64 Hillary Clinton’s campaign was undone by a clash of personalities more toxic than anyone imagined. E-mails and memos— published here for the first time—reveal the backstabbing and conflicting strategies that produced an epic meltdown. BY JOSHUA GREEN The Front-Runner’s Fall or all that has been written and said about Hillary Clin- e-mail feuds was handed over. (See for yourself: much of it is ton’s epic collapse in the Democratic primaries, one posted online at www.theatlantic.com/clinton.) Fissue still nags. Everybody knows what happened. But Two things struck me right away. The first was that, outward we still don’t have a clear picture of how it happened, or why. appearances notwithstanding, the campaign prepared a clear The after-battle assessments in the major newspapers and strategy and did considerable planning. It sweated the large newsweeklies generally agreed on the big picture: the cam- themes (Clinton’s late-in-the-game emergence as a blue-collar paign was not prepared for a lengthy fight; it had an insuf- champion had been the idea all along) and the small details ficient delegate operation; it squandered vast sums of money; (campaign staffers in Portland, Oregon, kept tabs on Monica and the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia— Lewinsky, who lived there, to avoid any surprise encounters). one day a shots-’n’-beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel The second was the thought: Wow, it was even worse than I’d mom. Through it all, her staff feuded and bickered, while her imagined! The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even husband distracted. But as a journalistic exercise, the “cam- the most reserved Beltway wise men. Surprisingly, Clinton her- paign obit” is inherently flawed, reflecting the viewpoints of self, when pressed, was her own shrewdest strategist, a role that those closest to the press rather than empirical truth. had never been her strong suit in the White House. But her How did things look on the inside, as they unraveled? advisers couldn’t execute strategy; they routinely attacked and To find out, I approached a number of current and former undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Clinton staffers and outside consultants and asked them to Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she share memos, e-mails, meeting minutes, diaries—anything would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire. that would offer a contemporaneous account. The result dem- Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of onstrates that paranoid dysfunction breeds the impulse to managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put hoard. Everything from major strategic plans to bitchy staff it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like 65 a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ campaign, to persuade Iowans to reconsider her? Or should heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clin- she run a negative campaign that would accuse her opponents ton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but of being untrustworthy and under-qualified? Clinton’s top rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. advisers never agreed on the answer. Over the course of the Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a campaign, they split into competing factions that drifted in price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency. What and out of Clinton’s favor but always seemed to work at cross follows is the inside account of how the campaign for the seem- purposes. And Clinton herself could never quite decide who ingly unstoppable Democratic nominee came into being, and was right. then came apart. MARCH 2007: THE STRATEGY 2003–2006: LAYING THE GROUNDWorK enn had won the trust of both Clintons by guiding Bill s long ago as 2003, the Clintons’ pollster, Mark Penn, was Clinton to reelection in 1996 and through the impeach- quietly measuring Hillary’s presidential appeal, with an Pment saga that followed. But his poll-tested centrism A eye toward the 2004 election. Polling suggested that her and brusque manner aroused suspicion and contempt among prospects were “reasonably favorable,” but Clinton herself never many of their advisers. In the White House and during Hil- seriously considered running. Instead, over the next three years, lary’s Senate races, Penn often prevailed in internal disputes a handful of her advisers met periodically to prepare for 2008. by brandishing his own poll numbers (which his opponents They believed the biggest threat was John Edwards. distrusted) and pointing out that he had delivered a Clinton Decisions made before her 2006 reelection to the Sen- to the White House once before. ate were to have important conse- quences downstream. Perhaps the biggest was Clinton’s choosing to forgo the tradition of visiting early states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Even if she was presumed to be the heavy favorite, Clinton needed to win Iowa to maintain the impression of invincibility that she believed was her greatest advantage. And yet Iowa was a vulnerability. Both husband and wife lacked ties there: Bill Clin- ton had skipped the 1992 caucuses because Iowa’s Senator Tom Harkin was running; in 1996, Clinton had run unopposed. With her Senate race looming, she feared a backlash if she signaled her presidential intentions. If New Yorkers thought her presumptuous, they could punish her at the polls and weaken her national standing. A collective decision was made not to discuss a presidential run until she had won reelection, leaving the early pursuit of Iowa to John Edwards and Barack Obama. In light of this history, he got off to an inauspicious start The effect of these choices in Iowa became jarringly clear when Clinton entered the race in January 2007, by demand- when Penn conducted a poll just after Clinton’s Senate reelec- ing the title “chief strategist” (previously he had been one of tion that showed her running a very distant third, barely ahead several “senior advisers”) and presenting each of his senior col- of the state’s governor, Tom Vilsack. The poll produced a curi- leagues with a silver bowl inscribed with the words of Horace ous revelation: Iowans rated Clinton at the top of the field on Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory questions of leadership, strength, and experience—but most for humanity.” did not plan to vote for her, because they didn’t like her. This Penn had clear ideas about how to engineer a win for Clin- presented a basic conundrum: Should Clinton run a positive ton, in Iowa and beyond. Obama had eclipsed Edwards right 68 THE FRONT-RUNNER’S FALL THE ATLANTIC SEPTEMBER 2008 out of the gate and was experiencing the full measure of “next b. Connect on the problems of the global economy, JFK” hype. In a memo dated March 19, 2007, Penn laid out economics an “Overall Strategy for Winning” built upon a coalition of c. Foreign policy expert voters he called “Invisible Americans,” a sort of reprise of Bill d. Unions Clinton’s “forgotten middle class”: Contest the black vote at every opportunity. Keep him pinned down there. As this race unfolds, the winning coalition for us is clearer Organize on college campuses. We may not be number 1 and clearer. There are three demographic variables that there, but we have a lot of fans—more than enough to explain almost all of the voters in the primary—gender, sustain an organization in every college. party, and income. Race is a factor as well, but we are fighting hard to neutralize it. Penn’s prescription is notable because it is the rare instance We are the candidate of people with needs. of a Clinton campaign goal that panned out—the coalition We win women, lower classes, and Democrats (about she ended up winning a year later is the one described here. 3 to 1 in our favor). Penn’s memo is also notable for its tone: it reinforces rather Obama wins men, upper class, and independents than confronts the Clintons’ biases. “The biggest problem we (about 2 to 1 in his favor). have is the troika that has been set up to tear Hillary down,” Edwards draws from these groups as well. he wrote. Our winning strategy builds from a base of women, builds on top of that a lower and middle class constitu- It is a vast right and left wing conspiracy. Listening to Brit ency, and seeks to minimize his advantages with the high Hume say that Obama is surging while Hillary failed to do class democrats. X is almost comical and certainly transparent. The right If we double perform with WOMEN, LOWER AND knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila MIDDLE CLASS VOTERS, then we have about 55% of the Hun, and a third party would come in then anyway. the voters. The reason the Invisible Americans is so powerful is By contrast, top consultants like Karl Rove usually aim that it speaks to exactly how you can be a champion for to temper their clients’ biases with a cold dose of realism. I those in needs [sic]. He may be the JFK in the race, but suspect the damaging persecution complex that both Clin- you are the Bobby. tons displayed drew much of its sustenance from memos like this one. Clinton was already under attack for an attitude of Penn also left no doubt about where he stood on the question “inevitability”—the charge being that she imperiously viewed of a positive versus negative strategy.