The Agenda

Inside the Clinton White House

Bob Woodward

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780743274074
• eBook ISBN: 9781416552819
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Agenda is a day-by-day, often minute-by-minute account of Bill Clinton's White House. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, confidential internal memos, diaries, and meeting notes, Woodward shows how Clinton and his advisers grappled with questions of lasting importance -- the federal deficit, health care, welfare reform, taxes, jobs. One of the most intimate portraits of a sitting president ever published, this edition includes an afterword on Clinton's efforts to save his presidency.

1

ONE MORNING IN LATE AUGUST 1991 in Little Rock, Arkansas, the state’s first couple awoke in the mansion’s guest house. Renovation in the mansion had banished them for months to tight quarters in the small two-room house. Their daughter, Chelsea, was sleeping on the fold-out couch in the living room.

“I think you have to do it,” said the state’s First Lady, Hillary Clinton.

“Do you really?” Governor Bill Clinton asked his wife from their double bed.

“Yeah,” Hillary said.

“Why do you believe that?” he asked.

“I think you are absolutely the right person to make these arguments,” she explained. She believed that it was a rare meeting of a man and history. Her husband had just turned 45, and she was 43. They had been married 15 years.

“You really think so?” Clinton asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “I really think so.”

“What do you think’ll happen?”

“I think you’ll win.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah, I really think so!” she said.

“Well, you know,” Clinton said, “a lot of people think this will be a dry run.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I think if you run, you win. And so you better be really careful about wanting to do this and making these changes in your life.” Others had been saying that if he ran well, more seasoned and powerful men in his party would come in and take it away from him, but that he would get the necessary experience, and that would be good. She did not agree.

The effort would be hard and bruising, she added. It was a question of what she called “the pain threshold,” and who would take it on. The Republicans were well organized and well financed. They thought they were anointed, as if they had a right to win every time. And they played very tough.

She didn’t remember exactly what he said in response that morning.

For months she had known he was going to do it, even though he hadn’t yet come to realize it fully. He entertained the idea, and they’d been talking about it all summer with a new intensity. But he wasn’t convinced that he was the one. “I just don’t know if I want to do it,” he told her once. “I don’t know if it’s worth it.” But she knew. She had known it for months, since the spring. Since then, she had never doubted it.

2

IT WAS THAT SPRING, on May 13, 1991, that Clinton visited Harvard. He strolled into a large meeting hall at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He moved quietly, looking relaxed, a large man, 6 feet 3, with a mop of thick, graying hair that took some of the edge off his boyish self-assurance.

Clinton came to Harvard with some ideas. He had been formulating what he felt was a powerful critique of the economics and the values of Presidents Reagan and Bush. Just two months earlier, President Bush had won the Persian Gulf War, but Clinton felt the real problems of national security were at home in the struggles of average people. Too many feared for their jobs, their health care, the educational opportunities of their children, their homes and neighborhoods, their retirement.

Though not well known on the national stage, Clinton was a leader in a movement of self-styled “New Democrats” who rejected the party’s liberal orthodoxy. Mostly Southerners, they were trying to convince the middle class that the Democratic Party could be strong on foreign and defense policy, moderate in social policy, and disciplined in spending tax money and taming runaway government. While retaining the ideals of the New Deal and the Great Society, New Democrats sought more efficient activism. Clinton had been traveling the country saying that these ideas were neither liberal nor conservative, but both, and different. He cast his ideas in the loftiest terms.

At Harvard, a small, bearded, biblical-looking man of 4 feet 11 inches took the stage. “Hello, my name is Bob Reich,” he said. Reich, a professor at the Kennedy School, had recently published his third book, The Work of Nations, which prompted one magazine to anoint him the country’s “leading liberal political economist,” the next John Kenneth Galbraith. Reich was leading a symposium on “Preparing Our Workforce for the Next Century,” a subject central to his book.

“Bill Clinton was first introduced to me 23 years ago, when we were on a boat, on a ship heading to England,” Reich said, turning to his first guest. They had been two of 32 Rhodes Scholars headed for Oxford in 1968 for two years of study. Reich explained how Clinton had nursed him through his seasickness with crackers and ginger ale.

Clinton, the nation’s senior governor, in his fifth term in Arkansas, rose to the crowd’s applause. “I was just thinking how much simpler life would have been for the rest of us,” he began matter-of-factly, “if I’d let him die on that boat.” There was laughter from the audience, which included many of Reich’s colleagues.

Clinton was not widely known outside Arkansas. In 1988 he had become a national footnote when he introduced the presidential nominee, Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, at the Democratic Convention in an interminable 32-minute televised speech. Clinton had won applause only when he said, “In closing. . . .” Though his presidential ambitions were obvious to his friends, in the spring of 1991 Clinton was not considered a leading, or even likely, candidate for 1992.

“America spent too much time and money in the 1980s on the present and the past,” Clinton said to the Harvard audience, “and too little attention and money on the future. . . . I define future as investments in education, infrastructure, research and development, and the environment. . . . We have to break out of the old categories and think about whether we are going to invest in the future.” Clinton spoke in a quiet tone—intellectual, reassuring, youthful but confident.

Clinton drew extensively from Reich’s book, which he was toting around, with bits of paper stuck in several pages. Sentences were underlined and little stars dotted the margins for emphasis. Reich’s core point in The Work of Nations was that a nation had only two resources within its borders—its workers and its “infrastructure” of roads, communications systems, and other common public assets—that stayed put. Other resources—such as money, factories, technological know-how—all were crossing international borders easily and almost instantly. Reich argued that a nation needed to spend money on the nonmobile resources: education and job training for its workers; roads, bridges, high-speed rail, and other forms of infrastructure. A large body of economic research showed that such investments could yield vast returns in the future, for workers and the country. Clinton was looking to bring about a government investment revolution.

Clinton was a master of sustained eye contact, hunting reactions in the eyes of an audience of one or a thousand. “If you let 10 to 20 more years go on where the middle class keeps losing ground,” he continued, “this won’t be the America any of us grew up in. And, I will say again, it is a question of organization, will, and leadership. It has nothing to do with the American people. . . . They have not been properly led. And I hope that this will be the beginning of turning that around. If it is, we’ll owe a lot of it to Bob Reich.”

Reich, sitting nearby, could imagine Clinton’s talk as the prototype of a campaign speech that, while not yet fully formed, contained strands of a powerful message.

•  •  •

AFTER DINNER, Clinton, Reich, and Richard G. Stearns, another Rhodes classmate and a Massachusetts judge, went over to Reich’s Victorian house on Mercer Circle and sat on the veranda for nearly four hours. On that crisp spring evening, Clinton turned to the topic on his mind. As his two friends knew, Clinton said, he had been thinking of running. Was this the time? he asked them. Should he do it?

Stearns had known of Clinton’s ambitions since virtually the moment he met him on the ship to England in 1968. In those days, many of them had been enchanted by the Kennedys and spoke openly of their political aspirations. In 1991, however, for an unknown governor to announce such ambitions seemed to be overreaching. Stearns had been steeped in Democratic presidential politics for 20 years, having worked for candidates George McGovern, Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, and Michael Dukakis. He had seen older, better-known, seemingly wiser Democrats chewed up and spit out in their losing White House bids. There were reasons Clinton shouldn’t run, Stearns said.

True, Reich chimed in. But there were also reasons Clinton should. The three agreed to examine both sides in an orderly fashion. Stearns would list the reasons against a Clinton run, and Reich would rebut with reasons in favor. At each point, Clinton would respond—Oxford-style.

Stearns led off with the Democratic Party’s fatal weakness on national security questions. With no experience in the military, in Washington, or in foreign policy, Clinton’s record next to Bush’s would pose a stark contrast, especially after the recent Gulf War victory. Straight off, Stearns pointed out, Bill would be forfeiting one of the most important campaign issues.

The argument seemed compelling, Clinton responded, warming to the challenge. But only on the surface. The Soviet threat was evaporating, and foreign policy would not play a big role in the campaign, he predicted. Instead, the economy would be the decisive issue. America’s economic system was out of whack—great for the wealthiest 20 percent, who were getting richer, but lousy for the other 80 percent, who were sinking or treading water. The working- and middle-class alienation could help him win in 1992. These groups constituted the vast majority of voters, and they felt insecure.

Reich almost bounced with delight, as he recognized the references from his book. He relished the prospect of being chum and idea man to a presidential candidate.

Stearns moved to his second reason. Arkansas, one of the country’s smallest and poorest states, had a tiny financial base. Millions of dollars were required to sustain a presidential campaign. Raising money could be not only time-consuming but also humiliating, as the candidate made the rounds hat-in-hand to the big givers and special interests. He had seen campaign debt almost wreck candidates who spent the rest of their lives trying to pay it off or hide from it.

Clinton acknowledged the problem but said there was more money in Arkansas than Stearns realized. Wal-Mart, the country’s largest discount retail chain, was based there. His boyhood friend Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty III ran the Fortune 500 natural gas company Arkla. He had other national contacts too, Clinton said. He even accepted Stearns’s challenge to build a $1 million war chest by the day he announced.

Okay, Stearns said, moving on. Clinton had promised the voters of Arkansas repeatedly in his 1990 gubernatorial campaign that he would not seek the presidency, that he would remain governor for another full term until 1994. Could he survive breaking the pledge?

That was also a difficult problem, Clinton again conceded. But if he went to the people of Arkansas and effectively asked their permission to run for president, he thought they would give it and rally behind his candidacy.

Stearns cited his next reason: Bush’s immense popularity coming off the Gulf War victory. The president’s approval ratings were running 78 percent in the latest polls, down from his postwar peak of 91 percent but still forbiddingly high.

Clinton again saw a twist. Oddly, he said, Bush’s popularity would carry some hidden advantages for Clinton. Other high-profile Democrats—such as New York Governor Mario Cuomo, or New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, who had just squeaked by in his reelection campaign—would be intimidated and sit out the race.

Bush would expend all his political capital in 1992, his last campaign, Stearns replied. He would convert his international activism to domestic activism and offer a dramatic set of proposals for America’s problems at home.

Stearns next said that moderate Southern governors were not exactly in vogue after Jimmy Carter’s failed one-term presidency. Clinton would be typecast and would have to live down the Carter legacy.

“I’m not Jimmy Carter,” Clinton said firmly.

Stearns asked what the public knew about Clinton. Stearns had seen his friend revive and enliven a tipsy, late-night banquet audience with his humor and extemporaneous style. But Clinton’s boring speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention, he said, had left an indelible national impression.

It had not been a great moment, Clinton acknowledged. The Dukakis campaign had written the speech, handed it to him, and insisted he deliver it precisely as written. He claimed he was just being a good soldier. “The biggest mistake of my life,” Clinton said.

While on the subject of mistakes, Stearns broached a delicate subject. What about the latest rumors about Clinton and women?

Clinton had spoken to friends about the issue before. He had confided to another friend over dinner one night four years earlier the nature of his dilemma. It was the late summer of 1987 and Clinton had just decided not to run for president in the 1988 campaign.

You know why I’m not running for president? Clinton asked.

The friend guessed that infidelity was the reason. Gary Hart’s affair with model Donna Rice had been publicly exposed several months earlier amid a great hullabaloo, forcing Hart to withdraw from the race. Now reporters were asking all the candidates if they’d ever had affairs. Clinton acknowledged he had strayed.

In 1991, Clinton indicated to Stearns and Reich that he thought the adultery question would prove to be 1988’s passing fad. In 1992, the economy would matter.

What about the annual federal budget deficits and the $4 trillion national debt they had created? Stearns asked. Wouldn’t the next president be left with the wreckage from Reagan and Bush? Wouldn’t the presidency be just a cleanup job? Was he sure he would want the job, even if he could win?

Clinton said that the explosion in the federal debt was largely attributable to skyrocketing health care costs. The health system was wasteful and irrational, and reforming it would be a priority for him as president.

Reich hardly had to make the case for Clinton.

“Bill,” Stearns said, “remember that presidents get in trouble not for what they do that is wrong, but what is wrong that they try to cover up.”

3

STANLEY B. GREENBERG, another important professor in Clinton’s life, was also encouraging the governor to run. Greenberg, 46, was a Clinton contemporary with a rare mix of academic and practical political credentials. Intellectual and articulate, with a Groucho Marx mustache and bushy hair, Greenberg held a Ph.D. in government from Harvard, had taught political science at Yale for nine years in the 1970s, and had headed a Washington polling firm since 1980. His wife, Rosa L. DeLauro, was the congressional representative from New Haven, Connecticut.

Greenberg had been advising Clinton since his 1990 gubernatorial campaign. In 1991, he gave the governor a draft of a long article he was writing for The American Prospect, a liberal political journal. In part a review of three books that examined what Greenberg called “the Democrats’ perceived indifference to the value of work and the interests of working people,” the article was the culmination of a lot of analysis and polling. It was also a personal manifesto of sorts. Greenberg was devoted to studying the crisis in the Democratic Party and the defection of middle-class and working-class whites—the so-called Reagan Democrats—to Republican presidential candidates in the 1980s. These voters held the balance in national elections, and Greenberg argued that they wanted to return to their party, to come home. Party leaders had to reach out to th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author’s Note
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Cast of Characters
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About Bob Woodward
• Index
• Photo Credits
• Copyright