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Chapter One
Oh, For Just One More Term
Hours before he would hand over the White House to George W. Bush, Bill Clinton was pulling an all-nighter. He was known for sleeping only a few hours a night even during the calmest of times, but this evening, he was outdoing himself.
He would most certainly have run for the presidency again—if it weren't for the constitutional ban on third terms—and even after the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the humiliating impeachment, he would have won.1 He had survived scandal after scandal since late 1991 when he launched his improbable run at the White House, and yet, when his second term ended on January 20, 2001, his approval ratings hit 66 percent.2 Even Republicans who wondered how such a brilliant, empathetic man could be so lacking in basic morality understood that, as president, William Jefferson Clinton had shown just how good he could be. As president, he had eliminated the deficit, coaxed through welfare reform, and presided over years of peace and prosperity.
Jim Guy Tucker, who had competed with Clinton in Arkansas politics (usually landing on the losing side), succeeded him as governor of the state but ended up in prison, tangled in the Clinton-era Whitewater scandal. Nonetheless, Tucker recognizes that Clinton tops the pyramid of ultragifted politicians. He compares him to all-pro NFL Hall of Famer Lance Allworth, who had played for the University of Arkansas. "These really talented athletes have skills that you and I don't even think about," says Tucker. "Their instincts . . . are just different and I happen to think that there are politicians who have those same unique qualities." Clinton is one of them.3
Mark Buell, a wealthy San Francisco businessman and generous supporter of Democrats in general and Bill and Hillary Clinton in particular, remembers the president, then in his second term, giving him and his wife, Susie Tompkins Buell, a Sunday-morning tour of the Oval Office. "I love being president," Clinton said. "I could be president twenty-nine more years."4
In 1999, Bill Clinton grew wistful at the prospect of moving on: "I confess that I love the job, even on the worst days." By then, more than a year after the Lewinsky scandal turned the president of the United States into a dirty joke on late-night television, there were plenty of bad days.5
"It was very hard for him to let go," says Melanne Verveer, First Lady Hillary Clinton's last chief of staff. "He loved being president. He loved the house. He loved his relationship with the American people. He did not leave easily."6
Clinton needed to savor the remaining hours, pride mixed with regret mixed with brooding over the beating his reputation had taken after he admitted that, yes, he did have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, and not only that, he had it just steps from the Oval Office.7 He was obsessed with framing the historic impeachment that followed as a badge of honor—the right-wingers tried to force him out of office and he had held his ground and would serve until the last minute of the last day of his last term.
As happens at the close of every administration—Clinton being Clinton it was happening closer to the close of his—he was wrestling with the question of pardons and who should get them.
That afternoon of January 19, Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson was in Washington for the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting. Anderson was pushing for a commutation of a fifteen-and-a-half-year prison term for Cory Stringfellow of Salt Lake City. A first-time offender convicted of a nonviolent crime—he sold LSD—Stringfellow had served six years and earned a master's degree while in prison. He was a victim, his parents argued tirelessly, of mandatory minimum sentences.8
President Clinton met with the mayors, and, during the photo op, as Anderson and Clinton were shaking hands, a hundred mayors behind him waiting for their photograph with the president, "I took that opportunity," Anderson recalls, "to remind President Clinton that we had put in for this pardon and really appreciated his personal attention to it." Anderson knew this was Stringfellow's last chance.9
The pardon power, granted to the president in Article II of the Constitution, is subject to no one's review, not the Congress, not the courts. Clinton could have pardoned—or commuted the sentence of—a serial killer if he so chose. The framers recognized that there would be political repercussions for a chief executive who granted pardons that offended public opinion.
Anderson wasn't the only one trying to catch Clinton's attention that last day in the White House.10 His friend Jack Quinn—until 1997, he was Clinton's White House counsel; before that he was Al Gore's chief of staff—telephoned him to push a pardon for one of his clients, commodities trader Marc Rich, a billionaire fugitive-from-American-justice.11 Rich had fled to Switzerland in 1983, living there on loot he accumulated by trading arms to Iran. He remained there rather than face charges—brought by then U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani—of tax evasion, racketeering, and trading with the enemy, the latter also covering illegal oil deals with Iraq.12
This was not the first time Jack Quinn had lobbied Clinton. During Clinton's last weeks in office, the lawyer/lobbyist plied the president with entreaties and documents. Recognizing that the window of opportunity was closing, Quinn wrote Clinton a letter dated January 5, 2001.13 In a final push, Quinn sent two more letters on January 18 and January 19, and, according to Bill and Hillary biographer Sally Bedell Smith, Quinn had a twenty-minute meeting with Clinton early that evening.14
Excerpted from Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House by Carol Felsenthal All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
