Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine

by Daniel Halper

  Hillary Rodham Clinton served as the 67th U.S. secretary of state from 2009 until 2013, after nearly four decades in public service. Her “smart power” approach to foreign policy repositioned American diplomacy and development for the 21st century. Clinton played a central role in restoring America’s standing in the world, reasserting the United States as a Pacific power, imposing crippling sanctions on Iran and North Korea, responding to the Arab Awakening, and negotiating a ceasefire in the Middle East. Earlier, as first lady and senator from New York, she traveled to more than 80 countries as a champion of human rights, democracy, and opportunities for women and girls. Clinton also worked to provide health care to millions of children, create jobs and opportunity, and support first responders who risked their lives at Ground Zero. In her historic campaign for president, Clinton won 18 million votes.5

  As she spoke, she appeared well rested and, as usual, meticulously well prepared. “I am thrilled to fully join this remarkable organization that Bill started a dozen years ago, and to call it my home for the work I will be doing, some of which I will outline today.” And after a couple of acknowledgments to her hometown crowd—she had grown up in the Chicago suburbs six decades before—Hillary rained a series of trendy but meaningless buzzwords on her husband, thanking him for “giving philanthropy and problem-solving a new paradigm, and we’ve seen already this morning . . . what that means. To really look at solving problems through partnership and collaboration. And really I am very proud of what he has accomplished.”

  Hillary made it clear that she too was on board with the effort to brand Chelsea as the seasoned and competent NGO manager. “I am also a very proud mother,” Hillary said, “because Chelsea’s role is expanding and this is truly a labor of love for our entire family. In just a few short years, she has helped the foundation widen our reach to a whole new generation of young people through CGI U—CGI University. . . . Chelsea’s really been our leader there.”

  As the crowd applauded, Hillary beamed at her daughter. “We are so excited and thrilled to have this be a full partnership among the three of us.” It wouldn’t be the last one for the trio, who stood onstage clearly as a unit. As solid a team as they had ever been. And just as much a mystery to everyone else.

  “I don’t understand the Clintons, either,” says a former press secretary. “They’re like any old married couple. When they’re together, they get along just fine. They have their own very different styles. She’s way more neat and organized and much more of a planner than he is.”

  For Newt Gingrich and others who have observed the Clintons for years, their latest evolution fits a familiar pattern. “These are very smart, very powerful people who are very, very intelligent, and who are very driven,” says the former speaker. “She married him because he was going to be somebody. And he married her because she’s going to help him be somebody. And they decided to be somebody together. . . . He has empowered her, while she has tolerated him. And it’s been a mutually beneficial relationship.”

  Currently married to his third wife, Gingrich was animated talking about the Clintons’ marriage. “They must have at some point had a very tough period of talking through—what the ground rules are, and how they relate to each other,” he says. “I think they had a very clear discussion, whether it was the Lewinsky period or whether it happened five or ten times over their relationship, I don’t know. But clearly they reached a very clear agreement on how they would operate and what they would do.”

  For the last decade, they have largely lived separate lives. Back in 2006, the New York Times found that the two spent only 51 of 73 weekends together. Their time together likely grew even rarer after she became America’s most-traveled secretary of state, eager to board a plane across the globe because, frankly, she had nowhere else to go at home. With what spare time she had, she was usually at her house near Georgetown, where Bill rarely visited. There she would garden or redecorate. “They redo their house like every other week,” says a former aide, somewhat facetiously. “And re-cover furniture. I think she does a lot of that.”

  That has changed, at least for the moment, now that both of them are out of public office. Hillary and Chelsea are around all the time, which does not entirely thrill the former president. “Why do you think he wants her to run for president?” a former aide asks half jokingly. “He just wants to have this lifestyle that he’s grown accustomed to without them around, and now they are around all the time.”

  Hillary and her husband also look to buy more homes. They’ve been spotted in New York State, near the Connecticut border, looking at a $10 million home. It is a white colonial in South Salem and is described as having a “pool, lighted tennis court, studio, stable, indoor and outdoor ring and a 3-car garage.” Bill Clinton wanted to turn the horse-riding ring into a conference center of sorts, which could be used by the Clinton Global Initiative, according to someone familiar with their visit to the property. That would allow at least some of the property to be written off as business expenses.

  The Clintons’ concern was that the home should be close to the airport, which is a bit of a problem with the South Salem address since the closest airport is Danbury Municipal Airport, a twenty-five-minute drive away in Connecticut. That airport’s runway is too short for the kinds of planes the Clintons would need to be able to use—which would make White Plains, New York, the next-closest airport and the one they would have to rely on. It’s at least a thirty-minute journey to get to it.

  The Clintons were even overheard talking about whether the home could, at some point, handle a helicopter pad—or at least some sort of helicopter landing space. Ultimately, they decided not to buy the home, showing a little indecisiveness.

  In fact, property hunting is now a favorite Clinton pastime. “They always are looking,” says someone familiar with their activities.

  The key consideration, of course, was politics: How would it look if Hillary were to run again? They are concerned that it might not look too good to be buying a $10 million home before a presidential run. They are aware of the ridicule Mitt Romney endured in the 2012 election for his many homes, and for even putting a car elevator in one high-priced property. John McCain in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004 were likewise criticized for having too many houses. (Interestingly, the candidate in the last three presidential campaigns with the most number of homes would wind up being the loser—John Kerry in 2004, McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012.)

  And it might look especially bad to be buying a vacation home, though that too hasn’t stopped the Clintons from looking into the possibilities.

  “They were looking at property in the Hamptons for a while, but I think that they decided that, if she runs, that seems too tony or too exclusive. Which it is,” says a Clinton insider. The Clintons love the Hamptons. While Bill Clinton was president, there were often reports that the First Family had poll-tested places to vacation. They’d avoid the ritzier locales for something more “authentic” and down home. But out of office, they tend to enjoy a bit more flexibility on the vacation front.

  “Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton are renting a virtual Shangri-La in this lush, beachside paradise in the Hamptons. The $11 million mansion sprawls over 3.5 acres of prime real estate, with four fireplaces, six bedrooms, a heated pool and private path to the beach,” the New York Times reported in the summer of 2013.6

  There they hobnobbed with celebrities, held fund-raisers for their foundation, and gathered together with family.

  In his self-pitying moments, the kind close acquaintances know well, the former president will tell people he only has five years to live. He has gone through heart surgeries, lost significant weight on a largely vegan diet, and worked hard to control his voracious appetite. For food anyway. Yet he hears the ticking of the clock. Hillary’s election, he says, especially to donors, might be the last thing he ever does. The most important thing he could possibly do, with whatever time the good Lord has left for him.

  The subtext, of course,
is that this is not the Bill Clinton of old—the destructive narcissist who plunged his presidency through seemingly endless scandals. A kinder, gentler Bill Clinton, approaching seventy, is more discreet, more disciplined. He wants to be a grandpa, he tells acquaintances (unlike Hillary, he doesn’t have many true friends). And he is the picture of the loyal, dutiful husband, one whose wife gamely jokes with Barbara Walters that if she were elected president, he’d want to be named “First Mate.”

  Her nonprofit rebrand aside, Hillary has joined Bill in the Clintons’ real business—making money. She received a reported $14 million for her (second) memoir. She gives speeches around the country and around the world, often taking lessons from her husband, who by now has the routine down to a science. He shows up at a random place in the middle of nowhere, he makes a splash, steals the show, and, while he’s still hot, he gets out of town. All the while, he makes as little news as possible—while still satisfying and flattering his high-paying hosts.

  Wherever the Clintons are, they are plotting, constantly recalibrating their positions to stave off likely opposition to her candidacy on the Democratic left. In the span of Clinton’s four years as secretary of state, the Democratic Party had essentially shifted underneath her feet. The consensus position among Democrats went from defining a marriage as between a man and a woman to the belief that gay marriage—marriage between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman—should be legalized.

  Hillary obliged. “LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones—and they are full and equal citizens, and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage,” she said in a face-to-camera announcement posted online. “That’s why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law, embedded in a broader effort to advance equality and opportunity for LGBT Americans and all Americans. Like so many others, my views have been shaped over time by people I have known and loved, by my experience representing our nation on the world stage, my devotion to law and human rights, and the guiding principles of my faith.” The video was published by the Human Rights Campaign, the biggest and most powerful gay lobbying organization.

  The entire social issue shift Hillary engineered would also suggest another connection she was anxious to develop: one with younger voters, who were more socially liberal than their parents, and who used social media to follow politics. Hillary would try to tap into this at first by posting her video announcing her support for gay marriage on YouTube. She’d develop this outreach further by connecting to Twitter a couple of months later, in June. “Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD . . . ,” her snappy and impressive Twitter bio would read. It would remind young Americans who might not be as familiar with all her official posts of her credentials. It would also intentionally leave an air of mystery surrounding her with the three-letter acronym TBD. Her future, she wanted everyone to know, was To Be Determined.

  Over the course of the next year, she’d pose for selfies with her daughter, Chelsea, share pictures of her travels, and tweet at celebrities. You know, she’d use social media . . . just as the kids do these days. It wasn’t any different from other politicians’ mimicking social media practices—but it was a new experience for Hillary, who had fallen behind while at the State Department. Soon she’d have more than a million Twitter followers.

  She’d also use the medium to push out statements on various policy issues that arose. After a Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, she tweeted, “I am disappointed in today’s decision striking at the heart of the Voting Rights Act,” with a link to a longer statement from her and her husband on the Supreme Court’s decision.

  That particular statement was part of something greater: a direct appeal to the black community. It’s a core constituency of the Democratic Party and one that broke for Barack Obama, the first black president, in the 2008 primary election. Ironically, it was Bill Clinton, long before most Americans even believed a black president would be elected in their lifetime, who was famously called “the first black president,” by author Toni Morrison. But signaling the shift away from the Clintons, she too would endorse Obama over Hillary and later explain, “I thought about voting for Hillary at the beginning. I don’t care that she is a woman. I need more than that. Neither his race, his gender, her race or her gender was enough. I needed something else, and the something else was his wisdom.”

  Something like 90 percent of black voters support the Democratic nominee in normal presidential contests. These numbers went up to about 95 percent for Obama. In other words, looking at building support there made a whole lot of sense. Bill Clinton would personally go to great lengths to reingratiate himself with this constituency—one that had turned on him so sharply after he accused the Obama campaign of being a “fairy tale” and after he’d likened Obama’s presidential prospects to those of a black man who had run unsuccessfully for president before him—Jesse Jackson. The former president would pick up the phone to call members of the Congressional Black Caucus, like Maryland Democrat Elijah E. Cummings to see how his mother, whose name Clinton (of course) remembered, was feeling. “He has made an effort to reach out over and over again through the years,” the congressman told the New York Times, a sort of liberal bible.7 The newspaper reported that Hillary would make an “appearance before the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta in July, which she opened by offering condolences to the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was killed in Florida last year, and her voting rights address to the American Bar Association in August drew significant attention among black leaders.” Delta Sigma Theta, founded at Howard University, is an historic African American sorority.

  The story of Bill Clinton’s phone call and Hillary Clinton’s remembrance of Trayvon Martin was many things—a rebuilding of a relationship with the black community and the Times. Both would be important allies as the Clintons looked at their legacy and began to eye the 2016 presidential race.

  One of the reporters on the Times piece was Amy Chozick, a source not looked upon too keenly by old Clinton hands.

  “And I just think this—you know, we have newspapers that have people devoted to doing nothing but covering a campaign that doesn’t exist. So then they have to decide to create stories. You know, we don’t need that. We need to focus—the American people have economic and other challenges. And our region and world have challenges. We should be focused on those things. And that’s what Hillary thinks too,” Bill Clinton would say, ribbing Chozick without naming her in an interview with Univision host Jorge Ramos.

  Perhaps that’s why Ramos got what Chozick couldn’t: an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Bill Clinton.

  But Ramos also offered something the Times reporter couldn’t: a chance to try to rebuild relationships with an ever-growing voting bloc—Hispanics.

  “I think that we’re trying to pass immigration reform. The country needs it,” Clinton would tell Ramos, hitting on a major issue for many Hispanic voters. He’d bash Congress—always a safe bet, since their approval rating is consistently in the toilet—for not getting it done.

  But Clinton would also suggest it might be hard to get it done soon. “Not this year, right?” Ramos asked. “I don’t know. Next year is the election year. Not this year—2013—2014 maybe,” Clinton replied.

  The Clintons are usually able to use the press to their advantage—one way or another.

  “The press is schizophrenic about Bill Clinton. The press was tough on Bill Clinton. They were tough on his personal foibles. They were tough on the whole Monica thing. Everything was a scandal. President Clinton, in his own unique way, turned that to his advantage by exhausting the nation with the discussion of what he did, and because everyone became so exhausted, they just wanted to move beyond it. It paradoxically helped Bill Clinton,” says one former White House press secretary in an inte
rview.

  These days, Hillary Clinton gets more of the schizophrenic coverage, while Bill Clinton enjoys much more flattering coverage since leaving office more than a dozen years ago. The differences are easy to explain: Hillary is still in politics, as she is obviously considered a presidential hopeful, while former president Clinton is not. The press tends to afford a special status to former presidents, letting them rehabilitate their legacy and pursue various philanthropic goals without much scrutiny, and President Clinton is no exception.

  Numerous Clinton associates, those who have known the former president for decades, have raised this question in our interviews—each separately suggesting that Bill Clinton does not want Hillary Clinton to overshadow his place in history by winning the presidency herself.

  “Everybody continues to talk about how badly he wants Hillary to run. Why would he want to be the first spouse?” asks a close associate of both Clintons, and who suggests that Bill actually dreads the prospect. “What’s he going to do? Live back in the White House and do the Christmas cards?” The former president, who likes to dominate any conversation, is all but certain to be frustrated being confined to the East Wing, kept out of cabinet meetings, and out of national security meetings in the Situation Room. A man who has spent the last decade doing pretty much whatever he’s wanted to do suddenly will have to have his movements, trips, and associations vetted and cleared by aides to his wife for fear of conflicts of interest.

  What does all this portend for 2016? A former president deeply conflicted. On the one hand motivated by the altruistic thought that his wife deserves a shot at the presidency. And on the other prone to give in to his darker qualities—selfishness and self-destructiveness.