Crisis-Mode Clinton Managed 'Tricky Balance'

Dec. 1, 2007 — -- It was about 3 a.m. by the time Sen. Hillary Clinton finally made it back to her home in Washington this morning. Friday was a blur -- a terribly long day filled with gut-wrenching fear, frantic phone calls and crisis management.

When it was finally over, there was relief and perhaps even some amount of unanticipated political benefit.

"I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well," Clinton told cameras outside her home in Washington -- as the national evening news broadcasts scrambled to include her reaction to the abrupt ending of the six-hour hostage drama at Clinton campaign headquarters in Rochester, N.H.

Presidential campaigns are equipped to deal with all sorts of emergencies, of course -- bad poll numbers, nasty personal attacks, negative press. But this was different. Friday was the kind of day no campaign ever anticipates.

"Sen. Clinton did all the right things," said Stephanie Cutter, former communications director for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. "She took politics out of it, but demonstrated strength and showed empathy."

Clinton was at her home off Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. when she got a call from campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle telling her about the hostage situation in New Hampshire.

According to a senior campaign staffer, Clinton immediately changed her plans for the day and decided not to speak to a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in nearby Virginia.

In those first moments, three young Clinton campaign staff people, a young volunteer in her 20s and her baby were inside the Rochester office. The mother and baby were released early on.

One of Sen. Clinton's first comments was about contacting the young staffers' families.

"She said 'I want to get on the phone with the parents,'" the Clinton campaign aide said.

"It affected me not only because these were my staff members and volunteers," Clinton told reporters, "but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."