My Life, page 64
After Georgia, I campaigned in Davenport, Iowa, then flew to Milwaukee, where I did my last televised town hall meeting and cut my last television spot, urging people to vote, and vote for change. On Sunday night, after campaign stops in Cincinnati and Scranton, the Rodhams’ hometown, we flew to New Jersey for a big rally at the Meadowlands, a musical extravaganza featuring rock, jazz, and country musicians and movie stars who were supporting me. Then I played sax and danced with Hillary before 15,000 people at the Garden State Park racetrack in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where a horse named Bubba Clinton, the name my brother had called me by since he was a toddler, had recently won a race at 17-to-1 odds. My odds were better now, but they had once been far longer. One man who bet 100 pounds on me in April with a London bookmaker when the odds were 33 to 1 made about $5,000. There’s no telling what he could have made if he’d placed the bet in early February when I was being battered in New Hampshire.
Hillary and I woke up Monday morning in Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy, and the first leg of a four thousand–mile, eight-state, round-the-clock campaign swing. While Al and Tipper Gore campaigned in other battleground states, three Boeing 727s, decorated in red, white, and blue, took Hillary, me, our staff, and a horde of media on the twenty-nine-hour jaunt. At Philadelphia’s Mayfair Diner, the first stop, when a man asked me what would be the first thing I would do if elected, I replied, “I’m going to thank God.” On to Cleveland. With my voice failing again, I said, “Teddy Roosevelt once said we should speak softly and carry a big stick. Tomorrow, I want to talk softly and carry Ohio.” At an airport rally outside Detroit, flanked by several of Michigan’s elected officials and union leaders who had worked so hard for me, I croaked, “If you will be my voice tomorrow, I will be your voice for four years.” After stops in St. Louis and Paducah, Kentucky, we flew to Texas for two visits. The first was in McAllen, deep in South Texas near the Mexican border where I had been stranded with Sargent Shriver twenty years earlier. It was after midnight when we got to Fort Worth, where the crowd was kept awake by the famous country-rocker Jerry Jeff Walker. When I got back to the plane, I learned that my staff had bought four hundred dollars’ worth of mango ice cream from the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, just across the street from the Alamo. They had all heard me say how much I loved that ice cream, which I had discovered when working in the McGovern campaign in 1972. There was enough of it to feed the three planeloads of weary travelers all night.
Meanwhile, back at headquarters in Little Rock, James Carville had gathered our people, more than a hundred of them, for a last meeting. After George Stephanopoulos introduced him, James gave an emotional speech, saying that love and work were the two most precious gifts a person could give, and thanking all our people, most of them very young, for those gifts.
We flew from Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a very early-morning rally with my old friend Governor Bruce King. Afterward, at about 4 a.m., I devoured a breakfast of Mexican food, then headed for Denver, the last stop. We had a big, enthusiastic early-morning crowd. After Mayor Wellington Webb, Senator Tim Wirth, and my partner in education reform Governor Roy Roemer fired them up, Hillary gave the speech and I forced my last campaign words of gratitude and hope through swollen vocal cords. Then it was home to Little Rock.
Hillary and I were greeted at the airport by Chelsea, other family members, friends, and our headquarters staff. I thanked them for all they’d done, then left with my family for the drive to our polling place, the Dunbar Community Center, which is in a mostly African-American neighborhood less than a mile from the Governor’s Mansion. We spoke to the folks gathered around the center and signed in with the election officials there. Then, just as she had done since she was six, Chelsea went into the voting booth with me. After I closed the curtain, Chelsea pulled down the lever by my name, then hugged me tight. After thirteen months of backbreaking effort, it was all that was left for us to do. When Hillary finished voting, the three of us embraced, went outside, answered a few press questions, shook a few hands, and went home.
For me, election days have always embodied the great mystery of democracy. No matter how hard pollsters and pundits try to demystify it, the mystery remains. It’s the one day when the ordinary citizen has as much power as the millionaire and the President. Some people use it and some don’t. Those who do choose candidates for all kinds of reasons, some rational, some intuitive, some with certainty, others skeptically. Somehow, they usually pick the right leader for the times; that’s why America is still around and doing well after more than 228 years.
I had entered the race largely because I thought I was right for these times of dramatic change in how Americans live, work, raise children, and relate to the rest of the world. I had worked for years to understand how political leaders’ decisions play out in people’s lives. I believed I understood what needed to be done and how to do it. But I also knew I was asking the American people to take a big gamble. First, they weren’t used to Democratic Presidents. Then there were the questions about me: I was very young; was the governor of a state most Americans knew little about; had opposed the Vietnam War and avoided military service; held liberal views on race and rights for women and gays; often seemed slick when I spoke of achieving ambitious goals that, at least on the surface, seemed mutually exclusive; and had lived a far from perfect life. I had worked my heart out to convince the American people that I was a risk worth taking, but the constantly shifting polls and the resurgence of Perot showed that many of them wanted to believe in me but still harbored doubts. On the stump, Al Gore asked voters to think about what headline they wanted to read the day after the election: “Four More Years,” or “Change Is on the Way.” I thought I knew what their answer would be, but on that long November day, like everyone else, I had to wait to find out.
When we got home, the three of us watched an old John Wayne movie until we dozed off for a couple of hours. In the afternoon, I went jogging with Chelsea downtown and stopped at McDonald’s for a cup of water, as I had countless times before. After I got back to the Governor’s Mansion, I didn’t have to wait much longer. The returns started to come in early, at about 6:30 p.m. I was still in my jogging clothes when I was projected the winner in several states in the East. A little over three hours later, the networks projected me the overall winner, when Ohio went our way by 90,000 votes out of almost 5 million cast, a victory margin of less than 2 percent. It seemed fitting, because Ohio had been one of the states to guarantee me the nomination in the June 2 primaries, and the state whose votes had officially put me over the top at our convention in New York. The turnout was huge, the highest since the early 1960s, with more than 100 million people voting.
When all 104,600,366 votes were counted, the final margin of victory was about 5.5 percent. I finished with 43 percent of the vote, to 37.4 percent for President Bush and 19 percent for Ross Perot, the best showing for a third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt garnered 27 percent with his Bull Moose Party in 1912. Our baby-boom ticket did best among voters over sixty-five and those under thirty. Our own generation apparently had more doubts about whether we were ready to lead the country. The late Bush-Perot tag-team attack on Arkansas had shaved two or three points off our high-water mark a few days before the election. It had hurt, but not badly enough.
The victory margin in the electoral college was larger. President Bush won eighteen states with 168 electoral votes. I received 370 electoral votes from thirty-two states and the District of Columbia, including every state that borders the Mississippi River from north to south except Mississippi, and all the New England and mid-Atlantic states. I also won in some unlikely places, like Georgia, Montana, Nevada, and Colorado. Eleven states were decided by 3 percent or less: Arizona, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina went for the President; besides Ohio, Georgia, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New Jersey voted narrowly for me. I received 53 percent of the vote in Arkansas, my highest total, and won twelve other states by 10 percent or more, including some large ones: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. While Perot kept me from getting a majority of the popular vote, his presence on the ballot almost certainly added to my margin in the electoral college. How did Americans come to choose their first baby-boom President, the third youngest in history, only the second governor of a small state, carrying more baggage than an ocean liner? Surveys of voters leaving the polls indicated that the economy was by far the biggest issue for them, followed by the deficit and health care, with the character issue trailing. In the end, I had won the debate over what the election was about. In a presidential campaign, that is more important than whether the voters agree with a candidate on specific issues. But the economy alone didn’t do it. I was also helped by James Carville and a brilliant campaign team who kept me and everyone else focused and on message through all the ups and downs; by Stan Greenberg’s insightful polling and Frank Greer’s effective paid media; by able people who led the campaign at the grass roots; by a Democratic Party united by Ron Brown’s skill and the desire to win after a dozen years in the wilderness; by extraordinarily high levels of support from minorities and women, who also elected a Congress with six female senators and forty-seven female members of the House, up from twenty-eight; by the initial disunity and overconfidence among the Republicans; by surprisingly positive press coverage in the general election, in stark contrast to the going-over I got in the primaries; by the extraordinary performance of Al and Tipper Gore in the campaign, and the generational change we all represented; and by the New Democrat philosophy and ideas I had developed in Arkansas and with the DLC. Finally, I was able to win because Hillary and my friends stayed with me through the fire, and because I didn’t give up when I got beat up. Early on election night, President Bush called to congratulate me. He was gracious and pledged a smooth transition, as did Dan Quayle. After a last look at my victory speech, Hillary and I said a prayer thanking God for our blessings and asking for divine guidance in the work ahead. Then we got Chelsea and drove down to the Old State House for the big event.
The Old State House was my favorite building in Arkansas, full of my state’s history and my own. It was the place where I had received well-wishers when I was sworn in as attorney general sixteen years earlier, and where I had announced for President thirteen months ago. We walked onto the stage to greet Al and Tipper and the thousands of people who had filled the downtown streets. I was overwhelmed when I looked out into the faces of all those people, so full of happiness and hope. And I was filled with gratitude. I loved seeing my mother’s tears of joy, and I hoped that my father was looking down on me with pride.
When I started this remarkable odyssey, I could never have anticipated how hard it would be, or how wonderful. The people in the crowd and millions like them had done their part. Now I had to prove them right. I began by saying, “On this day, with high hopes and brave hearts, in massive numbers, the American people have voted to make a new beginning.” I asked those who had voted for President Bush and Ross Perot to join me in creating a “re-United States,” then closed with these words: This victory was more than a victory of party; it was a victory for those who work hard and play by the rules, a victory for people who felt left out and left behind and want to do better…. I accept tonight the responsibility that you have given me to be the leader of this, the greatest country in human history. I accept it with a full heart and a joyous spirit. But I ask you to be Americans again, too, to be interested not just in getting but in giving, not just in placing blame but in assuming responsibility, not just in looking out for yourselves but in looking out for others, too…. Together, we can make the country that we love everything it was meant to be.
TWENTY-NINE
On the day after the election, awash in congratulatory calls and messages, I went to work on what is called the transition. Is it ever! There was no time to celebrate, and we didn’t take much time to rest, which was probably a mistake. In just eleven weeks, my family and I had to make the transition from our life in Arkansas into the White House. There was so much to do: select the cabinet, important subcabinet officials, and the White House staff; work with the Bush people on the mechanics of the move; begin briefings on national security and talk to foreign leaders; reach out to congressional leaders; finalize the economic proposals I would present to Congress; develop a plan to implement my other campaign commitments; deal with a large number of requests for meetings and the desire of many of our campaign workers and major supporters to know as soon as possible whether they would be part of the new administration; and respond to unfolding events. There would be a lot of them in the next seventy days, especially overseas: in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was seeking relief from UN sanctions; Somalia, where President Bush had dispatched U.S. troops on a humanitarian mission to avert mass starvation; and Russia, where the economy was in shambles, President Yeltsin faced growing opposition from ultra-nationalists and unconverted Communists, and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Baltic nations had been delayed. The “to do” list was growing.
Several weeks earlier, we had quietly established a transition-planning operation in Little Rock, under a board that included Vernon Jordan, Warren Christopher, Mickey Kantor, former San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros, Doris Matsui, and former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin. The staff director was Gerald Stern, who was on leave from his job as executive vice president of Occidental Petroleum. Obviously, we didn’t want to look as if we’d taken the outcome of the election for granted, so the operation was kept low-key, with an unlisted telephone number and no sign on the door of the offices on the thirteenth floor of the Worthen Bank building.
When George Stephanopoulos came over to the mansion on Wednesday, Hillary and I asked him to continue being our communications director in the White House. I would have been happy to have James Carville there too, to help develop strategy and keep us on message, but he didn’t think he was suited to government and two days earlier he had cracked to reporters, “I wouldn’t live in a country whose government would hire me.”
On Wednesday afternoon, I met with the transition board and received my first briefing papers. At 2:30 p.m., I held a short press conference on the back lawn of the Governor’s Mansion. Because President Bush was in another tense situation with Iraq, I emphasized that America “has only one President at a time,” and that “America’s foreign policy remains solely in his hands.”
On my second day as President-elect, I spoke with a few foreign leaders, and went to the office to take care of some state business and thank the governor’s staff for the fine job they had done while I was away. That night we had a party for the campaign staff. I was still so hoarse I could barely squeak out “Thank you.” I spent most of the time shaking hands and walking around with signs on my shirt that said, “Sorry, I can’t talk,” and “You did a good job.”
On Friday, I named Vernon Jordan as chairman and Warren Christopher as director of my transition board. The announcement of their appointments was well received in Washington and in Little Rock, where both were respected by the campaign staff, many of whom were beginning to show predictable and understandable signs of exhaustion, irritability, and anxiety about the future, as the euphoria of our victory wore off.
In the second week of the transition, the pace picked up. I spoke about Middle East peace with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd. Vernon and Chris filled out most of the senior transition staff with Alexis Herman, deputy chair of the Democratic Party, and Mark Gearan, who had managed Al Gore’s campaign, as deputy directors; DLC president Al From in domestic policy; Sandy Berger, along with my campaign aide Nancy Soderberg in foreign policy; and Gene Sperling and my old Rhodes classmate Bob Reich, then a Harvard professor and author of several thought-provoking books on the global economy, in economic policy. The vetting of all candidates for important positions would be overseen by Tom Donilon, a sharp Washington lawyer and longtime Democratic activist. Donilon’s job was important; defeating a President’s appointments because of financial or personal problems in their backgrounds or previously unexamined opinions had become a regular part of Washington political life. Our vetters were supposed to make sure that anyone who was willing to serve could survive the scrutiny.
A few days later, former South Carolina governor Dick Riley joined the transition team to oversee the sub-cabinet appointments. Riley had a backbreaking job. At one point, he was getting more than three thousand résumés, as well as a couple of hundred phone calls, a day. Many of the calls were from members of Congress and governors who expected him to return the calls personally. So many people who had contributed to our victory wanted to serve that I was worried about able, deserving people falling through the cracks, and some of them did.
The third week of the transition was devoted to reaching out to Washington. I invited House Speaker Tom Foley, House majority leader Dick Gephardt, and Senate majority leader George Mitchell to Little Rock for dinner and a morning meeting. It was important for me to get off on the right foot with the Democratic leaders. I knew I had to have their support to succeed, and they knew the American people would hold us all accountable for breaking the partisan gridlock in Washington. It would require some compromise on my part and theirs, but after our meetings I was confident we could work together. On Wednesday, I went to Washington for two days to meet with President Bush, other congressional Democrats, and the Republican leaders in Congress. My meeting with the President, scheduled to last an hour, went almost twice that long and was both cordial and helpful. We talked about a wide variety of issues, and I found the President’s review of our foreign policy challenges particularly insightful. From the White House, I drove two miles into north Washington, to a neighborhood beset by poverty, unemployment, drugs, and crime. On Georgia Avenue, I got out of the car and walked for a block, shaking hands and talking to merchants and other citizens about their problems and what I could do to help. Eight people had been killed the previous year within a mile of where I stopped. I got food from a Chinese takeout where the workers operated behind bulletproof glass for safety. Parents of school-aged children said they were frightened because so many of their kids’ classmates brought guns to school. The people who lived in Washington’s inner city were often forgotten by Congress and the White House, despite the fact that the federal government still retained substantial control over the city’s affairs. I wanted the city’s residents to know I cared about their problems and wanted to be a good neighbor.
