LITMIR.BIZ

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all went to Little Rock for the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library, which drew the 1992 campaign alumni. (“Hey, Hillary! Begala’s still got his jacket,” Bill yelled, pointing to Paul Begala in a denim Clinton-Gore ’92 jacket embroidered with a thrusting donkey.)

      The weekend included an after-party at the mansion of the Clintons’ Little Rock decorator Kaki Hockersmith (known in DC as Tacky Kaki) and featuring Kevin Spacey holding court at an outdoor bar doing his Bill Clinton impersonation. And there was a late night at the Capital Hotel bar in Little Rock, where an inebriated Terry McAuliffe put his arm around me and said, “Amy, can you believe I’m governor?!” No. Gene Sperling, Clinton’s verbose economic adviser, cornered me until after 3:00 a.m. to defend the earned-income tax credit. Sid Blumenthal stewed in a corner nursing a Moscow mule.

      Ready for Hillary, the group that called itself a “grassroots super PAC” (as if that weren’t an oxymoron) held a donor confab at the Sheraton in Midtown. James Carville, Paul Begala, and other members of the original Clinton war room held panel discussions on topics like “It’s the Economy Stupid” and “Lessons Learned from 2008.”

      They critiqued Hillary’s ’08 campaign, telling reporters that “every six weeks there seemed to be a new slogan, and there was nothing people could wrap their arms around.” Harold Ickes, known in the White House as Bill Clinton’s garbageman for reasons that had nothing to do with waste disposal, briefed donors from a third-floor conference room. He predicted a hard-fought 2016 general-election battle in which Hillary would confront Jeb Bush–Rob Portman, a ticket bolstered by a simple message along the lines of “It’s time for a change.”

      But the biggest precampaign schmooze fest was the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York in September (on my birthday, to be exact), the Davos-like gathering that matches wealthy donors with worthy causes. Because this would be the last CGI before Hillary became a presidential candidate, the press shop had assigned handlers to escort reporters everywhere, lest we run into a donor who went off message. The theme that year was “Reimagining Impact,” not to be confused with 2013’s “Mobilizing for Impact” or 2012’s “Designing for Impact.” There was a lot of impact happening at CGI.

      I wrote a brief blog post about the young press minder (an intern, I later learned) who had followed me into the restroom. When I asked one of The Guys for comment, he sent me a press release about American Standard’s “Flush for Good” campaign to improve sanitation for three million people in the developing world. “Since you’re so interested in the bathrooms and CGI,” he said.

      It was worse than the Yorkie. It was worse than anything else I would publish for the next three years.

      I’d written the potty-minder post as a brief, breezy CGI scene-setter, not a serious commentary on relations between the Clintons and the media. But that’s not how the wider world saw things. The Washington Post published a column THE CLINTON TEAM IS FOLLOWING REPORTERS TO THE BATHROOM: HERE’S WHY THAT MATTERS. The Free Beacon called for one of The Guys, ironically the most decent and professional of the cohort, to “stick his big obnoxious head in the toilet and ‘Flush for Good.’” That didn’t help matters. Until then, I hadn’t fully grasped the impact of a Times story in the viral news era. Bathroomgate was discussed on the Today show, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and ad nauseam on Twitter. I declined every interview request. I just wanted it to go away.

      By the time Bill stepped off the stage after CGI’s closing plenary session (called “Aiming for the Moon and Beyond” because he spoke via a satellite link to a couple NASA astronauts who appeared, weightless, on board the International Space Station), the only story out of CGI anyone was talking about was the bathroom incident. “Goddammit, we’re trying to save the world and all these people can talk about is the goddamn bathroom,” was how one person summed up Bill’s backstage reaction.

      Hillary’s expletive-laced response was worse. She told The Guys she’d held out hope I might still treat her fairly, but she’d given up on me after the bathroom post. “To be very honest, this episode was upsetting to people, not least of which the foundation team,” Brown Loafers said.

      The Guys told me the post and a subsequent selfie I’d tweeted with a different press minder had “humiliated” a young intern. I felt awful about the whole thing. I hadn’t identified the intern and didn’t know her name. I had a handwritten apology note, but The Guys (who demanded I apologize) wouldn’t tell me where to send it. I could handle another fight with The Guys, but the last thing I wanted was for some hardworking kid to be inadvertently swept up in my media shit storm.

      After that, The Guys and I tried to avoid one another. They’d ask if I was working with any (preferably male) colleagues or researchers and said they would “gladly” talk to them instead. Of all The Guys, Outsider Guy, who a couple years back had fought to get me access and unleashed on Ugandan military officials who wouldn’t allow me (a “cockroach reporter”) into a Clinton Foundation event, had become the most venomous. Maybe because he knew me the best, ever since Iowa and the time we’d shadowed Bill and Chelsea shaking hands and stirring up mayhem in Las Vegas casinos ahead of the 2008 Nevada caucuses, Outsider Guy also knew how to wound me more permanently than the others. The things he said stuck with me as I morphed, in his eyes and occasionally my own, from ally to cockroach.

      On a story about Martin Scorsese killing an HBO documentary on Bill Clinton’s life after Chelsea had allegedly requested final cut, Outsider Guy would deal only with Michael Cieply, my coauthor in Hollywood and a grizzled industry veteran. “It’s hard for me to believe you deal with them for a living,” Cieply said, adding that his brief conversation with Outsider Guy had been the nastiest exchange of a career that had included getting yelled at by Harvey Weinstein and several studio executives sniffing coke off conference tables.

      I tried to give The Guys a taste of their own medicine.

      One night, at a cocktail party in the West Village townhouse of a former White House aide, a pile of Clinton hands, old and new, talked about the recent news that Robert Gibbs would leave his role as Obama’s White House press secretary to be the top corporate flack at McDonald’s.

      “You couldn’t pay me enough,” one of The Guys said.

      “I’d rather work for big tobacco. Seems more honest,” a White House aide turned Wall Street executive agreed.

      I was in a debate with The Guys about a page-one feature set for the weekend paper. I explained that this would be a heartfelt portrait of Hillary’s mother, Dorothy Rodham, and how her childhood struggles would form the emotional core of her daughter’s 2016 campaign.

      “Really? There’s nothing else I should know?” Hired Gun Guy said. “You always find a way to include some kind of dig …”

      “You’re serious? You think I’m going to take a dig at her dead mother?”

      “I don’t know,” he said, lifting his shoulders a couple of inches and pushing his open-palmed hands out in a cartoonish shrug.

      “You know,” I said, taking a sip of rosé and cutting him off, “best case scenario, this all ends with a job at McDonald’s.”

       10

       “Iowa … I’m Baaack”

      INDIANOLA, SEPTEMBER 2014

      “Secretary! Can you believe you’re back in Iowa?”

      “Hillary! Does this mean you’re running?”

      “Can you win here this time?”

      Hillary stood in front of a Char-Griller, pretending to flip a steak at the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa. It was the political event of the year for Democrats, Hillary’s first trip back to the state that had wrecked her 2008 presidential campaign, and the clearest public

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