THE CLINTON YEARS

THE CLINTON YEARS


INTERVIEW: George Stephanopolous
As Communications Director of Clinton's 1992 campaign, he helped set up the War Room that responded aggressively to attacks. He then became an advisor at the White House, but left after Clinton's first term. He wrote a 1999 book on his experiences in the Clinton campaign and presidency, All Too Human: A Political Education.

Interview conducted June, July 2000 by Chris Bury

When you decide to join up with Clinton and Clinton decides to have you on the team, what is it about him that catches your eye? Oh, the smarts. The guy had thought everything through, both on the politics and the policy. When I interviewed for the job, it wasn't really an interview. It was me listening basically for an hour and a half to Governor Clinton just go through the entire landscape of the campaign. And in the very first time I talked to him . . . he said, "It's all going to come down to Illinois on March 17. If I win the game in Illinois, I win Illinois, and I'll get the nomination." That's exactly what happened. But he had it in his head back in September. I thought it was just to be a terrific experience. That this was a smart guy who was going to move the party a little bit, bring ideas into the campaign and have a noble loss. Even if he got the nomination, George Bush looked unbeatable. But I thought it would be a terrific, important experience. But at some level, I think even if Clinton thought that maybe what he was doing was a sort of doing a practice run, he also had this unbelievable inner confidence. You had to choose. You were torn between Kerrey and Clinton at that point? Yes. I interviewed with both of them on the same day. And it was entirely different experiences. Kerrey was attractive, I mean, cerebral in a different way from Clinton, not as earthy as Clinton, a little more ethereal. . . . What was also different about the interviews is that -- and now this has become common wisdom to everybody else, but at that time it was a new experience -- this notion of meeting someone who is not just in your face, but kind of in your skin from the moment he meets you. You just feel completely connected to him when he turns to you. The difference for me in the end was Clinton. I agreed with both of them on the issues. There weren't that many big differences between them on the issues. But Clinton made you feel like a part of his team from the minute you met him. Early in the campaign in November, there is a speech in Memphis. What's going through your mind as you're watching Clinton? It was in an arena that had been transformed into a church. There were about 15,000 or 18,000 members of the Church of God in Christ, which is basically an African-American church. Clinton had flown in from New Hampshire that day. We met with him a little bit before the speech, but then went out into the crowd to watch. We saw him, far away, surrounded by this circle of black preachers, almost looking like a fighter surrounded by his entourage. And he was completely composed. His face didn't betray any sign of emotion, or any sign that he was thinking. But what I later learned was that he was composing his speech in his head. And then when he got up to give the speech, I was completely blown away because it was this music where he tied together his experiences in New Hampshire with the economic challenges facing the African-American community. And then he gave this message that both talked about how we have to, yes, invest more in your communities, but we also have to take more responsibility. If you're on welfare, you have to work. Usually you would think a white politician, a Democrat, wouldn't do that before a black audience. And I kind of held my breath thinking, "Was he going to get booed?" And they cheered. And what I immediately went back to -- and maybe it was just something I was just wishing for -- but I thought, "My gosh, this is our Bobby Kennedy. This is the guy who can bring blacks and whites together the way that Bobby Kennedy promised to do back in 1968." And for a lot of Democrats my age, Bobby is even more of an icon than Jack. Bobby was the great hope, the first person that we really were aware of politically. And I remember thinking that night: maybe Clinton can do it. The campaign is just taking off in New Hampshire. In January, the Gennifer Flowers story breaks. How do you decide to deal with it when the Star hits? . . . This was supposed to be a nothing event. The debate had been the night before. This was an early morning stop at a coffee shop. Clinton had pretty much beat back Jerry Brown and most of his questions the night before. And we always started slow in the Clinton campaign. Mornings are not Clinton at his best time. So we weren't planning on doing anything big there. I was sitting with Paul, chatting with a few reporters, drinking a cup of coffee in the coffee shop, while they did their thing meeting with people. And then all the sudden, Hillary starts to do this kind of impromptu press conference. Reporters had gathered around. I don't remember much of what she said, except the words that everyone would soon know, "tea and cookies." And it was just like bam, all of us all of a sudden we perked up and said, "That's going to be a problem." Because it was just too good a phrase. You know it was just impossible for any reporter sitting there that day not to use the most resonant, rich, colloquial phrase she could possibly use to describe her choice to work in a law firm as opposed to staying at home. And we knew it was a problem. But nobody wanted to tell her, because that wouldn't be fun at all. And I was sitting there with Paul, like the old commercial, saying, "No, I'm not going to do it. You go do it." "No, I'm not going to do it -- you go do it." "Let Mandy do it." Because we knew it was a problem the minute she said "tea and cookies." And we knew a lot of people would take it as proof that she is this radical feminist who has no respect for traditional women. And we're going to have to try to clean it up. Of course, there was no cleaning it up, because the words were already out there. Why were you reluctant to tell Mrs. Clinton? Why this fear about informing her yourself? Because then I would become the embodiment of all those people across the country who called her a radical feminist who didn't respect traditional women. And I didn't feel like that at 7:45 in the morning leading into the Illinois primary. It would not have been pretty. That's kind of a weird thing with staffers. You get the opportunity to question your boss under the pretense that you're just playing the reporter, which is very true, and you're only doing your job by asking the toughest questions. But I think it's understandable for someone like Mrs. Clinton in that situation to say, "Who do you think you are, coming at me like that?" even if it's the right thing at this moment. So, no, I didn't gladly volunteer for that assignment. And I avoided it quite successfully. She took it pretty well coming from Mandy. We actually thought it would be a little better if it came from a woman, rather than one of these young white boys on the staff. She tried to fix it. She tried to say that she didn't mean to say any disrespect. I don't remember the exact words she used, but the damage was done. And I think "tea and cookies" was pretty much of a roadblock on the evening news that night. A little later, there is a focus group in Charleston, West Virginia, looking at video. And you're all gathered around watching with the governor. What happened? Yes. We're trying to figure out the damage that had been done, not only by the "tea and cookies," but just the overall primary campaign. . . . But the footage that was used for Hillary was footage from election night, 1992, in New Hampshire. where she did, She had this elaborate Nefertiti-style hairdo that night, one that I've never seen since, and had not seen before. And it really was something. We were all sitting around the focus group watching these dials, and up until that point they had been pretty steady. And then this picture of Mrs. Clinton comes on and the dial groups go like wild, and Clinton doesn't miss a beat. He just says, "Oh, they don't like her hair." I'm sitting next to James on the couch and he starts to grind his fist into my thigh because it was like someone farted in church and we were about to start laughing uncontrollably. And we were just holding it in and he's grinding his fist into my thigh. And we finally, we're not breathing, we finally run out of the room, get into the hallway, and just break up laughing. Looking back, it was kind of sweet that Clinton said that. His instinct was to protect her. He's a smart politician and he knew that we had a pretty serious problem coming out of "tea and cookies" and that a lot of people had very strong feelings about Mrs. Clinton. And he was just being protective of her in that moment. We didn't dwell on it that day.

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