The First Hundred Days –No Crying
In the Oval Office
Day One. She spent the first day haunting the halls. There were a few Bush
operatives still lurking about and she kindly but directly showed them the door. She didn’t have to do that; Huma and
Maggie had it well in hand, but she couldn’t do anything else until her people were in place and the Oval Office—well,
the halls weren’t the only things being haunted.
Day Twenty-Three. She had
gone almost a week without dreaming about him. His smell still lingered on her
things, but it was fading. She sensed it; but maybe that was all in her mind. Years
of rising and retiring apart kept her from reaching out for him in the night. She’d
gotten used to an empty place. What she hadn’t gotten used to was the absence. Even when he’d left for the day, something had always lingered. Now, nothing
did.
But things were getting done now. Most people were still unpacking but
they were working out of boxes when they had to. There wasn’t a moment
to lose.
Bill used to say, “When they say you can’t win, it’s because they’re afraid you will.”
He was right. The Democratic Party hadn’t wanted her but the voters had and they’d taken it to the Convention
to ensure that their choice was the final choice. She had won once, then again.
Now to do something with that victory.
She stopped for a moment to admire the portrait of his smiling face as she passed it on the way to the Oval Office. She didn’t detour but there was a story later that day in the Boston Globe questioning
just why she blinked so much. And why nobody ever complained anymore that the
President cried like a girl.
Day Forty-Five. It was still
cool in D.C. and she was working her heart out already. The portico was unbelievably
pleasant, as it had always been and she found herself there more often than not. The
Oval Office felt like it was a path to nowhere. Ironically, it was. She had started
there and there she would end.
But not today. Today she had to get things done. There was a vote coming
up in the Senate, which had seen a massive turnover in November, that was co-sponsored and signed by John McCain and Barack
Obama. Chances were with Democratic senators now numbered so few that it would
pass. The question she had to ask herself: Was it worth the veto?
She had to get these people to pass her healthcare plan within in the year. She had to get these people to pass her
tax breaks for the middle class and lower. She had to live with this Congress
for the next four years and she couldn’t decide if she should pay the cost of her ideals and veto the thing or shore
up her political capital for later.
Bill had tried the former with NAFTA and had faced massive retaliation when she’d tried to reform healthcare
in ’93. That decision had paid dividends to them over the years and little
of it positive.
She turned over the bill, hoping there was something that would make it disappear from her sight before she has to
do anything with it. She knew how easy that would be, a pocket veto. Just put
it out of mind and let it lapse without her signature. She could do that.
But that’s not the president she’d promised to be. That certainly
wasn’t the president her husband had been. She wouldn’t change the
family legacy now.
Day Sixty. She’d almost
forgotten he was there.
He’d been so quiet and unassuming all these weeks that she hadn’t given him any thought. To be frank, no
one had given him much thought once he agreed to join her ticket. She regretted
that in hindsight, but there were so many things that she already regretted that she couldn’t give much credence to
the impression lest she fall apart.
Evan Bayh was standing in the doorway leading back into the Oval Office. He
was polished like Easter morning; every button done up right, his tie firm and tight.
He looked just like a Vice-President ought to look: competent and quiet. He
also looked worried.
That was not look a president ever wanted to see on her running mate’s face—even after the election.
“Evan? Is everything all right? Is it Susan?”
His kind face suddenly lost its almost severe concern to take on a more sheepish expression.
“Oh, no, no. She’s all right.”
Hillary sat back, relieved. The last thing she wanted to hear about was
someone else sick. It had been four months and fifteen days since…and she still held her breath when they played Hail to the Chief as she entered the room. She was still holding out for him.
“Good. Great, just what I wanted to hear.” She leaned farther
back in her chair to look up at her towering second-in-command. “Now, tell
me why you looked so worried.”
He hesitated before conceding to her will with a sigh. “May I?”
he indicated the vacant chair across from her. She nodded. She didn’t say
that this dinner set had been here back when, that the seat he was taking had been someone else’s. It didn’t seem
to matter. That someone wasn’t here now.
“Madame President--”
She snorted. “Evan, we go way back. You know it’s Hillary for you.”
He seemed pleased at that but sobered quickly. “Hillary, there are
a lot of people saying things—things that I believe aren’t true and that I believe have no basis in this presidency,
but I need to bring them to you. As your Vice-President, I have a responsibility to watch out for you.”
She straightened up in her seat. “Tell me.”
“There is…a question of your ability to make decisions. Especially given the situation in Iraq. There is talk of some kind of—interruptive action to be taken by Congress.” He winced. She could see that he didn’t like the words even as he said them.
“And my decision-making abilities are in question, why?”
He pursed his mouth angrily. He was being forced and he’d never
been very good at hiding it.
“Because I lost Bill. That’s why, isn’t it? Because
the other Clinton isn’t here they think I can’t run this country.”
He nodded solemnly.
“Do you agree with them?” Her friend of twenty years looked
at her long and hard for a full minute before he spoke.
“Never. They’re always wrong and I hate being wrong.” He sounded like a vengeful teenager talking
about his parents.
She smirked at her partner in crime. “Join the club.”
“Join it—I’m Vice-President of the club.” He dusted
imaginary lint from his nice jacket and grinned winningly.
“Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking when that happened,” she teased, patting his hand. He always did have a way of brightening things up. Especially
when it was late and there wasn’t a star to be seen—even in her own mind.
“What are they going to do?”
He sobered immediately, turning his palm up to catch her fingers. “Nothing
until they think I’m with them. Damn it, Hillary, I’ve heard you talk about the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but
you didn’t say it had infected our side.”
She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “Honey, I hate to be the
bearer of bad news here, but we don’t have a side. We have a foxhole and
we’re gonna need it. They’re going to lob everything they’ve got and everything they can fabricate at us
for the rest of this term and then some. There isn’t a thing we can do
about it. We can only do what we came to do and that is to be accountable to
who put us here: the citizens. Everything else…is white noise.” So many words meant different things than they had once.
“Right,” he frowned and nodded absently. “Right. Just noise. We’ll do what we promised.”
She looked at her companion and saw how relatively young he really was. As a Senator he’d seen some unsavory political ploys but he’d never seen
a power play like that which they were trying to organize against her. He was
blindsided and she was uninspired. She was also wary. “I think that only
works if we’ve got each other’s backs. Evan?”
He looked back from where his gaze had wandered towards the evening horizon.
“Yes.”
“Can I count on you? Can I count on you not to do to me what the Party did last year? I can’t be fighting
my Vice-President and Congress at once. I need you in the background working
for me. We need Universal Healthcare, Evan, and I can’t get it without
you. We need to be ready when the troops start arriving home next month. I need to count on you. Can I?”
She had been as open as she dared be with anyone left in the Party. The number of people who still held her counsel
was minimal. Her trust was becoming notoriously hard to earn as days went by. Although
many had attempted to “return to fold” after she lost Bill, she’d made it clear as bell that she had all
the confidantes she could stand. She and Bill Richardson didn’t speak at
her inauguration. John Edwards sent pictures from his children’s Christmas
recital through a mutual friend. There had been a note of contrition with it.
It had hurt too much to read it at the time; she couldn’t recall where it had ended up.
Nancy Pelosi—the less thought of her, the better, Hillary had long ago decided.
Evan was a different animal. He’d been there that night, along with
all her other supporters. He’d followed in a car with Chelsea because there wasn’t room enough for her in the
ambulance with Bill. If rumor was to be believed, he all but held up Chelsea
up as she tried to walk inside the hospital. She was already crying by the time
she got to the emergency room doors. Perhaps she’d felt it too, that feeling
that he was already almost lost and there was nothing she could do. Hillary had
felt it when she first saw him fall. Then again, maybe that was the love talking.
“I serve at the pleasure of the President.” His eyes were
glassy in the flame-colored light off the lanterns. It was dark out; the lights
had come on. Another day gone. Yet
he hadn’t forgotten either.
“Glad to hear it.” She stretched languidly, jarring the hand
that had captured her own. “Day Sixty done and we’re still in Iraq. Tomorrow is going to be unbearable.”
Day Seventy-Eight. He walked
into the Oval Office ready to surrender.
She was staring at her latest security briefing like it had grown highlights and started singing, Living La Vida Loca. Already not a great sign.
He purposefully kept his hands up. It was not his fault; he wanted to
make that exceedingly clear. “We have a problem.”
She withdrew her attention to what had to be either an especially confusing—or especially absurd—dossier
on the Iraq withdrawal. Her glasses had already slipped to the tip of her nose
and were it not for a quick catch they would’ve likely cracked atop the Resolute Desk.
“We have more problems?”
He did not like the sound of that. Not only did she kill the messenger
when the message was bad, she burned them at the stake. He took a cursory step back and assumed his most respectful posture
as Vice-President.
“Don’t tell me: Congress is having a séance on the Floor to resurrect Bill so that they can impeach him
again.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. She raised both of hers in return. Some days
her humor was darker than others. The best days were when she could joke about
him; on the worst, she couldn’t set foot in the Oval Office lest some memory of the old days overwhelm her. Things were better. He wondered if they might even someday be good.
“We’re not there yet, but they’ve got something up their sleeve. They’re playing fast and loose
with the UHC committee appointments.”
She frowned and reached for the folder he was holding in his hands. He was hesitant to relinquish it. It was really not his fault.
After a short tug-of-war she had possession of the folder. She flipped
through the loose pages inside to see the list of appointees buried among a bunch of doodles—Evan’s she didn’t
doubt—and minutiae. He was right.
She was not happy.
“Why is he on my committee to bring about Universal Healthcare?”
Evan shrugged, hands still up. “I don’t know. I asked around
and couldn’t get a straight answer out of anybody. Maybe he’s in it for the glory. Maybe,” he inched a bit
closer, “he actually wants to get some experience for 2016.”
The President scoffed at the idea. “Sure, that’s the Barack
Obama I know. He wants to work for a living. I’m also not naive enough to
think he’ll wait until 2016 to run. I expect to see him declare in 2011. Trust me, he doesn’t know his limits.”
Seeing that no nuclear catastrophe was imminent, Evan felt safe enough to perch on the edge of her desk. “Maybe the limits he’s misunderstanding are yours.”She squinted up at him with a fairly
puzzled look on her face. “Hillary, you’re the President of the United
States and for all that brain and instinct, you’re still reacting like a Senator.
He isn’t just some guy jockeying for your spot, he’s a guy trying to roadblock what will likely be one
of the key legislative reforms of your administration. Stop him.”
She fixed him with a narrow gaze as though to gauge his sincerity. He’d said what he intended. He was sick of the threat of Barack Obama. The man had lost the nomination and, by extension, the presidency
via his own questionable and concerning associations. It seemed to Evan that vengeance was the order of the decade. He just wanted to make sure that the victim of it wasn’t his President.
“I have a better idea.” She smiled widely.
Did he mention there were some things he didn’t like? It wasn’t the smile itself; that was nice, but it
never preceded anything good and it was unlikely this would be any different.
“How better?”
“Much better. How about I go back to interpreting this brief of Babel
and you get Barack Obama off my Universal Healthcare committee? You’re great
for this and you’ve always come through for me before so I don’t doubt you can do it again.”
“So you want me to be your attack dog?”
Her grin was positively feral. “That’s exactly what I want
you to do.” She folded her hands under her chin and gave off an air of
quiet confidence. “I can’t scratch my nose without Congress screaming
about Executive overreaching. I need you to do the reaching for me. Should’ve started out that way, but you live and learn.”
“Right.” He wasn’t nearly so confident in his abilities
to whip the Congress into shape but his president had stated her wishes and he had no intention of disappointing her. “Tell
me who to lean on.”
She continued to finger the pages, shaking her head at the names as they arose.
It was a committee devoted to making sure exactly nothing happened. She
was tired of things like that.
Luckily, so was he.
“Work your way up to Reid. He owes me.”
“Most of ‘em owe you, Hidge. The question is will they pay.” She looked up at him a little surprised. Very
few people called her that. In fact, Bill was the only one to do it with any consistency. It was an Arkansas thing. They called it her hick name. He was Bubba and she was Hidge.
Evan didn’t seem to notice he’d tripped an emotion. Or if he did, he decided the best thing he could do
was let it go unnoticed. Either way, within a minute he’d nodded like a
good little soldier and gone on his way.
Hillary was left staring at the empty oval room, again. She wasn’t
angry. Bill didn’t own the name just because he’d used it most. But
he had used it most. Now, Evan was using it.
She guessed that was all right.
Day Ninety-Five. She’d
forgotten how hot D.C. could get. It was spring all right, but the lingering nip of winter still hit hard in the mornings.
That’s when she felt it in her bones. Time had gone by so fast.
The big 100 was just days off. There was a party planned by the staff
to celebrate surviving the transition back into power. It had been mostly smooth. The few traps left by the Bush administration
had been as inept as the administration had been and were easily thwarted and dismantled. Hillary had sent him a nice note
for his efforts.
She was still in the Residence this morning. Surprisingly there was nothing
particularly pressing waiting for her in the Oval Office and she had an hour or so to simply be. She hadn’t left the bedroom yet, but she was primped and dressed for the day. Never an eyelash out of place, not for her.
Through the windows she watched the movers and shakers of D.C. stride down the perpetually wet sidewalk outside the
White House gates. There were a few protesters too she could see. That wasn’t unexpected. Three months in and she’d made as many adversaries as Bill had in eight years. Then again, she’d had a few in reserve anyway. She’d
hear about it later.
Her breakfast was a half hour cold. She hadn’t eaten much of it
though; too much time spent talking to Evan as he sat across from her with an English muffin in hand. Were he a boy she’d have tapped his hand for talking with his mouth full. She let it go for him.
They spent nearly every morning having breakfast. Not because it was healthy but it was the only way to truly be on
the same page at the start of every day. It was also the only way to keep their
plans discreet. Sadly, there were people she didn’t trust, even in her
own White House. Evan was the exception.
He was quickly becoming the exception to everything.
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