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

shaking hands and having his picture taken with Gus Savage, an Illinois congressman infamous for his anti-Semitic views who had been reprimanded by his colleagues for hitting on a Peace Corps volunteer during an overseas junket. What made the moment even worse was that there was nothing I could do about it. If I tried to stop the photo, it would only call attention to the problem. It was awful: Balz was watching me watch the photo op, while I was watching Dan watch me. He could sense my discomfort, I just knew it, and he started to tease me, pretending — at least I hoped he was pretending — that Clinton posing with Savage was the real story in Memphis.
He's kidding, right? That's all we need: an article on Clinton the hypocrite. Talks about “bringing people together” on stage, curries favor with a sexist and racist congressman backstage.
    Dan
was
kidding. The interview went well, and the evening couldn't have gone better. I saw the inspiring side of Clinton and felt I'd done my part. Before driving home, David and I stopped for eggs, grits, and country ham at an all-night diner near the arena. There was nowhere else I wanted to be just then, as the convention delegates streamed in well after midnight for food and talk. Wilhelm and I were jazzed up by the crowd and the speech and our candidate and the excitement that comes with being at the top of a new campaign for the first time, when it's early enough to know you have little to lose and everything to gain. Early enough to believe that anything is possible.
    I wanted to wander from table to table to eavesdrop on imagined conversations.
“Who was that fellow Clinton? I liked what he had to say.”
But I knew from experience at church conventions that the delegates would be too busy catching up on family, friends, and church politics to pay much attention to a young politician they might never hear of again. So I just ate my ham and hoped for a good article in the
Post
.
    Before New Hampshire, there are stretches in the campaign when nothing happens for weeks, and occasional days when it seems as if everything happens at once. Monday, November 18, was one of those days. The previous Friday, all the candidates had been in New Hampshire to roast Dick Swett, a Democrat running for Congress. Clinton and Kerrey were swapping jokes behind the dais before the official ribbing began, and Kerrey told Clinton a dumb and dirty joke about Jerry Brown and lesbians. Clinton laughed.
    Three days later, as we flew to Washington, Richard Mintz called the plane from Little Rock to warn us that C-Span had a videotape of Kerrey telling the joke. Chris Matthews of the
San Francisco Examiner
also had the story and was staking us out in Washington to get Clinton's response.
    Not good. Slow news day. Two leading candidates in the. race. Sex, feminism, and political correctness all rolled into one. Matthews has a scoop, and we're stuck right in the middle of it
. By this time we were using a Learjet, and when I leaned across the lap table to tell Clinton what was going on and ask him to tell me the joke, he smiled over his reading glasses and said he couldn't remember exactly how it went. If he was bluffing, it was probably for the best. The fewer details coming from our side, the better.
    Our mission was tricky: How did we extricate Clinton from this embarrassing incident without exonerating Kerrey? This story was both an opportunity and a threat. A threat because any sentence containing the words
Clinton
and
sex
would always be bad news. Opportunity because Kerrey was our main rival, and getting caught telling an offensive sexist joke would cut against his soulful image. It was time to apply a corollary to Napoleon's rule: “Never get in the way of your enemy when he's heading for a cliff. But give him a push if you can get away with it.”
    Of course, we couldn't pretend that Clinton had been offended by a joke he had obviously enjoyed. Explaining that he was laughing just to be nice was