Who's Who Inside the Clinton and Bush Campaigns
Bingham, Christopher Georges and Clara
WHO'S WHO THE CLINTON KIDS; THE BUSH BUNCH This special edition of Who ’s Who, by Christopher Georges and Clara Bingham, peeks inside the Clinton and Bush campaigns. Susan Threadgill will...
...Barbara Franklin, who took Bob Mosbacher’s job as Commerce secretary last December when Mosbacher moved over to the Bush campaign, is expected to leave in 1993...
...Aside from his economics background, Sperling, who was lured to Little Rock in June from the policy staff of New York Governor Mario Cuomo, also brings to the campaign expertise on the abortion issue, having served as a policy adviser to Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights Action League...
...And if conventional wisdom proves right, they will emerge as the stars of a staffing scenario termed the “Deputy Coup...
...Sperling is another veteran of the Dukakis campaign, where he first met up with Stephanopoulos and Boorstin...
...Wilensky, who has a Ph.D...
...He is known to be tough, brilliant, politically savvy, and ideologically moderate-but perhaps too milch so: He worked under two Republican liberals, Tom...
...As a young aide in the Nixon White House, he crafted the infamous list of Jews in the Labor Department, which tainted his political career...
...Gary Franks of Connecticut, a conservative Yalie, loses his reelection bid this year, he may also be considered for the HUD job...
...Also fond of jumping up on tables to make a point, he is described by a campaign coworker with the phrase, “If a tornado could talk...
...While the message makers take care of the day-to-day crises, the next level of advisers, the consultants, is led by James Carville, 47...
...Still, some water-cooler talk at the White House has it that Skinner will survive, but that his deputy, former Louisiana representative Henson Moore, may be sent to the Energy Department, where he would replace Admiral James Watkins as secretary...
...has had a hand in running the administration’s environmental policy...
...The plan has resurfaced this election as Clinton’s domestic G.I...
...Jack Kemp is also rumored to be a possible Franklin replacement...
...Carville, who was recruited by Clinton fresh from engineering Harris Wofford’s upset victory over Richard Thornburgh in the 1991 Pennsylvania Senate race, is often likened to Lee Atwater, the magician of Bush’s ’88 campaign and a consummate man of the people...
...Chances are also good that you know that Clinton and one of his top policy gurus, Robert Reich, studied together at Oxford as Rhodes scholars the same year-and even resided in the same college...
...Clara Bingham is a White House correspondent for Newsweek...
...Nick Brady, Bush’s longtime friend and adviser, is commonly considered an ineffective Treasury secretary and a weak spokesman for Bush...
...Kemp, who wants to run for president in 1996, has stayed at HUD, a political backwater, longer than anyone expected and will probably be rewarded...
...He is credited with resurrecting Quayle’s image by getting him to speak out on deregulation, tort reform, and those infamous ‘“family values...
...Be real...
...But Yeutter has yet to solve the problem, so both of .them will probably go unrewarded in the second term...
...Knowing the risk involved in appearing on the show (Imus mixes the caustic with the vicious), the message team drilled Clinton on how to deal with the supersnide radio host...
...Carville was a key player in planning Bill and Hillary’s “60 Minutes” state-of-their-union response to the Flowers allegations in January (he was reportedly moved to tears during the taping...
...Alongside Stephanopoulos are Bruce Reed and Paul Begala...
...The two candidates rumored for the Treasury seat are Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, CEO of America International Group, the most profitable insurance company in the country, and Donald Marron, CEO of the Wall Street brokerage firm Paine Webber...
...Although Darman has always kept his eye on the top post at Treasury (where he worked under Baker), EIush insiders say that the lifelong bureaucrat @arman has served in three Republican administrations) will probably venture into the private sector...
...Insiders say that Stephanopoulos, with his evercool demeanor, is also a calming influence on the candidate...
...Marlin Fitzwater, White House press secretary since 1987, is rumored to be contemplating leaving government after 22 years...
...Soderberg has carved out a reputation as one of the more respected foreign policy experts on the Hill...
...The Clinton campaign marks Soderberg’s third presidential campaign (she also worked for Walter Mondale and Dukakis...
...in economics, served as administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration at HHS...
...Insiders say that one contender is Kenneth Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati...
...The lagging economy, the deficit, and a bloodied banking industry would be major problems in a second Bush term...
...Zoellick, a “Grady Bunch” favorite of James Baker, would leave his job as undersecretary of state for economic and agricultural affairs to fill in for Moore, whose star has fallen even lower than Skinner’s at the West Wing...
...At the last minute, however, Brown pulled out of the Imus appearance, opting instead to do NBC’s “Today” show...
...Moley, who was active in each of the last two Republican campaigns, is an expert in health and education, two domestic issues that are likely to be noticed in Bush’s second term...
...If Rich Bond decides to do a private-sector tour, Matalin, 38, could be the first female director of the Republican National Committee...
...They are thirtysomething, moderate Republicans, many of whom got their start with the Reagan Revolution, then came of age in the Bush White House...
...And it is this team that has decided that Clinton should lay off Perot (at least for now) and instead let the Texas millionaire and the Texas billionaire battle it out between themselves...
...But now he is a political liability with conservatives on the Hill because of tax increases...
...A former Marine, middle school teacher, and lawyer, Carville prefers blue jeans to the pin-striped suits of politics...
...While Clinton is far from 44 points back, the upcoming battle for Carville and Clinton’s whiz kids looks just as daunting...
...When George Bush looks around for second-term talent, his eye will surely fall on the “Grady Bunch,” a group of young, energetic deputies whose names are still unknown outside the pages of policy-wonk weeklies...
...Skinner has successfully undermined Darman’s power over domestic po1.icy decisions by hiring Clayton Yeutter as “domestic policy czar...
...Kemp may want the high-profile Commerce job for a few years before he gets an office at the Heritage Foundation and begins plotting his path to the presidency...
...Coworkers say he has an uncanny knack for being able to decipher exactly which issues middle America cares most about...
...Another advantage: The president knows Moley well and likes him...
...Both men will probably leave the administraticin if Bush is reelected...
...trade representative, if not the more pivotal chief of staff position...
...For years now, Brady’s foes in the financial community have been wondering when someone will find an ambassadorship for him...
...He is an expert on budget and tax strategy due to his long tenure Ion the House Ways and Means and Budget committees...
...A more recent coup was Clinton’s sax-playing performance on the “Arsenio Hall Show...
...Bush likes to tap hardworking second bananas for top jobs...
...a behind-the-scenes operator, a policy junkie, and an extremely talented workaholic...
...Bill Frenzel...
...Zoellick was issues director for the: 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign, as well as James Baker’s close aide at both Treasury and State, which gave him a broad base of knowledge of economics and foreign policy...
...Informally led by the precocious George Stephanopoulos, 3 1, who essentially oversees both the policy and communications shops, the team plays a key role in determining how Clinton will appear on the all-important evening news...
...Clinton deputy Robert Boorstin, who was with Clinton in New York, teamed up with Rick Kaplan, a former TV producer and adviser to the campaign...
...And when opponents take a swipe at Clinton, it’s their job to think of how to swipe back...
...It was Greer, by the way, who helped mastermind Douglas Wilder’s 1990 gubernatorial victory...
...If you’re enough of a political junkie to be reading this column, you probably already know that it was Clinton Campaign Chairman Mickey Kantor who was rushed to New Hampshire in the wake of GeMifer Flowers’ allegations to rescue the campaign from the political brink...
...Susan Threadgill will return in September...
...delegation to the U.N...
...Begala, meanwhile, has served as a chief speechwriter working with Stephanopoulos to mix the broad message with the specific pollicy...
...Louisiana native Carville is also known for his personal eccentricities, such as refusing to change his underwear in the final week of a winning campaign for fear of arresting the good momentum...
...Congenial and already a skilled television spolresman, Stephanopoulos jumped from a key position on House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt’s staff to Clinton’s campaign last year when it became clear that Gephardt would not make a run for the Democratic nomination...
...These consultants are the Roger Aileses of the Clinton campaign-folks who make a living getting politicians elected but don’t necessarily help them govern...
...credited the appearance with swinging the momentum Clinton’s way, allowing him to escape New ‘fork respectably...
...Wofford, who was 44 points behind Thornburgh at the outset of the campaign, won by 10 percent...
...The high-powered business consultant and Republican fundraiser has gotten low marks at Commerce, where she has been criticized for being “invisible” and ineffective...
...He says he prefers USA Today to The New York Times and claims to base his political strategies on conversations he overhears at K-Mart...
...coworkers to action, serving as a sparkplug around campaign headquarters...
...Skinner proves once again that the administration’s only consistent message might well be: “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you lay the blame...
...Stephanopoulos and Boorstin link Clinton to his economic policy director, Gene Sperling, 32...
...So we’ll spare you the rehash on the campaign bigwigs and get to the folks you rarely hear about-but who have a lot more to do with how America sees and hears Bill Clinton on a day-to-day basis...
...Another reason why Franklin might leave is that her job will be an important political payoff position for someone who worked hard on the Bush reelection effort...
...It’s also where he rekindled his working relationship with Robert Reich, a policy mentor of Sperling’s and Clinton’s longtime friend...
...Stephanopoulos, a philosophy major at Columbia University and later a Rhodes scholar, first learned the art of manufacturing soundbites as ii message-meister for Dukakis...
...Greenberg is known as the toughest boss in America...
...Of course, even if Bush does appoint a group of young, energetic aides to top domestic policy positions, they won’t have an impact unless the president himself offers some policy leadership...
...Not that these kids run a tight ship...
...Again, just a handful of advisers call the shots...
...Chances are that the issue, a political hot potato, will not be tackled until well after the election is over...
...Mary Matalin, the Bush-Quayle campaign’s deputy political director and a protBg6 of Lee Atwater, could get Ron Kaufman’s job as White House political director...
...To fill first-term vacancies at the heads of Justice and Transportation, the president looked past high-profile candidates in favor of deputies like William Barr and Andrew Card...
...Their mission is to sculpt the longer-term strategy -whether or not to attack Ross Perot, whether to stress job creation or health care, how to translate the most recent poll results into a political ad, and how, to borrow a phrase of their own, to “define” their candidate...
...When Sullivan eventually exits, Gail Wilensky, the deputy assistant to the president for policy development, may get the HHS job...
...Carville’s gang generally provides the political outline and leaves it to the message team to fill in the details...
...James still seems the safest bet...
...and lobbyist and former Oh4B official Deborah Steelman...
...he also worked on Dukakis’ opposition research team (which makes him doubly useful to Clinton this time around...
...bill...
...Just days after he joined the Clinton staff last month, Sperling was deputized by Clinton to help develope the policy behind the candidate’s “100-day legislative agenda,” a sweeping plan that the Clinton team hopes will convince voters that their man is the true agent of change...
...Malek has since apologized, and 20 years later, he may now be about to hold a high-profile administration job-possibly Carla Hill’s position as U.S...
...likely candidates are Bill Kristol, Kevin Mole,y, and Bob Zoellick...
...Likewise, Carville pushes Clinton toward issues he feels people care about on a daily basis-education, say, rather than abortion-and has tried to raise the Clinton campaign’s stock with the middle class as opposed to special interests...
...California Governor Pete Wilson invited Grady to be his state’s secretary of environment, but the White House urged him to stay put...
...The Bush administration will look for a black Republican to replace Kemp at HUD...
...Although Carville says the relationship is on hold until November, it prompted Bush aide Robert Teeter to take a jab at Carville in a recent encounter: “Bush has got your girlfriend,” Teeter reportedly told Carville, “and Perot has got your voters...
...But Zoellick’s meteoric rise is best explained by the fact that he can be counted on to get things done...
...but before she left on vacation she told us that there is a Scarlet Letter in the past of one of the top members of Perot’s camp...
...On the domestic policy front, perhaps the only reason Bush will turn his do-nothing agenda into an activist one the second time around is out of concern for his place in history...
...Sperling four years ago was most noted for helping develop one of Dukakis’ more successful policy initiatives: a plan designed to pay for any student’s college education in return for a commitment to perform two years of national service...
...In one Carville-inspired ad, Dawkins was pictured effusing about how much he loved New Jersey and saying he was not a carpetbagger...
...Susan Thomases, a friend of both Clinton and Imus...
...Kaufman, who came into the White House on Sununu’s coat tails, will definitely leave after the first term...
...Dick Darman’s days as director of OMB are numbered...
...Carville has also been credited with turning Wofford, a classic liberal Democrat who was a top official in the Peace Corps under John F. Kennedy, into an economic populist, shaping his campaign around the issue of health care...
...Human Rights Commission...
...the Court of St...
...Porter, a former professor at the Kennedy School of Government has been considered a lame duck ever since Skinner brought in Yeutter in an attempt I:O save the administration’s nonexistent domestic policy image...
...He’s a delightful object of ridicule...
...His replacement is rumored to be Bob Grady, who at OME...
...THE BUSH BUNCH This special edition of Who ’s Who, by Christopher Georges and Clara Bingham, peeks inside the Clinton and Bush campaigns...
...He also devised the counterattack when the story about Clinton’s ROTC letter broke...
...at 34, he is considered too young for the job...
...It was this team, for example, that encouraged Clinton to counterattack when Paul Tsongas started throwing the “Pander Bear” barbs his way as the campaign moved south in the weeks after the New Hampshire primary...
...Rounding out the team is Nancy Soderberg, 34, a foreign and defense policy expert who has spent more than seven years on Capitol Hill as a key aide to Senator Edward Kennedy...
...This news should provide an interesting test of Perot’s character: Will he use it to justifi a witch hunt or to demonstrate that he can forgive and forget...
...Chairs in the Cabinet Room will also be shuffled in 1993...
...Kean and Millicent Fenwick (Gamy Ikudeau’s favorite rep...
...Carville relies heavily on Begala, who also serves as a link between Stephanopoulos’ message crowd and the consultants...
...The ad closed with a narrator saying, “C’mon Pete...
...You may even have heard that almost all of Clinton’s top aides are political classmates of his from the 1972 McGovern campaign...
...If Bush does decide to make changes at home, instigating a “Deputy Coup” will be the best way to do it...
...Imus, fuming over the Brown snub, agreed to talk to Clinton...
...Occasionally we’ll hit a pure note, but more often it’s chords...
...Administration insiders say that Bush will look beyond the Beltway for a business leader to staunch the hemorrhaging...
...More often than not, explains one campaign staffer, the Clinton machine is a world of controlled chaos...
...It worked...
...Yet insiders say his aggressive, take-control style has also managed to offend some of the candidate’s oldest friends, who have constantly offered advice to the campaign...
...When it comes to initiatives within our borders, Bush tends to half-heartedly react to problems rather than deal with them as they emerge...
...Christopher Georges is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...Like Darman, Brady is tainted by the 1990 budget deal...
...He is, however, at home abroad...
...If Rep...
...He has also been at the right p1.ace at the right time...
...Sperling’s recruitment may also have been an attempt to help bridge the gap between the two factions battling for control of Clinton’s policy agenda-the more conservative advisers from the Democratic Leadership Council (such as AI From and Robert Shapiro) and the more left-leaning types (such as Reich and Derek Shearer...
...Boorstin, who by the time he was :!8 had already accumulated a career’s worth of journalism experience (he was president of The Harvard Crimsofil and later worked for Newsweek and The New York Ernes), wrote speeches for vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro eight years ago and also did communications for the Dukakis effort...
...Administration insiders think EPA head Reilly will fly the coop in 1993, if for no other reason than to maintain his credibility as an environmentalist...
...Sullivan has told his aides that he plans to continue at HHS until health care reform is passed by Congress...
...Several other White House jobs arc: likely to turn over, including Roger Porter’s domestic and economic policy adviser position and Yeutter’s domestic: “czar” job...
...Perhaps the only good news is that if they fall short, they’re still young enough to try again in ’96...
...In his second term, he’ll keep his strong foreign policy team-Baker at State, Scowcroft at NSC, Cheney at Defense, and Powell at the JCS...
...Meanwhile, inside the West Wing, Chief of Staff Sam Skinner will be lucky to keep his job through November...
...If he does depart, his current deputy, Judy Smith, will be the most likely successor...
...Here’s an instance of Stephanopoulos’ team in action: In the March days that led up to the New York primary, Clinton, fresh off his “didn’t inhale” remark, was sinking in the local polls and taking a beating from the New York press...
...Both men are heavyweights...
...In fact, the pundits back in D.C...
...With the help of Sununu, Darman was able to keep active cabinet secretaries like William Reilly, Jack Kemp, and Louis Sullivan at bay...
...And then there’s his unlikely love &air with Mary Matali, the deputy political director of Bush’s reelection campaign...
...Of all cabinet chieftains, Kemp receives the most requests to attend political events and is expected to spend four out of five days a week this summer and fall campaigning for Bush...
...Malek, 55, is a successful businessman and longtime Republican political operative...
...Now, after a decade of seasoning, they will be indispensable to an administration that hopes to polish for the history books its final chapter on education, health care, and the economy...
...In addition to attempting to shape the dry policy ideas that come from the issues staff into useful political weapons, Boorstin is constantly exhorting hi...
...Both are close to George Bush and are active fundraisers for his reelection campaign...
...Since 1989, Grady had been a political associs.te director at OMB in charge of the environment, energ;y, and science...
...The Los Angeles riots have finally brought this “bleeding heart conservative” into the limelight, and if he stays on the Bush reservation through November, he will probably be the most politically effective cabinet secretary in the campaign...
...Reilly can look back to the passage of the Clean Air Ad in 1990 as his biggest accomplishment...
...Skinner is under attack by the Bush campaign as well as by his own people, many of whom don’t believe he has the authority or the smarts to get things done...
...One White House aide, sounding a note of nostalgia for the departed John Sununu, says, “We need a chief who everyone is afraid of...
...Conservatives especially hate him...
...Their job is a tough one: to bring some life to Clinton’s ailing campaign...
...At the White House, he has fought a gallant uphill battle against pro-business, antiregulation advocates like Quayle and Darman...
...Porter’s and Yeutter’s jobs will be meshed...
...Zoellick, 38, is known variously a...
...One campaign official explains it this way: “Darman has been hit by lightning so many times that he has burned out...
...Three names that are most often mentioned as Darman successors are: former Minnesota Rep...
...Scheduled at press time to be :;worn in as Darman’s deputy at OMB, Grady is a longer shot for top cat there...
...Reed, deputy campaign manager for policy, has been the point man thus far in assembling Clinton’s detailed policy agenda...
...Of Stephanopoulos’ many roles in the campaign, perhaps the most important is filtering ideas for the candidate, whether from senators calling to offer advice or from insiders like consultant James Carville...
...Frenzel, ii retired 10-term representative, is conservative on economic issues and moderate on social and foreign policy...
...Darman’s deputy, Grady...
...Working with Carville are consultants Stanley Greenberg, Mandy Grunwald, and Frank Greer...
...Carville devised a game plan that targeted Dawkins as a carpetbagger who had moved to New Jersey a year before the election just to compete for the Senate seat...
...Along with Sununu, Darman held sway over the White House through most of Bush’s first term but has kept a low profile since 1990, when he presidled over the budget agreement that put the words “new taxes” right into George Bush’s mouth...
...In the trenches are a core of about half a dozen young staffers...
...Moley, 45, is the deputy secretary at HHS-the secondranking official beneath Sullivan...
...At the top of the list of possible Skinner replacements are Fred Malek, Bush’s campaign manager, and Craig Fuller, Bush’s vice-presidential chief of staff, who was later pushed out of the White House by Sununu...
...In New Hampshire, for example, it was Stephanopoulos’s unit that gathered in a motel room in the wake of the Gennifer Flowers allegations and conjured up the “Comeback Kid” strategy designed to make Clinton appear as the underdog...
...He is also feared by his opponents for his bloodthirsty tactics: In 1988, for example, he headed New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg’s reelection campaign against strong challenger Pete Dawkins...
...This is definitely a cacophony, not a choir,” he says, apparently unable to slip out of soundbite mode even when describing his own work...
...llubba was good,” Imus said, recalling Clinton’s appearance...
...Both Stephanopoulos and Boorstin, 32, toed the line as aides to the Dukakis campaign four years ago...
...Bush, at 68, needs the energy and vitality of upstarts like Office of Management and Budget Deputy Bob Grady, Quayle Chief of Staff William Kristol, State Department counselor Bob Zoellick, Commerce Undersecretary for International Trade Mike Farren, and Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Kevin Moley...
...and consultant Mandy Grunwald to cash in on Brown’s blunder...
...If he succeeds Skinner, he will bring in as his own deputy Wayne Berman, a 36-year-old former Commerce official and senior adviser to the campaign, or Farren, 39, who just left Commerce to be Malek’s deputy on the campaign...
...A couple of one-liners were planned (one allowing Clinton to explain that hi: took up playing the sax because it’s one instrument where you don’t have to inhale) and the appearance was a hit...
...Jerry Brown, still gaining strength, had swung a soughtafter appearance on the irreverent Don Imus morning drive-time radio show, the most popular radio program in the New York market...
...Stephanopoulos and his friends sprint from one fire to another, whipping up the daily soundbite, drummin g up new policy ideas, thinking of how to win free media time-in general, trying to get America to pay attention to what Bill Clinton has to say...
...Alixe Glen, a former Fitzwater deputy, now Sullivan’s press secretary, may also be considered for the job...
...Kristol, 39, who has taught public policy at Harvard, is conservative with a reputation as one of the smartest aides at the White House...
...Blackwell lost a bid for Congress in 1990, and currently serves as leader of the US...
Vol. 24 • July 1992 • No. 7
