Bill Clinton, the one-man steamroller
AS A biographer of Bill Clinton, I find it fascinating to watch him battle Senator Barack Obama in South Carolina. Yes, he's doing it on behalf of his wife, and yes, he's sincere in thinking Hillary would make the better president. Still . . .
People underestimate what a competitive animal Bill Clinton is. It's the blood that runs through his veins, the fire that ignites him. He grew up in a little town defending his mother against a trigger-happy, alcoholic stepfather; he was considered fat and nerdy, but grew tall and genial. His energy and intelligence amazed everyone - so extraordinary, in fact, that his very paternity was - and is still - questioned in Hope, Ark. This man is, like Lyndon Johnson, a one-man steamroller when he wants something. And now he wants his wife to be chief executive of America Inc. Does Obama stand a chance?
Clinton lost four major times in his political life: in 1970 when seeking election to Congress at age 28; in 1980 after his first term as governor of Arkansas, at age 34; in 1992 in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, at age 45; and in 1994, when - with his face morphed onto local Democratic candidates - Republicans swept to victory in the great midterm meltdown election that gave them a majority in both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
In each case, Clinton suffered severe depression - but bounced back with renewed energy and determination to win. Each defeat made him wiser, more savvy in dealing with the tactics of his opponent. In 1974, the would-be congressman omitted to monitor ballot-counting in Fort Smith, Ark., and lost by barely 3,000 votes. "He was literally on the floor," a female friend recalled, "lying there moaning and groaning and counting the noses of everyone who didn't vote for him . . . talking about how the Republicans had stolen the election."
In 1980, having unwisely raised state motor vehicle taxes, the youngest-ever-elected governor of Arkansas lost to a happy-go-lucky creationist more in tune with local Southern sentiment. "When the news came in he was really very upset, in tears" recalled his friend Jim Blair. A babysitter coming to the mansion found him on the floor, kicking, screaming, and bawling like a baby. "After he lost the election he didn't want to take all that responsibility for it. He wanted to blame it on Jimmy Carter," Blair remembered. As for Clinton's refusal to consider switching career to gain experience outside of politics, Blair said, "He looked me in the eyes, and he said, 'There's nothing else I want to do.' I thought, Man! You're a sick butt!"
But the butt persevered - and won back the governor's mansion in 1982, to hold it five times. Similarly in New Hampshire when draft-avoidance and the Gennifer Flowers scandal seemed to doom his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, he responded with renewed determination - combining inspirational rhetoric with tough political tactics in destroying rivals, by whatever means he could, especially negative advertising.
"He wasn't a nice man - but nice men don't win wars," was an epithet said of the British general, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who commanded the successful D-Day armies - and this could well have been said of Clinton's maturation as political leader.
Faced with the Newt Gingrich-led Republican avalanche in Congress, he didn't despair as president; he summoned a Republican, Dick Morris, to X-ray Republican intentions and weaknesses, and proceeded to give a masterly demonstration of presidential firmness, bringing the civil war in Bosnia to a close while simultaneously defeating Gingrich's shutdown of the US government.
The lesson? Here is a man, a born politician, who can never admit to himself or the public he is wrong, but equally, who never lets up - and never stops crafting his next step, his next battle, his next victory by learning from defeat.
Want to know how Hillary reversed her loss in Iowa? Want to watch Hillary make her way to the Democratic convention in Denver? Watch Bill Clinton - carefully.
For Obama, it's galling to have to fight not just a woman who wants to be the first female president, but a man who was, already, the Muhammad Ali of his time - and still is, in many ways. But studying Bill Clinton's rise to power, not that of Ronald Reagan, won't do the senator from Illinois any harm, either.
Nigel Hamilton, a biographer of Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, is a fellow at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at UMass-Boston.
