Always Their Own Worst Enemies

Interestingly, Hillary's Senate office appears to be much more stable and better run than the Bill Clinton White House. Staffers say that she created a friendly competitiveness, though she could be a bit fastidious. She liked her staff to have clean desks and if she saw a messy one, she'd say, half humorously, "Do you know everything on your desk?" She liked to know the gossip, but stayed out of personnel matters, other than to issue a curt "Fix this" from time to time. On the morning of 9/11, she was calm and steady. Arriving as her staff was being evacuated from the Russell Senate Office Building, she reassured them, "It's going to be OK, you are all going to be all right."

Her campaign staff, however, has been disrupted by the influence of Hillary's husband, the former president. As Hillary's polls dipped in Iowa late last fall, some of her closest advisers, including Solis Doyle and ad maker Mandy Grunwald, advised her to show her softer side. They argued that voters wanted to see the former First Lady as a human being, and that Iowans especially did not like negative advertising. But Penn wanted to attack Obama, and he was contemptuous of what he called "the weepy stuff" advocated by Grunwald and others. During endless conference calls, the argument went round and round, recalls an adviser who wished to remain anonymous discussing internal deliberations.

Then Bill Clinton stepped in. He was frustrated and angry, says the adviser, because he thought that Obama was getting a free ride. At a Dec. 1 meeting at Senator Clinton's brick colonial on Whitehaven Street in Washington, the former president—a lover of polls—was examining Penn's data showing that negative messaging drove down Obama's ratings. At the end of the meeting, Hillary agreed with her husband, and the campaign essentially followed the Penn strategy of going negative. At a press conference on Dec. 2, the senator rather grimly signaled the onslaught by announcing, "Now the fun part begins."

It backfired in the land of "Iowa nice." After one speech, the campaign dialed back. Obama won overwhelmingly regardless—by doubling voter turnout. But while Bill Clinton ranted at the rotten press and the poor predictions of pollsters (including his friend Penn), Hillary stayed focused on the next stage, micromanaging, ordering staff around and—crucially—changing her approach. She took the advice of campaign communications director Howard Wolfson to jolly up the cranky reporters in the back of the plane. She allowed herself to get misty at a New Hampshire campaign event, revealing more passion for the campaign and the country than many voters had seen in her before.

For all his bad advice, Bill was not going away, however. Indeed, after New Hampshire, the former POTUS asked for an office at campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., an arrangement that was sure to be too awkward and was abandoned after a couple of days. The campaign wanted to limit stumping in South Carolina as a mostly lost cause, but Clinton would not take orders. Through an aide, the former president informed headquarters that its plan was "crazy" and declared that South Carolina could still be won—if only he would go there. (A spokesman for Bill Clinton declined to comment.)

His tour through the Palmetto State was a disaster. Finger wagging, face reddening, he lectured reporters and appeared to clumsily play the race card, comparing Obama with Jesse Jackson. Senator Clinton lost badly in South Carolina and achieved no more than a draw on Super Tuesday. The former president took the hint from fund-raisers who told him to lower his profile. (A NEWSWEEK reporter who followed the president for the past two weeks was kept fenced off, along with other members of the national press, far, far away from the rope line.) It fell to Hillary to once again brace and buck up her troops. Right before a sure defeat in the Wisconsin primary in mid-February, she told her dispirited staff to stay focused on the battles ahead: "We can win this. I know we can win this." Solis Doyle fell on her sword and was replaced by Maggie Williams, a former Clinton White House aide with more stature and perhaps more ability to cope with strong egos. A campaign adviser who did not wish to be quoted for obvious reasons describes the campaign as "basically, just a mess" without any clear lines of authority. "There are way too many chiefs, power plays, inside games." But this adviser has some hope for Williams: "She's pretty quiet, she doesn't speak up a lot, but she is also in charge. She lets you know it."