After raising a record $70 million as finance director for Clinton's 1992 campaign, he planned the inauguration and went on to serve as political director, then senior advisor, at the White House. He left the White House in October 1998. Interview conducted June, 2000 by Chris Bury You joined the campaign in fall of '91. What was it about Clinton that made you decide to work for him? He was espousing a new Democratic philosophy. I had worked for Mayor Daley at that point, Ed Rendell, mayor in Philadelphia, Mayor Bob Lanier in Houston -- all campaigns and clients of mine. I believe that the proper shift of the party...was offering a new Democratic philosophy. One that was more focused, willing to bring the values agenda into the party, not being hesitant about that issue. A more centrist area on the economic front... Your job was to raise money. What was like that in the early months of the campaign? Well, I would describe it as probably a start-up in today's terms. [The governor] had a lot of connections and a lot of people that he knew through Georgetown, Yale, Oxford, through the National Party Governors. And we tried to create something that had not really been. All the pieces were there but nobody had assembled the pieces... [He was an] unknown governor. A few people knew about what he had, what he was doing, that he was a new voice, a more centrist voice. Remember, early on until part of December there was still the Cuomo cloud that hung over, that he was going to enter the field. You had two senators. One was Bob Kerrey, and his past, specifically his biography as it related to Vietnam, was kind of the new face of the party. You also had Senator Harkin in there and former Senator Tsongas. So that combination. I remember my father, when I said I was going down to Little Rock to work for Governor Clinton's run for president, he thought maybe somebody needed to check the medication cabinet. He thought somebody was playing around with it. He had never heard of him he said. I said, "Well, I think he's going to be the next President of the United States."... [The Gennifer Flowers scandal] must have worried you a little bit. Of course it worried me. I mean, it would worry anybody in addition to fundraising. You have a burden going into any campaign when you're raising money to fund that effort because there's always a desire to spend more money than you have. Then you have this added burden because people remember other presidential campaigns being knocked out for other information that sidetracked their candidates. You had this hit come upon you. It absorbs a tremendous amount of time. You haven't established your identity.... I felt in the fundraising area you became somewhat of the barometer of whether you can sustain.... George Stephanopoulos writes that you came to the realization after Flowers broke that sometimes the candidate can be your own worst enemy. ...Yes, the candidate can be your own worst enemy. Yet he is your only asset to get out of that situation. ... There's a heads and tails to that coin. There's one realization, and there's also another, so they're not mutually exclusive. And I think everybody agrees that President Clinton was at that point both the person that [created] this situation. On the other hand he's the person that is quite capable of leading the campaign out of it, as proven correctly.... Let me also say this, every one of us -- at least I know this for David and myself -- we had heard stories about the candidate when we moved down there. So we were quite aware of what we were getting into.... We all went in with our eyes open.... A lot of people have written that [Hillary] was sort of Clinton's organizational side, that she was much more organized and a better sense of that than the candidate did. ...She does think in a more linear fashion. But she was very important to him in the sense of being his partner in how they thought about the campaign and what issues were important, et cetera. She was determined to make sure the campaign was focused.... Give us a sense of the flavor of the war room. What was it like working in there? There was an intense kind of kinetic energy that circled around James [Carville] and George [Stephanopoulos] and Stan [Greenberg] in a sense of there [were] two center forces. One is clearly the airplane where the candidate is and the apparatus built around the campaign. And then the kind of strategic nerve center of the campaign has all the information coming in and attempt[s] to make single piece of information going out. ... Stan, James, Paulie, myself, Wilhelm, George, Mandy, we all had known each other in one way or another through campaigns we had all worked on, the national Democratic Party. And none of us had clearly risen to the level we were at [on] a presidential campaign. And yet, there was a simpatico of mind and strategy. And it was an amazing quick link with the candidate. Outside of James you were really a bunch of kids? ... Yes, we were all a bunch of kids. ... No, we had never done a presidential [campaign] and that's a fair criticism. But not many candidates have done a presidential. And, yes, we were young. But I think we all had a very good familiarity with each other. We were comfortable with our roles. And we had a strategic coherence with the candidate, which is essential. And I think that is what served the team as well as the candidate and the campaign well.... What was your first inkling that you might win in '92? ..I think when the electoral map went up on ABC. But not until election night. You can think it inside, but you don't [want to] act it out. Clearly I felt different post-convention and post the set of debates we had. You feel better, but you never let your foot off the gas pedal. What do you remember about election night? What was going through your mind? ...I had worked in politics at that point 12 or 10 years. I thought, you know, I always wanted to do a presidential. I finally got a chance to do a presidential campaign, do it at a senior level and do it with a candidate I believe in ... and who I believe would do something great for this country. And I thought it was a great amount of hope and opportunity. I felt exhilarated. And given my dad thought I was crazy for moving down, it was probably the first call I made the next morning.... What was your first impression of Bill Clinton as president? Did things change? Did your relationship with him change? Did he seem different to you? Well, whether he does or doesn't, you treat him different. I think it's Theodore White's book that mentions the fact that the moment somebody's a president and you call him "Mr. President," [the person represents] our culture, our history, our sense as our nation. ... You clearly inevitably think different about them and you respond to them differently. They are no longer "governor." It's "Mr. President." And if anybody for any minute doesn't think that that changes, I don't think they're being honest with you. After the inauguration there's a lot on this man's plate. He had a very ambitious campaign. Expectations were high. Stakes were high. What was he like there facing all these things that he wanted to do in those first few years? As intense as he was through the seven years I worked with him in the White House. Everything, you know, everything was a priority, most specifically the economic plan, but moving on the agenda and hitting the ground running. So, there was an intensity to the campaign. ... Your most important time at the presidency is your first 18 months.... I remember our first meeting on a Saturday inside the Roosevelt room. I was trying to decide whether you could wear blue jeans to the White House or you had to be dressed up. And I remember the parade going by. I'm back at the White House while the president is watching the parade and I run into Bob Rubin who is looking to find his office, et cetera. [It's as if] somebody flicks the microphone on and it's on volume 10, and it's on volume 10 the rest of your time. You can't cough, you can't breathe, you can't think out loud because the microphone is on. And you have a full agenda. You have a lot of promises you want to keep, and all of them are priorities. There's no doubt everybody from the campaign believed that the economic plan was essential to the presidency. And that was the priority.... When it comes to appointing the attorney general there is a sense that the attorney general should be a woman. Zoe Baird is the name that comes up. What happens with that nomination? ...I think that in a vetting process and in some of the other issues that come up the political team that handled the campaign were at points excluded or not included for some very legitimate reasons in very important decisions. ... Ultimately decisions have a political impact. Are you saying that the Zoe Baird [situation] was mishandled because the political team didn't-- I'm not sure. Look, hindsight is more than part of it so we get to say that if the political people were more integral to some of this, we wouldn't have that problem. And I think there are a series of decisions early on where the non-political people are making them without the full impact that we later on in the administration get, which is an integration between policy and politics that is essential to any success. Well, who is making the Zoe Baird [decision]? I think that at this point it's coming out of the White House counsel's office. It does have a vetting process, people responsible for it. But ...we somewhat had a divided rather than integrated [approach]. But that's part of any new administration. You're just kind of learning that process. And there's that mistake. And it was a costly mistake.... There were a couple of things in those early weeks that set a tone. I think you might agree. Most people who worked in the White House sort of said this already, on the record. The other issue, of course, in that first week is gays in the military. ...It became a priority. It became a dominant part of our first days of our administration. It should not have been. It was mishandled. On the other hand, it is what it is, and that's governing. My point is [the media] brought it up. We didn't bring it up. It was a question he got asked at a press conference. He answered it. And then it became our priority. ... What did that do to the footing of this new administration? It totally threw it off. If you're trying to keep a rhythm and a tempo, it totally threw it off. There's no doubt about it. And it was costly. ... And we had to end up doing it. ...We were trying to [build] a coalition about respecting everybody's priorities. Specifically within the gay community, even in the campaign it wasn't a priority. And the president was the first candidate [who] openly advocated bringing gay Americans into the overall nation and making them feel part of this country, rather than excluded... There is a sense in Congress, and a lot of people have spoken and written about it, that this new president and his White House staff can be rolled. They're going to cave in to whatever constituency is pressing them at the time. What is your thought about that? Did this administration cave in too easily because it had made a lot of promises in those early days? You know, politics is about mending and tacking and so on, and setting your priorities. We were a very determined administration. We made a lot of compromises to get NAFTA passed and a lot of deals to get NAFTA passed. Did we cave in or not? We got it done. I don't think so. Did we make changes in his overall economic plan? Yeah. That's the art of sausage baking. That's what passing legislation is about. Did the principles of his deficit reduction plan get passed and priorities both on where you were going to spend money get changed within the government? Yeah. ... Did it change from the beginning? Yeah. Did we make compromises along the way? Darn right. Do them again. But did the ball get across the end zone line? Did a budget get passed according to plan? Did NAFTA get passed according to plan? Did money get shifted to education according to plan? Did we pass a crime bill according to plan? Did we institute six new education programs that had never been on the books according to plan? Yes. Did the basic written legislation change? Yeah. But did the ball get across the goal line? Yup. What was the argument like early in the administration between those on the economic team who favored deficit reduction and the others who many of your colleagues in the political team who thought this president had made specific social promises that [deserved] to pass? ...I think one of the mistakes we made in selling the economic plan, there's no doubt about it, is part of the political staff was not comfortable totally with the deficit package as the dominant priority. We wanted to make it an investment package and there were clearly investments in there. But you couldn't vote the deficit and investment. Later on, I think we figured out how to make the two work together thematically. Early on, to tell you the truth, we failed at it. There's no doubt about it and the political team failed in making that calculation.... But wasn't there a fundamental disagreement between whether deficit reduction ought to come first or-- There's no doubt it. And I think we gave both for the economy and for political purposes bad advice. And I think it was costly. Because I think, to tell you the truth, the success later on in the presidency, post-'94, is the ability that we were no longer going to have these kind of open running debates. We were going to pick a strategy and all stick to it.... Hillary Clinton, when she becomes first lady moves into the West Wing. Her chief of staff has an office in the West Wing. Neither of these things had ever been done before in the White House. What message did that send to? That she's going to be an influential player in the administration. I think that's [how] the press read it. That's how we read it.... I mean, I don't think there's any ambiguity in there. Was the staff frightened of her? You know, she's a very vocal clear. There's very little times that you leave a conversation not sure where she stands on something. So she's a forceful person.... A number of people have written that when you went into a conversation with Hillary, you'd better be prepared. What did that mean? You had to have your argument down. And if you weren't succinct or had thought through -- I mean, there's two sides to this. If you were kind of just mealy mouthed, she didn't respect you. And if you went in forceful but had not thought through, she didn't respect you. And she respected people even if she disagreed with them. But you better be good at it and you better know what you're talking about. That's not an unhelpful attribute in my view. That's no different than how the president was. He liked good intellectual hard hitting debate. ...What was it like being on the other end of it when the president was mad at you? It took its toll. ... It was not a lingering resentment or anything like that. But it can be quite intimidating. And as I'm sure James [Carville] would tell you, when he would burst out at you and things weren't working right, it kept you on your toes.... Around the end of '94, before the elections, the president is getting really concerned. And he starts conferring with Dick Morris sort of on the QT. What's your reaction when you find out that this fellow from the governor's past is now becoming a prominent political adviser? You know, I did not know Dick Morris and I didn't know anything about Dick Morris. So I didn't have the reaction that other people had. My bigger problem was ... we had messed up the politics.... You cannot separate the politics in a process. We had not managed our politics very well. And I think the president knew that.... [The president] has a tenaciousness about him and an unbelievable determination. So I think he was taking a sounding at that point before he was going to charge ahead again. And that's what he's clearly doing. He was talking to George. He was clearly talking to Dick Morris. He's asking my views. He's asking James' views. I think he was talking to his friends on the Hill and colleagues that he wanted to hear from people around the country. And he was running through the political processes. And he and the vice president were figuring things out. And we knew we had a big problem on our hands and we had to figure it out at that point. He [holds] a news conference where he says, "I'm still relevant." What was your take there? Just one of those many moments where you feel you know that it was not the best choice of words and there's a just a big twist in your stomach and that we were going to have something to deal with for a while here. You say it wasn't the choice of words but did it reflect a certain reality or a certain desperation. Here's the President of the United States saying he's still relevant? I don't remember him mulling about this at that point. I think he was answering a question. At that point you're dealing with the early stages of the Gingrich revolution in Congress. And Gingrich is pretending to present himself as the new prime minister. And you all were all talking about, writing and reporting that it was a shift of power. And I think he was doing too much education to a reporter about the separation of powers in our, as embedded in our constitution. Using the choice of words that"I'm still relevant" reflected a weakness. And the Chief Executive ultimately is a position about strength, not about weakness.