Hillary Clinton announces her 'listening tour' at the Moynihan farm, Pindar's Corners, New York, July 7, 1999 [AP Archive]
On a
bright summer morning in early July, 1999, some 300 reporters descended on the
Moynihan family farm in Pindar’s Corners, upstate New York. They had come to
cover the start of a state-wide ‘listening tour’ to be undertaken by First Lady
Hillary Clinton. Though Clinton had yet to make a formal announcement, it was
widely expected she would seek election to the Senate from New York to replace
Pat Moynihan, who would be standing down at the end of his fourth term.
Illinois-born, and having spent most of her career in Arkansas and Washington,
Clinton was already fielding accusations of carpetbagging. Outraged protestors clustered
at every stop on her tour. ‘A New Yorker for New York,’ read one of their
signs. ‘Hillary Listen: Go Home!’ read another.[1]
Clinton
had come to Pindar’s Corners in search of a benediction from the man she
aspired to replace. Moynihan and Clinton had a private meeting in the converted
wooden schoolhouse in which the former did most of his writing and then the
pair emerged to take questions from the media throng. Clinton acknowledged that
voters had ‘legitimate questions’ about her candidacy and that she had ‘real
work to do, to get out and listen and learn from the people of New York, and to
demonstrate that what I’m for is as important if not more important than where
I’m from.’ Standing beside her at the microphone and beaming genially, Moynihan
was bullish when asked about Clinton’s prospects: ‘I hope she will go all the
way. I mean to go all the way with her.’ After questions, they walked away from
the microphone arm-in-arm.
Those who witnessed that
tableau – the outgoing New York senator unwavering in his support for his
likely successor – could be forgiven for thinking that Moynihan was a long-time
Clinton ally. In fact, his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton was far
more complicated and fractious, riven with tensions that emerged from differing
policy priorities and personal animosities. As one particularly snarky report
on the Pindar’s Corners summit noted, anyone who ‘has spent any of the past
seven years reading American newspapers … can remember an instance or two when
the Clinton-Moynihan relationship seemed scarcely less hostile than that of
Montague-Capulet.’[2]
But
that hostility was by no means foreordained. In some respects, Moynihan and
Bill Clinton should have been natural ideological partners. Both were
self-identified defenders of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party against
what they perceived as they excesses of post-1960s liberalism. In the 1970s,
Moynihan had been associated with the Coalition for a Democratic Majority
(CDM), an organisation founded in the aftermath of George McGovern’s landslide 1972
defeat to repudiate the ‘New Politics’ liberalism that McGovern’s campaign had
embodied, and return the Democratic Party to its ‘Vital Center’ traditions.[3]
The CDM had all but vanished by the early 1980s, but did serve as a model for
the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), another internal party organisation
founded by moderate Democrats after another landslide defeat in a presidential
election (in that instance, Walter Mondale’s loss of 49 states to Ronald Reagan
in 1984).[4]
The DLC was established to push the Democratic Party to embrace pro-market
solutions, moderate social positions, and a more hawkish foreign policy. Bill
Clinton had been one of the founding members of the DLC, and also served as
chair, 1990-91. As the two belonged to essentially the same wing of the party,
and had fought many of the same opponents in their political careers, it would
have been reasonable to expect them to have a harmonious working partnership.
From the off, however, relations
were strained. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Moynihan had endorsed his
Senate colleague, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska (‘My tiger,’ Moynihan called him).[5]
Even so, Moynihan later took a share of the credit for Clinton’s victory. After
Kerrey dropped out in March, Moynihan was featured in Clinton’s TV ads in New
York denouncing California governor Jerry Brown, Clinton’s principal rival for
the nomination, for supporting a flat tax that he claimed would jeopardise the
Social Security trust fund. ‘And [Clinton] won New York, and that’s why he’s
president today,’ Moynihan boasted on Meet
the Press in early 1993.[6]
Clinton’s decision to appoint Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as Treasury
Secretary elevated Moynihan to the chairmanship of the Senate Finance
Committee, on which he had served since 1977. In this position, Moynihan had
jurisdiction over the policy areas at the top of the Clinton agenda, health
care and welfare reform. The White House managed to offend the new chairman almost
immediately, when a ‘top administration official’ told Time magazine, ‘[Moynihan]
can’t control Finance like Bentsen did. He’s cantankerous but … we’ll roll
right over him if we have to.’[7]
The president was
furious with the quote, phoning Moynihan the same day to assure him that if found,
the leaker would be fired. Clinton’s efforts to repair the breach went further,
as one White House strategist recalled: ‘We had Liz [Moynihan’s wife and
campaign manager] and Pat and Hillary and Bill dinners. We had Liz and Pat and
Hillary and Bill movies.’[8]
The president even made a personal appearance at a Moynihan fundraiser,
praising New York’s senior senator in lavish terms: ‘You know, before I met Pat
Moynihan, I actually thought I knew something about Government. Now I just feel
like I’m getting a grade every time I talk in front of him.’[9]
Within a year of Clinton
assuming office, Moynihan had clashed with the president on numerous fronts. He
dismissed Clinton’s promises to ‘end welfare as we know it’ as ‘boob bait for
the Bubbas,’ disparaged the rationale for Clinton’s health care reform
proposals (‘we don’t have a health care crisis in America’), and was the first
Democratic senator to call for an independent counsel to investigate the
Whitewater, a failed Arkansas real-estate venture that seemed at one point
poised to engulf the First Family. He also publicly mused about holding the
Clinton health care reform proposals ‘hostage’ if the White House failed to deliver
on welfare.[10]
The issue of welfare
reform ought to have been the highest priority of the new administration as far
as Moynihan was concerned. He was therefore infuriated by Clinton’s decision to
focus on health care. Reforming the health system was of particular importance
to Hillary Clinton, who led on the formulation of the legislative package in a
way that was unprecedented for a First Lady. As Finance Committee chair,
Moynihan was crucial to the success of the proposals. To the administration’s
chagrin, his behaviour throughout the ferocious, protracted battle was
sometimes less than helpful. Before the full bill had even been published, for
instance, Moynihan was publicly rubbishing the plans as a ‘fantasy.’ For all
that Moynihan disliked the lengthy and technical bill that the White House ultimately
produced, he did labour to produce a workable compromise – as Bill Clinton
himself private acknowledged – but without success.[11]
Democratic hopes of a major overhaul of the healthcare system would have to
wait another decade and a half.
In the 1994 midterm
elections the Republican Party won control of Congress for the first time since
the 1950s, in part by exploiting public discontent over the long and
unproductive health care fight. Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House and
Moynihan lost his committee chairmanship. Chastened by this ‘Republican
revolution,’ Clinton turned back to welfare reform to reassert his moderate
bona fides in advance of his own re-election. Though Moynihan had been pressing
the White House to tackle welfare, he was virulently opposed to the Work and
Responsibility Act that Clinton eventually sent to Congress. In particular, he
opposed the provision to eliminate Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC), a New Deal-era programme that provided direct cash transfers to single
mothers with young children. The plans to replace AFDC with the more stringent
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme, argued Moynihan,
would lead to a steep increase in child poverty. To Moynihan, the proposals were
the panicked response of a White House still shell-shocked by the unexpected
Republican insurgency. ‘I had no idea,’ he declared on the Senate floor, ‘how
profoundly what used to be known as liberalism was shaken by the last election.’
Moynihan was one of only eleven Senate Democrats who declined to vote for the
measure. In the aftermath, he wrote fuming to Senator Edward Kennedy that
‘[t]he Democratic party did not have to go along with this, but sure as hell
did.’[12]
Moynihan remained
basically estranged from the White House for the rest of Clinton’s tenure.
During the Lewinsky scandal, though it had initially seemed that he would
endorse impeachment, he ultimately came out against removing Clinton from
office, saying that to do so might ‘very readily destabilize the Presidency.’[13]
He declined to defend Clinton personally, however, and couched his opposition
entirely in institutional terms. ‘Senators, do not take the imprudent risk that
removing William Jefferson Clinton for low crimes will not in the end
jeopardize the Constitution itself,’ he urged his colleagues.[14]
A few months before the
Senate acquitted Bill Clinton, Moynihan announced his intention not to seek a
fifth term. When Hillary began exploring the possibility of running to replace
him, Moynihan was receptive. He met with Clinton, as did Liz, on several
occasions and arranged ‘tutorials’ with leading figures to bring her up to
speed on New York politics and policy. In one private meeting, Clinton joked
that she had taken to sleeping with Moynihan’s ‘Fisc.’ (the annual report the
senator prepared on New York’s fiscal relationship with the federal government)
under her pillow.[15]
Hillary Clinton’s assiduous courtship of Moynihan in these months doubtless
went some way toward smoothing relations between them. Pat surely also
recognised the advantages New York State would enjoy with a former First Lady
for a representative.
The accusations of
carpetbagging dogged Clinton throughout the campaign, as did the related, and
by now wearily familiar, charge of ‘inauthenticity.’ Some cited examples of
this were silly, as when Clinton, supposedly a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, was
ridiculed for donning at New York Yankees cap at one of the latter’s games. However,
such froths spoke to a deeper mistrust of Clinton, to the belief that she was a
power-hungry opportunist who had parachuted into a convenient race. Clinton was
sensitive to such accusations and tried to assuage them with a combination of
hard work and humour. She embarked on a campaign tour of all 62 of New York’s
counties (in a Ford conversion van that the press nicknamed the ‘HRC
Speedwagon’), stopping at diners and cafes to speak with voters; she made appearances
on David Letterman’s show and spoke at the annual press dinner in Albany in
character as a ‘carpetbagger.’[16]
Moynihan, for his part, span Clinton’s out-of-state origins to her advantage,
cheerfully telling one interviewer that she would bring ‘that magnificent,
young, bright, able Illinois-Arkansas enthusiasm to New York, which probably
could use a little.’[17]
Moynihan was effusive in
his praise of Clinton on the stump. ‘Eleanor Roosevelt would have loved Hillary
Clinton,’ he told audiences. (This was, Clinton wrote in her memoirs, ‘the
ultimate compliment’).[18]
The fact that Clinton had the enthusiastic support of the popular outgoing
senator certainly gave her campaign an invaluable boost. Indeed, one ad for her
Republican opponent, Rick Lazio, included a mocked-up image of Lazio alongside
Moynihan (the two had never been photographed together) in an effort to dilute
the benefit Clinton received from Moynihan’s backing.[19]
For all their disagreements, Moynihan respected Clinton’s determination and
policy nous. She would be, he said proudly, his ‘legacy’ to his state.
However, Moynihan
continued to assert his independence from the Clinton administration. In
September 1999, two months after publicly anointing Hillary as his successor, Moynihan
endorsed New Jersey senator, and former basketball star, Bill Bradley over
sitting vice president Al Gore. ‘Nothing is the matter with Mr. Gore,’ he
explained to the press, ‘except that he can’t be elected President.’
Unsurprisingly, he was asked how in his opinion Hillary Clinton differed from
Gore. ‘I think she can be elected Senator,’ he replied, to laughter.[20]
As indeed she was. On
Election Day 2000, with the Gore-Bush race grinding to a stalemate that would
end in the Supreme Court, Clinton won handily, by a margin of over 800,000
votes. Riding in a freight elevator down to the victory celebrations in the
ballroom of the Grand Hyatt hotel, Bill Clinton told Moynihan, ‘If it had not
been for your endorsement, Hillary would never have won.’ Whether or not the
president was merely being courteous, Moynihan was pleased enough with the
compliment to record it in a memo for his files.[21]
If Hillary Clinton does win the Democratic nomination, and the White House,
later this year, Moynihan may justly claim a sliver of the credit for having
assisted in the rise of the first woman to serve as president of the United
States. He certainly would not have hesitated to stake that claim.
[1] The Clintons would purchase
a home in Chappaqua, just north of New York City, two months later. Michael
Grunwald, “First Lady Dives Into N.Y. Bid, Carpetbag Issue,” Washington Post, July 8, 1999.
[2] Tish Durkin, “Hillary’s
Got A Fella – Pat Moynihan,” New York
Observer, July 12, 1999.
[3] Drawing on New Left
currents, New Politics liberals advanced a systemic critique of American
politics and society that ‘Vital Center’ liberals rejected. They were generally
more culturally liberal (McGovern was famously, and inaccurately, denounced as
the candidate of ‘acid, amnesty, and abortion’) and dovish on foreign
policy. Coalition for a Democratic Majority ad,
New York Times and Washington Post-Times Herald, December 7, 1972. For more on the New Politics, and the
McGovern campaign, see Bruce Miroff, The
Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the
Democratic Party (Lawrence, KS, 2009).
[4] The DLC was formally
dissolved in 2011 and its records purchased by the Clinton Foundation. For more
on the organisation’s heyday, see Kenneth S. Baer, Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of
Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton (Lawrence,
KS, 2000).
[5] “Moynihan Endorses
Kerrey’s Candidacy,” NYT, January 25,
1992.
[6] Tim Russert, “Wit and
Wisdom: Moynihan and Meet the Press,”
in Robert A. Katzmann (ed.), Daniel Patrick
Moynihan: The Intellectual in Public Life (Washington, D.C., 1998), 162.
[7] According to Carl
Bernstein, the official was Bentsen himself, trying to send a coded warning to
Moynihan through the press. Carl Bernstein, A
Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York, 2007), 261.
[8] Godfrey Hodgson, The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, A Biography (Boston and New York, 2000), 351.
[9] William J. Clinton,
“Remarks at a Fundraiser for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in New York City,”
December 13, 1993, The American
Presidency Project, <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=46235>
[10] Richard L. Berke,
“Prof. Moynihan and Clinton: A Course in ‘Washington 101’,” NYT, January 14, 1994.
[11] In private after-hours
conversations with historian Taylor Branch, Clinton was keenly aware of
Moynihan’s difficulty in corralling the members of this committee. ‘The health
care bill was stuck in the Senate Finance Committee … [and Moynihan] was
finding no majority for any version of the bill. Clinton analysed Moynihan’s
performance with sympathy, observing that he was saddled with bad luck.’ Taylor
Branch, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling
History With the President (London, 2009).
[12] Hodgson, The Gentleman from New York, 375-76; Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, Steven R. Weisman (ed.), Daniel
Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary (New York,
2010), 605.
[13] Richard L. Berke,
“Moynihan Favors A Clinton Censure,” NYT,
December 25, 1998.
[14] Hodgson, The Gentleman from New York, 399.
[15] Dirkin, “Hillarys’
Got A Fella – Pat Moynihan.”
[16] Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Living History (London,
2003), 510-13.
[17] Hodgson, The Gentleman from New York, 399.
[18] “For Clinton
Faithful, Vindication Comes With Groundbreaking Victory,” NYT, November
8, 2000; Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living
History (London, 2003), 513.
[19] Rodham Clinton, Living History, 520.
[20] Adam Nagourney, “In
an Endorsement of Bradley, Moynihan Dismisses Gore,” NYT, Sept 24, 1999.
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