assembling and writing hisspeeches, and this proved to be the case with the convention speech as well. Several Clinton speechwriters and aides, including former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta and Washington power broker Lanny Davis, weighed in with their ideas, which Clinton incorporated into his drafts.
On his desk were a quiver of sharpened number 2 pencils, a box of Sharpie black markers, and a stack of yellow legal pads. Curled up at his feet was his chocolate lab, Seamus. Peering down from the rafters of the barn was a cigar-store Indian, a souvenir from one of the former president’s trips. The bookcases that lined the walls groaned with well-thumbed biographies of famous men who had gone before him. A voracious reader with a photographic memory, Clinton could cite whole passages from these books, many of which he hadn’t opened in years.
He had always yearned for a prominent place in the grand parade of history—to be ranked as a rightful successor to such transformational presidents as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan. As he later admitted to a friend, he was aware that his convention speech would be judged as his most important formal address since leaving office a dozen years before. And he was distressed by the thought that, for all his efforts to reinvent himself, he might not be up to the challenge and that, as a result, his enemies would be proved right in contending that he had been nothing more than a fair-to-middling president.
According to those who knew him best, Clinton’s greatest self-indulgence was not women; it was self-pity. They said he frequently talked about how unfairly he had been treated by his enemies. He referred to ancient political battles from ten, twelve,even twenty years earlier as though they had taken place last week. He spoke of his old political wounds as though they still bled. Despite his immense post-presidential popularity, he found it hard to believe that he had won his way back into the good graces of the American people. Had they really forgiven him for his Oval Office dalliance with that woman Lewinsky? He was never sure.
Those who helped Clinton draft the convention speech said he imbued it with almost magic powers. If he got the speech right, he told them, it would help reelect Obama in 2012, lay the groundwork for Hillary in 2016, and bring about a Clinton Restoration. He invested the speech with more importance than anything he had attempted since leaving office. He would show everyone that he ranked up there with the all-time greats.
There were those in the media who doubted that Clinton would dare to use his speech to overshadow Obama at the convention.
“[Clinton] is savvy enough to know that he is there [at Charlotte] to help win Obama’s reelection,” wrote Dan Balz, a senior political correspondent at the Washington Post . “But overshadow the president? Obama is no slouch when it comes to big speeches. However Clinton performs, the big speech in Charlotte will still be Obama’s.”
But those who doubted that Clinton would try to overshadow Obama didn’t know the Big Dog. The truth was, Clinton was not prepared to cede pride of place to anyone—not even to Barack Obama at Obama’s own convention. When it came time to compare his nomination speech with Obama’s acceptancespeech, Clinton (whose Secret Service detail had nicknamed him Elvis) had every intention of being crowned the King.
As the person chosen to deliver the nominating speech, Clinton seemed to have an assignment that was simple enough: to cast Barack Obama as a great president who deserved to be reelected so that he could finish the job he had begun. But Clinton’s task was complicated by an uncomfortable truth: he believed just the opposite of what he was assigned to prove. In his estimation, Obama was a weak president who had failed to earn the right to remain in office.
Less than a year before, when Clinton assembled a few old friends in the red barn in a futile effort to
On his desk were a quiver of sharpened number 2 pencils, a box of Sharpie black markers, and a stack of yellow legal pads. Curled up at his feet was his chocolate lab, Seamus. Peering down from the rafters of the barn was a cigar-store Indian, a souvenir from one of the former president’s trips. The bookcases that lined the walls groaned with well-thumbed biographies of famous men who had gone before him. A voracious reader with a photographic memory, Clinton could cite whole passages from these books, many of which he hadn’t opened in years.
He had always yearned for a prominent place in the grand parade of history—to be ranked as a rightful successor to such transformational presidents as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan. As he later admitted to a friend, he was aware that his convention speech would be judged as his most important formal address since leaving office a dozen years before. And he was distressed by the thought that, for all his efforts to reinvent himself, he might not be up to the challenge and that, as a result, his enemies would be proved right in contending that he had been nothing more than a fair-to-middling president.
According to those who knew him best, Clinton’s greatest self-indulgence was not women; it was self-pity. They said he frequently talked about how unfairly he had been treated by his enemies. He referred to ancient political battles from ten, twelve,even twenty years earlier as though they had taken place last week. He spoke of his old political wounds as though they still bled. Despite his immense post-presidential popularity, he found it hard to believe that he had won his way back into the good graces of the American people. Had they really forgiven him for his Oval Office dalliance with that woman Lewinsky? He was never sure.
Those who helped Clinton draft the convention speech said he imbued it with almost magic powers. If he got the speech right, he told them, it would help reelect Obama in 2012, lay the groundwork for Hillary in 2016, and bring about a Clinton Restoration. He invested the speech with more importance than anything he had attempted since leaving office. He would show everyone that he ranked up there with the all-time greats.
There were those in the media who doubted that Clinton would dare to use his speech to overshadow Obama at the convention.
“[Clinton] is savvy enough to know that he is there [at Charlotte] to help win Obama’s reelection,” wrote Dan Balz, a senior political correspondent at the Washington Post . “But overshadow the president? Obama is no slouch when it comes to big speeches. However Clinton performs, the big speech in Charlotte will still be Obama’s.”
But those who doubted that Clinton would try to overshadow Obama didn’t know the Big Dog. The truth was, Clinton was not prepared to cede pride of place to anyone—not even to Barack Obama at Obama’s own convention. When it came time to compare his nomination speech with Obama’s acceptancespeech, Clinton (whose Secret Service detail had nicknamed him Elvis) had every intention of being crowned the King.
As the person chosen to deliver the nominating speech, Clinton seemed to have an assignment that was simple enough: to cast Barack Obama as a great president who deserved to be reelected so that he could finish the job he had begun. But Clinton’s task was complicated by an uncomfortable truth: he believed just the opposite of what he was assigned to prove. In his estimation, Obama was a weak president who had failed to earn the right to remain in office.
Less than a year before, when Clinton assembled a few old friends in the red barn in a futile effort to
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