The Political Chase

The reality of Hillary Clinton’s White House experience

(update below)

Over the past few weeks Hillary Clinton has substantially increased her rhetoric about all the experience she gained during Bill Clinton’s administration, and this week Newsweek focuses on her White House experience. And said experience is what Clinton claims makes her uniquely qualified, above all other candidates, to be president — she, and she alone, can begin effectively and efficiently performing the awesome duties of president from her first day in office.

If her claims are true, and applicable — not some misleading farce — then Clinton deserves to be president. But there are a few aspects of Clinton’s ad nauseam claims of experience that merit a careful review.

With the one exception of a failed health care initiative (iirc), Clinton has offered precious little detail about exactly what applicable “presidential” experience she gained during her years in the White House. Moreover, what about her experience as the Senator from New York? Clinton and her surrogates no longer present her experience in the Senate — to any significant degree — as a qualification for the high office she seeks. Her experience as Senator seems to rise only when an opponent criticizes her record (e.g. voting for Iraq war, the recent Iran army terrorist resolution, etc.) And now there are strong suggestions that as Clinton touts her experience in a broader sense, it is viewed as a racial jab against Barack Obama, not just an effort to present her resume.

Newsweek’s article confirms much of what is known about Clinton — her decisiveness, take-charge-approach, strength and strong opinions — all of which Clinton touts as making her uniquely qualified to be president. However, when her “experiences” are put in context as Newsweek did, Clinton may have experience, but is it what is best suited for the next president or any president?

John Edwards and Barack Obama have called Clinton on her evasiveness, obfuscation, and lack of transparency. They’re not alone. Others with first hand experience, including George Stephanopoulos, speak directly to the issue in the article.

For all the strain and heartache in other areas of their lives, the Clintons have a long history of working together privately on issues and political strategy. Hillary enjoyed operating as a hidden hand. While giving instructions as First Lady, she was known to tell her staff, “Don’t leave any fingerprints.” White House adviser George Stephanopoulos recalled her explaining, “You have to be much craftier behind the scenes.”

The article portrays Clinton as extremely involved in President Clinton’s day-to-day affairs and decision-making, almost to the point of acting as a shadow president, but not necessarily always in a positive light. One could easily draw analogies to Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the Office of the President to that of Vice President Dick Cheney’s domination in the current administration.

She would routinely turn up at West Wing meetings, and her confrontational style “had a real chilling effect,” said a senior presidential aide who—like several other officials and friends quoted in this article—spoke freely about private matters on condition of anonymity. “People were scared of her,” said Clinton aide Robert Boorstin. “You did not cross Hillary.” Even the president “would try to avoid fighting with her if he could, deflecting her if he could.”

Hillary was not lying when she made her statement about baking cookies in 1992. She spent her time hiring White House staffers, overriding Bill Clinton’s decisions on who would be on his Cabinet, and appointing federal judges to the bench.

Hillary oversaw the hiring of White House staffers and pressed her husband to fill half the top positions with women. In particular, she insisted he choose a woman as attorney general, which led to the derailed nominations of corporate lawyer Zoe Baird and federal Judge Kimba Wood. The president finally settled on Janet Reno, who had been recommended by Hillary’s brother Hugh Rodham. “I don’t think Clinton believed he had a choice,” recalled Dee Dee Myers, his press secretary. “He had painted himself into a corner, and he had to appoint a woman.” Hillary was equally adamant that the president appoint her friend Madeleine Albright as secretary of State.

The First Lady also participated in screening nominees for the federal bench through her chief of staff Melanne Verveer, who met each week with representatives from the Justice Department, the president’s staff and the White House Counsel’s Office.

Clinton has been forced to integrate Edwards’ and Obama’s change strategy. I recall one account recently where Clinton said, paraphrasing, there are those that hope for change, and there are those that demand change, but hoping and demanding don’t necessarily make change happen. Along those lines, Clinton has touted her ability to work with others to get things done. Newsweek provides rather substantial insight into Senator Clinton’s White House experience in working with others, being conciliatory, and bringing change about.

Hillary was widely criticized for making the health task-force deliberations secret, insisting on pushing her proposal as an all-or-nothing package and targeting the health-care establishment as “the enemy” to be fought with a “war room.” When Bill tried to make the plan more flexible, he had to defer to her, in part because of their implicit marital bargain, in which Bill ceded her power as a trade-off for his history of infidelity. In July 1994, he was urged to accept a compromise plan with less than the universal coverage that Hillary wanted. When he unexpectedly told a group of governors in Boston that he would be willing to take 95 percent, Hillary immediately called her husband. “What the f––– are you doing up there?” she screamed, according to a West Wing adviser who was in her office at the time. “I want to see you as soon as you get back.” The next morning the president not only recanted his statement but apologized.

Part of change that Barack Obama and John Edwards refer to in their campaigns is the requirement to do things differently, do things for the American people, and not just for the sake of politics. The country’s approach must change, lest we remain in gridlock. But if Clinton intends to capitalize on her well-developed White House experience, change is no more than a campaign slogan to compete with her opponents.

The First Lady kept a close eye on shifts in public opinion. In 1996 she pressed her husband to veto two Republican welfare reform bills for being too punitive. She then helped persuade him to sign a slightly modified third version when she recognized that the public overwhelmingly favored welfare reform in an election year. “It was pure politics over substance,” recalled Donna Shalala, Clinton’s secretary of Health and Human Services. “Hillary was not torn. She saw the political reality without the human dimension. If Hillary had opposed the bill, we would have gotten another veto.”

Maybe Senator Clinton needs to address the issues raised by Newsweek and tell the public more about the experience she gained in the White House. If experience is her battle cry, then she should be more specific and not just profess she has “the right stuff.”

Update: Bowiegeek at MyDD has a very convincing argument on Hillary’s experiences during the Clinton administration that is in stark contrast to the Newsweek article and my remarks in this post.