The brave face she put on for Michelle notwithstanding, Hillary was not a happy woman in the summer of 2008. The past haunted her, the future daunted her, and the present was full of burdens. Still coping with her loss and what it meant, she kept casting her mind back, trying to grasp what had gone wrong with her campaign, inviting members of her former high command to her Senate office to conduct extensive examinations of their failure.

One day in July, (campaign strategist Mark) Penn arrived at the Russell Building for his discussion with Clinton. For more than an hour, Clinton held forth, while Penn mostly listened.

“Well, I thank you for everything you did for me,” Clinton began. “I’m sorry you took so much incoming fire. It kind of goes with the territory. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Yeah, well,” Penn replied with a shrug.

Clinton then launched into a lengthy overview of the problems that beset her. “It was just dysfunctional, and I take responsibility for that,” she said of her campaign. “I mean it just didn’t work.

“Having said that, it would have been a very hard campaign to run against Obama,” she went on. “We had the entire press corps against us… I mean, it was just a relentless, total hit job, day in and day out.… And you know, it was really hard to run against an African American when the entire Democratic Establishment was scared to death. They could not deal with it.”

* * *

But Clinton had harsh words for Penn, too. “Whenever there was a problem, people begged me to fire you,” she said. “Now why is that? Because you rub people the wrong way.”

After telling Penn that she was “personally fond” of him, she said he was dismissive, insulting, irritating, and alienating to his colleagues. “The Columbia thing, that really was beyond the pale,” she went on. “I felt fucked. I mean I gotta tell you. I felt like we were on the upswing, and I just felt fucked.”

“And I took the responsibility,” Penn said sheepishly.

Clinton, apparently all talked out about the past, turned to the here and now. “So what should I be doing?” she said. “I’m trying to stay low and out of the line of fire and not get in the way between (Obama) and the voters.”

Penn focused on Denver and the importance of Hillary’s speech. “He’s got to make sure that the night goes well,” he said. “The truth is, him making you vice-president is the best way to guarantee it.”

“There’s no way — no way,” she said. “He can’t tolerate that.”

Nothing was weighing on Clinton’s mind more than her campaign debt. “Bill and I never leave a debt unpaid,” she said. “It’s just that, I was shocked at how little (the Obama campaign) will help us. They aren’t going to help us. I really, I thought when I started this I might be able to get about five million out of them.... You know how much we’ve got so far?”

“Five hundred thousand?”

“No, one hundred thousand. He’s not going to help.”

“That’s why I wanted to negotiate first, withdraw second. Right?”

“The press — I couldn’t. I am held to such a different standard. We’re trying to get somebody to cover the fact that I’ve done more to promote unity than anybody in a comparable position — Bradley... you name it, Tsongas, Jackson, Kennedy. But you know it was like they just beat the hell out of me until I got out.”

Penn ran through the latest poll numbers, expressing his view of Obama’s chances against McCain as dicey.

“I want you to start thinking about how I avoid being blamed,” Clinton said. “Because I shouldn’t be blamed. But they are going to blame me. I somehow didn’t do enough.”

“‘She stayed in too long,’” Penn put in.

In a voice of mock horror, Clinton exclaimed, “‘Oh, she damaged him,’ you know — screw you! I thought it was a competitive election. I can stay in as long as I want to stay in. Teddy Kennedy stayed in until the convention. Give me a break.”

Penn, always on the lookout for business, said he wanted to try “to reconcile with the Obama campaign”.

“They’re never going to reconcile,” Clinton said dismissively. “Ain’t gonna happen. Ain’t gonna happen. Ain’t gonna happen. They are vindictive and small. They don’t think they need me. They had that conversation with Bill, they never called and asked him to do anything. They don’t care about a former president.”

Clinton returned to Obama’s prospects in the general election. “I think it’s 50-50 whether he wins, right?” she said, noting that Obama’s VP choice was critical, giving odds on whom he would pick: “Biden, one-in-two chance. Bayh, one-in-four chance. Kaine and Sebelius, both which I think are terrible choices, one-in-eight chance.”

For a year and a half, Hillary spent every waking moment not just trying to defeat Obama, but convincing herself that he was a lightweight, a nose-in-the-air elitist totally unfit to be the leader of the free world. A little more than a month after he ended her dream, she hadn’t become unconvinced. But now she would be forced to sit back and watch him run against McCain — a man whom Clinton considered a friend, but one whose election would be tantamount to re-electing Bush to a third term.

“The campaign was a terrible disappointment,” she said. “I hate the choice that the country’s faced with. I think it is a terrible choice for our nation.”

Extracted from Race Of A Lifetime: How Obama Won The White House
by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin;
Published by Penguin Books; Price: Rs 599. www.penguinbooksindia.com