All Too Human: A Political Education by George Stephanopoulos Page B

When our van pulled up to the mock-Tudor Sheraton Tara Hotel in Nashua the next day for a health care forum, we were greeted by a pack of reporters, cameras, cords, and boom mikes bigger than anything we'd seen yet in New Hampshire. Our first “clusterfuck.”
    Seeing all those reporters waiting in the snow was both scary and a little thrilling. They weren't there to hear what Clinton had to say on health care, but the fact that so many showed up was proof that we were in the big leagues. “Keep smiling,” I reminded Clinton as we prepared to climb out of the van. “We can't let them think they're getting to us.” Images of Senator Edmund Muskie passed through my head. While defending his wife against a Republican dirty trick, the 1972 Democratic front-runner against Nixon had wiped a tear — or was it just a snowflake? — from his eye. It was the beginning of the end of his campaign.
    Clinton was in no danger of repeating Muskie's mistake. As we walked toward the lobby, a mass of reporters surged toward us. Wearing a smile and sticking with our strategy, Clinton calmly explained that the
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story was both old and untrue. Whatever he was feeling inside, whatever uneasiness I witnessed behind closed doors, Clinton stowed it away before facing the cameras.
    Inside the hotel, two different campaigns were going on simultaneously, separated only by a wall. At the candidates' forum, Clinton held forth on health care. I was out in the lobby with most of the reporters, trying to suppress the scandal that threatened to consume our campaign. Under the gaze of the suits of armor posted by the registration desk, I tried to pick off the journalists one by one to explain why the
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story was not only irrelevant but wrong — and part of a plot.
    My main job now was damage control, the front lines of spin. Not only was I an ersatz defense counsel, I was also learning to deconstruct the text of tabloid stories like a literary sleuth, searching for unsupported statements, hearsay, logical inconsistencies, and, most valuable to us but most difficult to find, charges that could actually be disproved rather than merely disputed. A single demonstrably wrong accusation could call an entire story into question, allowing us to focus attention on the accusers rather than the accused.
    Beating back the first
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story was relatively easy — the sworn affidavits did the real work. Besides, I believed Clinton, and believed even more in what he was trying to do. But I was conflicted in another way. Crisis management was starting to consume my time and define my character. My better side cared about the substance of the campaign, but the competitive warrior in me was more engaged by the street fighting. The pull to be part of the battle felt more urgent than shaping the policies we were trying to advance. I wanted to be in the lobby, not the forum. In the heat of the moment, this impulse was easy to justify. I told myself that if this allegation, or the next one, or the one after that metastasized into a full-blown scandal, the campaign would die — and nobody would ever hear or remember or benefit from anything we proposed on health care or education or the economy. I would also be out of a job.
    What began as a strange, even sordid, way to spend my time soon felt natural. Wake me up in the middle of the night, I could have told you the lies in the Nichols story before I even opened my eyes. I began to think that doing the dirty work was not only necessary but noble, a landmark on the road to greater good. I began to fool myself, because fighting scandals can be fun; the action is addictive.
    But any fun I was having faded fast a week later, when Gennifer Flowers flipped. Another Thursday, another
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story, another garbage day. But this one was more serious. A key witness for the defense was now part of the prosecution — and she said she had tapes. Early that morning, from a pay phone at National Airport's private terminal, I made my