http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/11/clinton200711?printable=true¤tPage=allBill and Hillary's joint decision-making at the beginning of his presidency was as overt as it would ever be in the White House. "He would say, 'Hillary thinks this. What do you think?'" said White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum. "They really were a partnership. She was the absolutely necessary person he had to have to bounce things up against, and he was that for her. I sensed a tremendous need for each other. They didn't have to see each other, but they would talk continually every day." In deference to her continuing role as Bill's "closer," staff members called Hillary "the Supreme Court." "We would always say, 'Has the Supreme Court been consulted?'" recalled Dee Dee Myers, the president's press secretary for two years, now a V.F. contributing editor. Whenever Bill said, "Let me think about it," aides knew he intended to call Hillary.
Gore was the one most affected by Bill's reliance on his wife. It was a given in the White House, as Chief of Staff Mack McLarty said, that everyone would "just have to get used to" the fact that Hillary, along with Bill and Gore, had to "sign off on big decisions." But having what Clinton domestic-policy adviser Bruce Reed called "three forces to be reckoned with" added yet another layer of perplexity and rivalry to the West Wing, where advisers and Cabinet officers knew they could lobby either the First Lady or the vice president to reverse decisions by the president. David Gergen, counselor to the president in 1993 and 1994, called the "three-headed system" a "rolling disaster."