The Nine [35]
Meanwhile, even with Cuomo out of the running, Clinton was still infatuated with the idea of naming a politician. Important decisions are a form of autobiography, and Clinton believed his skills with people and his “big heart” were more important than mere legal expertise. He was determined to appoint someone in his own image. Clinton also had a politician’s conviction that legislation, rather than litigation, was the best way to solve society’s problems, so he didn’t want to waste a great deal of political capital pushing a controversial choice through the Senate. Clinton had built his campaign on economic issues, and he didn’t want to divert his focus in Congress. His economic program, with health care next on the agenda, was simply more important to him than taking a risk on a novel choice for the Supreme Court.
Clinton turned next to George Mitchell, the Senate majority leader and a former federal district judge in Maine. He had the same kind of skills as Cuomo, but without the governor’s need for psychodrama. True to form, Mitchell didn’t agonize when Clinton offered him the job. He declined on the spot, preferring his job in the Senate and his mission of passing Clinton’s legislative program. Next came Richard Riley, the former governor of South Carolina who was Clinton’s secretary of education. He, too, declined, with winning self-awareness. “I was a mediocre country lawyer,” Riley told the president. “This isn’t my thing.”
What about Bruce Babbitt? Clinton asked. Like Riley, Babbitt had been a Democratic governor in a largely Republican state, and he now served in Clinton’s cabinet, as secretary of the interior. And as the former attorney general of Arizona, Babbitt would have none of Riley’s qualms about his own fitness for the job. Let’s do Babbitt, subject to a background check, Clinton told his team.
So Vince Foster and Klain spent an entire night in Babbitt’s office in the Interior Department, a vast sprawling space that is sometimes described as the best office in Washington. They pored over tax returns, especially payments to household help. (This was just weeks after Clinton’s nomination of Zoe Baird for attorney general had foundered because she had hired illegal immigrants as a family nanny and a chauffeur. Worries about a “Zoe Baird problem” became an enduring preoccupation for public figures of all kinds.) The all-night vetting session turned up no problems. The White House lawyers told Babbitt to prepare for an announcement in the Rose Garden the following day.
In the morning, though, Clinton had misgivings. First, the Washington Times, a conservative paper owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, reported that Babbitt had gambling debts in Las Vegas casinos that were paid off by the mob. More important, Clinton had spoken to Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Hatch had said Babbitt would have a hard time getting confirmed. Babbitt’s strong proenvironmental views had alienated a group of Republican senators from the West, and they might take revenge—either on Babbitt’s nomination or on Clinton’s choice for his replacement at Interior. Several western Democrats were pushing New Mexico congressman Bill Richardson for the Interior post, but Vice President Gore didn’t think Richardson was “green” enough for the job.
So Clinton dropped Babbitt, with perhaps greater alacrity than the situation warranted. None of the problems with a Babbitt nomination were likely insurmountable. (The Washington Times story turned out to be completely bogus.) Both Babbitt and a successor at Interior would likely have been confirmed eventually. In truth, Clinton always had some ambivalence about Babbitt, because the two men were almost