Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe is running Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign with the same no-nonsense touch that characterises his memoir, writes Denis Stauntonin Washington.
As the 2008 presidential race gets under way, Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe is everywhere, talking up Hillary Clinton, whose campaign he is chairing and promoting his new memoir What a Party! My Life among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals.
Amid the fauna of Washington's political life, few specimens are more colourful or more controversial than McAuliffe, a pugnacious Irish-American charmer who has been close to the centre of the Democratic Party for a quarter of a century. To his admirers, McAuliffe is a hard-headed hero who professionalised his party and succeeded in the 2004 campaign, for the first time in history, in raising more money than the Republican National Committee.
He has no shortage of enemies, however, both inside and outside his party and some Democrats view him as the embodiment of a coarse political culture in which money matters above all and no blow against an opponent is too low. The grandson of a professional boxer from Co Cork who himself fought as a teenager, McAuliffe makes no apology for his rough political style.
"We've got to know that when we go into these races, we are representing millions of people who have no voice in American politics, who are counting on us to fight for them. And if we don't rise to the occasion and we don't fight and if we're not going to win and if we allow the Republicans to distort our positions on issues, to distort our character and we don't respond in kind, then shame on us," he says.
In his book, McAuliffe blames John Kerry's timidity in responding to Republican attacks for the loss of the 2004 election. When a group of disgruntled Vietnam veterans ran adverts questioning Kerry's war record, the Democrat dithered until it was too late to effectively counter the charges.
"John Kerry went to Vietnam, he volunteered twice. George Bush was never on duty when he was supposed to be on duty with the National Guard. And we lost the issue? The American public is very smart. They know, if you don't fight for yourself, you sure as heck ain't going to fight for us," McAuliffe says.
A born salesman who started his first business at 14, tarring driveways for his neighbours in Syracuse, in upstate New York, McAuliffe has made a fortune from diverse interests in property, marketing, banking and financial services. Despite his success as a fundraiser, McAuliffe doesn't defend the role of money in American politics, but points out that, when he was chairman of the Democratic Party from 2001 to 2005, the average donation was just $48.
"We raised hundreds of millions of dollars in small cheques. That's good for democracy. It brought a lot of new people into the party. I'm not going to say it's good or bad. I'll say to you, it's part of the process. If you run for president or you run for office, you've got to buy media, you've got to pay for ground support, you've got to put your operations together. It's expensive. It costs nearly a billion dollars when you're all done to run for president of the United States of America, counting the party and everything else," he says.
Much of McAuliffe's book, which he admits to be passionately partisan and seasoned with plenty of blarney, is devoted to his friendship with Bill Clinton, a political soul mate who is also a close friend. Indeed, the Clintons and the McAuliffes go on holiday together and when Clinton bought a house in upstate New York at the end of his presidency, McAuliffe guaranteed the loan.
The Clintons left the White House $10 million in debt on account of legal fees run up during their various investigations, which Hillary Clinton saw as a Republican strategy to bankrupt them.
"They had achieved their purpose," Hillary Clinton told McAuliffe. "We owned nothing. We didn't own a car. We didn't own a house. Here we were, 50 years old, and we owned nothing. Nothing! All the money we had, which we had brought into the White House, was gone. I hadn't made any money for eight years, so it was really horrible."
McAuliffe's closeness to Clinton enabled him to get to know numerous world leaders, including Yasser Arafat, who spent one dinner stroking McAuliffe's leg under the table. In August 2002, after Clinton left office and the Bush administration was gearing up for war in Iraq, McAuliffe was chatting to Tony and Cherie Blair at the wedding of Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar's daughter in Madrid.
Cherie Blair asked McAuliffe what people in the US thought of Blair's stance on Iraq.
"We were all having such a good time talking, but I decided, what the heck, I'd tell them the truth. 'With all due respect, mister prime minister, most people think you're a lapdog for George Bush,' I said. 'No offence, sir'.
"At that point, Cherie slapped her husband on the shoulder and said: 'See, I told you so, Tony.' I knew I liked that woman," McAuliffe writes.
He identifies the 1995 visit to Belfast as the high point of Clinton's presidency, an event that cemented an emotional bond between Ireland and both Clintons.
"He talks about it as the greatest day of his life. And when he walked out on to that stage and he lit that Christmas tree, you could see for miles people waving Irish flags and American flags together, singing 'God bless America'. I don't think there was a prouder moment for Bill Clinton than that. He'll never get over it. Hillary will never forget it," McAuliffe says.
McAuliffe's role as chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign is not clearly defined, but it will undoubtedly involve the use of his fundraising talents. He also believes he has a role in conveying to the public what he describes as Clinton's true character as "a warm, caring, family person".
If these are not the epithets most Americans associate with the notoriously cautious senator from New York, McAuliffe says it is because Republicans have spent so much time and money trying to define her in an unflattering way.
"They are scared of Hillary Clinton. She is their biggest obstacle to keeping the White House. This is about power. The Republicans love power. They want to keep power and they will do anything they can to destroy anyone who gets in their path," he says.
Early polls give Clinton a huge lead over Democratic rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards and a slight edge over Republican frontrunners John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.
"John McCain is very formidable. But he's wrong on the war. He's wrong about sending 20,000 more troops over and the American public is 70 per cent against this war in Iraq. So I think he's wrong on the issues at the end of the day. But I think today for the Republicans, he's probably the frontrunner. They talk about Rudy Giuliani. I'm not sure if Rudy can win. He's pro-choice, pro-gay rights. That's a hard thing for the Republicans, the conservatives in that party to swallow," McAuliffe says.
He believes that Clinton's experience will persuade Democrats to nominate her and that, if McCain is the Republican candidate, he will be handicapped by his support for Bush on Iraq, but he cautions against making firm predictions too soon.
"If you go back and look historically at 2004, the polls all changed in the last three weeks of that race before Iowa. Howard Dean was the frontrunner for a long time in 2004. John Kerry was in third, fourth, fifth place and he ended up winning it with a large margin, followed by John Edwards, who came in second and Howard Dean was a distant third. My point is, these things change all the time," he says.
If Clinton becomes president, McAuliffe could expect a plum ambassadorship, perhaps in London or even a cabinet post such as commerce secretary, but he insists his sights are, for now, firmly on the present.
"I'll chair her campaign for president. Then let's just see what happens after that. I'm focused for the next two years on getting Hillary Clinton elected president. That's my top priority. And selling a lot of books," he says.
What a Party!, by Terry McAuliffe, is published by Thomas Dunne Books
