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BILL CLINTON thought he had it tough when he ran for president in 1992, but
his wife is facing an even more brutal race, according to Terry McAuliffe,
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman: “Bill Clinton said to me, ‘Terry, I
have never in my life seen such an attack on one candidate and that’s saying
something’.
“It has been relentless. He didn’t have to face attacks from his own party.
She has had them from day one. But I’m not complaining. She has taken on the
Republicans and beaten them. She’s so resilient. She has the attitude, ‘It
is what it is’, and just marches on.”
McAuliffe, the Democratic party’s great showman and preeminent “friend of
Bill”, was rolling through snowbound eastern Iowa at the head of “Hill’s
Angels”, a group of supporters making a last push for Hillary Clinton to win
the Iowa caucus on Thursday. It represents the first potentially
make-or-break test of a candidate’s electoral strength.
“This is showtime!” McAuliffe told 361 campaign workers all over the state by
conference call. “It’s game day. This is what it is all about. I tell you, I
love Iowa!” They cheered.
He grinned, “It’s all retail politics. Person to person. Door to door.” At a
stopover in Dubuque he hailed a middle-aged female precinct captain, tasked
with ensuring that supporters turn up to vote on caucus night, and said:
“Give me a hug – you’re going to make it happen!”
Later he gave instructions for Clinton to be photographed with a nine-year-old
boy who had “a crush” on her, at a rally the next day. It would please the
boy’s mother, who had some friends in high places in Iowa. If McAuliffe
could canvass every voter in the state, he would.
The 2008 battle for the Democratic and Republican nominations has been more
gruelling than anybody can remember. The money raised has been phenomenal –
Hillary Clinton alone has a war chest of $120m. The crowds have never been
greater – 30,000 people turned up at a football stadium this month to see
Oprah Winfrey, the televi-sion star, campaign for Barack Obama. And the
stakes have rarely been higher.
After a year of nonstop campaigning and fundraising, the people of Iowa will
set the path of the presidential election - yet only 300,000 are expected to
participate in the caucuses. It is peculiar, to say the least, even for
Americans. Nevertheless the US elections are the greatest political show on
earth. Ultimately, the rest of the world will have to live with the result.
For the first time in more than half a century, no sitting president or
vice-president is running. With no obvious heir to George W Bush, the race
for the Republican nomination is wide open, while the Democrats have the
chance to elect either the first woman president or the first
African-American president in US history.
Few contests are more exciting than the one between Obama and Clinton, once
billed as the “magic v the machine”. For all his brilliance, Obama has shown
perhaps a little less magic and rather more muscle than people had expected,
while Clinton’s formidable machine has not always hummed along as smoothly
as predicted when under pressure.
If Clinton wins the Iowa caucus, she should glide with ease to the Democratic
presidential nomination. But if she loses to Obama, she faces the political
fight of her life. Victory in predominantly white, rural Iowa for an
African-American political newcomer brought up in Hawaii could change the
game plan.
On the Republican side, the frontrunners have formed a circular firing squad
in a self-destructive frenzy. Can Mike Huckabee, the populist former pastor
from Arkansas, destroy the telegenic but flip-flopping Mormon Mitt Romney,
the former governor of Massachusetts?
Will a resurgent Senator John McCain, 71, written off last summer as too old
and too broke to go the distance, have the last laugh against “lazy” Fred
Thompson, the Hollywood actor and former senator, and Rudy Giuliani, the
tough but secular former mayor of New York?
Somebody is going to have to win and Iowa could give the victors the “big mo”
to wrap up the nomination on Super Tuesday, February 5, when voters in 23
states will have their say.
Even Iowans are baffled by their preeminence. “We’re fortunate. We almost get
to name the next president. It’s kinda weird,” said Lon Diers, a retired
businessman, who braved the frost last week to attend one of Clinton’s
rallies. What is more, Iowans are milking it. They are in no hurry to make
up their minds. Diers is for Clinton but his wife Rosalyn, a former factory
worker, said that she was still undecided.
“I’m afraid that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, she’ll pay the
Republicans back for the times they were so horrible to her husband. We need
someone who can work with both parties,” she said. But she is not sure that
Obama has what it takes either: “I’m not ready for him. He’s too young and
green to be president.” ABOUT 30% of Iowans are still on the fence,
according to McAuliffe’s calculations. There is no secret ballot and
caucus-goers can be persuaded to change their vote right up to the last
minute: “You walk into the room on caucus night and there’s going to be a
group dynamic at work. Until we get those results, we’re all going to be
nervous, like cats on a roof. It’s very tight between the three of us, very
tight.”
The third candidate is John Edwards, who is showing signs of building strength
in Iowa after coming a close second there in 2004 to John Kerry, the
eventual Democrat nominee. If Clinton fails to win this week, the next best
result for her team would be a victory for Edwards, as he lacks the
organisation and resources to compete in other states.
The cash-rich Obama, on the other hand, presents a serious threat to Clinton
in New Hamp-shire and South Carolina, two early voting states where the race
is still tightening.
“I’ve said on day one, there was always going to be an alternative candidate
to Hillary Clinton,” McAuliffe said at a diner in Dubuque. “If it hadn’t
been Obama, it would have been someone else. I knew someone would capture
the internet vote and the young, antiwar vote, as Howard Dean had done.”
Dean lost in Iowa in 2004 with the “Dean Scream”, when his young voters failed
to turn up for the caucus in sufficient numbers and put off more people with
their punk hair and earrings than they attracted. But Obama is running a
more collected campaign with a professional polish that has impressed
veteran Democrats. “He’s going to have a brilliant future in the party . . .
Just not yet,” McAuliffe said.
Although Clinton maintains a double-digit lead in national polls, Iowa is
presenting her with a serious challenge. “This is not a state that we’ve
been in for years. Her husband didn’t campaign here in 1992. People forget
that,” McAuliffe said.
“I’ve always said nobody is going to give it to her. She’s going to have to
earn it. I just didn’t think she was going to have to work this hard,” he
laughed.
Weather permitting, Clinton has been travelling all over Iowa by coach and
“Hill-icopter”, addressing several rallies a day with her daughter Chelsea
at her side. Campaigning is a family affair. Bill Clinton is holding just as
many rallies as his wife in this final stretch, prompting some pundits to
wonder if he is more of a hindrance than a help to her.
“It is not even a close call,” McAuliffe said. “She’s got huge crowds. He’s
got huge crowds. We’re covering double the places. How can you argue with
that?”
One of Clinton’s chief organisers in Iowa told him: “Terry, if you can get
Bill Clinton every day of the week, I’ll take him.”
McAuliffe is convinced that Hillary Clinton has the breadth and depth of
support to survive if she suffers a shock early defeat. “Obviously Iowa is
very important and we’re very competitive here, but for us, there isn’t a
state that she has to win. That just doesn’t apply to Hillary Clinton.”
She holds strong leads in the vast majority of them and, if she can survive
any initial loss of momentum, she will be hard to beat. And there are signs
that her campaign is stabilising after hitting a rough patch last month.
When Clinton’s poll ratings began to tumble, Mark Penn, her pollster and chief
adviser, held an early-morning meeting to hammer home her strategy. Don’t
abandon the message “strength and experience”, he cautioned. Remember
Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, he said.
Added to the mix was “the Hillary I know” – testimony from friends and
supporters who claim she is kinder, gentler and more likeable than her
“chilly Hilly” image. Thatcher did not bother with such niceties, but
McAuliffe believes that Americans want their presidents to pass the “beer”
test.
“There is no question that the core message is strength and experience, but
people have got to like you,” he said.
At a crowded rally last week in Carroll, western Iowa, Clinton was firmly on
message. She was introduced by an apple farmer from upstate New York who
spoke glowingly of the warmth of the Hillary he knew towards rural folk like
him, but in her stump speech she adopted a statesmanlike persona.
“It is time to pick a president,” she said. “There will be a stack of problems
waiting in the Oval Office. A war to end in Iraq. A war to address in
Afghanistan . . . and these are the problems we know about. Some will come
out of nowhere.” Her supporters are drilled to say she is ready to lead on
“day one”.
It has been frustrating for Obama to be portrayed as inexperienced, when
Hillary Clinton, as he once tartly observed, did not serve in her husband’s
cabinet. But that is how he has been defined and it is difficult to shake.
Addressing an equally packed hall in Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, last
week, Obama said: “Some of my opponents appear scornful of the word ‘hope’
and think it summons up naivety or weakness, but I know it has been the
guiding force behind the most improbable changes this country has ever made.”
There are signs that support for Obama is levelling off after his recent surge
in the polls. Perhaps the sly references by Clinton supporters to his drug
use in his youth and his Muslim heritage have had an impact, but so too has
the frequent implication that he is “too green” rather than “too black”.
Dan Alexander, a university maths lecturer and Obama supporter, admitted: “His
support appears to have reached a plateau. I’m just going to walk and talk
to people and knock on doors and hopefully give some people enough push to
turn up on caucus night. My guess is there was a lot of excitement in
November, when support for him started to build, but there’s been a bit of
buyer’s remorse. Some people think Obama is too nice, too conciliatory.
Hillary Clinton has the Margaret Thatcher toughness.”
OBAMA can make a convincing case that he offers the greatest appeal to
Republicans and independents. Introducing him at last week’s rally was Tony
McPeak, a retired four-star air force general who described himself as a
“recovering Republican”. In a dig at Clinton, the general said: “He [Obama]
didn’t come first and show you what a tough guy he is and then come a month
later and show you how warm and fuzzy he is.”
Obama claimed: “We can change the electoral map. That’s what the polls show I
do best. We’re attracting more Republicans and independents than any other
candidate in the race.”
McAuliffe believes the Republicans are being soft on Obama because they are
scared of Clinton: “Didn’t Karl Rove [former White House adviser to
President Bush] write a memo to Barack Obama on how to beat Hillary? What on
earth was that all about?
“Republicans are terrified of Clinton as the nominee. We’re already ahead in
11 [Republican] states, and all we’ve got to do is win Ohio. We haven’t even
begun to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars we’ll have to get her
positive message out. What more are they going to say about this woman?
We’ve heard it all before and we’re still beating them.” By the time the
Republicans have finished firing at each other, many of their candidates are
going to be seriously wounded. The exception could be McCain, the Arizona
senator and former Vietnamese prisoner of war, whose implosion over the
summer led his overconfident, better-financed rivals to patronise him as a
great American hero. They built him back up, when they might still have been
knocking him down.
McCain’s support for the troop surge in Iraq looks shrewder today than it did
six months ago, but his liberal views on immigration – one of the hottest
issues for Republican activists – may still scupper his campaign.
Giuliani has been in a tailspin over ethical issues, including the use of the
New York police to protect his mistress (possibly a necessary task, but not
one to be looked on kindly by voters). Huckabee is under attack from the
Republican establishment and red-meat conservative chat-show hosts for being
a tax-and-spend liberal in conservative guise. He also has a reputation as a
foreign policy ignoramus. In a malapropism last week, he “apologised” to
Pakistan for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister.
Romney has been obliged to explain how he “saw” his father march in a suburb
of Detroit with Martin Luther King, the revered civil rights leader, when
the two men were never there together, and the slow-footed Thompson, after
squandering his early promise, may come to miss his old television acting
job on Law & Order.
Against such a weakened field, the Democrats naturally fancy their chances.
But one word has been banned from Clinton’s lexicon. She is no longer being
touted as the “inevitable” Democrat nominee nor the “inevitable” next
president.
“I don’t know who said she was ‘inevitable’, but I cringed when I heard it,”
McAuliffe said. “You’ve got to prove you are strong, but there is no such
thing as inevitability in a presidential race. Whoever said it doesn’t know
our party. They’re going to put you through the wringer.”
Penn has attracted the most criticism for running an overcautious poll-driven
campaign. “When we win, Mark will be a genius,” said McAuliffe, “and, if we
were ever to lose, someone will get the blame. If Hillary wins it will be
primarily because of her and after her, because of her husband. If you lose,
Jeez, it will be: I was never in that meeting– Hillary who? It’s the nature
of the beast.”
It is not going to happen if McAuliffe can help it. “Smile!” he said to
campaign workers in Dubuque. “How’s everybody feeling? Are you pumped up?
We’re winning!”
