A Woman in Charge (77 page)

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EBRUARY
27, Chelsea turned sixteen. Not long after, the president and first lady attended “college night” at Sidwell Friends School with Chelsea. She was a high school junior—motivated, self-possessed, bright, and remarkably unspoiled given the circumstances of her upbringing. On the way back to the White House, she surprised Hillary and Bill by saying she might like to go to Stanford University, in California. Her mother immediately responded that it was three time zones away and that, trapped in the White House, she and Bill would almost never get to see her. Bill told Chelsea she could go wherever she wanted. She had earned it.

A few weeks after her birthday, Chelsea traveled with her mother to Bosnia, now pacified, to meet with American peacekeeping troops there. Singer Sheryl Crow and comedian Sinbad were on the trip as well. The Dayton accords brokered by Clinton and his emissary, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, which ended the bloodletting among Croats, Serbs, and Muslims, was one of the great achievements of the administration, both morally and practically. (Yet neither the Clinton administration nor George W. Bush's administration—which never was willing to credit its immediate predecessors with success of any kind—sought to capitalize diplomatically from the fact that the United States, alone among the nations of the world, had sent troops to stop the genocide of Muslims.)

During Hillary's trip to Bosnia she spent many hours talking to individual soldiers about their view of the American commitment. That helped convince her that the United States military must continue to maintain secure borders and be engaged in some areas of historic conflict. Though it had been American policy since U.S. troops had stood between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai and the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, Republicans (and some Democrats) were increasingly pursuing a more isolationist foreign policy in which European troops, not Americans, would be responsible for military commitments closer to home. Hillary's contrary view would figure later when she was a senatorial candidate and, more controversially, in regard to Iraq.

 

W
ITH THE DEATH
of health care reform, Bill and his advisers considered it essential to follow through on his 1992 campaign pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Hillary shared his view that the existing system of welfare payments corroded the lives of millions of families who subsisted on them. This had become a poisonous subject of political debate, with most recipients subject to unfair characterizations such as “welfare queens”—people who supposedly lived the high life on their family's meager monthly payments. Contrary to what too many Americans believed, “welfare” went only to families with children at home—unlike unemployment payments for individuals who had lost or could not find jobs.

Since Republicans had won control of Congress at the midterm elections, conservatives had been trying to take over the welfare reform debate by introducing punishing modifications to the federal government's program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, as welfare was known. Gingrich's “Contract with America” proposed a Personal Responsibility Act, which aimed to discourage teen pregnancy and illegitimate children by disallowing benefits to mothers who were minors and denying additional funding to those who had more children. Many of the Gingrich Republicans wanted to abolish the concept of welfare outright. Hillary and Bill both believed changes to the system should be much less harsh, and include funding for guaranteed job training and child care to help recipients as they went back to work.

Virtually all of the administration's experts on welfare and the organized “children's advocates” in Washington—including Marian Wright Edelman—opposed the kind of welfare reform that had been introduced in Congress late in the year. On November 3, 1995, Edelman wrote an open letter to the president in the
Washington Post
saying that it would be wrong for him to sign any legislation that would “push millions of already poor children and families deeper into poverty, as both the House and Senate welfare bills will do.” She added: “Both the Senate and House welfare bills are morally and practically indefensible. Rather than solve widespread child deprivation, they simply shift the burden onto states and localities with far fewer federal resources, weakened state maintenance of effort and little or no state accountability.”

Edelman's letter was intended as well for Hillary, who, given her professional history, had greater credibility on the issue than Bill and, despite her legal difficulties with Ken Starr, more specific political capital. Edelman knew that reporters covering the welfare debate would seize on her letter as putting Hillary under pressure from her close friend.

There was little danger that the president would sign the legislation under consideration by Congress, but Edelman—and Hillary—were less confident about what Bill might wish to do if squeezed in an election year. Hillary had never publicly opposed any legislation or policy of her husband's administration, but her views about welfare were strongly held and probably more complicated than his. She recognized the urgency of reform, she wrote, but her work as a child advocate had taught her that welfare was often required as a bridge of emergency support for impoverished families. She had seen the system exploited, but there were many instances in which it had rescued its beneficiaries. She told Bill and his deputies that she would make known her opposition to legislation that did not provide health care through Medicaid (to avoid cutoffs of welfare funds by the states), a federal guarantee for food stamps, and guaranteed child care assistance for recipients transitioning out of the welfare system. Bill vetoed the first welfare reform bill, which was part of a proposed Republican budget.

When Republicans passed a second bill in early January 1996 “with minimal changes,” the president again vetoed it, and his action required little lobbying from Hillary.

In August, as the Democratic convention loomed and the prospect of an ugly election debate over welfare threatened, Bill had to decide whether to sign or veto a third welfare reform bill, largely shaped by the Republican majority and lacking many of the safeguards Hillary had specified. He feared, with good reason, that if he didn't sign the legislation, a great chance to enact serious welfare reform would be lost.

The latest bill required those who received welfare to work—plain and simple. It also instituted a lifetime benefit limit of five years, and reduced the federal welfare spending program by $54 billion over a six-year period. A particularly objectionable provision of the legislation was the elimination of benefits for most legal immigrants. Critics tried to persuade Hillary to talk the president out of signing the bill. Peter Edelman, who held the position of counselor to Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, urged that the bill be vetoed, as did Shalala. Hillary, Bill, and the Edelmans all had the same concerns—that the bill would throw millions of children into poverty, especially the children of immigrants.

Shalala's objections had troubled her particularly. Lynn Cutler, deputy assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs, who discussed the matter with both Hillary and Shalala, noted that the first lady saw welfare reform first and foremost as a question that affected women and children. “Why should a huge number of women be condemned to a life on the [dole] instead of getting an education, getting the help, and having the self-respect of earning a living?” she said. “And I suspect at some level she [Hillary] absolutely believed in that. I think what might have concerned her, given her Children's Defense Fund background, was that the child care piece and the support pieces weren't there in quite the same way that they ought to.”

Bill had always been inclined toward compromise to win a political fight, but as the death of health care reform had demonstrated, this had not been Hillary's way. But she had learned a punishing lesson about the perils of not compromising. In all likelihood, this would be the only chance she and Bill would have to accomplish something they had talked about for years. It
was
an imperfect bill, but Hillary was becoming inclined to support it. Later, many commentators speculated (and some reported as fact) that she had urged Bill not to sign the legislation and was angered when he did. In fact, she accepted the decision as inevitable.

Carl Sferrazza Anthony, author of a number of books and articles about first ladies, asked Hillary in 1999 whether she and her husband had disagreed on signing the bill. He said she told him, “I was in favor of welfare reform. I…just wanted to make certain that there was a safety net that…if the welfare-to-work didn't work in some cases, that families weren't out on the street.”

On July 31, Bill and his cabinet members met for what George Stephanopoulos described as the “final decision meeting” about whether the president would sign the welfare legislation. Dick Morris vehemently told Clinton he would lose the election by 3 percentage points if he didn't sign the bill. Stephanopoulos believed that Hillary would rather Bill veto the reform, yet “after the failure of health care, and given the persistence of Whitewater, political prudence and the balance of power in their marriage weighed against a decisive Hillary intervention on welfare,” he said. He sensed she was trying to gently note its flaws.

At a press conference later on August 22, Bill told reporters he would sign the bill, describing it as a timely, excellent chance to reform welfare. Hillary called it a “critical first step” to reforming welfare. She said she wanted Bill to sign it into law; though she was disconcerted by the five-year time limit, she felt importantly that it tried to foster independence rather than dependence.

In Hillary's autobiography, she described the bill as hardly perfect, and conceded that pragmatic politics had figured in her willingness to support the measure. She felt it was better to allow the bill to become law with a Democratic administration in charge of implementing it. She recognized that if Bill vetoed welfare reform a third time, he would be giving the Republicans an edge in November, risking not just his own reelection, but endangering other Democratic candidates as well. Eventually Hillary and Bill claimed great success for welfare reform.

The Clintons' decision came at a personal cost. Peter Edelman resigned in protest a few weeks after the legislation was signed by the president. For years the Edelmans shunned the Clintons; the breach was painful. Hillary went to great lengths in her memoir to recognize the sincerity and reasonableness of the Edelmans' opposition. But she said as well that there were times political realities required compromise, though never on “principles and values.” As a senator and presidential candidate, many of her former supporters and other opponents felt she had done just that, especially in regard to the great issue of her time in the Senate: Iraq.

 

T
HE
D
EMOCRATIC CONVENTION
in Chicago was something of a coronation for Bill. The Republicans, as he had expected, had nominated Bob Dole for president. The economy was finally showing evidence of a boom: ten million new jobs had been added to the workforce since Bill had taken office. The combined rate of unemployment and inflation was the lowest in twenty-eight years.

For years, Bill had been using the phrase “a bridge to the future” to describe his goals and policies. Now Dick Morris and Clinton made clear Dole was a link to the past, a Washington insider with thirty-five years in Congress. That was plenty of time to establish a voting record that could be picked apart for inconsistencies, particularly as his party had moved rightward and he had occasionally embraced the more extreme policies and views of the far right.

The only glitch in the convention script was Morris's mania, which had become a real problem, even as he had been of enormous help. He was responsible for “brilliant engineering of Clinton's comeback,” said Stephanopoulos, in getting Bill back on his feet since the disasters of 1994. Morris, despite his professed dislike of personal publicity, was on the cover of
Time
magazine that week, telling how he had done it, and he was readily available to the reporters who lined up to interview him to tell them more. Meanwhile, he tried to scrap speeches carefully prepared by Al Gore and Hillary for prime-time delivery, and replace their themes with his own hastily composed thoughts, which meandered. “Dick's gone bad. Someone's gonna have to put him down,” said Harry Thomason.

Ultimately, Morris did that to himself. On the evening of his great triumph, helping resurrect the presidency of Bill Clinton, he resigned. He had been hinting that something bad was coming, that he might be portrayed shabbily in a personal story the
Star
tabloid was threatening to run about him and a prostitute. The
Star
coverage was far worse: not only had he been photographed with the prostitute at a suite in the tony Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, he had allowed her to listen in on his phone calls with the president. She was quoted extensively in the piece, about her numerous meetings with Morris, who had bragged to her about writing the vice president's and first lady's convention speeches. Bill, meanwhile, seemed happy to see Morris go. He had done his job and was now expendable.

Hillary was concerned that Morris might commit suicide. Sensing how deeply troubled he was, she had issued a stern directive to the president's aides not to make any comment that might aggravate him or trip a circuit. This was a presidency that had already seen far too many deaths: in addition to Vince Foster, the naval chief of staff had recently committed suicide, following news reports that he had not earned the combat medals he wore; Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who was close to both Hillary and Bill, had died with thirty-four others in a plane crash in Croatia in early April.