Inside the Bill Clinton–Vernon Jordan Bromance

Bill Clinton famously cultivated a wide network of friends and political loyalists—a group that came to be known as F.O.B.s, Friends of Bill. But in his personal life, the 42nd president counted one man, first and foremost, as his best friend: the power broker and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, who died in March at age 85.

Clinton and Jordan’s connection was solidified at a breakfast in a cramped Little Rock kitchen in 1980. Several weeks before, the voters of Arkansas had rejected Clinton’s second gubernatorial run, making him the youngest ex-governor in American history. He was only 34. His vision of a grand political career—which many believed might someday carry him to the White House—appeared to be in tatters. He was depressed, convinced his career as an elected official was over. That is, until Jordan came down from New York to talk some sense into him. “He was flailing, in utter shock,” remembered Democratic mandarin (and current nominee for the Virginia governorship) Terry McAuliffe. “He screwed up, and now didn’t know what to do with his life.” Dozens of friends and acquaintances took time to commiserate with Clinton, but that didn’t change his view: his trajectory in public service had been knocked off course and he felt too depressed to chart a comeback.

On election night, 1980, Vernon Jordan had watched the returns from his Fifth Avenue apartment. Ronald Reagan and his conservative coalition had swept the nation, winning the White House, flipping the Senate, and ushering in a generational realignment of American politics. Jordan, one of the country’s most prominent civil rights figures at the time, was concerned what that rightward shift would mean for the future of a movement to which he’d dedicated much of his life. One race in particular saddened him: the defeat of his new friend Bill Clinton.

The two men had met three years earlier in Little Rock at a banquet for the National Urban League. Jordan had come to town to raise funds for the civil rights organization he had led for nearly a decade. Clinton was then the state attorney general. Jordan, in fact, had followed the Arkansan’s career because of his long friendship with Clinton’s wife, Hillary, whom he had met at a conference in Colorado in 1969. As Hillary herself recalled it, she had been sitting on a park bench, having just given a speech, going over the day’s schedule with Peter Edelman, a former Robert Kennedy aide. “Into my eyesight,” she remembered, “came a pair of highly polished shoes and a voice that said, ‘Well Peter, aren’t you going to introduce me to this earnest young woman?’ I looked all the way from his shoes up to the head of this very attractive man. We started talking and instantly I was struck by his intelligence, his charisma and mannerisms. Just an incredible public presence.”

Forty-three years later, her husband vividly recalled the first time he met Jordan, in 1977: “The Urban League banquet. We had a heck of a crowd there and he was a big star. The emcee for the evening was this woman who was one of our best TV anchors. She wore a beautiful dress that was high collared but had no back. Vernon and I were sitting on either side of the lectern where she was speaking, and her back was visible to Vernon. And he said to me after we were walking out, ‘She’s a very attractive lady and that was a beautiful dress. It’s too bad they ran out of fabric before they finished it.’” And so began Bill Clinton’s closest adult friendship—fittingly, in laughter, and not surprisingly about women, which would become a frequent topic of conversation.

That single exchange presaged thousands that would keep Clinton and Jordan engaged and entertained for the next four decades. Their banter would play out at Thanksgiving at Camp David and Christmas Eve parties at the Jordans’ D.C. home; on Martha’s Vineyard during summer vacations; and in the Oval Office. That America’s “first Black president”—the moniker bestowed on Clinton by writer Toni Morrison in 1998—would choose as his First Friend a Black man from the South (Jordan grew up in a deeply segregated prewar Atlanta) is not surprising and no coincidence. As one former aide said of the pair: “They complemented each other perfectly: Both were extremely smart and charismatic; both were larger-than-life guys, with big appetites.”

“I could see that he was aggressive, sure of himself and genuine,” Jordan noted, when describing that first encounter. “It was clear that he had a deep, caring concern about race, and so there was an immediate affinity.” And Clinton saw in Jordan those same beliefs, along with the political acumen and infectious personality to advance Black interests across all aspects of American life. But their easy rapport and love of the game—especially in politics and sports—took the Clinton-Jordan friendship to another level. What’s more, both were players, knowing how others, not infrequently women, reacted to their boundless charm and electric bearing. At six foot two and six foot five, respectively, Clinton and Jordan, with broad shoulders and radiant smiles, lit up whatever room they occupied. When Clinton later shared that same magnetism with Monica Lewinsky, a 20-something intern in the White House (now a Vanity Fair contributing editor), the consequences would be devastating, imperiling his presidency, and forcing Jordan into an uncomfortable role at the center of a national scandal.

Back in 1980, things were anything but radiant. Feeling the sting of Clinton’s defeat, Jordan decided to pick up the phone, knowing the governor could use a sympathetic ear. Hillary answered, only to hear a booming baritone, asking, “You got any grits down there?” Hillary responded, “I don’t know how to make grits, but you come on down.” A few weeks later, Jordan, in a three-piece suit, was standing in the tiny kitchen of the Clintons’ small yellow-framed house; they had just vacated the governor’s mansion. Awaiting Jordan was a piping hot plate of instant grits Hillary had purchased that morning. As he saw the young couple with their one-year-old daughter, Chelsea, Jordan could feel his friend’s despondence. Gone was the confidence that had so impressed Jordan at their first meeting. He now saw a man adrift.

Over the next two and half hours, Jordan dominated the discussion. He spoke in blunt, direct terms: Stop pitying yourself and appreciate what others see in you. You’re a man of immense promise who suffered a single election loss. You have too much commitment to the causes you care about, too much support to step off the stage. “He knew that I had just become the youngest former governor in the history of the country. And that my epitaph had been written,” Clinton recalled. “He told me: ‘You and Hillary, you got a lot of talent, and your heart’s in the right place; it’s going to come out all right.’ ”

“Nobody else was saying that to me,” Clinton remembered 40 years later. “That wasn’t the storyline.”

Jordan’s message resonated with Clinton at the very instant he was entertaining offers that would have given him financial security and less heartache. Clinton had been approached about becoming the head of the World Wildlife Federation, chief of staff to California governor Jerry Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and president of the University of Louisville. Then Jordan appeared as the lone voice in the wilderness. “You’re not done, and you shouldn’t think you’re done,” Hillary remembered Jordan saying as Clinton ticked off the opportunities he was considering. “He made a big impression on him in that moment.” Her husband echoed this sentiment, “He told me I needed to stay in the game…. I just took a deep breath and instead of being miserable, after that, it all began to sort of fall into place. And I began to just think about the rest of my life and try to live in the present and for the future.” Hillary would add, “That conversation was a milestone in Bill’s decision to stay in Arkansas, stay in politics, and ultimately to run for president.”

Before leaving for the airport, Jordan offered one more piece of advice—to his friend Hillary Rodham: she needed to start using “Clinton” as her last name. If Bill was going to make a political comeback, and do it in Arkansas, Hillary had to accede to the conventions of the time. As Bill Clinton recounted, “Vernon said to her, ‘I’m older than you are. I think keeping [the] last name is bothering a lot of older Black people and we need them all.’ And Hillary thought: if Vernon believed she could do it and maintain her integrity and be who she was, it made her think she could do it.” Hillary agreed: “It was important to have his voice in that decision. I respected his intelligence and political experience, and really paid attention.”

The Clintons stayed put, forged ahead, and two years later, Bill Clinton, with Hillary Rodham Clinton by his side, took the oath of office as the 42nd governor of Arkansas. Amid the sea of onlookers at the front of the Capitol was a beaming Vernon Jordan.

By 1991, as the nation’s focus started to turn to the next year’s presidential election, Jordan was as well-regarded as anyone in America who worked at the intersection of politics and business. Every year, he traveled to Europe to attend the Bilderberg Meeting, a gathering of the world’s elite centered around issues affecting the U.S.-European alliance. It was also a chance for leaders from both sides of the Atlantic to see and be seen. Jordan went out of his way to extend an invitation to a restless Clinton, then in his fifth term as governor.

Three years before, Clinton had decided not to make a White House run. (He expressed concern about the impact of a presidential campaign on Chelsea, then seven years old. And a close Clinton aide, Betsey Wright, had warned her boss about his history of what she termed “Bimbo eruptions.”) The governor, nonetheless, was raring to ascend the national political ladder and had emerged as one of the leading voices of moderation in a party that seemed to be tacking leftward. Jordan, mindful of Clinton’s ambitions, believed he needed some international exposure and foreign policy gravitas to become a more credible candidate—especially if he were to face off against the seasoned George H. W. Bush.

Bilderberg presented a perfect opportunity. “Vernon called me and said ‘I think you ought to go,’ ” Clinton said. “‘It’d do you good to get exposed to them.’” In June 1991, the two arrived in Baden-Baden for a few days of high-level talks with European leaders such as Gordon Brown, the future British prime minister, as well as senior members of the Bush administration. They then proceeded to Russia, giving Clinton a chance to witness for himself the country’s dramatic transition to a market-driven democracy. In hindsight, Jordan viewed the experience as Clinton’s “coming out party.” And on the flight home, both men recognized that Clinton possessed the maturity and intellectual breadth to be president. There was one problem, though: Bush’s approval ratings, buoyant after the first Gulf War, still remained in the 70s. To many observers, the president looked invincible. But not to Clinton. He had recently seen factories close in his home state. He sensed a Bush vulnerability, telling Jordan as their plane crossed the Atlantic: “I’m out here living in the real America and Bush’s popularity is based on the Gulf War. But the economy is in much worse shape. . . . There’s a lot of anxiety here. And I really believe that I need to look at this.”

Jordan was more cautious. He knew how ruthless the Bush political operation could be; he had seen campaign manager Lee Atwater’s infamous and racist oppo-research smear, deployed four years before, against the Democrats’ Mike Dukakis. “Are you tough enough to handle this?” Jordan asked his friend. “If I’m not,” replied Clinton, “then I’m not tough enough to be president.”

The trip to Bilderberg accomplished its purpose. Clinton sized up his opponents and concluded he could beat them. “Bill listened to representatives of the Bush administration give answers to questions about domestic policy, economic policy,” Hillary remembered, “and he thought their answers were so weak that I knew he came out of it very fired up and thinking maybe he would actually run that year. It was very important to his decision.”

In April 1992—just a dozen years after that kitchen visit from Jordan—Bill Clinton fought off his Democratic opponents to become his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. The next question facing him: whom to pick as his running mate? He needed someone with superior discretion and judgment to help guide the process. And, surprising no one, he named Jordan to co-chair the committee that would identify would-be veeps.

The committee operated off two lists: the official roster of 40 or so candidates that would be considered by the committee (chaired by future secretary of state Warren Christopher)—and a private list, known only to a handful of Clinton intimates. On that list were the few people Clinton was really interested in, the ones who, without any vetting, he had already decided would be his strongest choices. Clinton quietly asked Jordan to determine who on that very short list was ready to run with him.

Interestingly—and never disclosed before—the man Clinton ultimately picked, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, was not on that short list. (I know because I served on the vetting staff, later joining Clinton’s White House Counsel office and the Department of Justice, before heading on to a career as a lawyer and communications strategist.)

As Clinton recalled, “The first person I was interested in was Bill Bradley because I had known him a long time.” Sitting with Jordan, Clinton called Christopher to set up a clandestine meeting in Philadelphia. Christopher made the pitch to the New Jersey senator and former New York Knick, but as both men later confirmed, he took his name out of consideration right from the beginning. He wasn’t interested.

Clinton then asked Jordan to phone West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller. He and Clinton had worked closely together as governors, and they shared a passion for health care. Clinton thought the promise of passing comprehensive health care reform might be enough to attract Rockefeller’s interest, but he was wrong. Rockefeller, according to Jordan, said to him he was sure Clinton was going to lose the general election. If that happened, Rockefeller planned to run for president himself in 1996.

With Bradley and Rockefeller nixed, Clinton directed Jordan to make one last call: to his friend Colin Powell, Bush’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a hero of the Gulf War. “I never really thought he’d do it because he was made a general under President Reagan and had a good relationship with President Bush,” Clinton said. “He also probably thought of himself as a liberal Republican before it became a vanishing, extinguished species. But I felt that I had to ask because I thought the country was so divided. If we could have had a national unity ticket, it would be good.” Powell was immune to Jordan’s argument and declined, citing his wife Alma’s fear for his safety.

The short list exhausted, Clinton turned to his longer list. Gore immediately shot to the top, but as a fellow Southerner from the baby boomer generation, he didn’t offer geographic, demographic, or even ideological diversity. Plus, Clinton didn’t know if the two would mesh personally. On the day of his interview, Gore traveled in a Ford Bronco with tinted windows to secretly meet with Clinton at the Capitol Hilton. Greeting each other stiffly in suits and ties, they started talking at nine in the evening. Soon enough, ties came off, shirttails dangled, and beer bottles emptied. Each time an aide reminded the governor of the time, he would be shooed away. When the meeting finally ended at midnight, the two men, exhausted, were aware they not only liked each other—but they had just made a historic match.

On July 6, Clinton placed a call to Gore and offered him a place on the ticket. The men would enjoy a productive and healthy partnership—until 1999, when they had a bitter falling-out after Clinton’s impeachment for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and Gore’s seething assessment of it.

On November 3, 1992, Bill Clinton was in his jogging clothes when the first encouraging returns started trickling in at 6:30 p.m. Within a few hours, the networks would declare him the winner. Three days later, in a nod to just how much he trusted and valued his best friend, Clinton’s first official announcement as president-elect was to announce Vernon Jordan as chairman of his presidential transition committee. Jordan would later describe the announcement as one of the proudest moments of his life: being named the first person of color ever to serve in that position.

The pair got down to work. (Eventually Clinton would appoint more women and people of color to more high-level positions than any previous president.) As they began, Clinton didn’t have to say out loud what both already knew: he desperately wanted Jordan in his Cabinet. Wasting little time, Clinton asked him to come to Little Rock to talk about the potential appointment. Meanwhile, lawyers rushed to compile any public information available to informally pre-clear Jordan’s name for consideration. Without preamble, Clinton bore in: “Will you be my attorney general?”

Clinton had numerous motivations, beyond friendship. He could see GOP forces gathering to oppose him; he was especially aware of the ascendance of a young Georgia congressman named Newt Gingrich, who would become Speaker of the House. “I saw what they were going to try to do to weaponize the courts,” Clinton said. “They were already well on their way to doing then what [became] second nature to [Trump’s attorney general] Bill Barr.” He believed Jordan—an advocate for racial equality and an eminence in the corridors of power in Washington and New York—was the one to keep Gingrich’s conservatives at bay. Said Clinton, “I knew Vernon was respected enough, wise enough, and tough enough.”

Like the lawyer he was, Jordan had come ready with his rebuttal. Twenty of the previous 30 years he had worked as a civil rights activist, at relatively little pay. Now he was making real money. But beyond the pecuniary considerations, he thought he could be a more effective transition chair if he wasn’t in contention for a job himself. He also knew that saying no to his best friend could complicate a relationship he treasured: “There was no way to know,” Jordan remembered thinking, “where my decision might take our friendship.”

He took a few moments before he answered Clinton. The president-elect could tell he was giving the matter serious reflection. Finally Jordan spoke. “I’m just not going to do it.”

“Why?” Clinton asked.

“I like my life now. I like being a private citizen. I like the business things I do. I like not having a hassle with the political press.” Jordan offered a persuasive alternative: “I’ve watched a lot of presidents. And you need me more as a friend than in the government. I’ll be way more good to you being there, 24 hours a day, to tell you what I think and not have to worry about running some department and the latest controversy. It’s best for you. And I know it’s the best thing for me.”

Clinton knew Jordan so well by then that he recognized what he could and couldn’t talk him into. When Jordan played the friend card, Clinton knew he had lost the argument. “Remember this guy had had a fascinating life,” Clinton said, “but also a tough one. His first wife [Shirley] came down with MS.… Ann in many ways saved his life and they created this blended family with all the kids together. And he just didn’t want a job where he had to be on the road and under fire all the time. And I realized that it was deep. And I also realized how dependent I had grown on him, just because we got each other. He got me, I got him. You didn’t have to explain the history of the world.”

As the president settled into the White House, a routine developed. Whenever a key decision had to be made, aides would receive the same instruction: “Call Vernon.” And Vernon was indeed called, countless times, and asked to share his views on everything from the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which allowed gay soldiers to serve in the military so long as their sexual identity remained hidden (Jordan supported the plan), to his reluctant endorsement of appointing of an independent counsel to investigate the Whitewater scandal (“the worst decision of my presidency,” Clinton rued 25 years later).

They conversed by phone, in one-on-one meetings in the Oval, up in the residence. On the rare occasions when he would sit in on Clinton’s larger Oval Office gatherings, which included the gaggle of young press and policy aides who populated the White House during the first term, Jordan would hang on the periphery, silently observing. Then the room would clear of everyone except Jordan. “Only then would he offer his opinion,” a Clinton confidant explained. “The president realized at some point early in his first term he didn’t have enough adults in the room. Vernon was so much more authoritative and seasoned than anybody else there. He would come in and just talk it through with Clinton. They saw each other as equals. There was never any bullshit.”

Of all the roles Jordan would play throughout his friend’s presidency, though, the most important was helping him break through the clutter of opinions being offered by staffers, who sometimes didn’t reveal or understand unseen agendas. No one around Clinton could match Jordan’s Rolodex, his judgment of human character, or his ability to persuade. “His genius was his charm,” observed ABC News veteran George Stephanopoulos, one of Clinton’s closest aides during the campaign and through the first term. “His smile, his voice, his size, his looks, his capacity to pay attention to you, all of it in combination could just get you to do anything without realizing it was really him that was pushing it. He wasn’t unlike Clinton in that way, but more. Vernon would make you feel you were being taken into his confidence and you could trust him, that he wasn’t going to screw you. Even when he got me to do something I absolutely didn’t want to do, he could make me feel like he had my back. He did it with such grace that no one on the receiving end ever felt suspicious or resentful”—a rare commodity in a city full of transient relationships.

Throughout Clinton’s two terms, Jordan was ever present, from offering sartorial counsel (he favored suits by Oxxford, shirts by Charvet) to hosting dinners for the Clintons on Martha’s Vineyard. But there was so much more. He was urged by the president to open doors for interviews for Monica Lewinsky when she was seeking post-White House employment. (Jordan would testify twice about this and other matters, emerging relatively unblemished after Clinton’s second-term scandal and impeachment.) Later, after Clinton publicly admitted to having maintained a relationship with Lewinsky that was “not appropriate“ and “wrong,” the president dispatched Jordan, according to two senior sources inside the Clinton White House, to dissuade the First Lady from leaving their marriage.

Mostly, though, Jordan was there to provide support—and unvarnished advice. Clinton knew that when his friend offered an opinion, he wasn’t just providing a consigliere’s judgment but a distillation of all the intelligence he had synthesized from his vast network. Bruce Lindsey, one of Clinton’s closest advisors, would marvel at how crucial that was to the president. “Vernon knew everybody,” he remarked, “and was constantly picking up intelligence. So when he goes to see the president to talk about an issue, he knew more about what was going on—who was for it, who was against it, who would be a problem—than anyone else in the room.”

Then came the golf course. When out on the links, according to people who joined the Clinton–Jordan foursome, there was one special topic in which the president and his First Friend liked to indulge: women. Jordan himself acknowledged that fact. Newsweek, in 1998, would note: “Asked at a party earlier this year what it was he and Clinton talk about on the golf course, Jordan slyly replied: ‘We talk pu–y.’” Time reported the same anecdote, but did away with all the letters except “p.”

A person who often witnessed their banter described it as “highly exaggerated, highly sexualized, mostly playful; it had a 19th-hole quality to it.” He added: “You have to remember, they were very similar in their personalities, very attractive and sensual people, and also enormously attractive to women.” Each was fully aware of his own appeal, and the stories that naturally flowed from it. The golf course, without any prying eyes and ears, was their private venue to share those stories.

And then, in January 2001, the president’s stories—at least while he was serving as commander in chief—would come to an end.

Vernon Jordan was getting ready for dinner on a Saturday night when he received an impromptu call: “Can you come over for dinner tonight? I’m here alone.” A few weeks earlier, George W. Bush had been declared president-elect when the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 to end a recount of votes in Florida. Clinton, though impeached by the House of Representatives, would leave the White House with a 66 percent job approval rating, eight points higher than when he arrived. But on that night, he was by himself in the upstairs residence. He wanted company. And he wanted to share the moment with the man who had done so much for him over the decades. “I’ve already got a dinner, but I can come by after, say around nine,” Jordan told him, as independent and honest with the president as always.

A few hours later, Jordan pulled up to the South Portico in his red Cadillac convertible and went to the second-floor kitchen, where the president was waiting. They settled in for what both sensed would be the final night they shared together in the historic house. Jordan asked for some wine; Clinton directed “the only person there from the upstairs staff” to fetch a bottle. When the wine arrived, Clinton, who rarely drinks, remembered, “I didn’t pay attention to it, but later I found out it was some super valuable bottle to the White House. I think it was worth $10,000.”

Twenty years later, both men described the night as one of the most memorable of their lives. In the intimacy of a nearly empty White House, with the finest wine flowing, they let down their guard. “There was nothing we didn’t talk about—what happened in that house over the last eight years, all the fun we had together, what it meant to us,” Jordan said. Clinton remembered it as an evening he could finally feel a measure of peace after subjecting his best friend to the hell of his impeachment mess. It is possible that until that night, the two friends weren’t ready yet to have a conversation that would resolve whatever lingering tensions existed over the whole debacle following Clinton’s affair.

“It was one of the most wonderful times of my life,” Clinton said, “because I realized that he realized that I did not intentionally get him in the middle of all that impeachment stuff. He didn’t hold me responsible…. It meant the world to me that he knew that I had no earthly idea that he could be drawn into all that.”

After nearly six and a half hours, Clinton walked Jordan down to his car. It was 3:30 a.m. Clinton told him how much he loved him. It was what Clinton always said to Jordan when they parted. Clinton walked back the two flights of stairs to his bedroom while Jordan started down the south driveway toward the Washington Monument, illuminated in the distance. His eyes watered. “Here I am,” he remembered thinking, “the son of a postman who grew up in the first public housing project in the country for African Americans, and I’ve just spent the last six hours sharing everything with the most powerful man on the planet.” Tears started to stream down his face. Halfway down the driveway, overcome, he turned off the engine and rested his head on the steering wheel. Finally, his tears subsided, Jordan started the car again and headed home.

Adapted from FIRST FRIENDS: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents. ©2021 Gary Ginsberg and reprinted by permission from Twelve Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, New York, N.Y. All rights reserved.

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