Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine by Daniel Halper Page A

Comeback Kid.’ ”
    Lott’s comments that got him in trouble—the ones that didn’t seem to hurt his relationship with President Clinton—were about his support for Strom Thurmond, the Democratic senator from South Carolina who had run for president in 1948 on a “Dixiecrat” segregationist platform. “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either,” Lott said. It would result in his fall from Senate leadership.
    Lott’s audience laughed at the anecdote of Clinton calling him the “Comeback Kid.” 10 And then he launched into only a semi-defense of impeachment, saying that the votes were “never there” to remove Clinton from office, suggesting his role was only to marshal the will of people but without getting too hostile and too acrimonious.
    “I thought we got through it pretty well,” he said. “And I talked to Bill Clinton, not much during the proceedings, of course, but as soon as they were over,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, “we went right back to work. And did some more things for our country.”
    A similar tone is offered by Mike Huckabee, who, as governor of Arkansas, worked frequently with Clinton during his presidency. “Clinton was extraordinarily attentive to governors in general, and to me in particular, and if I were to call and request a conversation with him about something, I’d generally get a call back within half an hour,” Huckabee tells me in an interview. “You couldn’t get that kind of attention from the Bush White House.”
    Huckabee, like Gramm, was susceptible to Clinton’s small gestures. He tells me of a visit that he and his wife made to Toronto. Mrs. Huckabee noticed that Bill Clinton was in town for a book signing and suggested that they go and see him. “Well, of course, there was a huge line and they said no photos, you can’t say anything, just get your book signed and move on,” Huckabee says. “So she just got in the line, went through, and when he saw her he looked up and stood up from his seat and said, ‘Janet, what are you doing here?’ Well, it disrupted the whole thing and he gave her a big hug and they talked a minute. You could tell that all the people looking were just aghast, you know, ‘Who is this person who’s disrupting the whole thing?’ I’m sure they’d have a fit to find out it was the wife of a Republican governor, but that’s Bill Clinton. That’s just who he is.”
    As with Hillary, the men who led the effort to impeach Clinton weren’t off-limits, either. Clinton has exchanged warm letters with Jim Rogan, the former impeachment manager. In our conversation, Rogan declined to release the letters, but acknowledged that “[w]e’ve corresponded back and forth over the years. It’s been very friendly.”
    “Did he ever try to win me over?” Asa Hutchinson asks. “Every time we met. I mean that was the level of his engagement. He was always trying to make those connections and he generally did.”
    “President Clinton tends to hold you in a man grip that’s just a little too close for comfort and he doesn’t let go,” Utah Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz says with a laugh. He met the former president at a wedding reception for Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. (The event was hosted at the Clintons’ Washington residence.)
    “I think the thing that I admire really about President Clinton is he’s mature enough not to hold against somebody like Ray LaHood,” says LaHood in an interview for this book. LaHood, a Republican congressman from Illinois who later served as Obama’s secretary of transportation, noted that he voted for four articles of impeachment while in the U.S. House. “It would be very easy for [Bill Clinton] to turn and have a cold shoulder toward me as a Republican who served during the time of his impeachment. He’s a mature enough individual