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But while Tony's schemes were dubious, Hugh sprinkled his with a hint of fantasy. During impeachment, a friend recalls, Hugh pictured himself as the one who, for once, could come to Hillary's rescue from the vast right-wing conspiracy that she alluded to in a TV interview amid the Lewinsky scandal. (Hughie would have been better advised to rescue his sister from her husband, but his dealings with the President were usually always warmer than with her.) Like Ralph Kramden, he saw himself suddenly striking it rich on one scheme or another, proudly telling potential clients that they could reach him at "the House." He got hired by antitobacco and antigun lawyers hoping he could deliver the political muscle to prevail. He didn't.
The two brothers nearly created an international incident when they tried to launch a $118 million hazelnut-export business in the former Soviet republic of Georgia by hooking up with a local chieftain. The chieftain was then the sworn enemy of U.S. ally Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who told the White House he'd give the U.S. a day to get the Rodhams out of the country. To his credit, Hugh cooled it on the hazelnuts. But not Tony, who kept trying to get the President's blessing, calling during Clinton's last week every five minutes from a Washington hotel where he was holed up with a group of Russian moguls, trying to organize at least a photo op to prove his clout. (Tony got his moguls their presidential moment--more accurately, their ex-presidential moment--as Clinton dispensed handshakes at Andrews Air Force Base moments after the Bush Inaugural and just before he flew to New York.)
But as the Clinton era wound down, Hugh too was getting more desperate to make the killing that had not materialized in eight years of hustling. Taking and making whispered phone calls in the solarium on the third floor of the White House, Hugh was clearly up to something. That wasn't surprising. He always was: "Can you get me Oscar tickets?" "I want to go to the Super Bowl." "How about a lift on Air Force One?" And so, as Clinton popped in and out of the movie State and Main, which was being screened for the First Family, fielding last-minute pleas for various pardons, Hugh had decided not to attend, to make sure his were on track. He'd succeed in winning the ugliest pardons of all. He hit the jackpot, $400,000, for saving two worthless cheats, Carlos Vignali, who conspired to transport 800 lbs. of cocaine to the sons and daughters of Minneapolis, Minn., and the tax dodger Glenn Braswell, a snake-oil salesman peddling cures for cellulite and baldness.
It defies credulity to think that as Hughie was brokering the deal in the President's house, right under his nose, Bill Clinton thought his brother-in-law was working pro bono. Hughie was affable enough to give you the shirt off his back, but such a penny pincher, he wouldn't pick up the check at IHOP. And who helps scum for free, anyway? What other reason could Clinton have had for letting these awful people off than that his brother-in-law wanted it so badly?