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In the three decades since their wartime affair, Harriman had run twice for President, been elected Governor of New York and served as a top adviser to Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Before his death in 1986, he encouraged Pamela to launch her own political-action committee and turn their Georgetown mansion into a political think tank where party officials and donors gathered to discuss issues over meals served by black-tied butlers. "PamPAC," as some called her Democrats for the '80s committee, raised $10 million for party coffers. A one-day fund raiser in 1992 at her Middleburg, Virginia, estate gathered more than $3 million for candidate Bill Clinton. The grateful President was happy to send her back in triumph to France, a country she had loved since sneaking away as a teenager for a weekend in Paris with a married earl. As ambassador, her fluent French, hard work and access to the highest officials in Washington and Paris eased the sting of such contentious Franco-American issues as NATO expansion and differences over the Middle East, U.N. leadership and trade.
So how did she do it? She was smart and determined, gracious and tough, but the real secret was her charm, exquisite taste and laser-like focus--first on men, later on issues--to ensure that she stayed near the center of every important arena. Sometimes disappointed but never intimidated, she understood from late nights at the knee of her father-in-law Churchill how even powerful men could be plagued by doubts. Pamela once praised Clinton for having the "indispensable requirement of leadership," which she defined as the ability "to tell people not what they want to hear but what they need to know." Her own talent for doing both served her extraordinarily well.
Christopher Ogden is the author of Life of the Party: the Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman