Bill Clinton: The Long Road

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It was also in June that Clinton (with heavy prodding from Hillary) reorganized his staff. Until then, the campaign structure had so many fancy titles and overlapping duties that decisions had to be made by consensus -- or not at all. Carville, who admitted that he had often been "disengaged" since the New York primary, helped shape the re-organization by doing what for him was the unthinkable: he wrote a memo. Titled "the Clinton Action Team," the document outlined what would become the famous quick-response war room, designed to crank out swift replies to any Republican charges. Clinton belatedly made it clear that the campaign's headquarters would continue to be in Little Rock, despite the loud objections of some aides who would have preferred any of several more cosmopolitan locations (Carville's choice, for example, was Atlanta). The aides now admit that remaining in the Arkansas capital was an inspired idea; there the campaign team operated as a self- contained community with a gung-ho, no-frills atmosphere that some have likened to a boot camp.

An important personnel shift involved Susan Thomases, who had nominally been head of Hillary Clinton's personal staff but had annoyed others by sometimes abrasive forays onto their turf. For example, she blamed Stan Greenberg for a poll that included questions about Hillary's liabilities, which had led the pollster to write a memo about "the Hillary problem." Thomases in June was given the powerful but narrowly defined job of campaign scheduler.

Two largely symbolic moves in June further helped Clinton reappear on TV in a favorable light. Addressing a meeting of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, Clinton denounced "racist" remarks by rap singer Sister Souljah, who had been on a panel the day before (the remarks, which appeared to advocate killing whites, had actually been made in an interview somewhat earlier). Jackson, who had not been informed of what Clinton intended to say, was furious; he decried it as a "Machiavellian" move intended to appeal to conservative whites. The strategic appraisal, though not the overheated rhetoric, was sound. Clinton was in fact emphasizing his independence from the special interests, militant blacks among them, that had seemed to exercise so much power in the party as to frighten away many middle-class white voters who became the famous Reagan Democrats. Jackson's interest in keeping the fight alive, however, was one he could not make public; in a private meeting between the two to iron out their differences over Sister Souljah, Clinton told Jackson that he would not be considered for Vice President.

Clinton went on at the convention to deftly disarm Jackson as a potential troublemaker. Here again, the Arkansan fell into some luck. Jackson was another of the prominent Democrats who decided early on not to run in 1992; had he made the race and come into the convention with the masses of delegates he commanded in 1984 and 1988, he might easily have caused Clinton headaches as splitting as those he gave Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. But with no delegates at all this year, Jackson could rely only on his clout as a senior black leader, and it was not enough to mount any challenge to Clinton or even wangle a large role at the convention or in the campaign.