Adventures in Correspondentland (12 page)

A few weeks before he left office, as he attended The Foundry for the last time as president, Clinton even had the front to deliver the sermon, the unexpected announcement of which in the morning's order of service had me scrambling madly around for a pen and scraps of paper on which to transcribe. In full ‘Sunday morning Bill' mode, Clinton was quite brilliant, the best I had seen him in years. He quoted John Quincy Adams: ‘There is nothing quite so pathetic in life as an ex-president.' He bemoaned how his new-found reliance on commercial air travel would be a major test of his Christian bearing and confessed that he might well find it disorientating for a while to walk into a room without a band striking up ‘Hail to the Chief'.

His sermon included an oblique reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal – ‘the storm and the sunshine of the last eight years', as he put it – and a brief rumination on the poison that had polluted Washington, which produced another allusion to impeachment: ‘I have spent a lot of time, as you might have noticed, in a reasonably combative arena. I am not without competitive instincts. A lot of days, just showing up was an act of competition.'

He acknowledged the spiritual support of The Foundry's minister, the Reverend J. Philip Wogaman, who met Clinton for weekly one-on-one sessions, and who once described the president to me, with a wry smile and delightful ecclesiastical understatement, as ‘a work in progress'.

Then, as he looked to the future, the self-styled architect of the ‘bridge to the twenty-first century' did the vision thing anew. He described a world of greatly enhanced global interdependence, of new opportunities to relate to people across national, cultural and religious lines and of the breathtaking advances in biomedical sciences, which had the potential to dramatically lengthen and improve lives. Foreshadowing the mood of paranoia that followed 9/11, he warned that the biggest threat to humankind would be ‘the fear of the other'. Finally, he thanked his fellow parishioners ‘for your constant reminder in ways large and small that though we have all fallen short of the glory, we are all redeemed by faith in a loving God'.

Afterwards, as members of the congregation filed past the Clintons and performed various genuflections, I thrust out my own hand and thanked him for his work in Northern Ireland. (It would have been churlish in the circumstances to bring up Bosnia or Rwanda, I hope you will agree.) Clinton gave a slow, knowing nod and even managed to convey the sense that I had somehow managed to move him. No longer in need of votes, now he was in search of a legacy. As he gripped my hand, he gave me the distinct feeling of being the most important complimenter in the room.

Just as Afghanistan conjured up adventure and romance for the boots wing of the foreign-correspondent corps, New Hampshire fired the imaginations of those who ploughed their trade in suits. For a White House correspondent especially, confined for years on end inside the presidential bubble, nothing was more professionally invigorating than being allowed out on the campaign trail on quadrennial political furlough.

The reporting life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was nothing if not eventful – for three years out of every four, there were few better datelines than the White House – but the road that led there was more beguiling. In the theme park of Afghanistan, correspondents had to criss-cross the country to find the warlords, poppy fields or Taliban. In New Hampshire, everywhere was Candidateland: diners, truck-stops, ski-fields, high schools, hotdog stands, veterans' halls, white clapboard churches, college campuses and even the frozen lakes that were dotted in the winter months with bobhouses, the ice-fishing huts beloved of New Hampshirites.

If one rose early before breakfast, it was usually possible to have filmed most of the major candidates by lunch: schmoozing a pot-bellied trucker, conducting a high-school band, gladhanding
a postman, tobogganing down an icy hill, listening empathetically to a voter, or consuming a plate of bacon and eggs, sunny side up, then making sure to leave an over-generous tip.

Rather than
The New York Times
or
The Washington Post
,
The New Hampshire Union Leader
and
The Telegraph
of Nashua were the papers of record. The Wayfarer Inn in Bedford, nestled close to a covered wooden bridge and configured around a millpond, was the place to stay. Television producers especially loved its man-made waterfall, a perfect, if counterfeit, New England backdrop for live crosses to the studio in New York or Atlanta. Correspondents would stand before it, talking about how New Hampshirites liked authenticity in their candidates and how easily they could spot a fake.

The state's most famous water feature was overlooked by its most famous watering hole. Here, in the Wayfarer bar, reporters conducted much of their news-gathering, usually with a whisky or beer on the bar in front of them and, ideally, a loose-lipped campaign aide at their side. When finally he hung up his notepad, one legendary campaign reporter, the great Jack Germond of
The Baltimore Sun
, even had his bar stool officially retired.

Though Iowa could boast the first caucus of election season, it was New Hampshire, with the country's first fully fledged primary, which could make or break candidates – presidents, as well, as Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson could both attest. Most of us had read the history, and virtually all of us were familiar with the reportage of Hunter S. Thompson, who had brought his gonzo journalism to New Hampshire in 1972 and found himself shooting the breeze with Richard M. Nixon and peeing in a urinal alongside George McGovern.

Lavatorial or otherwise, all of us craved the same intimacy,
which only New Hampshire could deliver. And anomalous though it was to grant such an insignificant state such inordinate power – New Hampshire has a population the size of San Antonio, Texas, a demographic that is 97 per cent white and a cranky, contrarian streak summed up by its famed number-plate motto ‘Live Free or Die' – none of us asked too many questions for we were all having too much fun. This was the Kentucky Derby of American politics, and everyone wanted to be in the paddock for an initial look at the runners.

The first election of the new millennium had promise. Not since the end of the Reagan era had the presidential nominations of both parties been up for grabs, and New Hampshire had attracted a compelling assortment of characters. On the Democratic side, Vice President Al Gore was several characters all in one, an angst-ridden candidate so unsure of himself that he even took advice on what shade of clothing he should wear. ‘Earth colours' recommended his unofficial adviser, the author Naomi Wolf.

Up against Gore was the former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, a basketball star with the charisma of a chartered accountant, whom reporters lent a more dramatic persona in order to enliven their own lives as much as his. For a time, it looked as if the movie star Warren Beatty might also enter the race, which was the cause of much merriment. No candidate had ever promised such skeletal riches – Cher, Mary Tyler Moore, Joan Collins, Julie Christie, Natalie Wood, Diane Keaton and even Madonna – though his journey to the White House never progressed much further than the driveway of his Beverly Hills home. At least the speculation allowed us to perform one of the great rituals of any presidential campaign: to talk up a frivolous celebrity candidate – a position filled nowadays by Donald Trump.

On the Republican side, there were the usual publicity hounds and delusional no-hopers. Alan Keyes, a black radio talk-show host, right-wing ideologue and former diplomat, evidently thought it was possible to go from mid-ranking US ambassador to commander-in-chief in one Herculean leap.

Only marginally more plausible as a candidate was Steve Forbes, a nerdy businessman with Harry Potter glasses, vast riches, a celebrated name and the sense of entitlement that went with it. Given the strength of the Bible-belt right, Gary Bauer, a pocket-sized evangelical, hoped his candidacy would be blessed by providence, if not charisma. Yet his main contribution to the primary season was to produce its viral video sensation: the slapstick footage that showed him tumbling backwards off a stage and disappearing through the curtained backdrop, as he lost control of his frying pan in a candidates' pancake-flipping competition.

The press corps' favourite was the Arizona senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran who came with a story of marvellous heroism and a campaign bus, the ‘Straight Talk Express', that felt more like a frat-house on wheels. On board, McCain provided an endless supply of coffee and doughnuts, an even richer stream of pithy quotes, and something reporters valued even more, which was virtually round-the-clock access.

After the dissembling, obfuscation and perpetual spin of the Clinton years, here was the human rejoinder: an authentic candidate, comfortable in his own skin, seemingly untroubled by demons from his past and revelling in his insurgent candidacy against the Republican establishment and religious right.

Eight years later, after cosying up to his one-time foes in a second bid for Republican nomination that was both less
unorthodox and more successful, McCain appeared before the American electorate in a dreadfully amputated form. Yet in 2000, he was so vital and unpredictable that virtually the entire press corps succumbed to a collective crush. When the Arizonian stood before town meetings in New Hampshire and exhorted his audience to become part of something much larger than themselves, one sensed that reporters were itching to shut their laptops, cast aside their notepads and sign up to his campaign as volunteers. Instead, they did something that was far more useful to McCain's hopes of pulling off an unexpected victory, which was to produce a narrative of the campaign that talked up his chances. There was no question, the Wayfarer bar was McCain country.

His great rival, George W. Bush, came with an absorbing storyline and an even more stellar bloodline: a grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was a senator and a father, George Herbert Walker, who had been president. Eyeing up a possible Bush restoration, reporters naturally seized upon the Oedipal overtones of his candidacy. The works of Shakespeare were also mined for parallels, with George W. cast as Prince Hal, a son known for the discretions of his past, determined to redeem his father's reign.

As an aside, perhaps we should pause briefly to reflect on how campaign reportage relies on these kinds of tropes, and how Homer and the Bard are topped in the analogy league table only by American sport. Adopting the popular baseball argot, candidates invariably step up to the plate, swing for the fences, produce policies or strategies out of left field, get to first base if they survive beyond New Hampshire or Iowa, strike out if they do not, and demonstrate whether they are ready for the major
leagues thereafter. They might even find themselves in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded. If successful, they would have gone the whole nine yards, produced various knockout punches, full-court presses and be on the verge of a slam dunk or home run. If not, they would be on the ropes and about to throw a ‘Hail Mary' pass. My advice to anyone covering a US campaign would be to gain a rudimentary knowledge of Shakespeare, starting with the tragedies, and then invest in a glossary of American sporting terms. But I digress.

More than a decade on, and volumes of ‘Bushisms' later, it is easy to forget that in the early days of his candidacy Bush appeared to have the superlative presidential résumé, and be capable of home runs, slam dunks and of maturing from Prince Hal to King Henry without even breaking a sweat. A Harvard MBA and a graduate of Yale, he was regarded as highly intelligent. His enormously profitable stewardship of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise gave him credibility as a corporate chief executive. As governor of Texas, he was regarded as an innovative policymaker, especially in the field of education. By becoming the first Texas governor to win two consecutive four-year terms, he had also demonstrated his vote-winning capabilities. His victories were thought to stem from a winning personality and his credo of compassionate conservatism, which allowed him to appeal to the centre while at the same time shoring up his base – twin attributes easily transferable to the national stage.

Helpfully for the profile writers, he could also identify a crucible moment in his life: the dehydrated haze of the morning after his 40th birthday, when he woke up with such a clawing hangover that he promised never to touch liquor again.

Admittedly, Bush did not seem to have much interest in
foreign affairs. Nor had he travelled widely. However, at a time when American hegemony appeared settled and unrivalled, it did not seem to matter. No candidate in the field had greater name recognition or fund-raising prowess, which in turn gave him another high-value political commodity, the air of inevitability.

As his key strategist, image-maker and intellectual blood bank, Bush could also call on one of the smartest political consultants in the land: Karl Rove, a modern-day Lee Atwater, whom he christened ‘Turd Blossom'. In the early months of the campaign, it was Rove who came up with a reworking of William McKinley's front-porch campaign in 1896, whereby Bush rarely left the safety of the governor's mansion in Austin, and key supporters, donors and journalists paid visits to him.

Fearing closer scrutiny, Rove had come up with a candidate-protection program, but at the start of the campaign it only enhanced the governor's aura of invincibility, to use another overworked expression from the campaign phrasebook. Here again, it is worth reflecting upon the respect that Bush once commanded. Even liberal-minded Europeans, who later dubbed him the Toxic Texan and worse, succumbed to his charm. Back in early 1999, I remember watching the swooning response of a London-based BBC producer at the sight of George W. greeting the then British Conservative leader William Hague during a trip to the State Capitol Building in Austin. ‘Wow, look at that charisma,' the producer gushed, when all Bush had done was walk into the room, thrust out his hand and said, ‘Hi, how are you?' Though hard now to picture, it was typical of the flattering mood among journalists at the time.

George W. Bush's stumbling journey towards caricature only began later in 1999, when he started to venture further from his
porch. First, he started confusing his Greeks with his ‘Grecians', and his Kosovars with his ‘Kosovarians'. Then, in December 1999, just a month before the New Hampshire primary, he flunked that infamous pop quiz in which he was asked to name the leaders of Chechnya (tough), Taiwan (less so), India (should have been straightforward) and Pakistan (Foreign Policy 101).

‘Wait, wait, is this fifty questions?' the governor floundered.

‘No, it's four questions of four leaders in four hotspots,' countered the schoolmarmish reporter, Andy Hiller, who worked for WHDH-TV in Boston but looked more like a plant from
Saturday Night Live
. Afterwards, Bush's press woman, Karen Hughes, tried to contain the fallout by arguing that the governor was running for the leadership of the free world rather than auditioning for a contestant's spot on
Jeopardy
, but the damage had been inflicted and has since been impossible to repair.

From reporters assigned to cover Bush on a daily basis came bizarre tales, not many of which ended up in print but that started to alter the conventional wisdom nonetheless. Frank Bruni of
The New York Times
told the story of the governor's attendance at a memorial service at Texas Christian University in September 1999 for the victims of a multiple shooting in Fort Worth in which seven were killed and a further seven injured. Throughout the service, as prayers, songs, bible readings and eulogies were offered up, Bush kept on sneaking glances at the press corps and pulling silly faces. ‘Bush turned around from time to time to shoot us little smiles,' Bruni later reflected. ‘He scrunched up his forehead, as if to ask us what we were up to back there. He wiggled his eyebrows, a wacky and wordless hello.' Given that Bush had signed a law allowing Texans to carry concealed weapons and enjoyed strong backing from the
gun lobby, his presence in the outdoor stadium was bound to attract close scrutiny. Yet that did not stop him acting like a mischievous pageboy at a society wedding, a reprise of his role in his father's White House.

Certainly, the voters of New Hampshire thought they had spotted a joker, and, in any case, they had fallen for McCain. So, on election night, we all pitched up at the Arizonian's hotel, where we saw him celebrate a lopsided victory of 49 per cent to 30 per cent. Unable to raise his arms above his shoulders, because of the injuries he had sustained during his stay at the Hanoi Hilton, McCain did a victory jig with his shuddering hands stretched out in front, like some smiling zombie in a low-budget science-fiction flick looking for a victim to strangle. Weeks later, as the campaign circus moved to South Carolina, he almost had to be restrained from performing the same manoeuvre on George W. Bush.