Don’t Call Me—I May Call You
Soon after he wrapped up the Democratic nomination in June, Sen. Barack Obama invited some of Sen. Hillary Clinton's key financial supporters—"bundlers" in the trade—to a private cocktail party and dinner in Washington. These were the more practical types, many of them women, who loved Hillary but the Democratic Party even more. They felt the need to give face-to-face advice to their new champion. One of them, speaking to me on condition of anonymity, said she pleaded with the senator to spend quality time with a wounded and therefore potentially disruptive Bill Clinton. "I told Barack, 'Have dinner. Clear the air. Win him over'." Obama didn't seem eager, but he did make a brief call a month later. The bundler pressed him to do more. "Barack told me it was hard to find the time, and I said, 'You'd better!' " Last week Obama called a second time, and the result was a deal for Clinton to speak at the convention in Denver. Still, there are no plans for them to sit down alone.
Everyone knows there is bad blood between the Obamas and the Clintons. But politics is the art of turning the sanguinary into the sanguine. Obama could use the Clintons' help, even if he is reluctant to admit it, and the Clintons need to cheerfully join the team (or do a good job of faking it) if they do not want to be dismissed as whiners—or blamed as Machiavellian backstabbers if he loses. And yet a four-way alliance (Michelle Obama is a key player, too) has proved difficult to construct. The two couples, from opposite ends of the baby boom, have behaved like reluctant participants at their first middle-school dance. Negotiations over the Clintons' role at the convention involve no fewer than 12 staffers and exude the labored air of Middle East peace talks.
With a Senate job and a political future to protect, Hillary is so far the more committed of the Clintons. Since June she's appeared onstage with the senator and now, having settled on a theme—pay equity for women—she is campaigning for him in states where she did well in the primaries. At the same time, however, she has quietly continued to push for the convention to include a roll call of her delegate support. She says such a state-by-state count—a reminder of just how close she had in fact come to winning the nomination—would be a welcome "catharsis" for the party. Despite the disagreement, the Obama side has agreed to give her a prominent, prime-time role in Denver.
The former president is a tougher case. He seems more King Lear than keynote speaker. He seethes over the way the Obama campaign and the media portrayed him in the primaries. His rage erupted during a trip to Africa intended to show that he was now devoting his life to the charitable work of his foundation. "I am not a racist," a red-faced Clinton declared to ABC. "I never made a racist comment." As for Obama's readiness to be president—a key line of attack from Sen. John McCain—Clinton was able to muster this: "You can argue that nobody is ready to be president."
Some Obama advisers find Clinton a divisive and insufferable hypocrite who is merely yesterday's news. Yet he and FDR were the only modern Democrats to win back-to-back elections, and there is no doubt that a fired-up and ready-to-go Bubba would be a formidable salesman for Obama's cause.
To see Bill now is to see a melancholy political animal: still brilliant, but clouded by his own resentments. At the Aspen Institute Ideas Conference recently, he held forth effortlessly on ethanol and electricity grids, education and rural poverty. A tentful of academics, business leaders, journos and, yes, bundlers, sat in rapt silence. I knew what they were thinking: the guy is flawed (as are we all), but what a once-in-a-generation talent. Obama sure could use him.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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