It is April 1999, and for months I had been trying in my usual polite way as a law professor and former Dukakis campaign manager to convince Gore’s aides that they needed more women at the table. Ann Lewis, the senior woman at the White House, and I have taken this up as our project, something neither of us can quite believe we actually have to do in 1999. But we do. At this point, it is not at all clear that Tipper Gore and daughter Karenna will have major roles. The Gore campaign is being viewed by insiders as a battle of the princes–all of them white men, most of them now lobbyists in Washington–who are his chief strategists, advisers, and fund-raisers. Most observers are trying to figure out which prince will win; Ann and I are trying to figure out why it’s only princes. But both Ann and I, and the other women who are calling, are getting put off repeatedly. Be patient, I’m told.
In the meantime, the Democratic Party, controlled by the vice president, chooses Los Angeles as the site for its convention. They do that even though many of us have been saying very explicitly to anyone who would listen that if there’s one thing they shouldn’t do, it is to have a group of rich white men announce that they are hosting a convention in Los Angeles. There is a new joke in town: The Gore campaign’s idea of affirmative action is finding five white guys in the most diverse city in America. I am not laughing.
Two years ago, the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee disbanded. It broke up because many of its members were disgusted at being part of what they came to see as the essentially corrupt business of buying politicians with private money, and many of them found it difficult to participate in a system and seek to change it at the same time. “Do we need to get some rich women together so the boys will pay attention to getting women to the table?” I ask my best-connected women friends in Washington. I want them to say no. They say yes.
I call one of Gore’s top aides. I tell him that my friend Lynne Wasserman, whose family has given more money to Democratic politicians than any other family in Southern California (or maybe America; they are at least in the top three), is considering forming a new caucus of wealthy and media-savvy Democratic women whose sole purpose will be to ensure that there are women at the table in the presidential campaigns and at the convention. A dinner is planned for Friday night, where I expect the group to come together. It can still be stopped with swift action by the Gore campaign to address the problems in their campaign and in the convention committee. “I’ll get back to you,” the aide says.
Weeks pass. I finally get a return call. I say that Lynne is ready to go forward with the group, and that I am prepared to write a column about it. The aide is not happy. By now, I am taking notes. “What women do you have at the table?” I ask repeatedly. He gets defensive. He tells me that they do have “a woman” at the table, Elaine Kamarck, and that while “she might not be your kind of woman,” she is a woman. “Call her,” he tells me.
In fact, Elaine Kamarck is an old friend of mine. What he means when he says that she is not “my kind of woman” is that Elaine has always defined herself as a conservative Democrat, a Sam Nunn Democrat, the representative of the Democratic Leadership Council at the table, not the Women’s Council. She doesn’t do the feminist piece, which would be fine if there were someone else doing it.
In April 1999 I write a column connecting the need for women as voters with the need to have women at the table, pointing to the reported underrepresentation of women in the Gore campaign and connecting it to the fact that Gore is not pulling enough women’s votes against George W. Bush to win. The lead is pointed: “Al Gore may turn out to have a bigger problem with women than his boss. But in Gore’s case, the problem is professional.”
I don’t send the column to my syndicate, or to USA Today. One last try. I send it by overnight mail to the vice president himself. And I place a call to him, making it clear that I want to speak to him, not to one of the princes. Two days pass. No word. USA Today wants to run the piece on the following Monday. But there is a problem. On Monday, I am taking my children to the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. Then we’re spending the night there.
I first got to know the vice president when he ran against my candidate, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, in 1988. In the close circle of presidential campaigns, Gore’s was the least popular, and his New York campaign was particularly unattractive. But I saw him again when he was promoting his book about the environment, and he impressed me greatly. When, as vice president, he came under investigation for supposedly making illegal fund-raising calls, I jumped to his defense. He sent me nice notes thanking me. I saw him socially once or twice a year. We always kissed hello. I like to be seen as a team player and not an ambitious chick. But I was also writing a book about power. I sent the column to my syndicate.
Two days later, Al Gore called to yell at me, which is what turned the column into a story. It made the gossip columns and the Sunday talk shows, and excerpts of what was called my “secret memo” (the column) ran in the New York tabloids.
I hang up from my call with the vice president. I am shaking. I am also about to get on a plane to Washington with my family. We arrive Thursday night, in time for the president’s radio address on Friday, to which we have also been invited. They send the details to the hotel. So far, so good; we haven’t been disinvited. We go to the White House, where we are directed to the Roosevelt Room. The war in Kosovo is in its second week. The president is running late. I am judging the reactions of everyone I see. Are they all mad at me?
Ann Lewis comes upstairs to find me. When the vice president finished yelling at me, he called her. He claimed to both of us that this was the first he’d heard that anyone thought he had a problem with women in his campaign. I ask Ann if she yelled back. She says no. She works there. Her advice is that I ask the president to get involved. I find this rather horrifying. There is a war in Kosovo. Does she think I need to get the president involved in my dispute with the vice president? She does.
After the radio address, each family group has its picture taken with the president. I force my children, who are tired from waiting, to wait longer, positioning them at the end of the line, so I’ll have time to talk to the president. Finally, it is our turn. He kisses me hello, takes my hand, couldn’t be warmer. Clearly, he’s not mad at me. “I have a little problem,” I say. “Your friend the vice president is mad at me.”
“I know,” says the president of the United States. He laughs. “He came in to me this morning to complain about you, and I said, ‘Al, stop ka-vetching about Susan. She’s just trying to help.’ "
The president tells me that he’s going to try to solve the problem. “You know, you’re right,” he says. “It is a white boys’ campaign. They do need women.” Besides, he thought the line about Gore having a bigger problem with women than he did was pretty funny.
The vice president and I made up two weeks later. I wrote him a note, not apologizing, but explaining why inclusion is so important in a 21st-century campaign, why the debate has to move beyond questions of conscious discrimination to the more important challenge of how we include everyone at the table. I don’t know what the president said, but the vice president called me four times on the next Saturday, and talked to my husband, my daughter, and my answering machine before we finally connected. He said it was important to him that we talked. Clearly. “He must want something,” I said to Lynne. He wanted me to know that I was right about the need for diversity and that he thought of us as friends. My stomach suddenly felt better.
He told me about the calls he’d made to diversify the convention. He asked me what I thought of Donna Brazile, the African-American woman who was being considered for a job as political director. I had fired Donna Brazile in 1988 for speaking out in violation of the candidate’s direct instructions about rumors surrounding George Bush’s personal life.
“She could run your campaign,” I said.
She does now.
Taking on the vice president of the United States was a piece of cake compared to what I have been through this summer: separating from my husband of 14 years, creating a new home for my children and knowing that I have no one but myself to pay for it. I have never felt so powerful in my life, or so vulnerable.
The vice president is ahead in the polls thanks to the support of women. And it wasn’t just The Kiss. Bush is ahead among married women. Gore is strongest among those women who live alone and support their children. The promise of a safety net counts for more with those who don’t have a male version of one.
I am told that there are some at the Gore campaign who are still afraid of me. So be it. Sometimes it is better to be feared than loved. Sometimes, all it takes to wield power is the willingness to be yelled at–and an ample supply of Tums.
From “Sex & Power” by Susan Estrich. c. 2000 by Susan Estrich. To be published in October by Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.
