A new book reveals the deep division that developed between Vice President
Al Gore and first lady Hillary Clinton during Bill Clinton’s years in the
White House. “For Love of Politics — Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White
House Years” by Sally Bedell Smith claims that Hillary not only tried to
usurp Al Gore’s role as vice president, she cost him the presidency in the
2000 election by draining funds and resources away from his campaign in
favor of her Senate bid. [Editor’s Note: Get Sally Bedell’s book
“For Love of Politics — Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years” —
Go here now. ] The bitter feelings between Gore and 2008 presidential
candidate Hillary are said to persist to this day, leading some
observers to speculate that Gore could enter the 2008 race after all —
a move that might prove a final payback to Hillary. The rift between
the then-new first lady and the vice president began to develop just days
after Bill Clinton’s inauguration, when he appointed Hillary to head his
healthcare task force, according to an excerpt, published in the November
issue of Vanity Fair, from Smith’s book. “The move took nearly all
his top officials by surprise, including Al Gore,” she writes. “Bill
had invested Gore with considerable responsibility, but his failure
to confide in his vice president was a telling sign of the real pecking
order.” Before long, administration officials came to realize that
Hillary would play a part in all of Bill’s decisions. “He would say,
‘Hillary thinks this. What do you think?’ White House counsel Bernard
Nussbaum told Smith. Staff members began calling Hillary “the Supreme
Court,” the final arbiter on many issues. Gore, meanwhile, was being
increasingly marginalized. White House insiders recalled meetings where
Hillary urged Bill to discount Gore’s advice, telling him: “Bill, you
are the president.” Smith observed: “The Clintons resented the Gores
because they were products of Washington’s prestigious private schools
and its social network . . . “Hillary always had an undercurrent of
competition with Al Gore that burst into the open from time to time.”
On Nov. 6, 1998, New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced
that he would not run for a fifth term. “The Moynihan seat had
in fact been on the Clintons’ radar for months,” Smith discloses,
and Hillary would eventually campaign for the seat while Gore
campaigned to succeed Bill in the White House. Even before the
campaigns began, the “center of gravity” in the Clintons’
relationship had been shifting from Bill to Hillary. Bill
was a lame duck, crippled by the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
and she was “the rising political star,” according to
Smith’s book, which will officially be published on Oct. 23.
“Hillary’s ascendancy had a significant impact on the
presidential prospects of Al Gore, diverting attention
and resources from his candidacy and adding to the growing
tensions between the Gores and the Clintons over Bill’s
involvement with Lewinsky,” Smith writes. On the day he
announced his candidacy for president, Gore said in a
televised interview that he thought Bill Clinton’s behavior
was “terribly wrong.” When Bill heard about the comment, he
“erupted” in anger. Bill was still a sitting president, in a
position to give Gore’s campaign major boosts, but according
to Smith, “in 1999 those resources were diverted from Gore to
Hillary ‘in a big way,’ said one member of the Gore team. ‘The
Clintons come first.’” That year, Hillary’s office had 86 major
speeches listed on the White House Web site — four times as many
as those listed for her husband and Gore combined. One dramatic
example of the “contest” between Hillary and Gore came in
September 1999 when the Federal Trade Commission was set to
release a report on violence in the media. “Under ordinary
circumstances, a vice president running for the presidency
would have first call on publicizing the report,” Smith notes.
“But Hillary insisted she should handle the rollout.” When
the decision was made to have Gore and the Clintons make
more or less simultaneous announcements, “this did not sit
well” with Gore and his vice presidential running mate Joe
Lieberman, and they decided to break the news on their own.
Perhaps more significantly, Hillary was also competing with
Gore for campaign contributions. Bill and Hillary “raised millions
for themselves, distracting attention from the presidential race,
siphoning off Democratic money, and further angering the vice
president and his team,” discloses Smith, a former New York Times
reporter whose other works include books about the Kennedy White
House and Princess Diana. She tells that when a friend of Tipper
Gore planned a fundraiser in Los Angeles, Hillary insisted on being
invited — “then shocked the vice president’s supporters by soliciting
donations for herself in front of Tipper.” The result of the
Gore-Hillary clash, according to Smith: “The colliding agendas
of the president, first lady, and vice president were gifts to
the Republicans.” When Hillary easily won her Senate seat,
rumors “almost immediately” started about a Hillary run for
the White House in 2004 or 2008, Smith writes. Gore, meanwhile,
went down to a bitter defeat to George Bush after a legal wrangle
over Florida votes that lasted 36 days. After the outcome was
determined, Gore and Bill Clinton met in the Oval Office on Dec. 21.
“It was an unpleasant encounter, as Gore forthrightly blamed Bill’s
scandals, while Bill rebuked Gore for failing to make the most of their
successful record,” Smith reveals. “Afterward, Bill told
[presidential adviser] Sidney Blumenthal they they had parted after
‘patching everything up,’ but in fact the mutual resentments among
the Clintons and Gore persisted.”
had parted after ‘patching everything up,’ but in fact the mutual resentments among the Clintons and Gore persisted.”
