Feature

Add Comment

The Once and Future President Clinton

Here’s how one could imagine it playing out: Hillary runs a Senate campaign in 2006 that focuses on how she helped rebuild New York after September 11. The topic, while of local importance, also allows her room to discuss her national-security bona fides, to mention her support for the Iraq war. She stakes out a few positions in opposition to Bush, like Social Security, that New Yorkers would relate to, yet she also stresses her various collaborations with colleagues from across the aisle, subtly suggesting that she’s the true uniter, not a divider. The race gets covered as if it were a national race—this is Hillary, after all.

And at some point, the conventional wisdom tips. To a great many people, Hillary remains Eva Perón, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, whoever. But to just enough people, she’s the Eleanor Roosevelt who finally found herself in the right generation—a woman who decided to commit herself to public service and found a life-partner who wanted to do the same. When he’d exhausted all his possibilities, she carried on in the same tradition, and she became the first First Lady ever to hold elected office.

It’s a long shot, for sure. Even as I write, I’m not sure I buy it. But one thing I do know: No two people are more adept at writing their own story than the Clintons.

“Bill Clinton didn’t just roll out of the crib with this talent,” says Bob Kerrey. “He worked very, very hard at it. He knew the details of every congressional district in America, and he took great care with each one of his speeches—I debated this guy on several occasions, so I can tell you. We’d all be sitting there before the debates, joking around. Not him. He had his head down, his lips moving, rehearsing his answers. Then the camera went on. And he appeared relaxed, sure. But he was prepared.

“I don’t know how you beat her for the Democratic nomination. She’s a Rock star.”
—Bob Kerrey, Former Senator (D)

“So it’s not all magic,” says Kerrey. “And Hillary’s working on it. She’s practicing and paying attention. And if you think oratory’s important and body language is important, she’s living with the best.”

At the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center, the big joke was how much the library looked like a trailer park, rather than a bridge to the 21st century. But up close, it really doesn’t look like either. Cantilevered over a river, its moorings far off to one end, the building looks more like a gangplank than anything else. The metaphor seems painfully apt. Clinton, the only two-term Democratic president since FDR, can’t seem to shore up his legacy. Everyone who follows in his footsteps keeps taking a header off a narrow walkway.

The day was depressingly rich in symbolism and all-too-obvious metaphors. It was pouring—pouring in a wrathful, almost biblical way—and the rain drowned out everyone’s words, once again making it impossible for Democrats to get their message out, and prompting one of my colleagues to note that this day, of all days, should have been the one for Democrats to find themselves a big tent. That evening, the original Clinton team threw a party in the original War Room—a space, it turns out, that’s now vacant.

There was something bittersweet about that party. Kerry had just been defeated and the Senate Republican majority had just shot up, yet there were the architects, foot soldiers, and stalwarts of the Last Big Win—Stephanopoulos, Begala, Grunwald—nibbling on spinach dip, trying to figure out what next. A lot of them were passing around photos of their kids, though photos of their younger, ’92 selves lined the wall, as well as pictures of the candidate they served, many of which only a die-hard fan of Bubba could love: Bill playing the saxophone. Bill fans holding up an Elvis poster. Bill flopped out on the sofa, belly hanging out, his head in his wife’s lap, remnants of a ravaged pastry by his side. Hillary looks a lot more presidential in that photo—though maybe they’re just playing their parts, in the end. And they certainly look like partners. Is this the new Camelot? A Wellesley feminist in a headband, a Big Mac addict from a trailer park?

Bridges to the presidency have been paved with stranger stuff.