Free Game Change by John Heilemann Page A

story in The New Yorker in May 2006, McCaskill had “told people in Missouri and in Washington that a ticket led by Clinton would be fatal for many Democrats on the ballot, and that a Clinton candidacy would rule out her chance to win the governorship.”
    Hillaryland was not amused by the New Yorker piece. But McCaskill smoothed things over with the Clintons, apologizing, claiming she’d been quoted out of context. In September, Bill flew to St. Louis and did a fund-raiser for McCaskill, and now Hillary was set to help fill her coffers, though (not coincidentally) nine hundred miles away from the Missouri media.
    The day before the New York fund-raiser, however, McCaskill appeared on Meet the Press and was asked by Russert if she thought that Bill Clinton had been a great president. “I do,” McCaskill said. “I have a lot of problems with some of his, his, his personal issues.” Russert began to speak, but McCaskill cut him off. “I said at the time, I think he’s been a great leader, but I don’t want my daughter near him.”
    Reines was in Chicago to attend a wedding and happened to be watching the show. Mortified, he knew that someone had to inform Hillary before the fund-raiser took place. He emailed the quote around Hillaryland. Everyone was aghast—and no one wanted to tell the senator, so Reines was saddled with the unpleasant duty.
    “So what’s going on?” Hillary asked, when Reines reached her by phone.
    Oh, not much, Reines replied, running through the day’s news, the guests on the Sunday shows, and then, at the end, sidling up gingerly to McCaskill’s comment.
    “She said what?” Hillary asked incredulously.
    Reines read her the quote verbatim: “I think he’s been a great leader, but I don’t want my daughter near him.”
    The phone went quiet. Hillary was speechless. A few more seconds passed, and then finally came her voice, hot with fury.
    “Fuck her,” Hillary said—and then called Solis Doyle and summarily canceled the fund-raiser.
    MCCASKILL WOULD AGAIN APOLOGIZE to Hillary and Bill, writing them letters, begging their forgiveness and forbearance. What she said had been stupid, hurtful, insensitive. But the truth was that McCaskill meant it, just as she’d meant her earlier prediction of the damage to Democrats across the country if Hillary won the nomination. McCaskill was in the market for a different horse—and now, like many other Democrats, she thought she saw one in Obama.
    Inside Hillaryland, the notion that Obama might enter the race seemed remote to almost everyone. Harold Ickes, a fabled Democratic operative and longtime adviser to the Clintons, was so dismissive of the idea that he offered to bet Solis Doyle $50,000 that it would never happen. Penn, too, was sure Obama would stay out; that was the skinny he was hearing from inside the Illinois senator’s orbit.
    Hillary, for her part, had no idea what Obama would do, though she knew that he wouldn’t be swayed by the argument that his experience was insufficient. “No one ever thinks they don’t have the experience to do this,” she told one of her aides. “No one thinks that way. He wouldn’t have gotten to this point and then said, ‘Oh, I don’t have the experience.’ You don’t think about your weaknesses. You think about your strengths.”
    But Obama’s strengths didn’t strike her as especially intimidating, and whether he took his weaknesses seriously or not, they were many and glaring. Sure, he had a great deal of potential, but it was just that—potential. He had no fund-raising network, no tangible accomplishments in the Senate. The speeches he gave—oh, they were pretty, but so what? You don’t change people’s lives with words , Hillary thought. You change them with committed effort, by pushing through the opposition. You change them with a fight. That was how you won elections, too. With a fight. In his entire career, Obama had yet to be hit with a single negative ad. How would he ever