When people who know and admire Clinton speak of his character flaws, they don’t mean Gennifer Flowers or flip-flops on policy. They mean the way he treats old friends like Harold Ickes, the deputy chief of staff who ran much of Clinton’s campaign, then learned from the newspapers two days after the election that he was to be fired. The president’s treatment of Ickes, a profane, eccentric but highly effective liberal lawyer from New York, deeply upset Hillary Clinton (who is far more sensitive than her husband toward staff) and threw a pall over what should have been a happy time for the administration. Clinton’s so-called ““friends’’ (quote marks are now required) bust their fannies working for him–in Ickes’s case, from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., daily–and in exchange they get to hear a self-pitying Clinton brag, as he did again last week, about how hard he works. His ““friends’’ still think he can still be a great president, but first he has to stop being an ungrateful one.
All politicians are self-centered and quickly insulate themselves from anyone embarrassing, even an old pal. But Ickes, who has known the Clintons since the 1970s, did not embarrass the president; in fact, he was critical in helping elect and re-elect him. On hearing the news that Ickes would lose his job, his wife, Laura Handman, asked a friend: ““Did I miss something? Did we lose the election?’’ Nobody in the White House expected Ickes to replace Leon Panetta as chief of staff, the job that went to moderate North Carolina banker Erskine Bowles. But they were shocked that Bowles, who worked with Ickes for two years as Panetta’s other deputy, was so intent on consolidating his empire that he persuaded Clinton to let him ax Ickes immediately and publicly. Clinton didn’t even call Ickes to apologize until after his goopy press conference announcing the Bowles appointment, the one where the president hugged Panetta and told him, Bud Lite style, that he loved him.
This is hardly the first time Clinton has flunked Management 101. In fact, Ickes himself was shafted in late 1992, when he had to learn from a press release that his old ““friend’’ the president-elect had left him off the White House staff because of some bad publicity about Ickes’s law firm. Only later, when Clinton desperately needed him, did Ickes come aboard. Now he joins a long list of what might be called Clinton ingratees, which includes Lani Guinier, Mandy Grunwald, Paul Begala, Stan Greenberg, David Dreyer, Dee Dee Myers, and Peter and Marian Wright Edelman. Some received lame apologies for their treatment; others were cut loose without a word of thanks. All found Clinton loyalty to be a one-way street. Is it any wonder that Dick Morris, who was rudely cast aside in 1982 after helping Clinton regain the governorship, covered his bets by selling his memoirs midway through this year’s campaign? Even without a call-girl scandal, he knew that Clinton was capable of disposing of him like a greasy paper towel.
Ickes, son of FDR’s famously cantankerous Interior secretary, somehow expected better. As a liberal, he lost most policy struggles in the Clinton White House. But as a loyalist, he was extremely successful at major campaign tasks. He was instrumental in keeping Jesse Jackson out of the Democratic primaries. This was essential to Clinton’s re-election. Had Clinton been challenged from the left, as Jimmy Carter was in 1980, he would have been forced to kiss up to liberals in the party, severely hampering his efforts to co-opt the center in the fall. Ickes was also deeply involved in repairing Clinton’s tattered relationship with organized labor, then persuading the unions to pour money into the campaign.
And it isn’t as if he is useless after the election. (Even now, he is loyally running the Inauguration, which is a little like being asked to throw the boss’ birthday party after you’ve been fired.) Whatever his peculiarities, Ickes is a tough, savvy combatant–the kind you want on your side in a political knife fight. As Hillary Clinton’s big rumble with the special prosecutor begins, she is said to be mortified that Ickes won’t be in her corner. To make matters worse, Ickes’s consolation prize–director of the National Park Service–may now be out of reach. By coincidence, Clinton signed an Interior bill recently with a little-noticed clause that requires Senate confirmation for that job. And Ickes, who is hated by Republicans on Capitol Hill, is all but unconfirmable.
For Clinton, the problem isn’t just the liberals. If they weren’t angry about Ickes, they’d be aflame about something else. And it’s not Ickes himself who will protect the president. The real threat is that one day soon some of the ““friends’’ of Bill, sensing the limits of the president’s loyalty, will return the favor, inside a grand-jury room or out. And other people of talent he badly needs will take a pass on serving their country. Anyone considering working in the White House is now forewarned: Bill Clinton thinks, but he is thoughtless. He feels the pain of everyone except those who happen to work for him.
