Madhouse. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1996 by Eleanor Clift

Jeffrey Birnbaum's new book, Madhouse, is about the madcap style of President Clinton and how it disrupts the lives of his closest aides. It is not a new theme, and it is hard to feel too sorry for the six people chronicled--four of whom have already gone on to pastures made greener by their short stays in the White House. Birnbaum is an excellent reporter, and in true newsmagazine style he delivers a narrative that is rich in anecdotal detail. But one cannot help feeling this is one long yuppie whine. It's tough to work at the top at UBM as well, and the rewards are typically not so great.

If there is a bigger point to Madhouse, it is the way in which hopes and dreams are dashed in Washington. Clinton's first two years, the period Bimbaum covers, disappointed even his staunchest loyalists. The aides who arrived starry-eyed from the campaign trail were particularly vulnerable to post-promise traumatic syndrome. Populist rhetoric is one thing; turning it into reality is quite another. "When you were a little kid watching Bobby Kennedy and dreaming of social justice, did you ever imagine whispering in the President's ear, `Sir, there was a big bond rally today'?" speechwriter Michael Waldman asked of economic adviser Gene Sperling after they had finished briefing Clinton for an important speech. Standing in the back of the Indian Treaty Room, waiting for Clinton to speak, the two aides laughed so hard they had to turn their backs to avoid creating a scene.

This was a welcome moment of humor in a series of profiles that turn mostly on the personal sacrifices of the White House staff. Long hours, strained relationships at home, and periodic self-assessments as to whether any job is worth this much grief have combined to make the average tenure of a White House aide 18 months, Bimbaum reports. Some of the people Bimbaum writes about were miscast from the beginning. Stars on the campaign trail, they were ill-suited to governing and didn't do their jobs well, or easily. Clinton himself has said that he made a fundamental error after his election in concentrating so heavily on the makeup of his Cabinet, and assuming he could successfully staff his White House with mostly youthful campaign aides under the supervision of the genial but terminally indecisive Mack McLarty.

With the exception of press secretary Dee Dee Meyers, the people Bimbaum profiles are not well-known outside the Beltway, or even inside the Beltway. They are the ordinary people who populate a White House, and Bimbaum's reporting allows the reader to imagine what it would be like to live in their skin. Howard Paster, a seasoned professional in his 40s and Clinton's chief lobbyist for the first turnultuous year, knew after only five months on the job that he could not sustain the pace, or the criticism. He set his alarm most mornings for 4:30 a.m., then battled his way through 18-hour days where getting the simplest decision was a monumental undertaking. He took the blame for some of Clinton's failures before departing for an exalted position with a top public-relations firms.

Jeff Eller had bounced around a number of Democratic campaigns before lucking into the winning Clinton campaign in '92. He had a mid-level job in the press office when he caught the First Lady's eye with the aggressive way he kept photographers away from her father's funeral. (He placed vans between the photographers and the church.) Mrs. Clinton was so pleased with Eller's work that she asked him to take over the communication of her health-care reform plan--a thankless task, as it turned out. Then Eller was called in as the communications expert to advise how to handle press reaction to the proposed firing of seven travel office employees. "Give them their notices," he counseled, arguing that swift firings would allow the White House "to get out ahead of the story." Three years later, the White House still has not caught up. It was Eller's misfortune, Bimbaum observes, "to have made a mistake in a place where any error is a catastrophe."

Domestic adviser Bruce Reed, a devout "New Democrat," and Gene Sperling, a Mario Cuomo liberal, are the yin and yang of Clinton's policy leanings, and the only two of those profiled who are still diligently laboring in the White House. Serious policy wonks, they struggle to reconcile their differences--and to advance a Clintonesque agenda. "He looks for things that government can do," Reed said of Sperling. "I look for things that government ought to stop doing." The inherent contradiction of Clinton's ideology is embodied in these two aides, who nonetheless remain steadfast friends.

Paul Begala got his first dose of reality on Inauguration Day, when his seats for the ceremony were so far away he could barely see the President he had helped elect. Unlike his partner, James Carville, who thumbed his nose at government from the start, Begala tried to fit in as a part-time strategist and speechwriter. But the autonomy he enjoyed during the '92 campaign vanished as Clinton, beset by a series of early fumbles, lost confidence in his campaign consultants and began listening to other voices, including that of David Gergen, who had worked in three Republican White Houses. Begala found himself increasingly on the periphery. After the '94 election, he moved to Austin, Texas, with his family. He only regretted he had not done it sooner.