Hillary Clinton began her official 2000 New York Senate bid at a high-profile farewell gala for Bill Clinton that became a scandal of the first order involving convicted felons, wide scale fraud on behalf of its organizers, fundraisers and the Clinton campaign management on the deepest levels of involvement other than the dame herself. According to legal history anyway. Given the state of Bill's reputation concerning smokable products, the Clinton brand wasn't exactly a layup election-wise.
Why not start there? The reason the New Square is where I am choosing to start is because, while not as dramatic as Benghazi, emails, Whitewater and the Gala itself—those being on the short list—it is archetypical: engagement with shady figures, money or favors are swapped hands, votes and influence are peddled and ultimately it ends in murky litigious and speculative political aether.
In other words, standard everyday politics.
The New Square is located in Rockland County, NY, just outside of Manhattan. It is a small enclave of Skver Hasidic Jews whose leader derives his lineage from a movement started more than a century earlier in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Yes, it is the same one, but they had long since left the area when Chernobyl gained its international infamy.
Grand Rabbi David Twersky was, and still is, for all intents and purposes the totalitarian leader of a tiny sect of approximately 2000–3000 followers at that time, who lived in the highly insular New Square. Reading about his financial and social relationship to his followers—almost 50% of whom live at or below the poverty line—is textbook cultishness. He has his private prayer room in the synagogue, and actually knocks on the wall during services to indicate the laypeople can move onto the next phase of the service. He also enjoys a private multi-million dollar residence outside the enclave, and drives there in cars at which most can only marvel.
Twersky also has another familiar characteristic of cult leaders, and indeed, some major religions. On quite a few documented occasions some of his followers have come forward and revealed their young sons were sexually molested by high ranking community and church leaders. Twersky apparently had performed the same courageous acts as the likes of Pope Benedict and Joe Paterno: cover it up and tell the family never to mention it again. It’s almost pathetic how predictable totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian environments foster this sort of behavior.
Rockland County, NY in which New Square is located had a population of approximately 300,000 at that time, meaning that the inhabitants of New Square, although obviously voting as a bloc at the whim of their dear leader, represented a grand and frankly generous less-than-1% of the county’s population. In an election in which Clinton would win by almost 900,000 votes when her total of 3.5 million votes from across the state were tabulated, one has to wonder why the Clintons not only invited Twersky for a formal meeting with the President and First Lady at the White House, but why they would associate themselves with someone of that character at all.
To understand this is to understand both the complex and the simple nature of their politics that has resulted in their tremendous success. It is almost never one or the other—it is a duality of purpose.
From its most simple standpoint,Twersky was one man who was worth about two thousand votes. It may not seem like much in the big picture, but the Clintons have always been grassroots and, generally speaking, good to those who are both good for and to them. The New Square may be a kind of Jonestown-lite in the middle of New York’s wealthier suburbs, but Twersky delivered them the votes. This simple relationship also highlights the simplicity and complexity beautifully.
If neither side has any disproportionate leverage, political transactions are simple. Find out what you both want, negotiate and broker a trade. Once that is done, all that need be done is follow through in good faith, realizing that nothing more has been exchanged. It doesn’t make you friends, there may or may not be an ongoing relationship there and crucially, nothing bullshitted or dangled outside the realm of that very specific transaction is binding.
Politics on this level is the art of creating verbal contracts where both parties are bound only by their desire to gain, at the risk of incurring meaningful loss. That’s the difference between the law and politics: in politics there is no judicial recourse (generally speaking)—loss of what you could not attain through any other means is the judge and jury. As you will see with the conclusion of the business with New Square, how far this can be stretched and calculated is the subtle complexity of the game.
The Contract:
It would be charming for the Clintons to lock down a few thousand votes, and Twersky had no reason to give them to her. In fact, in both of Bill Clinton’s elections the community broke largely against him, and their votes were unbelievably trivial minutia in the big picture. The Clintons are not Twersky’s friends and vice-versa, and as far as Twersky’s community is concerned not even the president stands between him and God. He is literally a walking saint, and he's got all the money he needs from his laypeople to live the life of a millionaire. Obviously the Clintons didn’t want to just kiss a little ass for a few ballots and hope he’d show up, because the only result of kissing ass is that one person has to rinse their mouth and the other has to wipe off the drool afterwards. At most, the receiver can add a little notch above the bedpost to their list of sexuo-political conquests.
If you think the Clintons are going to put their lips on anyone’s ass, you’re out of your goddamned mind. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but politicians do have egos, and I'm pretty fucking sure the Oval Office had to be expanded by a dozen feet or so in every direction just so Bill could fit his all in. At the very least everyone is going to get off at least once in the deal—the Clintons probably a minimum of three times— and then it’s a game of “who can stay awake the longest” to make sure the other side doesn’t steal $50 out of their wallet for cab fare and malt liquor and leave through an open window at three AM never to be seen again.
In politics, that post-coital snuggle could last for decades depending on how much money is in a particular briefcase near the nightstand.
As it turns out, Twersky did have something he wanted, and it was extremely important to not just him but his entire community. Four of his lads defrauded the government to the tune of $30 million dollars earmarked for a school that was never built. All four went to jail, and Twersky wanted them out. After all, a man who is supposedly a walking saint needs to be able to perform a miracle now and again, and besides; they did take a huge fall for the community—probably so Twersky came off clean, given that there is no conceivable way $30 large waltzed into his community under his substantially bearded nose.
Opportunity makes for good sex in politics, and this was memorable. All Twersky wanted from the Clintons was a presidential pardon. There was not a snowball’s chance in hell that four unquestionably controversial pardons from the most powerful man in the world could be bought for a few thousand votes, and nobody thought otherwise. Fortunately, Hillary had a big problem too. Early in the election cycle, the Clintons had met with Yasir Arafat and his wife, and Hillary was photographed about fifty billion times kissing Suha Arafat—Yasir’s wife—on the cheek at the conclusion. Up to that point, Hillary was a popular speaker at Jewish events, but kissing the wife of the leader of the PLO, particularly after Suha had just ripped Israel a gigantic new asshole a few months earlier in the press, was...
...problematic.
And by that, I mean somewhere between DEFCON 3 and 4 on the political nuclear annihilation spectrum.
Especially in New York.
And especially, especially in the influential areas of New York.
I think it’s pretty clear where this is going. Damage control was in order, but finding a Jewish leader who was going to be willing to help was going to be extremely difficult. Everybody wants something in this world, but not even a photo of the president snout-deep in your butt cheeks to show your friends is worth selling out your entire race. What was needed was someone who fit three important, unusual criteria:
1. Made of absolute goddamned teflon when it came to their public.
2. Needs something almost nobody but you is selling.
3. Is extremely Jewish and not going to cause any future problems for you.
Twersky fit the bill. The Clintons scheduled a little visit, and New Square was decked out for their arrival like Cinderella’s two stepsisters when the prince showed up with the slipper. Hillary was photographed canoodling with the most orthodox Jewish looking human being in the entire state to achieve extreme political unction, and the good rabbi was even courteous enough to pay her bar tab with some votes.
The following things then occurred:
On November 7, 2000, Hillary Clinton received virtually 100% of the votes—far, far better than anyone had ever done there before.
On December 22, 2000, Twersky paid a little visit to the White House and had a lovely chat with Bill and Hillary.
Thereafter, Twersky’s boys did receive something. Mr. President did not grant them a full pardon, and whether Twersky was expecting it doesn’t really matter. Remember the nature of political contracts: the Clintons had the upper hand because Hillary wanted something delivered to her doorstep immediately. Twersky wasn’t going to get what he wanted until Bill Clinton was on his way out of office in January of 2001, which definitely gave Bill the opportunity to back out of the entire thing anytime he wanted after November 7th in case Twersky did something horrible or, frankly, he had better things to do. Twersky named a street in New Square after him, thus giving Bill a happy, shiny clean ass to show off while Twersky privately cleaned the shit out of his beard in his private bath in the synagogue.
When it was all said and done, Bill Clinton decided to follow the rule of being good to those who were good to you: he commuted a few months of the sentences. Hey, why make an enemy when you can make a friend? Besides, he was out of office anyway, and given the Lewinsky scandal it would be shocking if anyone even noticed the pardons. It makes sense really, especially since Hillary may need to get elected again in the future, and Twersky got some lovely pictures of himself and the newly elected Senator Clinton at the White House with the President, thus giving the illusion the Clintons were kind of, sort of or whatever, kissing his ass to his public. As far as everyone was concerned, all the gods had spoken, and everyone was still living on Olympus.
That is the art of the Clinton politics. The deals were made, and at all times the Clintons held all the cards.
...Wait a minute...
Did you say “at all times the Clintons held all the cards?!?” What about the desperate need for credibility in the Jewish community after the Arafat incident?
This next part is my absolute favorite.
Politics, Current Events: State of Affairs—The Rise and Run of Hillary Clinton: The Early Years
Politics, Current Events: State of Affairs—The Rise and Run of Hillary Clinton: Prologue