Putting the Ark. in Clark
In Little Rock, the Old Clinton Team Rallies Around a New Favorite Son
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 13, 2003; Page C01
Different candidate, but the scene was all too familiar. Little Rock, just near the river. Wesley Clark's "campaign headquarters," really a hovel with makeshift desks and no phone lines. Some of the old Clinton boys -- Eli Segal, Mark Fabiani -- pumping the candidate: There's no time, General Clark, you'll have to announce tomorrow. We'll stay up all night to write the announcement speech! Get up at 4 to prep for the morning shows!
But this time around Ron Klain skipped out early -- he had a client meeting the next morning -- and caught the 5 p.m. flight back to BWI.
For an impressive percentage of the old Clinton-Gore crowd, the Wesley Clark campaign is doubling as a college reunion. There they were at the New York Democratic presidential debate last month, a revival act strutting into the greenroom just late enough to cause a stir: Fabiani, Klain, Bruce Lindsey, Rahm Emanuel, Michael Waldman, plus scores of mid-level extras from "The War Room." Buzzing around their man, again, making news, again, bringing with them a whiff of those legendary days: the backroom of Doe's steakhouse, the time James Carville cracked an egg on that girl's head, victory night singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" maybe 20 times on the steps of the Little Rock statehouse.
"Hey, it's just like old times," says Terry McAuliffe, who as head of the Democratic National Committee is neutral but still nostalgic. "We're all back together again."
But as anyone from the VH1 generation can tell you, a reunion of old comrades is never just a happy occasion. Old feuds are revived, missing years are sized up, a suspicion lurks that the perfect chemistry happens only once in a lifetime. The band can get back together, but it's never the same.
At this exact time in 1991 they were no-name grunts, holed up in an old paint store, sleeping on couches to try to elect some guy dismissed by Republicans as the "failed governor of a small state." They were mostly kidless and if they had wives they never saw them. Back then, if they called Little Rock a "hole" they said it with pride, like you might complain about a favorite dive bar just off campus.
"Really naive," says Klain. "Totally idealistic. The whole thing had a generational feel about it. It didn't feel professional at all. It felt like we were making it up as we went along."
Now they come with baggage: kids old enough to voice their objections, demanding clients, more than a decade's worth of political enemies. Now they comfort each other that Little Rock, Clark's home town, has improved dramatically in the years since they camped there. But by that they mean Southwest Airlines has direct flights from Baltimore, so you can get in and out in a day.
"Not that we're in it just for the White House jobs," says Klain. "But it's less fresh, less naive. It just feels like the second time around."
Scanning the greenroom that day in New York, watching the scrubbed faces from the other campaigns flitting in and out, Klain had this thought: "Every other person in here has worked for me four, six years ago. I'm 42. I'm just way too old to be doing this." He recounts this moment while sitting in the new I Street offices of the law firm O'Melveny and Myers, where exotic plants grace the hushed marble hallways, where his name is etched in the frosted glass door.
On the far side of his office is the gallery of great moments: a photo of him cracking up at the podium while helping Al Gore prep for a debate, him and Clinton the day the president picked a new Supreme Court justice, framed news clips of their victories. On the bookshelves right over his desk are the family photos, nothing special, just the comfort of domestic routine, his three kids standing around the front door, sitting around, hugging his wife.
"It's been long enough," he says. "Part of me thinks it's somebody else's turn now."
Political Junkies
Veterans describe their first campaign as an incredible high, the second as a problem addiction. "Campaigns are one of the strongest narcotics known to man," says Bruce Reed, one of those grunts working on Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign who is now at the Democratic Leadership Council. "Once you've tried it, it spoils you for everything else. It's hard to go back to normal life. You're just waiting around for the next one to start."
Those considered lucky enough to have moved beyond temptation are the ones with the lucrative TV gigs, namely George Stephanopoulos, who's now an ABC news show host; James Carville, who has a role on the HBO show "K Street"; and Paul Begala, who co-hosts CNN's "Crossfire."
Although even Begala says: " 'Never' is a strong word. . . . Look, I miss it, and if I didn't have four children now I'd do it again. There's a part of you that's like the firehouse dog who's retired to a nice family in the suburbs. Once in a while you hear the bell and think, 'I gotta go fight that fire.' "
Reed misses the trail, too, but he uses what he calls "the methadone approach." He gets it out of his system by staying neutral, advising nearly all of the Democratic candidates on policy matters. "It doesn't bother me to go home to my family every night instead of sleeping on some couch in Little Rock," he says. "It's time for the younger people to experience these joys."
The ones who are not resisting fall into several categories, depending on their willingness to pick up and move to Little Rock. Last week Clark announced his key staff positions and half were Clinton-Gore veterans. Conspicuously missing were Fabiani and Klain, who've done a large share of the work since he announced his candidacy.
"I just can't," Fabiani says about going official or, God forbid, moving to Little Rock. "I've got two small kids and an existing list of clients I can't just leave in the lurch." He says he'll only help with the "start-up," although he admits, "You get totally drawn into it."
Some have already moved to Little Rock: or are about to: Eli Segal, who ran Clinton's first campaign, is the chairman and CEO of Clark's campaign. Vanessa Weaver, a Clinton appointee, has been with Clark from the start and is known as the XO, in charge of day-to-day operations. Matt Bennett, who worked on both Clinton campaigns, is now director of communications. Mickey Kantor, who chaired Clinton's first campaign, is now heading Clark's steering committee from Washington.
Other Clinton-Gore veterans are floating in Clark's orbit: Clinton friend Bill Oldaker is the election lawyer. Adviser Bruce Lindsey has traveled with Clark. Ex-speechwriter Michael Waldman and legal adviser Joel Johnson have helped with debate prep. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) is his strongest congressional supporter. Robert Rubin, Gene Sperling and Laura D'Andrea Tyson, the trio of Clinton economic luminaries, are giving advice. Andrea Evans, the wife of Chris Lehane, Gore's campaign press secretary, has also joined the campaign.
There are several theories about why the Clintonites converged on the Clark campaign. The meanest is that no one else asked them. The most cynical is that they think he can win. The most likely is that Clark announced late and had no political network, so there was a huge vacuum that could be quickly filled with experienced operatives.
The New Generation
From the newly improved Clark campaign office in Little Rock's old train station, Segal describes himself as a "Clinton person for thousands of years." Like most of the Clintonites, he'd met Clark only a couple of times before he signed on to the campaign. He supports him, he says, partly because he thinks he can win and partly because he inspires the kind of awe veterans of political wars feel for veterans of real ones:
"With Bill Clinton it was a personal thing," he says. "But with Wes -- I mean General Clark -- it's a different thing. It's a kind of quiet respect. You can't help but respect and honor what he's done for the country."
He doesn't mind moving to Little Rock because his kids are grown, and because the place holds fine memories for him. Just the other day he walked by the statehouse and flashed back to victory night, 1992, he and Carville swaying and singing "The Star Spangled Banner" over and over.
"It was such a magical moment," he says. "I never really thought it would happen to someone like me who'd spent their life balancing budget sheets."
This latest venture he describes as a "time warp. The same kind of raucous young energy, the cacophony of noises." But this time around it's happening sort of apart from him. "Look at them," he says, sweeping his arm toward the open room. There's a group of people roughly the same age as his children, all sitting and staring intently at laptops ("Yo, check out this blog," yells one), guys in goatees, their oxford shirts rumpled at the elbows, a girl in a military fatigue crop top that reads "Wesley Clark for President."
"They understand more than just the technology, they understand how to use it," he says. "Which is why it's easy for an old guy like me to thrive off their energy."
At lunchtime, a group of young Clark staffers heads over to Doe's, where Carville et al. used to order steaks after hours and hold backroom strategy sessions well into the night. They rented "The War Room," the documentary about Clinton's Little Rock campaign operation, a couple of weeks ago and worship the various characters. "That's us now, I guess," says one. All have left spouses, jobs, in some cases little kids, to move to a place where they know no one. They are uprooted, broke and yet happy, desperately earnest about their candidate, whom they refer to as "the General."
Chris Kofinis, a former professor at California State University, Northridge, has seen his wife "for half a day and two hours in a month," he says with a strange kind of pride. He is the prankster who thought up the idea of running a half-page "Draft Wesley Clark" ad in the local paper in Crawford, Tex., while President Bush was there on vacation.
But mostly they are deadly serious. The Draft Clark 2004 movement was "the most empowering experience of my life," says Susan Altrui, who quit her job as a debate coach at Colorado State University to join.
"Wesley Clark is the president we were promised as children growing up," says Altrui. "He is a real leader. Someone who inspires. Who cares. He is like the parent for the nation," she says, and then picks up a french fry.
Resisting Temptation
The General, meanwhile, is on his way to the next presidential debate in Arizona, where he will meet the debate prep team. With one exception they are old hands.
Waldman is on his way to Arizona too, but insists several times that he is not really involved. "No, no, no, no, no," he says, when asked if he is joining the campaign. "I have a new law practice and a book I'm promoting" -- an anthology of great presidential speeches called "My Fellow Americans." "I have no intention of being involved in a presidential campaign. Period."
During the Clinton campaign, Klain was the junior member of Gore's debate prep team. Now he's the senior person in charge of assembling the staff. He makes sure to mention that one of its members is Josh Margolis, a draft Clark leader who "brings a different perspective. It's been a big help."
Their job is fairly clinical, they say. It's not to formulate Clark's positions or ply him with jokes but rather to teach him to shoehorn his thoughts into neat 30-second sound bites.
Klain says the sessions are fun and not too straining. He has outstanding commitments, though. His daughter, now wise to the cycles of politics, has noticed that her bat mitzvah is scheduled for right after Super Tuesday. So far he's promised he'll be there.
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