All Too Human: A Political Education by George Stephanopoulos Page B
Authors: George Stephanopoulos
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relationship and the presidential race. Hearing Clinton's unmistakably husky voice felt like picking up the phone to catch your girlfriend whispering with another man. My whole torso tightened as I was hit by a wave of nausea, doubt, embarrassment, and anger. Mostly anger.
He lied. Even if he didn't, what's he doing talking to her in the middle of the campaign? That must have been her Clinton and Lindsey called from that pay phone in Boston. How could he have been so stupid? So arrogant? Did he want to get caught? How come he let me hang out there? Never said a word that whole ride to Claremont while I swore to reporters her story was false — just sat there, pretending to read Lincoln
.
As the senior staffer in the room, I kept my anger inside to avoid demoralizing the interns and volunteers. This was a new challenge: I was used to keeping calm to convince my bosses they could count on me. Now I had to be strong for the kids who looked up to me. I tried to identify hopeful signs.
The conversation did sound stilted; her questions
were
leading — maybe the tapes were doctored? It's a setup
. Later investigations by CNN and KCBS would show that the tapes were “selectively edited,” but there was no getting around the fact that by talking to her on the phone, Clinton had put everything we worked for at risk.
When Gennifer finished, Rahm Emanuel, David Wilhelm, and I retreated to a private office. We didn't know what was true anymore or what was going to happen. All we could trust right now was each other. There comes a time in every campaign when even a candidate you admire becomes your worst enemy. As if by design, each of us in turn expressed our disgust while the other two bucked him up. Tag team venting.
It worked, and as the night passed, we were back to fighting for Clinton even more fiercely. A dynamic had already started that would repeat itself many times in the years ahead — one explained well by Reinhold Niebuhr: “Frantic orthodoxy,” he wrote, “is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.” I now had doubts about Clinton, had seen his flaws up close, which caused me to focus even more intently on his strengths and believe even more fervently in his ideas. I didn't want to throw away what he could achieve as president and what I could achieve by his side, and I didn't want our enemies to win. They'd stop at nothing to defeat him, so nothing would stop me from defending him. Now I was a true true believer.
Hillary rallied all of us that night with a conference call from Minneapolis, foreshadowing another pattern that would be repeated again on a larger stage. If she was standing by her man, then so were we. A Boston TV poll showed that Clinton was still leading in New Hampshire, and a national survey on
Nightline
found that 80 percent of the country thought Clinton should stay in the race.
We had survived to fight another day.
Colonel Gene Holmes was the Gennifer Flowers of the draft. In 1969, he was the ROTC commander at the University of Arkansas. After a year at Oxford, Clinton returned to Fayetteville, enrolled in law school, and sought to fulfill his obligation for military service by joining the ROTC unit commanded by Holmes. Later that summer, Clinton changed his mind and returned to Oxford, but avoided military service by drawing a high number in the lottery that determined who would be drafted. This is what I knew about Clinton and the draft when I signed up. What I didn't know was what had not been reported: that Clinton's version picked up the story
after
he had received an induction notice from his local draft board. In 1969, Clinton gamed the selective service system — and got lucky.
The full story of Clinton and the draft is an anxiety-ridden tale of manipulation and mendacity similar to thousands of others from the 1960s. But as an aspiring Arkansas politician in the 1970s, Clinton didn't want to be defined by his unflattering draft
He lied. Even if he didn't, what's he doing talking to her in the middle of the campaign? That must have been her Clinton and Lindsey called from that pay phone in Boston. How could he have been so stupid? So arrogant? Did he want to get caught? How come he let me hang out there? Never said a word that whole ride to Claremont while I swore to reporters her story was false — just sat there, pretending to read Lincoln
.
As the senior staffer in the room, I kept my anger inside to avoid demoralizing the interns and volunteers. This was a new challenge: I was used to keeping calm to convince my bosses they could count on me. Now I had to be strong for the kids who looked up to me. I tried to identify hopeful signs.
The conversation did sound stilted; her questions
were
leading — maybe the tapes were doctored? It's a setup
. Later investigations by CNN and KCBS would show that the tapes were “selectively edited,” but there was no getting around the fact that by talking to her on the phone, Clinton had put everything we worked for at risk.
When Gennifer finished, Rahm Emanuel, David Wilhelm, and I retreated to a private office. We didn't know what was true anymore or what was going to happen. All we could trust right now was each other. There comes a time in every campaign when even a candidate you admire becomes your worst enemy. As if by design, each of us in turn expressed our disgust while the other two bucked him up. Tag team venting.
It worked, and as the night passed, we were back to fighting for Clinton even more fiercely. A dynamic had already started that would repeat itself many times in the years ahead — one explained well by Reinhold Niebuhr: “Frantic orthodoxy,” he wrote, “is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.” I now had doubts about Clinton, had seen his flaws up close, which caused me to focus even more intently on his strengths and believe even more fervently in his ideas. I didn't want to throw away what he could achieve as president and what I could achieve by his side, and I didn't want our enemies to win. They'd stop at nothing to defeat him, so nothing would stop me from defending him. Now I was a true true believer.
Hillary rallied all of us that night with a conference call from Minneapolis, foreshadowing another pattern that would be repeated again on a larger stage. If she was standing by her man, then so were we. A Boston TV poll showed that Clinton was still leading in New Hampshire, and a national survey on
Nightline
found that 80 percent of the country thought Clinton should stay in the race.
We had survived to fight another day.
Colonel Gene Holmes was the Gennifer Flowers of the draft. In 1969, he was the ROTC commander at the University of Arkansas. After a year at Oxford, Clinton returned to Fayetteville, enrolled in law school, and sought to fulfill his obligation for military service by joining the ROTC unit commanded by Holmes. Later that summer, Clinton changed his mind and returned to Oxford, but avoided military service by drawing a high number in the lottery that determined who would be drafted. This is what I knew about Clinton and the draft when I signed up. What I didn't know was what had not been reported: that Clinton's version picked up the story
after
he had received an induction notice from his local draft board. In 1969, Clinton gamed the selective service system — and got lucky.
The full story of Clinton and the draft is an anxiety-ridden tale of manipulation and mendacity similar to thousands of others from the 1960s. But as an aspiring Arkansas politician in the 1970s, Clinton didn't want to be defined by his unflattering draft
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