That synthesis would be the foundation of the “New Democrat” movement in politics that Bill Clinton would come to symbolize over the next ten years. But it was also a synthesis, to some extent, of his and Hillary’s ideas. She had labored over preparation of the speech with him, and when she felt his message was becoming too contrarian, too critical of the well-worn path of traditional liberalism, and perhaps intended too much for Republicans tuning in to a Democratic convention in prime time, she moved it back toward basic principles.
But basic principles were of little help in undoing the damage Bill had caused himself, with help from Jimmy Carter and Frank White, in Arkansas. Shortly after Morris’s arrival, he brought Hillary and Bill his latest poll, which showed Clinton with less than 50 percent of the likely vote. With Hillary’s consent the Clinton campaign bought radio and television time for one last—negative—ad against White.
On election night, Hillary and Bill received the early returns at the governor’s mansion, not campaign headquarters, a few blocks away. The first results showed him carrying Texarkana, to the encouragement of his supporters. But Bill told Hillary it was over. Nobody could read election returns better than he could. His immediate reaction was anger—at himself, the press, Carter, the Republicans, his staff. He was calm when he and Hillary arrived at campaign headquarters, but she was trembling, trying to appear composed.
He had lost 52 percent to 48 percent, and in Hillary’s words, he “was devastated.” He felt he wouldn’t be able to make a proper concession speech and face supporters and reporters. Instead, he sent out Hillary, who thanked them all and invited them to the mansion the next morning for a gathering she later described as being like a wake.
Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell were among the first to arrive. “Bill’s eyes were puffy and his voice was hoarse,” Hubbell remembered. “Hillary had dark circles under her eyes. Both of them looked more fragile than I’d ever seen them.” Hillary and Bill never made the same mistakes again. “From then on,” Hubbell noted, “they ran their campaigns themselves, going on their gut instincts, and they never again failed to hit back fast when the situation demanded it.”
That afternoon Hillary and Bill went to lunch with Jim and Diane Blair. An indelible image of Bill remained with Diane: “He was half-laughing, half-crying over the country song on the café jukebox, ‘I Feel So Bad I Don’t Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling.’”
BILL’S COLLAPSE after his loss was psychologically and emotionally absolute. He was utterly undone, wounded so critically that Hillary feared he might never recover. “He couldn’t face people,” said Deborah Sale. “It was unbelievably devastating. He just thought it was the end of his life.”
Hillary recognized that she was the only person who could nurse him back to health. “She basically had to take care of him,” said Sale. “She is very strong. She felt there had to be some way to shore him up. She felt that recovering politically was absolutely essential to his recovering emotionally. They had to have some sense of hope that there might be a political future for him because he really saw that as a way, as his path in life.”
If she failed, the path she had chosen in life—with Bill, and their grand future as a couple destined to do great things—would be inaccessible. Whether he could regain his emotional and political strength was an open question. Hillary knew the only way to do it was to regain office in two years.
Her instincts for political survival dictated her first major decision toward that end—to call Morris again, only days after Bill’s defeat. She wanted Morris to start putting together, with her, the pieces for another campaign.
Meanwhile she seethed at the press for allowing Frank White to make her name part of his campaign. “People said, Oh, you know, she didn’t even change her name. This was a terrible thing. But, in fact, this was just an excuse,” said Sale. “They really didn’t like [Bill]. They didn’t like the way he was conducting himself at the time.” Hillary vented about Jimmy Carter, too—and she has never been one to let go of grudges. Twelve years later, as Bill Clinton ascended to the White House she decreed that members of Carter’s inner circle could not serve in a Clinton presidency.
But in Little Rock in November 1980, Hillary was one of very few people who believed that Bill Clinton might still be able to reach the White House.
While she was firm, determined, and encouraging in dealing with Bill, it was difficult for her to keep her emotions under control. First, there were enormous practical considerations. Ann Henry could see how hard Hillary was struggling: “They now have to move out and find another place to live. They have a baby. Living in the governor’s mansion you have a lot of things taken care of. Now it’s all on you. So she’s still going to work. They have this baby. Bill is depressed. No troopers, no maids, no cook, no nothing.”
At Hillary’s behest, less than ten days after the election, Bill phoned Betsey Wright in Washington and asked her to come to Little Rock to shut down his office and to put his records and files in order. He told Wright he needed “a trainer to get back on the track.” She arrived to find the staff demoralized and worried about where they were going to find jobs, and Bill deeply depressed and shocked. “It was like going to somebody’s house when somebody that you love dies, and you talk about the life that had been lived, and the things that were good, and where you screwed up. I felt like I went to a permanent wake but without the Irish jubilation.”
Betsey moved into the guest cottage on the mansion grounds, and when other friends arrived, the mansion basement. She had brought only a suitcase. She left Little Rock eleven years later.
In effect she was forming a partnership with Hillary to put Bill’s political career back together. Along with Joan Roberts, Bill’s press secretary, they would come to be referred to by reporters clandestinely as “the Valkyries.”
The files that Hillary and Betsey were so concerned about were not routine official records related to Bill’s governorship, but rather the working papers of his life in politics: contacts, phone numbers, addresses, notes made to himself, old calendars, and, absolutely essential, the voluminous collection of note cards listing, in his hand, his campaign contributors and political contacts. Each card was a diary of Bill’s interaction with an individual who figured in some way, no matter how small, in Bill’s political development: each contribution, each meeting, each letter sent and received. Computers were not yet common, but Betsey found a program that could catalogue the cards—perhaps ten thousand of them.
While Bill wallowed in self-pity, calling friends, asking constituents how he had done them wrong, flagellating himself for bad decisions, and seeking guidance from preachers, Hillary made plans for their move from the mansion to a house in the same Hillcrest neighborhood they had left only two years before. The new house was even smaller than the last. They created a nursery for Chelsea—eleven months old when they moved in January—in a converted attic. Hillary and Bill combed thrift shops and secondhand stores for traditional furniture and a few near-antiques of the sort she seemed to favor. When Virginia looked around their new quarters, she asked why they liked such stuff, remarking that she had spent her entire life trying to get away from old furniture and houses. Then she gave them a Victorian “courting” couch that had been sitting in her garage. The household they managed to cobble together was a depressing display of their slide from life in the mansion. Dick Morris described the decor as a testament to Hillary’s lack of domesticity. The furniture, Victorian style in red velvet, looked like “the lobby of a hotel in an old Western movie.” Bill had picked out some of the pieces, heavy German sideboards and chairs, and bric-a-brac that inclined toward the garish and the curlicued. The kitchen had a college dorm feel, said Morris. “The glasses and plates looked like they came from a gas station or supermarket—mismatched, in clashing sizes and designs.”
Bill found a job of sorts at the law firm of Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, little more than a pit stop for Bill with a desk and telephone. Often he was out a
nd about trying to reestablish himself with voters. Politics, he told a class of Diane Blair’s at Fayetteville, was “the only track I wanted to run on.” “Political leaders,” he said, “were usually a combination of darkness and light. The darkness of insecurity, depression, family disorder. In great leaders, the light overcame the darkness.”
Hillary had also ever so briefly considered a job offer—as president of Hendrix College, which was affiliated with the United Methodist Church—and then set about rebuilding her life and Bill’s. She joined the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, became a member of its board, and did pro bono legal work on its behalf. Her renewed emphasis on spiritual life led her to give a series of talks around the state on why she was a Methodist, including a visit to a Baptist church across the Arkansas River in North Little Rock where her topic was “Women armed with the Christian sword—to build an army for the Lord.”
Friends from around the country came to see how she and Bill were doing. There were good days and bad. The good ones tended to involve Chelsea. The bad ones tended to involve screaming and tension and, once again, Bill’s penchant for other women. Friends surmised that Hillary believed Bill had lost the election in part because, as governor, he had let himself become distracted by the women who always seemed to be throwing themselves at him. “As I look back,” said Rudy Moore, “it is more evident that Bill Clinton was not the same person psychologically in 1980 that he had been before. It must have been something personal, perhaps with his relationship with Hillary, but he was ambivalent and preoccupied. His reelection campaign reflected it.” Later Gennifer Flowers, the nightclub chanteuse with whom Bill had an affair, said their relationship began in 1977 and that Arkansas newspaper reporters were making inquiries about it toward the end of his first term as governor.
To journalist Max Brantley, Bill seemed to be in a period of mourning—for his political career. “Bill obsessed on the subject. He was in a funk for months afterward, and he just couldn’t leave it alone. You’d catch him in the grocery store, he was at loose ends, particularly right after he left office, and he’d go on obsessively about the factors that had caused it and what had gone wrong, and was just feeling sorry for himself.” “He really felt like sackcloth and ashes, and that people should be flogging him with whips or something,” Betsey Wright said.
To help ease their transition, Hillary had taken a brief leave from the Rose Law Firm. Now she returned to find a chilly reception. It was clear the partners had expected her to be a rainmaker, bringing in business from the contacts she and Bill had established over the years. “The apolitical firm I’d joined seven years earlier was no more,” Webb Hubbell said. “‘You need to talk to Hillary, Webb,’ was the mantra. The message to her boiled down to this: Either leave…or start billing to make up for the liability you create. They wanted Vince and me to talk her into leaving.” Neither of them talked to Hillary about leaving.
More than ever, in fact, the Rose Law Firm—and Vince Foster—were a refuge. Colleagues began to notice subtle differences in her relationship with each of the Amigos.
Bill Clinton and Vince Foster were as different in most aspects of their character as Hillary could have imagined. But she and Vince were, in many regards, a natural fit. “Vince was just born middle-aged,” an acquaintance had observed. Hillary could identify. As Bill once said, “I was born at sixteen and I’ll always feel I am sixteen. And Hillary was born at age forty.”
Vince had comparatively little interest in politics, exuded integrity, was meticulous in habit and dress, studied fine wines, was conversant in every nuance of politesse, and spoke ill of almost no one. In the firm, he was regarded as the soul of discretion, and it stood to reason that if ever Hillary would choose a confidant outside her marriage it would be someone of his mien and judgment. He and his wife, Lisa, gave frequent formal dinner parties in their home, at which the social elite of Little Rock felt comfortable.
Hillary found it easy to let her guard down with Vince. “I don’t think there was anyone closer to Hillary for twenty years,” said Hubbell. “But I don’t think it was sexual. I think it was, Here are two people with like brilliance who enjoyed the same things, enjoyed each other’s company and had extreme confidence in each other. I mean, you love a friend more than you love a lover.” At office retreats, Hillary and Vince often remained together while the others went off to play golf or tennis. They would stroll, talk earnestly over a glass of wine, and laugh uproariously.
Those who knew them best doubted that they had had an affair. One friend wasn’t sure: “He loved Hillary. I hoped they had an affair. I think they both deserved it. They both had complicated spouses, complicated marriages. I think all marriages go through periods where the partners aren’t very close.” Vince and Hillary “found comfort that was unique and special for them,” said a friend of Foster’s—who knew Hillary, Bill, and Vince well. As for the Three Amigos, “They did everything together, and Vince and Webb covered her back and handled her business.”
But no matter how contentious her marriage, Hillary rarely, if ever, seemed to doubt how deeply she was in love with her husband, no matter how flagrant his provocations. In early March 1981, she and Bill were in Los Angeles because Nancy Bekavac persuaded Bill to be the speaker at her law firm’s Monday partners lunch. During the question period, as he talked of his experience as governor of Arkansas, someone rushed in and shouted, “Reagan’s been shot!” All hurried to an anteroom to watch the events on television. Bill looked grave, the color draining from his face. “I looked around,” said Nancy, “and didn’t see Hillary. She was back in the corner with her arms crossed, and a hand on each shoulder, cradling herself, all hunched over in the corner. And I went over and said, ‘Hillary…’ and she said, ‘Bill gets death threats.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘When he left the governorship one of the last things he did was to commute a bunch of death penalties to life sentences. And he’s gotten death threats [from opponents, crime victims, and death penalty proponents] ever since.’” Nancy sat down next to her, put her arm around her, and realized that, for Hillary, this was not just about Ronald Reagan. “It was so immediate,” Nancy said. “It was so physical.”
BY OCTOBER 1981, Hillary, Betsey, and Dick Morris were ready to set the campaign express back on the tracks. Morris had been traveling to Little Rock to meet with the Clintons and Betsey for a few days each month. He and Betsey could see that Hillary was battle-ready for this campaign, and would be far more involved than in the previous one. She would be the chief adviser and strategist. Working closely with Betsey and Dick, she would persuade Bill to adopt more pragmatic political positions. She seemed to grasp intuitively what needed to be done, and how Bill should do it. First, he would have to apologize to the people of Arkansas, an acknowledgment of what had gone wrong. Bill was hesitant. Hillary was insistent. As Morris remembered it, she said, “Bill, they didn’t want to throw you out—they just wanted to make sure you knew how they felt. Put aside your damned pride and show them that you get it.” Morris’s polls confirmed her interpretation.
Morris proposed to Hillary, Bill, and Wright that they buy television time for an ad in which Clinton apologized for his mistakes, most notably the car tag increase. This led to an advertising campaign with the theme, “My Daddy Never Had to Whip Me Twice.” Given another opportunity by Arkansas citizens, said Bill, he would pay them heed and not make the same mistakes again. The ads aired in early February, but Bill would not officially announce his candidacy until Chelsea’s second birthday, February 27, 1982. At that press conference, Hillary gave Bill a framed picture of the three of them, with the engraving, “Chelsea’s second birthday, Bill’s second chance.”
The 1982 campaign became the model for their political future, with Hillary assuming a far more direct, hands-on role in terms of policy, strategy, scheduling, and hiring staff for the campaign. She wasn’t the campaign chairman in name, but she was the campaign director in fact. After 1982, she and Bill
were always in effect their own campaign chairmen. “She was out in front, on the campaign trail, and in charge. She had an opinion on everything. I mean everything. Issues. People. Where Bill was going to speak. I mean everything,” said Woody Bassett, who had been their law student and worked in every campaign. “Hillary was never bashful about telling you when she thought you made a mistake, or when she thought you could have done something better, or if she didn’t think enough people were at an event. Bill Clinton would never tell you that, though he might think it. He was the good guy. Hillary was the one that laid the law down and she was the one that made it known if they weren’t happy about something.” Successful campaigns usually have a backbone of discipline and Hillary was the one to provide it.
THEN HILLARY RODHAM became Hillary Clinton, as she had vowed never to do. Changing her name, which seemed to signal to voters that she was changing her attitude, was as essential to Bill Clinton’s future as apologizing for the car tag fiasco. Or, as Jim Blair said about the name change, Hillary “would sacrifice some of her principles to keep political expediency.” Hillary talked to Hubbell about why she now thought changing her name was important. “We had a long conversation that day, and I understood a lot more about her afterward,” he said. “There was the notion of retaining her own identity, which she had submerged in coming to Arkansas, and the conflict of interest sensitivity she felt as a lawyer. And there was something closer to the bone. It hurt her that people would think she didn’t love her husband. It hurt her when people asked what Chelsea’s last name would be. It hurt her that people in Arkansas didn’t try to understand her as much as they wanted her to understand them. But the name had become an issue, and she was prepared to change it to help her husband.”