters that she planned to unveil a new stump speech. When the traveling press arrived on the grounds of the state capitol, they quickly saw what her message would be. Campaign workers had e
rected a stage with banners that read, “The Change We Need.” Others read, “Change + Experience.” She drew a roar of approval from the enthusiastic crowd when she shouted, “Are you ready for change in the United States of America?”
Hillary Clinton had never gone directly at Barack Obama’s core strength the way she did now. Her advisers always paid lip service to the fact that voters wanted change, but they were more concerned about voter resistance to electing the first woman president. She needed to show strength to demonstrate she could be commander in chief. Creating a sense of inevitability about her candidacy combined with an image of strength topped any message of change: Strength and experience always trumped change—or so they thought.
Her Labor Day weekend stump speech was the result of weeks of discussions, with considerable input from Clinton herself. It would be, in the words of one aide, a moment of “shock and awe” that would pin Obama back on his heels. Her advisers saw it as a pivot from successfully establishing herself as the candidate most ready to be president to challenging the ground he occupied. Co-opting part of his change message would enable her to checkmate Obama before he got moving.
“Change is just a word without the strength and experience to make it happen,” she told the Concord audience. “And I know some people think you have to choose between change and experience. Well, with me, you don’t have to choose. I have spent my entire life fighting for change. . . . I will bring my experience to the White House and begin to change our country starting on day one.”
Then, in a line that aimed squarely at Obama, she added, “We need to dream big, but then we have to figure out how to make those dreams a reality in the lives of Americans.”
From Concord, the Clintons drove to the Hopkinton state fair. Then it was on to Nashua for a nighttime rally, then to Iowa the next morning for a labor rally, and finally to Des Moines for another big rally at the state fairgrounds. During those two days, she repeated her new stump speech over and over. As she delivered it a final time before heading back east, Bill Clinton stood behind her on the stage, mouth agape, staring aimlessly into the crowd. “He’s totally exhausted,” said an aide.
Later in September came the unveiling of her signature domestic issue, health care. Back in December, she told an adviser, “If I can’t do universal coverage, what’s the point of running?” That was far from a casual remark. Her failure to enact universal health care during her husband’s first two years in the White House had helped Republicans seize control of Congress in the 1994 elections, a devastating defeat for the Democrats and personally a bitter one for her. Now she made it known that if elected she intended to push aggressively for universal coverage. What she lacked through most of the early campaign was a plan to get there. On Monday, September 16, at a hospital in Des Moines, she finally unveiled one.
Her new plan was carefully crafted and politically astute, offering detail where necessary and avoiding it where possible. Clearly, she had learned her lesson from the health care debacle. Since most people who have insurance want to keep what they have, she built her plan on the existing system of employer-based insurance, with alternatives for those who did not have insurance through their work. Her plan, unlike Obama’s, imposed a mandate, requiring that everyone purchase some kind of insurance.
By 2008, 41 percent of working-age Americans—or seventy-two million people—were having difficulty paying medical bills. Seven million older adults aged sixty-five and beyond faced the same problems. And those problems worsened throughout the election year as the economic crisis brought rising numbers of layoffs and cutbacks—or termination—of health insurance benefits. For someone like Dr. Janis Orlowski these kinds of figures form a background for her daily experience as chief medical officer at the Washington Hospital Center, the largest nonprofit hospital in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and ranked among the nation’s top hospitals. Conditions there are a perfect example of the promise and problems of the American health care system, and illustrate why health care remains a potent political issue.
“In this hospital,” she told us, “I have Supreme Court justices. And I have undocumented, unhealthy individuals who fall off a roof and suddenly no one knows who they are. I provide them top-quality, state-of-the-art health care. They return to whatever level of recovery they can, then they can’t find a place to go. They have no family, no means to care for themselves. At this time I have ten individuals in our hospital who have been here for thirty days. Why? I cannot place them appropriately in an outpatient setting. And you know where they’re sitting right now? In my hospital, with us taking care of them. In the end, my patients are paying for their care. Why? Because of the issue of the uninsured patient or the undocumented one. You asked me how our health care issues fit in with this presidential election. This is a critical election, the most critical I can remember. I have three newspapers delivered to my doorstep every day. So I should be an educated citizen. I have the [Washington] Post, I have the New York Times, and I have the Wall Street Journal. I read all day long on health care, so if anything I should be educated on the candidates’ thoughts on health care. But I have to tell you I have only a very vague idea of what they plan to do with health care. I hear sound bites about health care: ‘We’re going to bring health care to everyone. We’re going to make smart decisions. We’re going to have a program to insure the uninsured.’ Great. That’s what we need. But how?”
Reflecting on the way the political system deals with health care, Dr. Orlowski said, “We know what the issues are, but they’re not addressing them. If we know that we have these health care problems, why are we not educating the public about them?”
Clinton followed the health care speech with the most extensive media blitz of her campaign, which included a string of interviews with columnists. That weekend, she granted interviews to all five major Sunday talk shows.
The next day, after Hillary Clinton’s “most dominating week of the campaign to date,” co-author Dan Balz wrote the following snapshot for the Washington Post’s Web site:
“The Hillary Clinton who appeared on five Sunday morning shows was a formidable political candidate: poised, polished, knowledgeable. The package she presented was designed to send a message to her Democratic rivals: catch me if you can. She now sits atop the Democratic field, in a tier by herself. . . . The rush to anoint Clinton as an inevitable nominee overlooks the history of nomination battles, which is that few candidates win these contests without a struggle or without at least one serious setback or stumble—either self-inflicted or inflicted by the voters.” What could trip up Clinton? “The most likely is a defeat and that certainly appears most possible in Iowa. . . . Clinton holds a sizeable lead in national polls, and she has, on average, double digit leads in the other early states. But in Iowa, the polls show a three-way contest that also includes Barack Obama and John Edwards—and what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire will affect all the other states.”
A late September Washington Post/ABC News poll put her lead over Obama at 53 to 20 percent. A University of New Hampshire poll showed her lead growing from nine to twenty-three points between July and September. Even in Iowa, the one state where she was struggling, a Des Moines Register poll the first week of October showed her leading Obama and Edwards, after trailing earlier.
A September 29 strategy memo prepared by Penn showed the bullish-ness inside her campaign: “We are on strategy. The other campaigns are not. . . . If you are sitting over there at the Edwards or Obama camps you are realizing you are not going to win on policy, so you will try to win on personality and character. They never quite get how a blend of substance and issues can define character. . . . Having won the national battle, we should be focused on the key states where ending it decisively is increasingly within reach.”
We sat down with Penn two weeks later. “We’re at an unexpected moment in the campaign,” he said. “The numbers that are coming back are better than anybody expected.” He sounded upbeat as he talked about what
he believed the campaign had done right to put Clinton in such a strong position. She had been firmly established as the candidate of strength and experience, while Obama, he argued, was in a rut with his theme of change. “I don’t think Obama is catching on in Iowa,” he went on. “He’s not an Iowa person. . . . We’re in a better position than anyone imagines at the moment.”
Privately, Penn was warning Clinton to steel herself for the attacks that might be coming. On September 30, he advised her that it was time to prepare a series of ads as possible counterattacks. He believed that some columnists, supporting Obama, were furious she was doing so well and that opponents would be assaulting her not on policy but on character. They would call her dishonest, untrustworthy. All she could do was get ready. She agreed.
Howard Wolfson had earlier proposed preparing ads highlighting her motivation for public service and her personal beliefs as a way to inoculate her against coming attacks on her character. Penn shot down the idea, according to a member of the inner circle. Voters don’t care about private character, he argued, only public character and what a politician can deliver.
CHAPTER SIX
The Unraveling
“Hillary is not the first person in Washington to declare ‘Mission Accomplished’ a little too soon.”
—Obama to Jay Leno, October 16, 2007
On the morning of August 8, Axelrod arrived at his Chicago office shortly before ten o’clock. “We’re on this bucking bronco but we’ve got to ride it,” he said ruefully. “We’ll find out later whether it was the right horse to get on or not, but we’re on it now so we’ve just got to sit tight in the saddle and ride the thing.”
The Battle for America 2008 Page 10