Hillary Clinton's Biography

hello this is Hillary Clinton I want to thank you for letting me speak with you about an issue that is Central to our children's future and critical in our fight to restore this nation's economy solving our nation's Health Care crisis there is no prescription or role model or cookbook for being first lady the future is created every day the future is not something that is out there waiting to happen to us the future is something that we make well I have said and I believe that there's a good possibility that sometime in the next 20 years we will have a woman president Hillary Clinton logged many firsts in her role as first lady political Partners since law school the clintons survived scandals and even the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and as she considers another bid for the White House herself Hillary Clinton's story is still being written good evening and welcome to c-span's year-long series first ladies influence and image tonight we'll tell you the story of the spouse of our 42nd president Hillary Clinton here to tell us the story for the next 90 minutes are two journalists who know the clintons well by covering them many for many years Gil shei from her base at Vanity Fair she is a biographer of Hillary Clinton her book in 2000 was called Hillary's choice and David marinus his home base is the Washington Post he's the author of many books and two of them are about the clintons including his 1995 biography of Bill Clinton first in his class welcome to both of you thank you well as we start here uh I want to play a a bit of Cl a video from 1992 it's one of those and there's probably five or six uh Hillary Clinton clips that become emblematic of her and this is one of them uh this is during the campaign when she talked about how she might approach the role of first lady and how involved she was going to be let's listen those of us who tried to have a career tried to have an independent life tried to make a difference and certainly somebody like myself who's combined that with very full and active public involvement on behalf of primarily children but other issues um you know I've done the best I can to lead my life and I suppose that it'll be um subject to that kind of attack but it's not true and I don't know what else to say other than you know that's sad to me you know I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life so as they campaigned in 1992 they really were promoting this idea of two for one the fact that she would be a very involved first lady as the administration unfolded how did that work out for her yeah well uh they made a lot of mistakes in the beginning I the the the public was not prepared for a two for one presidency I don't know if they ever will be uh but I think the the the it was stunning to suddenly see this really intelligent outspoken uh totally Confident Woman Who had been given the role of co-president um if we had a co-residency that might be a really cool thing because Partners in power I think are more and more uh happening but at that time uh Hillary was you know she'd gone from the 50s to the 70s in her four years at Welsley you know she was suddenly plunged into a new women's movement uh period She actually it took a Hillary to raise a president uh she did have to uh keep him in the channel because he was brilliant but all over the place and Reckless uh so to swallow all of that was really quite a quite a an over over kill for the American public and it took her I think almost six years to really figure out how to do it I I had an occasion to meet her at Renaissance weekend once in the lady's room and she kind of let down her hair and said this is 94 she said I just don't know what to do anymore nothing I do Works she said I understand that I'm really threatening to men that the velocity of change between men and women uh and the way the country is going and from one generation to the Boomers is overwhelming especially to Men I'm threatening to them and I don't know what to do about it so David marinus in the end since we're looking at first ladies in a our Global sense was she a transitional figure or one of a kind I would say she was almost oneof a kind I mean the the role model that she modeled herself after was elanar Roosevelt but there was a great difference between between the two which was that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton from the very beginning saw that they could get places together that they couldn't apart and so whereas Elanor was very active as a first lady she was really on her own track separate from president Rosevelt whereas Bill Clinton relied on Hillary for much of his policy from the very beginning going all the way back to Arkansas so that two for one comment which he made it wasn't the Press saying that um was a reality to them um and throughout his presidency it it helped and H at various times well we said at the outset that Hillary Clinton was a first lady with quite a few firsts let's show some of those to you she's the first first lady to have a post a graduate degree her was a law degree she was the first to have an office in the West Wing which is where the policy is made uh she was later on the first to testify before a grand jurry as the investigations were ramping up after office she was the first to be elected and serve as United States Senator the first of course to run for president herself and the first to serve as Secretary of State we're going to be talking about all that and more with our two guests Gail shei and David marinus but first we have to go back to the beginning Hillary Clinton was born in Chicago uh as as Hillary Diane rodom to parents Hugh and Dorothy rodom tell me about what her childhood and what was most significant about it the the most significant thing I think was the way she saw herself which was from the age of 8 or 10 a star uh and one of the uh her her fantasy was and she wrote about this was she would get out on her lawn and dance in the Sun and spin Under the Sun and imagine that God was beaming the sun down on her only her and that Heavenly cameras were filming her every move she made that a reality you know for many years now maybe not Heavenly maybe you know satanical cameras but cameras nonetheless are following her every moov she made it happen so David marinus but she came from a parents her father had worked in been born in Scranton Pennsylvania worked in the factories and in the mines as a as a youth made his way to Chicago his her mother was a traditional housewife where did this come from in Hillary CL I wouldn't quite call her mother a traditional housewife she was a housewife but she was very strong and independent and Infused that into Hillary her father was a rock ribbed Republican uh Park Ridge was 99 .5% white it was in the sort of the deep heart of the Midwest middle class um it was very sheltered in that sense that children were the chosen ones and Hillary thought of herself as the chosen of the chosen ones um but she also uh so she she had her father's politics but as as Gail said the politics were sort of incidental to who she thought she was she even had a you know she was very strongly a Methodist in that throughout her life but it started started in her early teenage years and her youth Minister Don Jones was a very Progressive person who was challenging Hillary and many of the other kids to sort of think about the world outside of Park Ridge and so that was going on in her mind even before she blossomed or changed her politics you told the story in your book about this Minister who would take these these white Suburban kids in their sheltered life and take them to Chicago to see how other people live how did that people in migrant workers she was enormously affected by that you know she she knew then that that uh Park Ridge was was a a bubble and she wanted to know more about how the real world worked but I have to say that you know her mother told me I think one of significant story about her childhood um when they moved to Parkridge uh that you know vicious social hierarchy of four-year-olds didn't admit her and a little girl named Susie used to beat her up every day and she came back crying and one day her mother said this house is no place for cowards you go back out there and you knock that girl up her pins and that's what Hillary did the boys were watching their mouths a gape and Hillary came back home and said now I can play with the boys and she's been doing that ever since and she has she was also a uh pre-teen I if I have the age right who was reading Barry goldwater's conscience of a conservative and she also had a high school teach was a teenager okay but still very young to be reading I didn't read those sort of books as a teenager um but she also had a high school teacher who was very conservative who was influencing her the other direction do you know about the role he played in her life well he she she did have some conservative teachers in that period but so did all of us so I don't think that that teacher had a profound influence no more so than her father but it was enough to have her thinking in those directions um politically but not sort of internally um so I would not say that any teachers at AT uh Main toown ship High School had more influence on her than the the youth minister of the Methodist Church or her mother I think those were the two key influences and as I say it transcended politics yeah and two other ways in which her mother had an an important influence on her she would she wanted her to have equilibrium uh and so she used a carpenter's level to to as a visual to say keep the bubble in the middle and then she also wanted to warn her never get divorced because she darthy Ram's parents had been divorced and they abandoned her and it blighted her life so Hillary never agreed to give Bill Clinton a divorce even though at one point he wanted it so she had a powerful influence but um the other uh amazing thing about Hillary was uh when she met Martin Luther King introduced by Don Jones she was really taken the Methodist Minister Don the Methodist Minister introduced her to Martin Luther King who uh she heard in Chicago and she realized that uh you know there were no black people that she saw in her class or in Park Ridge and she she read up on it and she realized that you know the emanci mation proclamation hadn't really been carried out uh and she wanted to do something and her AA moment was at Welsley when she came in the day that Martin Luther King was shot and she heard about it and she came in screaming and sobbing and saying this cannot go on and that was when she really turned off from being a Goldwater little Goldwater girl to being a real Progressive uh marcher uh you know a a a a real liberal how did well that was 1968 um and she uh she would graduate the next year I think that was a moment where she turned into an activist but you could see her politics changing as soon as she got to Welsley really as did hundreds of thousands of people of that generation of kids when they got to college um the war was going on ands and all of that yeah and how did she get to Welsley this Midwestern girl well she was very smart student and she was the president of her high school class and um was an all girl school in in near suburban Boston um and you know she her parents drove her out in the Cadillac you know Ham's Cadillac and but it made her father Furious when he realized that it was you know a snobby Eastern liberal Girl School uh and he never visited her there until her graduation uh but it was the fascinating thing to me about Hillary's Wy years was she wrote a number of letters to a high school friend which he gave me uh she had a four-year identity crisis um she thought of she had to select her identity and she laid them out like a smorgus board and she said well shall I be a pseudo hippie well no I mean that was okay cuz she didn't care anything about her appearance but she was moral Methodist she was a laced she hated she read catcher in the Ry and hated it um then she said well I don't really like people very much maybe I'm a misanthrope then she wrote to her friend and said can you be a compassionate misanthrope and she was sort of uh should she be an alienated academic and she finally came to a decision she chose her identity which was she might as well she she hated looking inward she couldn't stand interp C and her father had taught her that any any expression of emotionality was a sense of weakness she wrote about that no emotion and show so she decided she would help other people lead their best lives and helps to save the world she became president of the student body at Welsley is that correct she did and she was selected to give a speech at Welsley that actually thrust her on the national Spotlight for the first time what was that all about well she had a speech written which she put down but it was because her generation was did not want to hear from a moderate Republican even though he was a black man uh about you know entering the workforce and going on to be competitive and so on so she got up and said we don't believe in oh just uh materialism and competitiveness we're looking for ecstatic experiences well you know her student body just got up and gave up you know an uproar of Applause that the faculty was mortified and you Hugh rodom got out of town as fast as he could um but it got her into Life magazine and she was already a star uh and then I asked her well what was the most ecstatic experience of your 20s and she said falling in love with Bill Clinton and I said what what attracted you to him and she said he wasn't afraid of me the uh African-American senator was Ed Brook of Massachusetts if you don't mind I'll read that that paragraph that that Gail was talking about this was the essence of filler's uh Speech we are all of us exploring a world that none of us understands and attempting to create within that uncertainty but there are some things we feel feelings that are prevailing inquisitive and competitive corporate life including tragically universities is not the way of life for us we're searching for more immediate ecstatic and penetrating modes of living that was the speech that you ROM did not want to hear so as you know if you've been watching us along the way the thing that makes this program different and interesting for us at the table are your questions and we welcome them three different ways you can call us we'll put the phone numbers on the screen and mix your calls in throughout our 90 minutes you can post a comment on c-span's Facebook page there's already quite a lively discussion going on about Hillary Clinton on our Facebook page and you can tweet us uh and you can use at cpan and in fact let me ask a question by Twitter as we're in this period of our life uh a viewer wants to know whether or not Hillary wanted to drop out of college but her mother encouraged her to stay is that part of her bi did she ever consider dropping out of college you know I I don't remember reading that in her biography it may have been in there she did go through a year of depression uh she felt that she there were a lot of um Highborn uh Society girls at Welsley and that wasn't her uh bag at all she and she wasn't sure that she was smart enough at the at the beginning uh so and she was depressed I think it was in her sophomore year so she may have considered it I think it was more like maybe taking a year off than actually dropping out for good but how did she get to Yale law school what what what was the decision to become to study law well um that's what somebody who wanted to have an active life um affecting change would do in that period um she got to yel law school in 1969 actually a year before Bill Clinton did um and took a fiveyear program to get through yel law school but I think she did it the not so much that she wanted to more she wanted to be a lawyer more than he ever did but they both saw it as a way to to the life that they wanted in politics and in um affecting social change our next and Y law school I'm sorry um was a very uh socially uh active place during that period the classes were the opposite of Harvard Law you know it wasn't like everything was rigid it was very loose which he had considered Harvard Law as well and chose Yale over Harvard what was the environment for women studying at Yale law school when she arrived well there weren't very many I think there were something like five in her class or uh but so she was quite unique there as she has been in every venue um and I don't know if she she didn't speak an awful lot about you know sexism or Prejudice because she was just too darn smart uh and when she and Bill decided to enter a contest with the barrs Union in presenting the case before a live jury it was she who did all the work and all the writing uh and then Bill did the presenting and of course he was brilliant at presenting but he goofed off during the the preparation and it was Hillary who made a real impression on one of the judges John door who later uh hired her for the um impeachment committee uh on Richard Nixon you know they're um working together in that prize trial sort of captured everything that was to come in a way where one of the the fellow uh law students described them as Bill Clinton was all uh To Kill a Mocking Bird and Hillary was all Chicago lawyer well we have a clip next from 1994 when Hillary Clinton talks about how she and Bill Clinton met let's watch he was standing out in the hallway and I just I don't know you know those moments you know sort of like click you know and I was sitting there and I just started staring at him and I just began to look at him and I thought you know I really like the way he looks I need to get to know him and then he caught my eye and he began staring back at me and so here I am in the library not reading Kiri is actually surrounded by people who are talking at him not talking back so finally I thought this is ridiculous you know I'm in this class with this person and so I put my books down and I went up and I said you know if you're going to keep looking at me and I'm going to keep looking at you we ought to at least know each other's names I'm Hillary rodom who are you and he says that he couldn't remember his name that makes me feel so good when he says that um but anyway he did sort of stumble out I'm Bill Clinton well you know then you really want me to go on about this I mean this is um then we ended up and it was the last day of class this class that we hardly ever went to but occasionally saw each other in and we both showed up for the last day and so I was walking out the door and he kind of got to the door at the same time he said where you going and I said well I'm going to go register for my classes next year he said oh oh I need to do that and I said okay so we walked together and we stood in this endless line you know register endless lines and we talked and talked and talked and I finally got up to the line and um the registar this wonderful woman who I've kept in touch with Gloria McHugh said well Hillary what are you going to take and I started to fill it out and then she looked at me she said Bill why are you here you registered yesterday so people always want to know and you both have explored this what is at the heart of this relationship what was it that attracted these two people so strongly to one another they seem so different in many ways well I think in the case of Hillary um she had not been popular with boys I mean and a boy girl sense um and here was this she liked big handsome hunks and here was this big handsome red-haired guy with Elvis sideburns and yeah he was rough around the edges but he had this Southern Charm and he was just walking after her out of class and kind of like a Lovick hound dog you know kind of panting behind her and it really made her feel like a woman uh and that was very uh that was a new experience for her but then she realized how brilliant he was and how they clicked and how you know she could like really do something with this guy you know she could really bring him up and um when she you know left the Watergate uh committee not the water yeah the Watergate impeachment committee to go out to Little Rock arkans not even Little Rock fville um her best friend was say you're crazy you're crazy Hillary what are you doing you're leaving this fabulous career in Washington where you're you know in line to be in Pol political life and she said you know Bill Clinton's going to be president someday you know and I'm going to marry him and the friend said does he know that she said not yet David well from Bill Clinton's perspective um obviously there were a lot of women that were interested in him and he and them but Hillary was different uh during that period his his uh roommates at at Yale would say that he would prepare and prep them for times when Hillary was coming over because he wanted to impress her so much and the reason was that she was she wouldn't put up with his sort of what what she called his Arkansas pver she was the one one girl who had the guts to just say he'll come off at Bill and but also beyond that they just understood that they that they had they actually did have a lot in common Susan they were completely different personalities but they had the same Ambitions and they saw they could get places together that they couldn't get to a part and they shared a love of politics and of movies and of books and of intellectual things and there was a spark there I think that Hillary from the very beginning was head over heels for him I think she was and I think that bill just saw her as someone different and someone who could really help him and and be a a partner how long did it take from that first meeting uh to marriage and and how did the relationship progress I'm not exactly sure I think it was several years um but what happened in between was quite fascinating uh when Bill was running for his first congressional race and his uh campaign was chaotic uh and he was losing and Hillary dropped everything flew out there came into the into the little campaign area and they shoed the college girl that he was um having a a romance with out the side door uh and she came in and said you know what's going on this is a mess she took over uh and that night that the night before the vote they knew they were going to lose um she and the campaign manager and his wife all got locked in a room together to find out what was really going wrong here and Hillary was giving them the third degree and the college the uh wife said well I even had to take you know Bill Clinton's girlfriend as my babysitter to get her out of the way and she turned on the cap campaign manager said you got Bill Clinton a girl while I was away you so and she started swearing and cursing and throwing things the next thing there's a window is broken I mean it was a melee uh and who sat through the whole thing nobody ever mentioned him was with the passivity of a Buddha Bill Clinton and that set the mold for the way she dealt with all of those eruptions it was never his fault it was always somebody else's fault they met in 1970 and they got married in 1975 and when she came out out to Arkansas he was running for congress and as Gil described that scene um but they also were law professors together at the University of Arkansas and again in that setting they it sort of set the tone for the differences between them Bill Clinton was an easy Professor who gave everybody B pluses at the worst and mostly A's and the feeling was that was because they were all going to be voters in Arkansas somay he didn't want to upset them he also was known for losing the tests you know being on a plan and leaving all the the exams somewhere Hillary was completely uh organized um her her classes were tough and the dean of the law school said that if he was going to hire one of the clintons to actually be a law professor would have been Hillary before we leave this period of her life uh talk about her experience on the impeachment inquiry staff for Watergate one of the few women one of the youngest lawyers on a staff of about 44 lawyers altogether uh she described it as one of the most important or more formative experiences of her life what was important about it how did it shape her well it was uh it was an historic moment in American history um she was hired by John door who ran the house impeachment committee staff because she had met him at Yale when he was a judge at the prize trial um he he brought her down um they H up in the old Congressional hotel where the staff was working um actually her job was not the most exciting a lot of PE a lot of the staffers were going over the Nicks and tapes and and really getting into the the grit of the Scandal itself her job was to to look at the constitutionality of impeachment um but she learned a lot from from from watching John door and one of her bosses was Bernie nusom a lawyer who would later be the council in the white house when the clintons got there um but it was really an examination up close of power and the manipulation of power and the abuse of power you couldn't work in that office without learning a lot about that so of course that would have a significant effect on her we're going to take you next to fville and the house uh that Bill Clinton bought for Hillary rodom as he uh proposed and where they got married let's watch this home is where the clintons lived when they were professors in fville in fact after Hillary's first year of teaching here uh bill was driving her down this road to go to the airport and they saw the house and it was for sale and Hillary pointed at the house and said that's a cute house and Bill took her to the airport and picked her up from the airport about a month later and said I've bought your dream house you have to marry me and live with me in it cuz I can't live there alone and that was in fact the fourth time he had proposed and they were married right in the living room uh there were nine people at the wedding it was a very small intimate ceremony their wedding announcement made notable mention of the fact that Hillary was retaining her own name Bill didn't seem to be bothered by this however ever when they told uh Virginia she gasped and when they told Hillary's mother she cried now we have a repca of Hillary's wedding dress here at the Museum um she got her dress the night before the wedding on a shopping trip with her mother at Dillard's for $53 off the rack and uh it was made by Jessica mcclint talk which was a popular designer at the time it was very humble beginnings for the clintons here in fville they were both making $144,000 a year as law professors and this room which has been enclosed was actually a screened in porch and they used to sleep out here in the Summers cuz they did not have air conditioning this was the Clinton kitchen and Hillary referred to it in her book in living history uh as the room in the house that desperately needed to be remodeled and this is what the Clinton kitchen looked like whenever they were here they had the Harvest Gold appliances and we've taken it back to somewhat of how it looked like when they were here of course Hillary never cooked uh she did say that bill would occasionally fry things which got a chuckle out of the people that were here uh and her first visit back to the house was in 2007 when she was on the campaign Trail uh this formal dining room the clintons called the war room and they actually used it as campaign headquarters for his attorney general Campaign which was his first successful political campaign in 1976 and there was a desk that sat in the middle of this room that had a map of Arkansas on it and Hillary had the idea to visit each County three times so that they could really Encompass the grassroot politics that would get him elected um both then and in future elections fville was a place where they really settled in um they really thought they had arrived they had gotten married they had uh bought a house they had successful jobs as law professors and they had finished law school and so they had kind of reached a plateau where they had achieved a lot of things that they had set goals for in life I'm mindful of our time so what I want to do is to get some of our first callers in here and uh then we'll pick up our story let's begin with James on Oakland California our first caller tonight hi James you're on hi great show I'm loving this series I have one question for Gail shei when she referred to uh earlier time where Bill Clinton agreed to divorce Hillary Clinton and I'm not aware of that period I'm also interested uh during the presidency where Hillary had um major policy differences than Bill Clinton supported thank you thank you okay hi thanks Bill uh well it was 1989 uh when uh Bill Clinton had been uh he gotten caught with uh Bim eruptions and uh he had pulled back from running for governor again uh and Hillary had um uh explored whether or not she should run for governor but a poll showed that she really wasn't going to be uh getting many votes at all uh and Bill Clinton fell in love with another woman really fell in love with her this was not a bimbo this was not a black rooted Lounge singer this was actually a woman of of quality a professional uh whose family was in Arkansas and in politics uh and he asked Hillary for a divorce uh and she consulted with her her Minister and herself and came back and said nothing doing uh that's not going to happen uh and this you know Affair is going to end um and that that was the that was the end of it he never brought that up again uh and they they found their own Arrangement much later which we can talk about later in the program uh and it does jump the storye but brief comment on major policy differences between between the two not too many but there were some I would say one of the major ones was more Nuance than complete difference but in is early in his second term when Bill Clinton uh declared that the era of big government was over and then proceeded to uh and during that period was reforming welfare um uh Hillary Roden rodm Clinton's Mentor was Maran Wright Edelman and her edelman's husband was very much opposed to what they were trying to do in terms of the welfare reform and he quit the administration and it was quite a tense period between them for that reason and other reasons but that was one of the major differences I would say next caller is trevante in Brooklyn you're on the air um hi um what um stries Hillary Clinton become the first lady what uh I didn't understand your question trante will you ask it again I wanted to know what drugged Hillary Clinton to become the first lady what what drove her to be the first lady so um is it something she had aspired to I mean you said at the beginning she knew bill was going to be president so yeah she thought that Bill had had it to be had had it in him to be president and she wanted to be part of that she literally remember she wanted to be a star and in that era she felt hitching her wagon to his star was a way to you know become a star herself and she was great so thank you travanti all throughout the series we've had a lot quite a few young callers calling in which is wonderful to get them interested in history Chad Crabtree is on Twitter and he asks because we were talking about the minister who was influential how influential is religion and her faith HRC does not seem as visible or as vocal with it as President Clinton well it's I think she's even uh that's more important to her agree don't you agree she was a very moral Methodist uh a a very buttoned up uh a prude in many ways a um socially conservative in in in in behavior um and and and Faith got her through some of the the worst times uh she really relied on it and also the inspiration of elanar Roosevelt Bill Clinton was a Baptist Hillary was a Methodist Bill Clinton as a Baptist would wake every up every morning and forgive himself and the rest of the world Hillary had more used her her religion more in a in sort of an explanation of her active life you know her motto was do the best you can the most you can as often as you can um and that was really sort of her Methodist motto that will be a line that we will quote after this program is overed it uh next is Kip in Atlanta hi Kip you're on yes uh Miss Swang good evening even hadn't talked to you since Ida McKinley uh David marinus and Gail shei two icons and I have read your uh both your Works uh Miss shei I really enjoyed your work on uh character back in 1988 my question was in response to a caller last week uh with Mrs Bush they want I think the question was what was the relationship between the two first ladies during the transition I seem to remember a quote of Mrs Bush and i' like to get both your comments on it uh after the informal tour of the White House Mrs Bush uh add in response to reporter's question I think the reporter said do you have any advice for Mrs Clinton and Mrs Bush said avoid the reporters like the plague and if they quote you make deed sure they H you so I would like to uh find out from both of you in terms of what Hillary Clinton I don't I don't remember her having much of a comment then but I'd like to get your take on on the transition and thank you so much for your work thank you she certainly didn't avoid the reporters like a play even if sometimes she might have wanted to um you know it's interesting that that Barbara Bush on on your programs talked about how much she likes Bill Clinton now I don't think that was necessarily true then um 92 was a tough campaign very much but over time they they became quite good friends as she told us uh I had an experience uh with Hillary that uh Vis the press and other things um early in '92 actually the day after she and Bill had appeared on 60 Minutes uh to address the Jennifer Flowers is issue um actually yeah and I so I flew with Hillary in a tiny little plane to Pierre South Dakota where she was going to appear before the pork rib feeders roast uh and as soon as we landed got into a motel there on the television screen was Jennifer Flowers playing her tapes with Governor Clinton I was right next to Hillary I watched her expression not an iota of surprise just a lizard eye blink and then directing her press secretary get bill on the phone get our St gets on the phone get Stephanopoulos on the phone boom right into battle mode um she been swept into the pork rib feeders roast Charmed the whiskers off the farmers uh and then was told all three Nets LED with Jennifer she went to the phone again came back boiling mad we got in the plane and for the next half hour she staked out what would be their battle plan for the rest of their time in the white house which was she said got to run against the Republican attack machine because they're now doing paid character assassination and run against the Press well the second one was a really big mistake she did shut the uh uh the access to reporters off which really uh alienated them a great deal and she stonewalled all the time and she lied much of the time and the Press very early on stopped giving them glass half full and started giving them glass half empty but what's important about that story is that she didn't seem as though she was angry at Bill Clinton for transgressions exactly she had decided uh that uh she'd made a choice and the name of my book was Hillary's Choice she was either going to rise with him or fall with him they were symbiotic they were joined at the hip and she knew what she was getting and she knew what she was what she was getting and she never really asked him they had an unspoken agreement she didn't ask him for any details about the women and he didn't ask her about Whitewater or Morgan guarantee or her cattle futures or her Investments so I wouldn't say that she wasn't angry at him but I would say that she was so stealed for it that she could she could just plow forward so uh we have um got to to spend a little bit of time about the uh with the Arkansas years um and um will not do it justice but Dave Murdoch asked us on Twitter how did the locals treat Hillary was Bill popular in town what did they think of the marriage let me use that as a jumping off point to say after the successful attorney general U bid he went on uh Bill Clinton to be elected to five non-consecutive terms as governor of the state of Arkansas what is important about Hillary Clinton's time during that period a rose Law Firm but then how did she serve as first lady of the state um in some ways as she did as first lady of the United States that that's the period when Bill Clinton first started relying on her to help him with her his most important policy issues and so the precursor to health care in the White House was education reform in Arkansas where he appointed Hillary um to lead the effort to reform the Arkansas school system which was so bad that the motto was thank God for Mississippi because Arkansas was 49th instead of 50th among test scores um so there was a Reliance there and her ability to deal with policy that was very important um she came into the first lady of Arkansas as Hillary rodom uh two years into uh their governorship he was defeated he was rendered the youngest ex-governor in American history M and uh as a result of that uh part of the campaign against her against Bill was sort of this woman who wouldn't even take her husband's last name and that was so unar caning um I would argue that although bill is always called sort of the protean character who could adapt to any setting Hillary was also adaptable I mean she's the one who came from Illinois and the east coast to Arkansas and after those first two years I think she really figured out how to how to work in Arkansas and over the rest of his governorship she was very much part of that whole social and political and cultural milu yeah yes and a lot of it had to do with image uh she you know hadn't given any you know thought to her appearance when you know the the buying the dress off the rack she dressed kind of like a hippie she didn't you know she didn't wear makeup uh her hair wasn't fixed and she really spruced up she pulled herself together and began to look more like an acceptable Southern lady uh and you know give teas and do do more of the sort of um first lady duties but she was also supporting them the big thing that she gave Bill Clinton was money I mean she was the bread winner while he was making you know very poultry salary for many years uh and she was uh made partner at Rose Law Firm a few three years years after she was hired once once he was back in the governor's office because that was now a very big connection there a little parallel there to the the Obama families where uh Michelle Obama was the lawyer earning more money to let allow the husband to pursue his the difference yes the difference was that Michelle during that period really wasn't happy with her husband being this political guy going off to Springfield Illinois whereas Hillary from the moment they got together she knew what his job was and she supported that part G she he uh in Arkansas there were the seeds of things that she would take to the White House and you referenced them and we should explain how uh what decision she made that they would end up becoming investigations the Whitewater investment Whitewater properties the rose law firm and billing during that time period investment in Futures uh were all things that Americans across the country would begin to hear about when they made it to the White House will you talk about Hillary Clinton's involvement in these and decisions that she made that would become National in their scope I think the real story here is about um the the decision to allow a special prosecutor that was a big uh debate between Bill and Hillary uh but we're we're advancing the story I'm looking at the Arkansas what she did there uh to were you know to this day I don't think anybody really knows um but be she was trying to make money she was trying to make money she was investing she had a hot shot investor who got her into cattle futures and she made a big profit Jim Blair was a friend of theirs Diane Diane Blair was in fville at the at the University when the clintons were there right and her husband was was very sharp with with trading and that's how they got into that um put in $1,000 and make $100,000 on cattle futures yeah and then the connection to the to other people in in Little Rock is when she got in trouble with with the rose Law Firm records and and actions involving Jim McDougall who was uh actually Clinton Bill Clinton's friend a kind of crazy cook guy it's all in the sort of morass of Arkansas politics that that sort of they got trapped in John is watching us in Gross Point Michigan hi John what's your question uh yes uh good evening I I like everyone have been following this series of programs and I want to commend you uh Susan and uh all of cpan for such wonderful wonderful journalism it's been great um regarding the Clinton I'd like to go back to 1972 and I believe that Bill Clinton was the uh in charge of the Texas McGovern campaign and that Hillary and uh man who's now a historian Taylor Branch also worked on that McGovern campaign in Texas in 1972 and that was the first foray I think that the two of them Bill and Hillary got together am I correct in that and then one other thing connected with that I think that I heard this and I wonder if this is true or if it's apocryphal that I believe that Bill Clinton said or wrote in one of his books that um that in the course of that uh he drove Ki Robert's dad hail bogs who was then the House Majority Leader uh to the airport uh and dropped him off you know cuz he was a campaign a Clinton was and uh said goodbye to him and everything and that was the last that hail bogs was ever seen thank you John we're going to get responses to your questions the McGovern campaign in 1972 and how formative it was for them well I think it was hugely formative because this was a this is a very new uh kind of politics which was they believed in uh I think McGovern was you know had the kind of platform that they were interested in and they thought they were going to bring that new New Politics to a larger America I think that inspired them but you have more on that that they also met uh Betsy Wright in that uh campaign and Betsy Wright was furious with Hillary for you know advancing Bill Clinton's political career instead of striking out on her own but Hillary pulled back from that she she was much more interested in you know making it a Tome bety right later became Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff as governor of Arkansas um but yeah 1972 Taylor branch and Bill Clinton were very young and they were running Texas for George McGovern they'd been hired by Gary Hart to run the state and he brought them in there because neither of them was from Texas and Texas was a political mess for Democrats at that point there was a huge split between the progressives and the conservatives and they thought that these two kids would at least sort of be able to diffuse some of that it was an enormous learning experience for both of the clintons Hillary was actually stationed most of the time in San Antonio bill was in Austin running the campaign um he not only did Drive Hail boogs to the airport as the as the caller suggested he also uh took George McGuffin out to the petali to meet with LBJ in a famous meeting they had out there Clinton learned a lot during that c but the essential thing that he and Hillary Learned was how you can lose and from that moment on Bill Clinton's whole concept was how you can be a progressive moderate Progressive and still hold on to something in America as it was changing that was the first of those many lessons that he followed over the next 20 years during their terms as go his term as Governor The clintons increased their National profile leading to the 1992 presidential campaign we mentioned earlier that it was a bruising one those of you who were following politics at the time will remember it well including uh the arrival of Ross perau candidacy in the campaign it brought Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton to the White House house shortly after they arrived there was the announcement about healthc care we have a couple of Clips to show you about the uh to that help demonstrate uh the intention of the first lady's involvement in the healthcare issue let's watch I am grateful that Hillary has agreed to chair this task force and not only because it means she'll be sharing some of the heat I expect to generate I think that in the coming months the American people will learn as the people of our state did that we have a first lady of many talents but who most of all can bring people together around complex and difficult issues to hammer out consensus and get things done as the president said and as he believes this is not a partisan issue it is not an ideological battle it is a problem to be solved that affects all of us and I'm looking forward over the next weeks and months to not only working with you but to watching you craft the most important social policy that our nation will have confronted in many decades when I worked on Healthcare a lot of people thought that I shouldn't be making recommendations about legislation um or that I shouldn't be involved in working on behalf of what my husband asked me to work on which was one of his primary um objectives um because they thought that that was somehow inappropriate uh that if you exercise influence do it behind the scenes where nobody can see you I find that curious I mean to me I'd like to know what goes on in front of the scenes um because uh I'm very um very much the kind of person who believes that you should say what you mean and mean what you say and and take the consequences I mean just like anybody else uh Who's involved in uh public life for our guest Emily emmer on Twitter says what and why was the difference in Hillary Clinton's Healthcare proposal failing compared to Obamacare so what was the difference why did that not work for the clintons you know it's interesting at the time that they were pushing it each of those presidents had a had control of Congress um uh but I would say that one of the contradictions in Hillary's statement there or at least paradoxes is that she talked about how she'd liked to be open and out front and one of the real problems with that effort to push through Healthcare then was that they were so secretive and that Congress did not feel that they were part of it now of course getting any sort of major initiative like that through Congress is enormously difficult no matter who's controlling it um so and there was so much antipathy towards it and and money spent by the insurance companies to defeat it there are a lot of complications to it um but but Barack OB President Obama was able with the Democratic majority to just barely get it through by working with them and one of the major problems with with with the Clinton's effort was that there wasn't a feeling that they were actually Partners in it and that they were just concocting it in these secret meetings uh strategically how uh important uh was it the appointment of Hillary Clinton ultimately in its trajectory I think it had it had a long hangover for the clintons um and uh you can see from the video that um Hillary came on she had a beautifully mod modulated voice she speaks without notes uh in paragraphs all of the the skills that we've seen uh her practice all along but she never said I'm not an expert but she never showed any difference to the people on this committee one of the oldest and most important committees in Washington uh to say um I look forward to your expertise to educate what she said was I know I studied I've talked to thousands of Americans and this is what we need to do and I think she got off on the wrong foot uh as a like who's she uh with with members of Congress um and as David said then everything was in secret many many meetings and then this in giant whatever thousands Pages uh thing was dropped on the on the table and the same complaints the same opposition from Republicans then on every single score in including well will Americans be guaranteed that they can keep their health care plan if they like it uh that Obama faced uh the clintons just were way ahead of their time and she was the the key was in her in her defense when she said I don't understand why I couldn't make policy just like any other public official she wasn't a public official now in 1994 the Gingrich Revolution came to the House of Representatives the Republicans took control for the first time in several decades and I I don't want to do a Bill Clinton presidency discussion now because I want to frame this question in terms of how it affected Hillary Clinton's record because the Republicans took over and investigations began will you talk about that before we get to the investigations the key thing to understand about what happened after Healthcare is the defeat in '94 was to the clintons exactly like the defeat in 1980 when they lost the governor ship and they had to recover in the same way they drew on the same people to do it um they had to sort of think out what the apology would be how to get back into the game um it was clintons were used to running every two years that's the way you did it in in Arkansas so even though they were not the ballot in 94 that defeat was the same as any other for them and then once they lose control of the house um they lose control of what's of Investigations and everything started to unravel from there and we will talk more about the uh the charges and the investigations later on but I wanted to essentially make the connection between the decision to put Hillary in charge of healthc care U the uprising against it which then had an effect on the election which then changed the course of their presidency you know there were other reasons why the Republicans took over in '94 but Healthcare was the top reason other causes uh that she was involved in and continually were children and also women's uh issues she published a book during this time period and it became another phrase emblematic with her it was it takes a village yes and this this brought her back uh I followed her on that book tour and public loved it uh that concept was really Hillary's which is you know it was her form of family values you know we need it takes a village to support uh women that they can work and have a family at the same time and be productive in the community uh and it takes pulling together it's not not all just up from your bootstraps by yourself with no help from government uh the she was mocked for it by the press for a while but she was so popular on the book tour people had to then acknowledge and her book became a a a big bestseller and uh she was she was able to kind of rehabilitate herself with that book and then became a bookwriter added to um her many other talents that one which she continues to use and Charlie Watts asked is it true that Hillary Clinton once won a Grammy award answer is yes for the spoken version of this book that's right yeah and uh sort of like Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize though one wonders what what what was involved in that decision for a Grammy Hillary Clinton held a White House youth Summit lobbied for passage of uh the Foster Care Independence act so she was involved in the policy side of children's issue throughout her time in the white house that's right and she also um uh you know called out the military on agent orange and made them finally admit that this was a disease that was a result of the Warfare in Vietnam and they needed to take care of veterans uh let's go to Jason next in Louisville Kentucky hi Jason you're on hi thanks so much Susan thank you for doing this special and also thanks to cpan uh not really a question just um a comment in that um around the historical significance of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and specifically that she moved the issue of equality for the gay community to the front of America's diplomatic agenda and uh one signature way that she did that was with her historic speech uh before the Human Rights Council in j EV where she famously said gay rights are human rights much as she did in Beijing regarding women's rights and to my knowledge prior to her we had not had someone that served um at that level uh to take that stand and really really make that push thank you Jason I'm going to let that stand as a comment because it's uh far ahead in our story and thank you for calling in tonight well we're talking about her interest in children's issues we haven't talked about the Clinton's child Chelsea who was born in 19 1980 a word about their style as parents and how they raised her in this very public life that they were living well you could see when they got to the White House that they were protecting her um she wasn't part of the story until there were certain times when when they needed to present an image of this family and then all of a sudden she'd appear in People magazine um but there's nothing uh negative to say about their parenting and there shouldn't be uh they were excellent parents uh they they showered her with with knowledge and books and and love and um she became very much like parts of both of them the better parts of each of them I would say and uh when you watched how they managed to give her something of a normal life in that very public environment what were your observations well I used to see them at Renaissance weekend when uh Chelsea would be around and it was the awkward years when she was in Middle adolescence and she was kind of gawky and um but she carried herself with confidence um that they must have instilled in her while she was going through the awkward stage and she was devoted to her mother uh and then her father uh used to come home and uh have dinner with her often times when Hillary was traveling and so he'd have his Saturday night date with uh with Chelsea and that was one of the things that was the most heartbreaking for him when he had really you know gone over the line with Monica lindsy was he he kind of lost uh his lost Chelsea for a while there was a time when he was governor of Arkansas and young Chelsea was asked what what does your father do for a living she said he drinks coffee and talks on the telephone for each of the first ladies we have talked about their stewardship of the White House and Hillary Clinton actually wrote a book about that while she was in uh in the role an invitation of the White House at home with history and we're showing you a picture of that book right now may I ask each of you to comment about uh their uh her stewardship of the White House and how they used the White House politically to advance their their goals during it as most president's have would you talk about her her interest in the history of the White House and and how she approached it well she she started America's Treasures um preservation uh and uh did a lot of research and found found a lot of things and put them you know on display uh I think she she did restoration of the treaty room several of the rooms of the White House she wasn't as active uh as Jaclyn Kennedy was but but she was still pretty active and uh I don't know much about their social entertaining they had um some Big White House lawn parties and uh and they they but they didn't use the White House nearly as much as the kennedies for instance who made it a cultural center uh um because they were they were very she was very busy doing other policy things of course we know about the Lincoln bedroom I was going to ask you so they did have a lot of social activities there and brought in a lot of musicians Bill Clinton loved music and and so much like President Obama and Michelle bringing in various uh great musicians that clintons did as well but they also turned it into something of a sleepover place um a lot of friends stayed there often no one actually lived there like under Roosevelt but but there were friends constantly coming through and also uh a lot of big donors would get uh rewarded with a night in the Lincoln bedroom that's right so let me take a couple of calls and then we have to talk uh in Broad brush stroke about the investigations and legal troubles of uh the clintons as a political partnership let's listen to Ellie in wa in Wilmington North Carolina hi uh Ellie you're on the air hi thank you so much uh I Dido the Kudo the Kudos um I'm I have Fe TV on and you had a funny look on your face that anyway adido the Kudos um two points and this has to do with something that was brought up last week with Barbara Bush um a person talked about uh how she kind of in the and the bushes kind of put the fear of the Lord in the press and that they wouldn't get called back to the White House if they printed something that was um that uh Barbara Bush was not in agreement with um yet Barbara Bush knew that her husband had been having an affair and so did a number of the press but they wouldn't um acknowledge that um and Hillary Clinton um Miss she said you know lied um that she knew a lot of things why do you suppose the press and the public would be so much more willing to accept a grandmotherly uh Barbara Bush who really would very Steely versus Hillary Clinton who really was quite a bit more vulnerable right Ellie thank you we're GNA run because we're running out of time here I'm not sure I understand the question but I can say something about um you know Hillary was really Furious that um George Bush um you know reputedly had had a had a Jennifer 2 uh and when I did an interview with Hillary Clinton very formal one uh she interrupted you know and out of nowhere raised this issue and said she had been sitting with um uh with the head of the uh Atlanta newspaper Fortune uh and she' brought this up and uh this woman said an Cox Chambers um why don't the why doesn't the the media investigate uh George Bush's Jennifer and Hillary said you know they're just going to circle the wagons on them because that's what the Republicans do and she planted this in my tape recorder when I wrote about it um Barbara Bush slammed back and said you know how dare she you know talk about my husband that way and Hillary had to really eat Humble Pie and she was depicted on the cover of the New York Post saying well shut my mouth and uh when she stepped off the it was just before the New York primary when she and and Bill Clinton arrived in Albany to for the last day before the primary um Bill Clinton had to step in front for for a very rare appearance apologizing for Hillary uh and he did it with a slight smile on his on his face um but I think you know Hillary was was just beside herself that the bushes could get away with this kind of thing but she couldn't and Hillary Bill couldn't the story of the Clinton uh two administrations was also a story of Investigations and Scandals and reactions to those we're going to show you a clip from 1994 uh early in their uh White House years when Hillary at a news conference talks about the level of trust that people have with her let's listen in the recent news reports about the first ladyes cat cattle future earnings and with all these Whitewater allegations many of us Americans are having a hard time with your credibility how can you earn our trust back is there a fundamental distrust of the clintons in America well I hope not I mean that would be um uh something that I would regret very much um I do think that um we are transition figures if you will um we don't fit easily into a lot of our pre-existing categories and I think that having been independent having made decisions um it's a little difficult for us as a country maybe to make the transition of having a woman like many of the women in this room sitting in this house so I think that the standards and to some ex to some extent the expectations and the demands have changed and I'm trying to find my way through it um and trying to figure out how best to be true to myself and how to fulfill my responsibilities to my husband and my daughter and and the Country David Maris what are your thoughts watching well my thoughts are that's the famous pink suit press conference where she talked for several hours and she was embroiled in in controversy at that point over the cattle futures and several other things involving uh the rose Law Firm I think what she said has a lot of Merit to it they were transitional figures she was facing Things That No first lady was before some of it was just part of the culture of that moment and some of it was self-induced um and so you can't really separate the two um they did uh many things that that did not help them during that period and and and and it's also true that that they were being judged in ways different from anybody before them especially Hillary G I'm going to show two more clips and this is from a pivotal year 1998 uh where uh we uh see a transition from the beginning of the year into the end of the year in their discussion of these issues January of 1998 let's watch the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president these past months have been a torturous process of coming to terms with what I did I understand that accountability demands consequences and I'm prepared to accept them painful though the condemnation of the Congress would be it would pale in comparison to the consequences of the pain I have caused my family there is no greater Agony so for both of you quite a long year so much uh to to talk about what's important for people to know about that year and again we're putting this in the framework of Hillary Clinton this first lady uh you know a year elapsed before Bill Clinton was finally able to come clean to Hillary and then to the country uh and that was a torturous year for both of them uh and she you know tried to change the story it's about the right-wing conspiracy it's not about my husband uh she did not know or did not allow herself to know that Monica Lewinsky was really a sexual uh relationship until Bill Clinton actually had to sit her down and tell her and then she you know really threw things at him and and and exploded and we saw how the the family split apart and it was a very tragic uh thing to watch but for that most of that year she was right in there fighting for him and the the attorney who was working with them on that damage control I said well gosh when they were sitting there preparing the defense you know she must have the body language must have been pretty you know hostile he said oh no not at all they were always holding hands their arms were around each other they were totally affectionate they were in this together and what H what you saw was that when crisis engulfed them they would be like it was at War they were in the Foxhole together you know bombs were exploding all around it's your battle buddy it's you two against the world and it made them closer and what would also happen when those thing when things erupted and it happened all through their relationship when she would you know turn into a lionist and rush in to rip the flesh off their enem enemies and sit down and make the battle plan Bill Clinton would suddenly reward her with affection intimacy more power they were closer that was when she got the closest to him so it was kind of uh you know a loop uh it it wasn't all bad for Hillary when things erupted and she became the crisis manager and Bill Clinton loved her for it that's exactly right there was this cycle to their relationship where when one was up and the other was down then one would be up and the other would be down it keep going back and forth and that actually had an effect of keeping them together through all of this um and just as as Gail had talked about in 1992 when when she saw Hillary that first time with Jennifer Flowers just steal herself for the battle plan she did it again in 98 and 99 of course things fractured but the the thing to remember from that is they stayed together right and one of the great ironies of modern political politics is that the Clinton have paay together when families like the gors who everybody thought was a perfect family split apart yeah Bev is watching us in Cleveland hi Bev you're on hi thank you I yes been watching this series the whole time um I want to say I read one time or heard that uh Hillary Clinton really garnered or earned a lot of loyalty in terms of you know people over the many years that she's been associated with either as you know friends or people that work for her and that's why there's really been no kind of tell all stories because she does has earned that kind of uh loyalty and does that speak to her genuiness her character which I would think if that's the case that would certainly be an admirable characteristic whether it's uh first lady but also as a possible uh president of the of the United States and also just to say that I was fortunate enough to shake hands and meet them when they were in 1992 running for um when when he was running so that was uh that was kind quite a thrill so yeah if you just kind of speak the then her character in terms of that thank you be as geli is answering we wanted to show all of you at home an interesting illustration in the New York Times Sunday magazine just yesterday and it really speaks uh in a graphic sense of these inter relationships uh that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have forged throughout their many years of public life uh it's it's called Madame Secretary of the universe you can see her in the center there as the sun I guess and all of planets revolving around it but to the caller's question about the importance of these relationships and shielding them it's been enormously important I think um both Hillary and Bill you know kept notes on people uh you know starting in college and in law school and they had files and so they would always remember you know even if they were visiting you know a military base and one year and then coming back the next year they would know to talk you know to ask you know Sergeant did your wife have the baby yet how did it turn turn out and people would melt but I think even more important uh for Hillary were the are the women that she uh brought into her uh bosom into her family they called it a family she would treat them all almost like family members really pay attention to their ups and downs and when they needed help uh the Loyalty that she showed to Huma abidan uh when she got into all the trouble with Anthony Weiner U shaming her in much the way that Bill Clinton had shamed Hillary uh that was very uh endearing I think uh and Huma is still attached to her side um so having a Hillary land and having uh wonderful women uh really smart uh supporting her and her loyalty to them has been enormously important but there's a downside too Patty siss Doyle was her chief of staff for a while and in the 2008 presidential campaign she kept Patty on as the the the campaign director and Patty was not up not ready for prime time and a lot of things went wrong because of her and it was killing to Hillary to have to finally fire her David marinus uh again we have about 20 minutes left and so much to cover so let me uh ask you we uh left the story with the the Bill Clinton's troubles which led to him being the second president in history being impeached and ironically as his troubles were mounting Hillary Clinton was considering a bid for the United States Senate and she was successful at that will you talk about her decision to become a candidate herself and how she pulled that off when her husband had been having political troubles you know it's kind of ironic I remember that Gail and I the last time we were on TV together was on Meet the Press in 1999 and and Tim russer asked us whether we thought Hillary would ever run for office and we both said yes um and the next day Robert torelli the head of the the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee started talking about Hillary running for the Senate um I think that she had already had her on that I think that because of Bill Clinton's troubles uh she was frustrated in those last few years in the white house and was looking to go out on her own um they had they had risen together as far as they could um for 25 years and now is her turn and I think that's the way she felt she did but even more than that uh because I I heard all about the meeting that she had with Harold IIs on the very day that the impeachment vote was taking place uh and another part of the in Congress and Bill Clinton stopped in to say hello to her guest and Hillary didn't even look up uh and you know they they didn't want to have anything to do with him Hillary was then totally focused she done everything she could to line up the ducks in the row so that the Democrats would make sure that he wasn't going to be thrown out of office now she was moving on and this was the biggest passage in her life she said to Harold deis I want independence I I have to have it I can feel it when I can speak with my own voice she was 53 years old uh I don't think it's going to take another you know with the current generation of women it's not going to take that long to speak with their own voice but she had to wait that long and still had to wait a little bit longer after that um but she did start her campaign before she left the White House moved to New York started a whole new life you know began to be seen socially uh and began to move away and and develop a separate Channel they never got divorced but they found a way to you know kind of cohabit in the universe and still help each other what distinguish her two terms in the senate or eight years in the Senate rather well she was uh actually very well-liked in the Senate I don't think that you would point to any specific legislation that that came through during that period that she was related to although very early in her first term at 911 happened and she was the senator from New York where that took place um and I think that the key uh issue and vote that ironically ironically heard her in 2008 Was the vote in 2003 on invading Iraq and she supported it and one can see the connection between being the senator from New York where 9 where the Twin Towers were hit and her vote a couple of years later and one can easily make the case that that vote cost her the Democratic nomination because Barack Obama who was not in the Senate but gave a strong speech opposing the Iraq War um won the progressive vote in Iowa and took off from there from the time that she had been considering her run for the Senate did she have her eye on the presidency itself or was that an evolution you know she was asked um I think in early 2000 um when she thought we would have a woman president and she said 2008 I heard her say that uh well we didn't have a woman president but she tried as hard as she going to be one and she thought she would be the one and she thought she'd be it here is 2008 in New Hampshire this is a pretty familiar uh piece of video to those of you who are following the campaign it's not easy it's not easy um and and I couldn't do it if I just didn't you know passionately believe it was the right thing to do you know I have so many opportunities from this country I just don't want want to see us fall backwards you know so ultimately why did that campaign fa it was a mess you know as tight as her White House operation was in what they called Hillary land the campaign itself um had all these different factions of Hillary people and Bill people and a lot of disagreements and and tactical errors um so all of that had to do with it in terms of you know whether they focus on caucus states which the Obama people figured out so many different ways um but in the end it always comes down to the candidates themselves and the interesting thing about that clip is that it shows Hillary at a point where where Barack Obama is is just uh winning the emotion vote um you know his his his speeches the the energy that he had the youth and all that and Hillary was considered sort of too much of a machine an automaton candidate um and so there she is trying to show I'm human too but it was a little bit uh too late well the yeah absolutely right David and uh it was Mark Penn and Bill Clinton who said you absolutely can't run as a woman you have to run as a man you have to be the strongest man in the cabinet you have to be the commander-in-chief and that was she had just lost she was third place in Iowa terrible shock to her he comes to New Hampshire just a small group of women and was an older woman who sort of asked her how do you do it day after day and that kind of got to her and she was Hillary unplugged for once you know where she actually you you saw a little bit of being a human of being a woman and then she got slammed for crying she didn't cry she just choked up a little bit I mean there were men crying all over the place who were in politics in in that period and getting away with it Ida is in West Palm Beach Florida hi Ida hi Susan and I thank you very much for taking my call again we spoke when you had the series on Jackie Kennedy and I'm enjoying this so very very much um I have a quick question does the panel feel that she will run again for the presidency considering all the scrutiny that she went through the first time as you just alluded to with her crying and all of that and if she does not run is her health going to be a factor thank you so much for the series I've really enjoyed it thank you for watching I think she cannot not run uh unless unless she has a serious health problem that would be the only reason to hold her back she now has the former Obama machine uh project USA um or is that what it's called or primary per USA yeah USA uh backing her um Hill which is Obama's people Obama's people uh she has ready for Hillary which is a Grassroots operation that's been going on for a year that's raised um almost a couple million dollars and uh you know she can't disappoint all these people plus the fact she's always wanted it and she's had so much scrutiny and here we are scrutinizing her all over again and everybody else will be doing the same I think she's in many ways Bulletproof on a lot of what's going on in the past I would never say bulletproof but I think that there were a lot of people who in the primaries voted for Barack Obama who in the couple of years after that were thinking well maybe Hillary would have been a a good president or had more experience even than he um but you know everything seems totally greased for her and that always uh sends off alarm bells in my mind you know everything seems inevitable history is never inevitable so even though it looks like it's going to happen um I would I'm counterintuitive enough to think that something else might occur in June of 2008 Hillary Clinton dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed and campaigned for Barack Obama even though the two had had really some intense times on the campaign Trail and the months before that uh she agreed to serve as his secretary of state was that a momentous decision for her it certainly was and uh I think what we I've just found out more recently is that she came into that discussion with a strong negotiating position she didn't just accept right away she said I have my own agenda I want to bring my vital voices which was her program in the White House to empower women uh and work for gender equality in countries all around the world uh and she had Milan verier uh as a as a partner in that she wanted to bring that into the state department as an official US policy and she said to Barack Obama you know if you can accept that fine otherwise you can find somebody else and he agreed and she did do that and I think that may be her greatest Legacy is to have made progress for women and girls around the world well uh David marinus as she became the most traveled Secretary of State 112 countries visited during her term we had a caller earlier who commended her for her work on gay rights uh while she was in the state department we just heard Gail she's thought thoughts on her promoting the causes of women but in fact uh this particular clip of her testimony after the attack in Benghazi will probably be most remembered for her tenure as Secretary of State let's watch we have no doubt they were terrorists they were militants they attacked us they killed our people people but what was going on and why they were doing what they were doing again again we were misled that there were supposedly protest and then something sprang out of that and assault sprang out of that and that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact and the American people could have known that within days and they they didn't know that with all due respect the fact is we had four dead Americans was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans what difference at this point does it make it is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again senator now honestly I will do my best to answer your questions about this but the the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information the IC has a process I understand going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out but you know to be clear it is from my perspective less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it then to find them and bring them to justice and then maybe we'll figure out what was going on in the me time that also is Hillary unplugged in a very different way I think that's a Hillary that that a lot of people have seen in campaign meetings behind the scenes um she's she's angry I don't think that's staged at all I think that's the way she was feeling at the time and I think there are some legitimate points she was making and also some of you know she said today that that Benghazi was her main regret as Secretary of State the fact that four people were killed on her watch um and you know there's still a lot to be determined about Benghazi um the reporters that I trust the most who've who've really explored it for both the New York Times And The Washington Post say that it's much more complicated than the Republicans have tried to portray it um but there is some responsibility that the Obama Administration and the state department has for what I have you know I think a lot of it is a money issue uh they're just the uh cutbacks on providing security for American outposts around the world have been severe and uh they didn't have enough people um I think Hillary was you know very aware of taking care of people in the state department uh but obviously she didn't think of Libya as being a place that needed to be fortified in advance and if it if if she could have done anything really important that would have been it the other thing to say which is the larger scheme of things yes that quote in Bazi will be the most remembered in the short term and that will be played over and over again uh if she runs for president um but in the course of history you know people could say well what did she do as Secretary of State um in terms of international diplomacy you can't point to that many accomplishments but you can point to something that has been part of her from from when she went to Beijing as the first lady and spoke about women's rights and so going back to what that man said about gay rights and women's rights I think that the larger impact that Hillary Clinton has had on on the world has to do with her speaking out so strongly about those issues we have just about five minutes left in our 90 minutes on first lady Hillary Clinton we're going to take a call from Tess in Springdale Arkansas hi Tess you there yes I'm here your question please my question is why did Hillary get so little coverage as Secretary of State when under the Bush Administration condalisa rice was in the news every day that's a good question perhaps you know David do you agree with her premise that she got little coverage as Secretary of State um I don't know what the difference would be between her and condalisa rice except that when cond Lisa Rice was there we were dealing with with Wars in a way that Hillary was sort of REM One Step removed from dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan she was focusing on some other things and they had special uh diplomats dealing with those two issues and one of the reasons that she didn't show any major accomplishments was because foreign policy was very much held tight by the white house uh Hillary wanted Richard Holbrook as her deputy secretary of State uh the Obama Administration would not agree because it would have put too much power in the state department uh so he was given Afghanistan they gave uh Dennis Ross was given Israel Hillary didn't have a major brief so what she did mainly was make friends around the country and try to undo some of the damage that had been done by the Bush Administration in alienating uh both allies and uh exacerbating enemies the other aspect to that was that when President Obama took over it was the economy stupid as James Carville Clinton once said all of the focus of that presidency was on the economy and so he had to have somebody running foreign policy that he felt was confident to trust to do it but but the press and everybody else was paying attention to what was going on domestically Tom is watching us in Philadelphia hi Tom you're on hi how you doing my question is will she win the presidency yes or no well I think David marinus answered that earlier with uh things that are greas don't always play out the way they should huh yeah I you know I I thought I was hoping the Packers would win the Super Bowl so you know it's the same thing is saying that I I'm not interested I mean I'm interested in the results but but for whatever I say I know no more than you or anyone else in this country Yi uh on Twitter um Aluna Jason has a a personal question about Hillary does Hillary have any interests or Hobbies outside of politics she seems singularly devoted to the political world well I think she she is primarily you know she doesn't really like to exercise uh she doesn't play any instruments uh she says she can't sing um I'm I'm not sure what else she likes to do uh she doesn't like to do her hair I can tell you that um she said she can't do it herself and that's why she let it grow long and so she could wear it in a ponytail or a bun and it took a lot of nuding by her Hillary land Pals to finally get her to cut her hair and uh and change the style Regina kumy asks on on Twitter is Bill a political Ally for Hillary or a liability so let's uh go back to their relationship and and what is his how is he seeing himself with now that it's her turn uh to seek the White House how is he approaching us well you can go back to 2008 and how he approached it there he was both a liability and a help um he loves being a campaign manager uh for all of his own campaigns he was always both the candidate and the campaign manager uh he he loves breaking down every Precinct in and county in Iowa and New Hampshire he knows them all um so and he also uh also understands and learned some lessons from 2008 that he has to be careful about uh what he says and how how he affects her candidacy um so I think that it's both the liability and but he is in my experience uh of covering politics for several decades the smartest politician I've ever met we are just about out of time as we close here I want to ask you both this has been a historical series about the first ladies uh we have uh this period of time women who are still very much living and with us and still writing their own life stories but how should we put a Capper on this discussion of Hillary Clinton what should people think about her from all you're reporting and and know about her that's significant in the context of History I think Hillary Clinton's from the very beginning wanted to be helpful uh in advancing the the the lives the security uh the opportunity uh and the impact of women and the protection of girls and you see that through line in every uh you know framework that she has operated in uh right to this day uh and I think that that has been her her greatest uh impact on the world uh she she and Bill Clinton have been in rehab for a long time but I think she has rehabilitated herself much more than he and he is probably depending on her to make the ultimate Rehabilitation if and when she becomes president we really only skimm the surface here so much we didn't talk about his heart attacks and the effect on the family of that so much more but in closing uh as as much as we could do the story Justice what should people know about this woman well I think she's the best known woman in the world I think she's an incredible story whether you like her or dislike her and everyone has an opinion pretty strongly one way or the other about her I think that she's a a a Pioneer uh she she blazed a path for every woman to follow in terms of her political career and activism and she's a Survivor as is her husband and together for all of the incredible ups and downs of their lives together and and moving forward um she is she keeps going you know she she once quoted the Woody Allen line that you know 90% of life is just showing up and she keeps showing up to David marinus and Gail sheii thanks very much for being here as C span's first lady series looks at the life of Hillary Clinton thanks for your time tonight our pleasure thank you the

Channel: TDC

Views: 226,228

Keywords: Hillary Rodham Clinton (Primary Candidate), Hillary Clinton, Hillary, Clinton, Bill Clinton, President Clinton, Election, news, politics, history, United States of America, USA, United States Of America (Country), President Barack Obama, Obama, Documentary, Conversation, Talk, Barack Obama (US President), Michelle Obama, Chelsea Clinton, run, Elizabeth Warren, Video, Good, international relations, foreign policy, economics, immigration, speech, primary, hard choices

Id: 5WjDYRXEzyM

Length: 92min 0sec (5520 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2014