HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton Read Online Free PDF

The event was a final expression of gratitude for the brainpower, tears, and sweat they had poured into her cause for more than a year.
    On this day, the sweat kept coming. It was a sweltering Friday in the nation’s capital, with violent summer storms brewing in the suburbs, and Clinton’s air-conditioned house was off-limits to guests, except for one bathroom that was accessible from the outside. Some of her aides kicked off their shoes and dipped their feet in the pool for relief. Hillary ignored the heat and stifling humidity to work one last crowd, taking pictures with midlevel staffers in sweat-soaked shirts.
    Like a weekend griller, Bill Clinton held court in his own backyard, complaining about
Meet the Press
moderator Tim Russert to just about anyone who would listen. Russert had called the time of death on Hillary’s campaign a month earlier on the night of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. “Sometimes in campaigns the candidate is the last to recognize the best timing,” Russert had said. “It’s very much like being on life support. Once they start removing the systems, you really have no choice.”
    Much as Bill blamed big-media types for jumping on the Obama bandwagon, Russert was just reporting a truth that was evident evento Hillary. The narrowness of Hillary’s victory in Indiana, where she had run the field operation for Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign, was just as telling as the pounding she took in North Carolina that night. The day after those primaries, on a conference call with the campaign’s top executives, she issued the edict to cease and desist on attacks that could hurt Obama in the general election. The final month of the campaign was a slow march to her inevitable fate.
    At the end of that slog, the backyard party had the feel of a wake, a bittersweet goodbye. Though the Washington air was thick with speculation about whether Obama might pick Hillary to be his running mate, the two former rivals had met the night before at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s D.C. home and, unbeknownst to the partygoers at Hillary’s house, Obama made clear thathe did not intend to ask her. For the most part, the extended Clinton family of friends and aides tried to keep the mood in the backyard upbeat. But surface conviviality couldn’t hide the fact that this journey was ending on the north lawn of the Whitehaven house rather than on the South Lawn of the White House.
    While Hillary listened to battlefield stories, shared laughs, and posed for pictures, she gave no hint of the emotional and politically delicate task that lay ahead of her that night. As the last of the political operatives and press aides shuffled off the property, Hillary headed to her dining room to write the final draft of the highly anticipated concession speech that she would deliver the next morning to a nation of Democrats waiting to see whether she could endorse Obama with conviction. The dining room, separated from the foyer by sliding French doors, is the business center at the Clintons’ Washington home, a 5,500-square-foot Georgian temple to the 1950s that they bought in 2000 so Hillary would have a place to live while she served in the Senate.
    By the time Hillary sat down late that afternoon with aides Doug Hattaway and Sarah Hurwitz, the latest draft of the speech reflected the scars of a staff still riven. Nearly all agreed that Hillary had to endorse Obama and acknowledge her own supporters, but they couldn’t come to terms on the best approach. For several days, hervarious communications advisers had been e-mailing drafts back and forth, fighting one another through edits to the text. The bigger camp, made up mostly of high-priced advisers like chief strategist Geoff Garin, demanded a full-throated endorsement of Obama that would convince his team, the Democratic Party, and the rest of the country that she was completely on board.
    The smaller set, which included several of the women closest to Hillary,