A Woman in Charge (53 page)

Stock understood how to navigate the tricky political and social shoals of Washington. She soon felt the Clintons were governing as if they didn't really grasp that they had won the election. As a result, Stock's office and the Executive Mansion itself became adjuncts of the permanent campaign, used to entertain and court constituencies and key members of Congress and pay off old debts and entertain old friends. But it was not being used as an institution of state. Instead of honoring the grandeur and cachet of the home of America's presidents, the Clintons' retinue “treated the White House as if it were a campaign venue,” said Stock. “They didn't really understand the significance of the president's house.” Many people in important administration positions were young and had had no previous experience in Washington.

After Hillary's much heralded (and supposedly hands-on) dinner for the nation's governors on the tenth day of the Clinton presidency, there were no more official state banquets for the next ten months. Instead, there were more than three hundred political teas and receptions at the White House, almost one every day. Most were ad hoc affairs in support of the Clintons' various policy objectives or friendly political constituencies. Meanwhile the so-called Georgetown set, leading members of Congress from both parties, the city's permanent political class—lobbyists, political consultants, influential representatives of the press—and high-level officials lured by the Clintons to Washington for important policy jobs were ignored, often studiously. One undersecretary of a government department, personally recruited by the president and Hillary, was never invited to a White House function during his three years in office except for a Christmas party to which he finagled an invitation. “They don't care about people,” said the official, who had taken a huge pay cut to become a government servant.

Regularly, the Clintons' personal friends, many from Arkansas, showed up on short notice for supper at the White House. So did visiting royalty from Hollywood and the entertainment industry, who were invited to stay the night, usually in the Lincoln Bedroom. Bill, more than Hillary, enjoyed meeting celebrities, and Stock's staff was enlisted to peruse the newspapers and hotel VIP lists to see who was in town. If the star was somebody the president or Hillary wanted to meet, they were invited over.

“I think where she missed the boat and he missed the boat was at the beginning when they underestimated what it was going to be like dealing with this town and the Congress,” Stock said. “And I really think they thought they were in Arkansas and didn't realize that many things are just different here.”

Part of the slighting of the Washington crowd was consistent with the way the Clintons saw their jobs: “He understands why he got elected,” said one of Bill's friends. “The country wanted action. He's going to give it to them. Coming down the stairs to a state dinner isn't about action.” Hillary made clear that her priorities were policy, not protocol, and she intended to keep it that way. “I'm more interested in being part of helping to change our country, which is what I care about.”

Terry McAuliffe, the Clintons' good friend and fund-raising savant, had a way of trying to explain their attitude, which only highlighted the problem of perception: “You have to understand these people are busier than most presidents and first ladies,” he said. “I mean, they don't just go out to someone's house for dinner. I mean you've seen the guy's schedule…. Listen, they're into issues. They like to socialize, but they believe that's secondary to the reason they're here today.” In fact, they often went to dinner at a local restaurant or the home of friends.

Those invited to the White House were not the usual guest list. As Stock noted, “It was a very issue-oriented crowd, and events were issues-oriented, built around whatever issue of the day they were trying to push.” Guest lists came out of the Office of the Public Liaison, the political outreach operation, not the protocol or social office.

For almost a year, “they ran it from a campaign war room,” Stock said of the “social” side of the White House.

“The mentality of the first year was more [that] of a campaign staff than a White House staff…. The first six months we probably did 110 to 120 events, of which we sent out only four written invitations, because we never got everything together more than twenty-four to forty-eight hours ahead of time. So, I would have my people picking up the phone and saying, ‘Hi, we're having an event day after tomorrow—the president would like you to be here.' People would go, ‘Excuse me, I've got to call you back. I'm getting an invitation from the White House and it's less than forty-eight hours ahead of time?…'

“In social Washington, even the out-of-office party still usually gets invited to the White House. But very few of the ‘Washington establishment,' if you will, were invited to our White House. And, when they were, it was last-minute.”

Stock, one of the few experienced Washington hands in the White House, had been assigned a principal aide who was an Arkansan, Ann McCoy, formerly the Clintons' events coordinator in Little Rock. McCoy would tell Stock, “We've got to have these FOBs [Friends of Bill] over for supper,” which usually meant an informal get-together with a buffet table and then a movie in the White House theater, or popcorn and a basketball game on the big-screen television. When Stock would propose that maybe Bill and Buffy Cafritz and others on the more traditional Washington social circuit be included, McCoy would put her foot down.

“I mean, Bill and Buffy Cafritz only walked through the White House door the first couple of years for the Kennedy Center Honors reception,” said Stock. “By virtue of what she does, she is an important player. There are lots of people like that in Washington. But that's the group that Hillary did not want to deal with right off the bat. And, you know, my point to her was neutralize them,” by inviting them to informal gatherings at the White House and lending the first lady's name to a few selected local charity events of importance to both Washington's ordinary citizens and wealthier organizers. Hillary would respond, “I don't have time. I don't want to do this. I don't need them.” Stock tried to explain to both Hillary and Bill, “It's really good for you to do some of these things. You need buzz to go around town about the good, wonderful things that you do.”

Such considerations and sensitivities might appear trivial or relatively insignificant compared with weightier affairs of state, but part of what tripped up the Clintons, especially Hillary, were matters that in saner times and less overheated and polarized circumstances would have been judged in a far less significant context. For better or worse, effecting change in the capital, and thus changing the country, was an intricate process that involved a certain amount of bowing and scraping, and the first lady was no exception from the requirement. It was something of a local tradition for the first lady to attach her name as sponsor for any number of local events: the National Symphony ball; a designated disease event; the Veterinary Society dinner dance. Hillary refused. No work would have been required for the first lady, just an endorsement. (“When the president and the first lady put their name on an invitation, they don't do anything,” a member of Stock's staff noted.)

Hillary told her aides (and, in less offensive terms, the press), “I'm not doing that. I've never put my name on anything where I've never worked in my life. I only lend my name to what I actually do.” The local ladies perked up their ears and noticed. “That's part of how this town runs,” said a member of Stock's staff. “Make them feel like they're part of the presidency…. I don't know that they care about issues. They care about charities.”

Stock felt that if the Clintons' Arkansas friends and political supporters were coming to the White House for supper and a movie anyway, including half a dozen socially prominent Washingtonians would scarcely be a hardship. “They want to be able to say tomorrow, ‘I spent Saturday night in the White House movie theater watching a movie that's not out.' That's what that game is…. Your whole informal buzz about what the president and first lady are doing comes through things like that. Nancy Reagan was the master of it. Barbara Bush was the master of it. The Clintons are now the master of it”—she noted in the final year of the Clinton presidency.

“It was somewhat a wasted [first] year in that it could have been easy for them to help lay the groundwork for health care and the rest of their legislative agenda,” said Stock, “had they skillfully entertained. Oh my God! The people you could have had over there for a movie. And you neutralize your yip-yappers. You take a Sally Quinn…”

 

E
VEN BEFORE
Bill Clinton had taken the presidential oath, a marker for Hillary's conduct had been laid down by Sally Quinn, who, like Hillary, was a powerful woman in Washington who owed much of her position and influence to a husband who was one of his era's most dazzling and accomplished citizens, Benjamin C. Bradlee, the former editor of the
Washington Post.

There were intriguing similarities between Quinn and Hillary. Both had made life far better for men of brilliant accomplishment and ability. Both of these women were resented and feared by many of the people who nonetheless courted them and desired a seat at their table; most of the courtiers, both men and women, were far more drawn to their husbands than to them.

Quinn, the daughter of an Army general, had gone to Smith College, another of the Seven Sisters schools, down the road from Wellesley. Hillary, the daughter of a martinet with none of the general's avuncular skills with people, shared with Quinn a propensity for long-held grudges. Both had experienced professional shocks—Hillary with her failure to pass the bar exam, Quinn with a hugely public embarrassment as a failed television anchor, for
CBS Morning News
—and almost immediately after had decided to throw the dice with men famously unreliable with women. Both women could be acerbic, were admirably curious, and not as sure of themselves as they liked others to think. They were also capable of wonderful friendships. Each had one child and was an unusually devoted mother.

Each was determined to be known for her own work—in Quinn's case as the author of long, penetrating profiles in the Style section of the
Washington Post.
As an employee of her husband (until his resignation as editor), she had a unique status in a uniquely powerful institution, a situation somewhat similar to Hillary's. Neither would have been commended for an ability to see herself as others did, except that Quinn knew she was better at decorating houses than almost any professional in the game, and, with her husband, she kept buying them and decorating them. Both women had a playful side that few people outside their immediate circle knew. Hillary held strong opinions that were a logical consequence of her politics and her own struggles. Quinn took surveys.

Almost any discussion of the Clintons' estrangement from the Washington establishment began with reference to a 2,200-word piece Quinn had written in
Newsweek,
which is owned by the Washington Post Company, on December 28, 1992, entitled, “Beware of Washington.” Quinn's piece was prescient, presumptuous, nasty, and showed a reptilian understanding of the Washington terrain. She predicted that, “For Hillary Clinton it will be worse than it has ever been for any other first lady because she is charting new ground. Her advisers and friends are warning her of all the problems she is likely to encounter. But it is important that she be prepared for how tough, how complicated and how uncharitable the atmosphere in Washington can be when the stakes are so high.”

Perhaps the first suggestion of just how uncharitable had been Quinn's
Post
attack, six weeks earlier, headlined, “Making Capital Gains: Welcome to Washington, but Play by Our Rules.” By way of telling the president-elect that he was going to spend the next four years in a jungle, she wrote: “Think of it this way: Your plane has crash-landed in the middle of Brazil and you found yourself surrounded by a curious and possibly hostile tribe. Instead of giving them beads and eating the monkey tongues they offer you, you decide that you don't need their help. Fine, but don't be surprised if you end up with poison darts in your backside. Like any other culture, Washington has its own totems and taboos. It would serve the newcomers well to learn them and abide by them.”

In her
Newsweek
piece Quinn offered for Hillary's consideration some thoughts about how Hillary could maneuver her way through the treacherous Washington terrain. “She must know her constituency,” Quinn proclaimed. “Hillary Clinton was not elected president. At a Washington dinner recently she was heard to talk about the budget. She was impressive and knowledgeable. But her conversation was peppered with ‘we': ‘We got our first look at the budget.' Those who've known Hillary for years say that she has always used ‘we,' that the Clintons have always operated as a team. But Little Rock is not Washington. ‘We' is the kiss of death in Washington.”

“She should not attend her husband's meetings,” Quinn also wrote. “Hillary's attendance at the meeting in Little Rock with congressional leaders was considered by many professional Washington women to be a mistake. ‘I don't go to my husband's meetings; he doesn't go to mine,' said one high-powered woman journalist.” She should not allow herself to become a scapegoat…. If the First Lady is wielding power, if she sits in on staff and cabinet meetings, if she makes policy—and people know it—two power centers will automatically develop, his and hers. The infighting, gossip and backbiting will be unmanageable. All of that would be distracting and damaging to the president. For Hillary Clinton, having Mack McLarty as chief of staff may seem like a perfect choice. He's someone who is reputed to be conciliatory and easygoing. He could allow her to function virtually as chief of staff. But that could be a trap for Hillary Clinton if she plans to involve herself in running the government. She won't have anyone in that job who can act as buffer. She shouldn't make Bill Clinton look like a wimp. Washington wants the president to be the president. If the perception is that his wife is telling him what to do, it will only make him look weak. If he looks weak he will not be nearly as effective as he could be. Power is what Washington is all about. If it looks like the president isn't powerful, people in this town can smell it a mile away. Symbols, appearances and ions are sometimes more important than reality.