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Podesta left the White House in 1995, in part, people say, because chief of staff Leon Panetta never gave him the respect he felt he deserved. He worked for Senate Democratic minority leader Tom Daschle and taught a law course on, appropriately enough, congressional investigations. He was lured back by Bowles just in time for the campaign-finance scandal. In that one, says Counsellor to the President Douglas Sosnik, Podesta wielded "the invisible hand that drove the process," pushing the lawyers to be more forthcoming but also reigning in the dump-everything-we-have strategy of Special Counsel to the President Lanny Davis. In Monicagate, Podesta played not only a backstage role but an onstage one as well: he was the person who arranged, at his old friend Betty Currie's urging, for Lewinsky to have a job interview with U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson. That later won him three appearances before Ken Starr's grand jury. But backstage, his arguments tipped the balance in favor of the decision to issue a response to Starr's charges ahead of time, a move that blunted the political impact.
His brother says politics did not run in the Greek-Italian Podesta family, even though it was based in Chicago. Their father was a factory worker for 50 years. "Bowles, blue blood; Podesta, blue collar," Podesta joked when Clinton announced his appointment. "No one ever got confused about which one of us had a passion for golf and which one had a passion for amusement parks," an allusion to his fascination with roller coasters.
Some argued that with Clinton facing possible impeachment, the replacement for Bowles should be a wise man who could deal with the major powers in Congress, much as Ronald Reagan picked former Senate majority leader Howard Baker to run things during the Iran-contra scandal. "But there are very few pooh-bahs left on the Hill," says Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, a former Podesta boss. "And John is known and respected by both Republicans and Democrats." In a White House often said to be short on grownups, Clinton's three previous staff chiefs--Bowles, Panetta and boyhood chum and businessman Mack McLarty--have invariably been described as Clinton's "peers." As a product of campaigns and of Washington's legal bureaucracy, Podesta doesn't fit that mold. But like his predecessors, he does have the peerlike ability to deliver bad news and stand up to the President. "He ain't a yes man," Leahy says. Adds a former White House insider: "He's got a hide of steel with a strong sense of self-confidence. He knows how to speak truth to power."
Podesta, married and a father of three, attended public school in Chicago and Knox College in Illinois before getting a law degree from Georgetown. He met Clinton in 1970, when both worked on a U.S. Senate campaign. He served as a trial attorney in the Justice Department and later gained policy expertise as a counsel to the Senate Agriculture and Judiciary committees. He and his brother formed a political-consulting business in 1988, melding their different styles. Tony, large and large-living, vacations on the Amalfi coast, while John, the ascetic one, drives the unpretentious Geo Tracker.