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

reviews of the headlines were deepening the bond. Clinton seemed to have confidence in me, and he coached me on what I needed to know — even taking me into the bathroom once to deliver an important message on how to deal with a particular woman friend of his.
    The night before, I had shared a car with Susan Thomases, a brassy New York lawyer and Democratic campaign veteran who was also one of Hillary's best friends. Exhausted from an all-night speech meeting and a full day of events, I didn't make a good impression. Bad move: She apparently told Hillary, who told Clinton that I was rude. When we got to the airport that morning, he gave me some advice over the urinals: “George, you know that Hillary and I have a lot of good women friends our age. You have to pay attention to them, ask them what they think so they don't resent you. You're smart, but you're a boy. You have to go out of your way to be nice to them.”
    By the end of the year I was doing better in that department. Every Tuesday, before her weekly “ladies lunch” in Little Rock, Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelley, would stop by my office to chat before leaving me with a powerful hug as thanks for “taking care of my Bill.” Hillary knew she could count on me to get things done and let me know how much she appreciated it by inviting me to the family Christmas party along with a dozen or so longtime friends of the Clintons. We played parlor games and sang carols — an old-fashioned American-style Christmas in the South. The ethnic in me found the whole scene exotic but warm. I was becoming part of the family.

3 HEARING HOOFBEATS
    A fter a few days off with Joan at a funky Ozark resort called Eureka Springs, I caught up with Clinton on New Year's Day in Charleston, South Carolina. He and Hillary wanted a quiet family night after their annual visit to Renaissance Weekend — a gathering of credentialed baby boomers who flew to Hilton Head every New Year's for earnest talk and energetic networking. Once they were settled in their suite with Chelsea and her choice of movie rentals, I went out for a walk. The warm salted breeze and the gaslights guarding the turn-of-the century town houses by the bay connected me to another time. But I was thinking about the year ahead.
    Things were looking good. Not only were we succeeding, but our rivals were stumbling. Cuomo was out, and Wilder would soon follow. Nobody took Tsongas seriously yet, and Harkin signaled that
he
wasn't a serious threat by taking a two-week vacation in the Caribbean. Jerry Brown was still a joke, and Kerrey had been hampered by a staff coup, weak fund-raising, and the revelation that he didn't provide health insurance to employees at the fitness centers he owned — a devastating charge given that the senator was trying to make universal health care the signature issue of his campaign.
    Our team was starting to gel. Dee Dee Myers came in from California to be press secretary, and Bruce Reed moved down from D.C. to run the issues shop. I was back on the road — this time for good. I couldn't have been happier with where we were or how I fit in. If our luck held, we'd get the nomination. If it held a little longer …
    The next day's main event was in an antebellum mansion with a staircase out of
Gone with the Wind
. As night fell, about a hundred supporters crowded up the stairs to watch Clinton go to work. These were his people — progressive Southern Democrats. And this was his place — a room big enough to perform in but small enough to forge personal connections. Mellowed by his brief holiday and building hopes for the new year, Clinton spoke in a soft drawl stretched out just a touch for his neighbors' ears. The crowd was rapt with parochial pride and the hope that this night might be a memory in the making — the year we began with the next president.
    Clinton didn't simply speak to the group; he conducted it. When he recounted the daily struggles of single women working their way off