Living History (41 page)

Bill’s name wouldn’t appear on a ballot in the 1994 midterm congressional election, but we both knew that his Presidency would be part of the electoral calculus-and that the health care setback would likely affect the outcome. There were other factors, including one of the few predictable trends in U.S. politics: Conventional wisdom says that the party in control of the White House usually loses congressional seats in the midterm elections.

This may reflect a deep-rooted desire among voters to maintain a balance of power in Washington―never let the President have so much authority that he believes he can act like a King. One way to keep him in line is to reduce his support in Congress. When the economy is down, or other factors diminish the President’s popularity, the midterm losses can be greater.

Newt Gingrich and his cohort of self-described Republican “revolutionaries” appeared eager to capitalize on the trend. In September, Gingrich stood on the steps of the Capitol, surrounded by like-minded members, to unveil his game plan for midterm victory: a “Contract with America.” The Contract, which provided the basis for Republican proposals to abolish the Department of Education, make deep spending cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment and slash tax credits for the working poor, came to be known around the White House as the “Contract on America” because of the damage it would cause our country. The numbers behind its contradictory agenda didn’t add up. You can’t increase military spending, decrease taxes and balance the federal budget unless you cut much of what the government does. Gingrich counted on voters to skip the arithmetic. The Contract was a strategy to nationalize local elections and turn congressional races into a referendum on Republican terms: negative on the Clinton Administration and positive on their Contract.

In American politics, candidates and public officials rely on polls to gauge opinion, but few want to admit it, because they fear that the media and the public will accuse them of pandering to voters. But polls are not supposed to tell politicians what to believe or which policies to pursue; they are diagnostic tools to help politicians make the most effective case for a certain course of action based on an understanding of voter response.

Doctors listen to your heart with a stethoscope; politicians listen to voters with a poll. In campaigns, polling helps candidates identify their strengths and weaknesses. Once elected officials are in office, judicious poll-taking can help them communicate effectively to achieve their goals. The best political polling is part statistical science, part psychology and part alchemy. The key is this: To get helpful answers, you must ask the right questions of a representative number of likely voters.

As we moved toward the midterm elections in November, Bill’s political advisers assured us that the Democrats were in relatively good shape. But I was worried. After weeks of flying all over the country campaigning for Democratic candidates, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the public polls commissioned by outside groups, as well as those taken by Democratic pollsters, were off base. I suspected that pollsters were not measuring, beneath the surface o£ American politics, the currents of vehement opposition on the Right and the demoralized indifference among our supporters. One of the secrets of understanding polls is to identify the intensity of voters’ feelings. A majority of voters may say they care about sensible gun safety measures, but they are not as adamant as the minority of voters who oppose any kind of gun control. The intense voters show up to vote for or against a candidate based on that one position, sometimes known as a wedge issue. The majority vote on a host of other issues or don’t vote at all. I knew that many of the Administration’s accomplishments could be framed as wedge issues. Most Republican voters were intensely opposed to the upper-income tax increase for deficit reduction, the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban, which had passed in 1994 and made it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess nineteen of the most dangerous semi-automatic weapons.

The National Rifle Association, the religious Right and anti-tax interest groups were more motivated than ever.

I also knew that some core Democratic supporters felt disillusioned by our failure to reform health care or betrayed by the Administration’s successful push for NAFTA, and I feared that their disappointment might overshadow all the positive accomplishments of the Administration and the Democratic leadership. There seemed little urgency among Democrats to get out the vote. And it was too early for many independent or swing voters to feel the improvement in the economy or see the salutary effects of a reduced deficit on interest rates and job growth.

In October I called Dick Morris for an outside opinion about our prospects. Bill and I considered Morris a creative pollster and a brilliant strategist, but he came with serious baggage. First of all, he had no compunction about working both sides of the aisle and all sides of an issue. Although he had helped Bill win five gubernatorial races, he also worked for conservative Republican Senators Trent Lott of Mississippi and Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Morris’s specialty was identifying the swing voters who seesawed between the two parties. His advice was sometimes off-the-wall; you had to sift through it to extract the useful insights and ideas. And he had the people skills of a porcupine.

Nonetheless, I thought Morris’s analysis might be instructive, if we could involve him carefully and quietly. With his skeptical views about politics and people, Morris served as a counterweight to the ever optimistic Bill Clinton. Where Bill saw a silver lining in every cloud, Morris saw thunderstorms.

Starting in 1978, Morris worked for Bill on all his gubernatorial campaigns except the one he lost in 1980. But by 1991, Morris had picked up more Republican candidates, and nobody in the Democratic power structure liked or trusted him. Bill’s advisers convinced him not to use Morris for his presidential campaign. I phoned him in October of 1994.

“Dick,” I said, “this election doesn’t seem right to me.” I told him I didn’t believe the positive polls and wanted to know what he thought. “If I can get Bill to call you, will you help?”

Morris was working for four Republican candidates, but that wasn’t the source of his reluctance.

“I don’t like the way I was treated, Hillary,” said Morris in his rapid-fire New York accent. “People were so mean to me.”

“I know, I know, Dick. But people find you difficult.” I assured him that he would just be talking to Bill and me and that we were trying to understand the mood of the voters and what Democrats wanted to do. Morris couldn’t resist the challenge. He quietly designed a set of questions to measure the national mood and shared the results of his polling, which were discouraging. Despite the giant economic strides Bill had made―the deficit was finally coming back under control, hundreds of thousands of jobs had been created and the economy was starting to grow―the recovery hadn’t fully taken hold and most people just didn’t believe it yet. Many who did wouldn’t give Democrats any credit for the turnaround. The party, Morris told us, was in deep trouble, and the best hope for turning things around would be for Democratic candidates to emphasize the concrete victories that people could acknowledge and applaud, such as the Brady bill, Family Leave and AmeriCorps. He argued that doing this might encourage Democratic turnout. Instead of running against the Contract, which was what most Democratic candidates were doing, we needed to be more assertive about Democratic accomplishments. Bill agreed and tried to persuade congressional leaders to claim credit for what they had done and to defend themselves against the GOP onslaught.

Two weeks before Election Day, Bill and I took a brief break from our concerns about the midterm election and traveled to the Middle East, where Bill witnessed the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement. And I celebrated my forty-seventh birthday in three different countries-Egypt, Jordan and Israel. On October 26, I saw the Pyramids at Giza in the morning light, and while Bill met with President Mubarak and Yasir Arafat to discuss the Middle East peace process, President Mubarak’s wife, Suzanne, hosted a birthday breakfast, complete with cake, in a dining room overlooking the Sphinx.

Hosni and Suzanne Mubarak are an impressive couple. Suzanne has a master’s degree in sociology and has been an energetic advocate for improved opportunities and education for women and children in Egypt, despite some opposition to these efforts from Islamic fundamentalists. President Mubarak has the manner and visage of an ancient Pharaoh-and is occasionally compared to one today. He has held power since the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat. In those decades he has tried to govern Egypt while controlling Muslim extremists who have made several attempts to assassinate him. Like other Arab leaders whom I have met, Mubarak recognizes the dilemma he faces in governing a country beset by tensions between a Western-oriented educated minority that wants to pursue modernization and the more conservative majority, whose fear over the demise of its values and traditional ways of life can be politicized. Walking that tightrope―and staying alive―is a daunting challenge, and Mubarak’s tactics occasionally have led to criticisms that he is too autocratic.

We flew from Cairo to the Great Rift Valley in Jordan for the signing of the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, which ended an official state of war between the two countries. The desert setting at the Arava crossing on the border reminded me of the scenery in The Ten Commandments. But the pageantry and grandeur of the event made for a story more dramatic than any out of Hollywood. Two visionary leaders were taking personal and political risks for peace. Battle-hardened soldiers, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein bin Talal never gave up on their hopes for a better future for their people.

One did not need to know that Hussein was descended from the Prophet Muhammad to be struck immediately by his arresting presence and innate nobility. Though small in stature, he had a commanding air. He conveyed a unique combination of gentleness and power. His speech was deferential, marked by the liberal use of “sir” and “ma’am.” Yet his ready smile and modest manner underscored his dignity and strength. He was a survivor who intended to carve out a place for his nation in a dangerous neighborhood.

His partner in life, Queen Noor, the former Lisa Najeeb Halaby, is an Americanborn Princeton graduate. Her father, the former Chairman of Pan American Airlines, was of Syrian-Lebanese descent, and her mother was Swedish. Noor, who has a degree in architecture and urban planning, was working as Director of Planning for Royal Jordanian Airlines when she met the King, fell in love and married him. She glowed with pride and affection in his presence and that of their children, laughing easily and often with them. She became deeply involved in the educational and economic development of her adopted country and represented its positions and aspirations in America and around the world.

With her intelligence and charm and the backing of her husband, she nudged her nation toward a more modern approach to women’s and children’s issues. Bill and I looked forward to any private time we could schedule with the King and Queen.

On that blistering hot afternoon in the Rift Valley, Noor, dressed in turquoise, as beautiful as any model, visibly delighted in her soldier King’s commitment to peace. I coincidentally also wore turquoise, which prompted a remark from a woman in the crowd: “Now we know the color of peace is turquoise.”

After the ceremony, Bill and I drove with the King and Queen to their vacation home in Aqaba on the Red Sea. Noor surprised me with my second birthday cake of the day, topped with trick candles that I could not blow out. The King, in on the joke, jumped up and offered to help. He was no more successful than I. With a twinkle in his eye, the King proclaimed: “Sometimes even a King’s commands are not followed.” I think often of that perfect afternoon when hope for peace was so high.

Later that day, Bill became the first American President to address a joint session of the Jordanian Parliament in the capital, Amman. Jet lag had begun to take its toll, and the traveling party was exhausted. I sat in the gallery watching Bill speak while all around me the heads of White House staff and cabinet officials began snapping back as one after another lost the battle to stay awake. I persevered by digging my nails into my palms and pinching my arms―a trick my Secret Service agents had taught me. I got my second wind in time for a private dinner with the King and Queen at their official residence.

Rather than a formal palace, they lived in a large comfortable home, tastefully but modestly furnished. The four of us ate at a small round table in the corner of a warm and inviting room. We spent the night in al-Hashimiya Palace, a modern royal guest home on a hill northwest of town with a splendid view of the sun-bleached hills and minarets of the Hashemite desert kingdom.

From Jordan we went to Israel, where Leah Rabin had a third birthday cake waiting for me and Bill delivered another historic address―this time before the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. Heading back home, I believed I was leaving Israel another step closer to peace and security.

This trip highlighted Bill’s milestones in foreign affairs. In addition to his pivotal role in easing the tensions in the Middle East, he was now focusing on the decades-long Troubles in Northern Ireland. And, after a harrowing year of diplomacy and the landing of American troops in Haiti, the junta had finally agreed to step down and return the elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power. Out of sight of the public and press, a nuclear crisis in North Korea had been defused for the time being, as the result of a 1994

accord in which North Korea agreed to freeze and ultimately to dismantle its dangerous nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid from the United States, Japan and South Korea. Although we later learned that the North Koreans breached the spirit, if not the letter, of that agreement, at the time it averted a potential military conflict. Had the agreement not been reached, North Korea could have produced enough plutonium by the year 2002. to make dozens of nuclear weapons, or become a plutonium factory, selling the world’s most lethal substance to the highest bidder.