Subject: Correct The Record Saturday November 15, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 12:47:58 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Saturday November 15, 2014 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*New York Times: “Bill Clinton, in Little Rock, Defends His Record With an
Eye to Other Chapters”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/bill-clinton-in-little-rock-defends-his-record-with-an-eye-to-other-chapters.html>*

“In trying to shape public perceptions of his record, Mr. Clinton is
effectively establishing the foundation on which his wife, former Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, may herself run for president in 2016.”

*Associated Press: “Clinton alums remember the past, look to future”
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2dd06a9bc4e44fbe8b9b0e3dec501a4d/clinton-alums-remember-past-look-future>*

“Former President Bill Clinton's political family reunited Friday in
Arkansas, reminiscing about his two terms in office and relishing the
prospect of a first for Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Podesta leaves open possibility of chairing
Clinton campaign”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/224228-podesta-leaves-open-possibility-of-chairing-clinton-campaign>*

“White House adviser John Podesta left open the possibility of serving as
chairman of a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign on Friday, saying he
will ‘do whatever she asks me to do.’”

*Politico: “Nancy Pelosi: You gotta fight cash with cash”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/nancy-pelosi-donors-democracy-alliance-112916.html>*

“Asked about efforts to coax Warren into the race, Pelosi, who has signaled
support for a likely Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, deflected. ‘She
has made her views clear, but you’ll have to talk to her about that,’
Pelosi said of Warren, who declined to talk to POLITICO after her Thursday
speech.”

*Los Angeles Times column: Doyle McManus: “Sage advice for Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mcmanus-hillary-clinton-challenges-20141116-column.html>*

“First, don't take the 2016 election for granted; it's wide open, and
either party could win. Second, the overriding issue on voters' minds is
the economy — specifically, the stagnant lot of middle class workers.”

*Roll Call blog: 218: “Benghazi Committee Will Meet During Lame Duck,
Chairman Says”
<http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/benghazi-committee-will-meet-during-lame-duck-chairman-says/?dcz=>*

“Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told CQ Roll Call Friday the committee will
meet ‘in public and in private’ between now and the end of the lame-duck
session, which is currently open-ended.”

*Bloomberg: “Hillary Clinton's 'Confrontational' Side Illustrated in New
Transcripts”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-15/hillary-clintons-confrontational-side-illustrated-in-new-transcripts>*

“If insights into Hillary Clinton from her husband's former aides and
advisers are what you're looking for, turn instead to the Miller Center at
the University of Virginia, which on Friday released a series of
transcripts from interviews for its Clinton oral history project.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Crossroads researching best ways to hit
Hillary”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/224205-crossroads-researching-best-ways-to-hit-hillary>*

“The big-spending conservative super-PAC American Crossroads is still
researching the best way to attack likely Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton, the group’s president and CEO Steven Law said Friday.”

*Articles:*

*New York Times: “Bill Clinton, in Little Rock, Defends His Record With an
Eye to Other Chapters”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/bill-clinton-in-little-rock-defends-his-record-with-an-eye-to-other-chapters.html>*

By Amy Chozick and Peter Baker

November 14,2014

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In front of a crowd of his former White House aides, on
a podium set up inside his presidential library, Bill Clinton on Friday
defended his legacy as one of policy breakthroughs achieved amid partisan
battles, a record that may soon take on fresh relevance.

“We made our fair share of mistakes,” Mr. Clinton said in a typically
rambling hourlong speech that covered a wide array of events from his
tenure. “But in the end, on foreign and domestic policy, economic and
social, you can honestly say that people were better off.”

Mr. Clinton’s speech came after a day of panel discussions at the William
J. Clinton Presidential Center in which former White House aides discussed
the former president’s foreign policy, domestic and economic agendas. The
discussions, which mostly celebrated the Clinton years, were timed to
preview the release of a trove of oral histories assembled by the Miller
Center at the University of Virginia that paints a more nuanced view of his
administration.

All of that might be of academic interest if it concerned any other former
president, but for this one, it bears rather profoundly on the future as
well as the past. In trying to shape public perceptions of his record, Mr.
Clinton is effectively establishing the foundation on which his wife,
former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, may herself run for
president in 2016.

The Miller Center interviews were conducted with White House officials,
cabinet secretaries, generals, congressional leaders and foreign heads of
state in the years after Mr. Clinton left office. The first batch of 47
oral histories posted online on Friday capture the administration’s
struggles over whether deficit reduction would prove effective, what the
United States should stand for after the end of the Cold War and how to
deal with the rise of a Republican Congress.

They touched on some of the scandals that afflicted the Clinton
administration. “The president always had an eye for attractive women,”
Leon E. Panetta, who served as White House chief of staff, said in his
interview before recounting how he noticed an intern named Monica Lewinsky
and had her banished to the Pentagon. Mickey Kantor, the former commerce
secretary, called the president’s last-minute pardon of the financier Marc
Rich “the single most inexplicable, devastating thing he did.”

The oral histories also underscored how the Clinton administration operated
with a series of feuding fiefs and recalled some of the fierce personal
enmities. Dick Morris, the president’s Republican political adviser, for
instance, was not popular with his colleagues. “A double spy,” Mr. Panetta
called him. “Our resident madman,” offered Bruce Reed, the domestic policy
adviser.

“The oral histories provide a thesaurus for fragmentation,” said Andy
Rudalevige, a professor at Bowdoin College.

The initial oral histories released Friday offer a glimpse into Mrs.
Clinton’s role in her husband’s administration. Mr. Panetta recalled that
one of the conditions he laid out when Mr. Clinton asked him to be chief of
staff was that “I need to have the first lady’s trust.” He said he “went
out of my way to make sure I briefed her on what was going on” and praised
her intelligence.

But she was tough. Mr. Panetta recalled a time when other Clinton aides
emerged from a meeting during which Mrs. Clinton berated them for
advocating the release of Whitewater documents. “She just let everybody
have it,” he recalled. Both Clintons could be “screamers,” he said, but the
president’s faded quickly. “She had much more sustained velocity for a
longer period of time.”

And yet Mrs. Clinton engendered more devotion from her staff than her
husband did from his, another former official recalled.

“There’s an interesting difference that always has struck everybody who’s
watched it up close, which is that she inspires fierce loyalty and he
doesn’t,” observed Roger Altman, who served as deputy Treasury secretary.
“She wears her heart on her sleeve much more than he does,” he added. “Less
and less now that she’s her own public figure, but that’s her nature.”

In his speech, Mr. Clinton encouraged the friends and former aides who
gathered in Little Rock to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the opening of
the Clinton Center to participate in the Miller Center project.

“If anyone gets approached, for God’s sake, do it, it’s important,” Mr.
Clinton said, although he himself has yet to give an interview for the
project.

But he touched on topics that he felt were left out from the day’s
discussions, including defending the controversial North American Free
Trade Agreement (“people will thank me for it in 20 years”), the failed
effort at health care reform and even Vice President Al Gore (who was “much
funnier than he got credit for”).

Speaking on an economic panel, Gene Sperling, former director of the
National Economic Council, described the uncertainty around Mr. Clinton’s
efforts to reduce the deficit, which was ultimately, though temporarily,
wiped out by the time he left office.

“Anybody who tells you we had a master plan at that point is smoking
something,” he said, referring to Mr. Clinton’s decision to allow the
government to shut down during a spending dispute with Republicans. “We
were scared.”

*Associated Press: “Clinton alums remember the past, look to future”
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2dd06a9bc4e44fbe8b9b0e3dec501a4d/clinton-alums-remember-past-look-future>*

By Ken Thomas

November 14, 2014, 5:59 p.m. EST

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton's political family
reunited Friday in Arkansas, reminiscing about his two terms in office and
relishing the prospect of a first for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"In the world of Clinton, there is not an end. There is always tomorrow,"
said Skip Rutherford, dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of
Public Service. He first met Bill Clinton in 1973.

What the future might mean for the couple depends heavily on Hillary
Clinton's decision on whether to make a second bid for president and if so,
the degree to which she would defend or distance herself from President
Barack Obama and her husband's terms in office.

Presidential politics in 2016 swirled around the reunion. In an hourlong
address capping the first day, Bill Clinton made no mention of the
possibility of another Hillary Clinton campaign but said his two terms had
accomplished the goals that it had set.

"At the end, on foreign and domestic policy, economic and social, you could
honestly say that people were better off when we quit," Clinton said.

Even as the Clinton alumni streamed to Little Rock, the former first couple
took a touch of friendly fire from Vice President Joe Biden, a potential
Clinton presidential rival, on her husband's record of creating jobs during
the 1990s.

The Clintons often speak of having created 23 million jobs and cutting the
poverty rate during Bill Clinton's presidency. But in a speech Thursday,
Biden highlighted that how that period is remembered will be important to
Hillary Clinton's ambitions.

The "middle class started to get into trouble in the late '80s," Biden
said. "All through the '90s ... the middle class was declining except the
last two years."

Republicans, still giddy about their midterm election triumph that handed
them complete control of Congress, are busily preparing for 2016.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul assembled his political team at a Washington hotel
this week for strategy sessions while former President George W. Bush has
encouraged his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to run. Govs. Chris
Christie of New Jersey, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Bobby Jindal of
Louisiana will head to Florida next week for an annual Republican Governors
Association meeting replete with presidential overtones.

The activity signaled that while the Clintonites insisted on an upbeat
focus on Bill Clinton's presidential stewardship two decades ago, the 2016
presidential race has effectively begun.

Even in the Clintons' orbit, unnamed former campaign operatives were
reportedly trying to shape Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign staff even
before she has any such campaign. ABC News reported Friday that a Democrat
on a private distribution list of ex-campaign staffers leaked
bravado-filled emails between two former operatives the source does not
support for senior roles in a potential Clinton campaign.

In an interview with PBS' Charlie Rose, former Clinton chief of staff John
Podesta briefly responded to reports that he would serve as chairman of a
Hillary Clinton campaign, saying, "If she runs, as I hope she will, I will
do whatever she asks me to do."

The Clinton homecoming offered a window into one of the most extensive
networks in American politics.

In Little Rock, where Bill Clinton served as governor for more than a
decade, the couple's wide-ranging array of political allies was on full
display, starting with a symposium Friday exploring the former president's
legacy in foreign and domestic policy.

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Podesta leaves open possibility of chairing
Clinton campaign”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/224228-podesta-leaves-open-possibility-of-chairing-clinton-campaign>*

By Peter Sullivan

November 14, 2014, 3:25 p.m. EST

White House adviser John Podesta left open the possibility of serving as
chairman of a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign on Friday, saying he
will "do whatever she asks me to do."

Podesta has been thought to be in line to chair Clinton's campaign, and he
was asked about the possibility on "Charlie Rose" in a video posted Friday.

"If she runs, as I hope she will, I’ll do whatever she asks me to do, but
right now she hasn’t made a decision to run and so I’m expecting to return
to what I was doing before, which is teaching law at Georgetown Law School
and working at a think tank," Podesta said.

Podesta is a longtime Clinton adviser, and served as White House Chief of
Staff under President Bill Clinton. He founded the liberal-leaning think
tank the Center for American Progress.

He joined the Obama administration at the end of last year to serve for a
year, and he said Friday he will mostly stick to that timeline. “I might
stay a little bit longer, through the State of the Union," he said.

A departure then would allow him to join a Clinton campaign as it is
ramping up. Asked if he had had conversations with Clinton about his role,
Podesta said, "You know, I talk to her from time to time."

"She hasn’t made a decision, so she’s structured no campaign," he added.

While he is expected to have a top job on the campaign, he ended the
discussion with a joke.

“Maybe I’ll be going door to door," he said.

*Politico: “Nancy Pelosi: You gotta fight cash with cash”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/nancy-pelosi-donors-democracy-alliance-112916.html>*

By Kenneth P. Vogel

November 14, 2014, 7:16 p.m. EST

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appeared behind closed doors at
Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel to thank major donors for their recent
efforts on behalf of liberal and Democratic causes — and ask them not to
stop.

Despite the results of last week’s midterm elections – a blow-out win for
Republicans – Pelosi praised the Democracy Alliance club of wealthy donors
for helping shape the political landscape. She specifically mentioned the
50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, as well as the
2020 redrawing of congressional district boundaries, in imploring donors to
continue supporting efforts to mobilize Democratic voters, according to a
source present at the speech.

Like the rest of the annual winter meeting of the Democracy Alliance,
Pelosi’s speech was closed to the press. Pelosi’s appearance was not on the
conference schedule, and came during a panel focused partly on “getting big
money out of politics,” according to an agenda.

Afterwards, POLITICO asked Pelosi about the irony of major donors meeting
behind closed doors to discuss ways to rid the political process of
secretive big money spending of the sort many Democracy Alliance members
have engaged in.

“Well, I think that, for the moment, it will take money to win the election
to get people there who believe in taking the money out,” she said,
stopping to hug Democracy Alliance donor Wayne Jordan, a real estate
developer from her hometown of San Francisco.

“People really know that this has to happen – that you just can’t go down
this path of secret, undisclosed dark money then attracting other kinds of
money,” Pelosi said. “It just builds the skepticism and the cynicism that
people have about politics that their voice is less important.”

She asserted that campaign finance reform, “has to happen. And, what else
has to happen, is we have to get our people on the field to vote. And money
is a suppressor of the vote. I have always said that. We suffocate the
airwaves with just so much stuff that people just give up and then they
don’t vote.”

Pelosi acknowledged, though, that with Republicans controlling Congress,
there’s little hope of tightening campaign finance rules legislatively. And
she conceded the slim prospects of a reform proposal supported by some
Democracy Alliance members – a constitutional amendment to reverse the
Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision striking down campaign
spending restrictions as unconstitutional infringements on free speech. Yet
she asserted the issue is a winning one for Democrats.

“We know that on amending the Constitution — that seems like a big tall
order. It is. But you get a standing ovation any place you mention it,”
said Pelosi, a voracious fundraiser who has appeared at many Democracy
Alliance events.

Her speech on Friday was well-received, but not as well-received as the one
delivered Thursday evening by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said the
donor. “No one got as good a response as Elizabeth. She’s the overwhelming
favorite of the Democracy Alliance.”

Some of the donors urged Warren to rethink her opposition to running for
president in 2016.

Asked about efforts to coax Warren into the race, Pelosi, who has signaled
support for a likely Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, deflected.

“She has made her views clear, but you’ll have to talk to her about that,”
Pelosi said of Warren, who declined to talk to POLITICO after her Thursday
speech.

*Los Angeles Times column: Doyle McManus: “Sage advice for Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mcmanus-hillary-clinton-challenges-20141116-column.html>*

By Doyle McManus

November 15, 2014, 5:00 a.m. EST

It's been almost two weeks since their stinging defeat in midterm
elections, but Democrats are still licking their wounds and trying to
figure out where they went wrong. They don't have much time to extract the
right lessons: The 2016 presidential campaign will begin in earnest any
minute now.

So I consulted two Democratic sages, each of whom played a central role in
electing the last two Democratic presidents: David Axelrod, who worked for
Barack Obama in 2008, and James Carville, who worked for Bill Clinton in
1992.

Their advice — aimed primarily at Hillary Rodham Clinton, who they both
assume will run — boiled down to two basic precepts.

First, don't take the 2016 election for granted; it's wide open, and either
party could win.

Second, the overriding issue on voters' minds is the economy —
specifically, the stagnant lot of middle class workers. The candidate with
the most convincing remedy for that problem is likely to win.

Let's take them in turn.

It may seem obvious that you should never take a presidential election for
granted. But some Democrats have suggested their party has a virtual lock
on the electoral college because more minority voters and young people will
turn out in a presidential year.

Wrong, Axelrod said at a panel sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. Take
no comfort in the demographics, he told the audience, because “history
suggests it's very difficult for a party to win after an eight-year run.”

There have been seven presidential elections in the last 60 years when
voters could extend a party's hold on the White House beyond eight years.
They declined to do so six out of seven times. The sole exception was in
1988, when George H.W. Bush defeated a weak Democratic candidate to succeed
Ronald Reagan.

“Of course people are going to want some kind of change,” said Carville.
“No one is going to say: ‘I want the next four years to look like the last
eight.'”

Lesson 2: the economy.

“We have to have a stronger message around economics,” Axelrod said. “The
danger for Secretary Clinton is that, as was the case in 2007, her
candidacy is out in front of the rationale for it. She needs to jump on
that message and stay on that message.”

Carville thinks the former secretary of State has already figured that out:
She just “needs to talk about it more. We have a lot of work to do. But
there's time.”

Indeed, Clinton has been talking about the economy — and sounding
distinctly populist notes. In May she compared income inequality today to
the “age of the robber barons.”

Stumping in Boston during the midterm campaign with Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), one of the Democrats' toughest critics of Wall Street, Clinton
said: “I love watching Elizabeth give it to those who deserve it.”

“Don't let anybody tell you that ... it's corporations and businesses that
create jobs,” she added. (After Republicans howled, she said she had unduly
“shorthanded” a more complex argument.)

It's fair to wonder whether Clinton is thinking partly about fending off a
primary challenge from candidates to her left, such as Warren. Her speeches
have been long on empathy for the struggling middle class, but short on
policy proposals to fix their problems.

She talks up a basic Democratic wish list — a higher minimum wage, paid
sick leave, pay equity for women, pre-kindergarten education — but hasn't
added any new ideas. She hasn't endorsed any of the reforms liberal
economists have been batting around for reshaping the tax code, such as a
hike on upper-bracket earners to pay for tax cuts at the lower end.

Of course, it's unfair to expect a non-candidate to roll out a detailed
economic platform. Even Clinton should be allowed to decide to run on her
own timetable, no matter how desperate her supporters are to see her in the
race.

But she still faces the challenge of meeting voters' appetite for change:
showing how she would be different from an incumbent most voters say
they're tired of, especially when her policies aren't all that different
from his. How does Clinton turn into a fresh new face?

“Simple,” said Carville. “She's not Obama. She can say, ‘Look, I ran
against Barack in 2008.' “

Axelrod suggested that Clinton accentuate stylistic differences: less
nuance, more bluntness. She did that to great effect, he noted, in the
later stages of her 2008 primary campaign.

“She was much more visceral. She was closer to the ground. If she can be
that candidate in 2016, she will be a much stronger candidate…. She has to
throw caution to the wind.”

They almost make it sound easy. But Hillary Clinton, despite her supposed
advantages, may soon face an unexpectedly difficult challenge: turning a
familiar message into one that looks like change voters can once again
believe in.

*Roll Call blog: 218: “Benghazi Committee Will Meet During Lame Duck,
Chairman Says”
<http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/benghazi-committee-will-meet-during-lame-duck-chairman-says/?dcz=>*

By Emma Dumain

November 14, 2014, 3:52 p.m. EST

Remember the Select Committee on Benghazi?

The panel convened to probe the 2012 attacks on the U.S. embassy in
Benghazi, Libya, was created in the spring and had its first public hearing
in September — but otherwise has been quiet.

Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told CQ Roll Call Friday the committee will
meet “in public and in private” between now and the end of the lame-duck
session, which is currently open-ended.

“I can’t give you any more specifics,” he said as he exited the House
chamber following votes on Friday, “but Mr. [Elijah E.] Cummings and I were
just chatting about it.”

Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, is the Benghazi committee’s ranking member.

House GOP leaders said they established the committee because they wanted
to restore seriousness to the process that had become hyper-partisan —
especially under the jurisdiction of Rep. Darrell Issa’s Oversight and
Government Reform Committee — but Democrats countered that it was just an
excuse to continue pointing fingers at the Obama administration and a
likely 2016 presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was, at the
time of the attacks, the secretary of state.

And while it may be true that House Republicans really did want to see
Congress investigate the incident through a centralized committee, it
didn’t hurt them politically, either, to be able to remind constituents
that they were the party determined to get to the bottom of the tragic
incident.

Meanwhile, Democrats say they have been pleasantly surprised by Gowdy’s
even-keeled leadership approach, and the September hearing took place with
minimal fireworks.

*Bloomberg: “Hillary Clinton's 'Confrontational' Side Illustrated in New
Transcripts”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-15/hillary-clintons-confrontational-side-illustrated-in-new-transcripts>*

By Margaret Talev

November 15, 2014, 10:40 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] You don't have to be in Little Rock this weekend to glean
insights on Hillary Clinton from Bill's former aides.

Hillary Clinton “just tore everybody a new a--hole.” That's how Leon
Panetta recalled former White House legislative affairs director Pat
Griffin describing how the former first lady responded when she wasn't
pleased with the staff in her husband Bill Clinton's presidential
administration.

Little Rock, Ark., is abuzz this weekend with Bill and Hillary Clinton
holding court at a 10th anniversary celebration for the Clinton
Presidential Center that's also a sort of pre-union for Hillary Clinton's
anticipated 2016 run. But if insights into Hillary Clinton from her
husband's former aides and advisers are what you're looking for, turn
instead to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which on Friday
released a series of transcripts from interviews for its Clinton oral
history project.

Panetta, who was Bill Clinton's chief of staff long before his stints in
the Obama administration, offers some of the more colorful observations in
his interview, which was conducted in 2003:

“There’s no question that she was smart, she was dedicated, she understood
the issue and people were a little intimidated by her. There were several
meetings where she basically walked in and let everybody have it, very
different from what the president would do. If she thought something was
going wrong, she’d say it. She was much more confrontational in that sense.

“I’ll never forget, Pat Griffin came out of that meeting and his eyes were
that wide and he said, 'You will not believe what I’ve just been through.'
I said, 'What are you talking about?' I had been at another staff meeting.
He said, 'I can’t believe it, I can’t believe what I’ve just been through.'
I said, 'What’s the matter?' He said, 'The first lady just tore everybody a
new a--hole.' I said, 'Really?' It was that first experience.

“When I became chief of staff, recognizing that she was an important
factor, I went out of my way to make sure I briefed her on what was going
on as chief of staff. But if she ultimately believed that you had the
capacity to do a job, she backed off. She served as what I would call a
chief of staff-in-waiting, in the sense that if she felt the chief of staff
or whoever was not doing the job, she was prepared to protect the
president. And she was very good at that.”

Marjorie Margolies, the former Pennsylvania congresswoman and Chelsea
Clinton's mother-in-law, in a 2007 interview talking about her own
experiences as a woman in politics:

“I’m doing women’s leadership around the world. You don’t fold in that if
you run as an outsider and you do something that they think is folding to
the politics, as opposed to sticking up for what you believe in, you hope
that that makes sense. But with women especially, the pedestal is then
pulled out precipitously. 'She’s just like all the rest of them.' There’s
also something that I’ve gotten into because we do a lot of polling in the
classes that I teach and some stuff around the world. In polling, there is
the minority factor. The one thing that you can’t measure is jealousy. It’s
a very difficult thing for women. It never entered my mind that that would
be a problem. But there is a lot of, 'Who does she think she is?' When you
look at Hillary, too, there is this.”

Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, in 2005,
recalling his and his wife Ann's early interactions after talking to
Hillary Clinton at the 1993 inauguration.

“About two weeks, three weeks later, we were invited to the White House. I
don’t remember what it was; it wasn’t a large group, maybe 50, 40. I
watched Hillary as she began to visit with Ann. Hillary never turns her
head when she’s talking to someone. She is absolutely riveted. She doesn’t
look around like, 'Oh, hi there Tilly; how are you?'—or divert her
attention from the person she’s talking to. That’s a gift. You have to have
that in politics. There were people around—it was adulation: 'We want to
talk to Hillary.' She must have spent about 15 or 20 minutes with Ann on
mental health issues. . . Anyway, I thought that was fascinating.”

Alan Blinder, the economist, who served on Bill Clinton's Council of
Economic Advisers, talking about Hillary Clinton in a 2003 interview:

“I think she’s much more politically astute now than she was in early 1993.
I think she learned. She’s really smart. She learns, and she knows she made
mistakes. She’s said it herself. I know she was not as politically astute
then as she is now because there were a lot of these—I mentioned a couple
of these—these alleged political ideas. How we were going to get the
small-business lobby? How we were going to get the old-line industries?
They were complete flops.”

Roger Altman, the investment banker and former deputy treasury secretary,
in a 2003 interview, on differences between Bill and Hillary Clinton:

“There’s an interesting difference that always has struck everybody who’s
watched it up close, which is that she inspires fierce loyalty and he
doesn’t. You look at the turnover that she had—or in her case did not
have—on her staff, and the turnover that he had. You look at the
relationships he ended up having with a lot of people that he was initially
close to and were central to his administration, whether it’s George
Stephanopoulos or whoever else it may be.

“She inspired, continues to inspire, fierce loyalty, and he doesn’t. It’s
quite a difference and I ascribe it to the fact that she does not look at
the world as, or at least in my experience, as solely and only politically.
She wears her heart on her sleeve much more than he does. Less and less now
that she’s her own public figure, but that’s her nature.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Crossroads researching best ways to hit
Hillary”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/224205-crossroads-researching-best-ways-to-hit-hillary>*

By Jonathan Easley

November 14, 2014, 1:34 p.m. EST

The big-spending conservative super-PAC American Crossroads is still
researching the best way to attack likely Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton, the group’s president and CEO Steven Law said Friday.

“I think there is an optimal time to engage any of the potential Democratic
nominees, with Hillary obviously being at the top of that list,” Law said
on Bloomberg TV’s With All Due Respect. “I expect we will start to focus on
her. I think there needs to be a lot more research done, a lot more
analysis, to understand the best way to talk about who she is and the kind
of president she would be for the country.”

Law said the research phase should be complete in early 2015, and that the
group’s attack strategy would play out publicly beginning shortly after
that.

“We’re going to do a lot of studying, a lot of deep analysis and then start
to enter that conversation in a pretty public way,” he said, adding that
they’re going through the same process for other potential Democratic
candidates, like former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D)

Law heads American Crossroads and its sister organization, Crossroads GPS,
which together spent more than $170 million in the 2012 campaign cycle, and
an estimated $47 million in the 2014 midterm elections, according to a
Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

He said that while the primary focus remains on Clinton, that he wouldn’t
be surprised to see Democrats move in a different direction.

“I think [Clinton] is more likely than not the Democratic nominee,” he
said. “But one of the things I’ve observed about the Democratic nominating
process is that they’re always looking for the new flavor, and she
certainly isn’t that.”

“As I look at the Democratic Party right now they seem to be involved in a
very intense dialogue about what the post-Obama Democratic Party looks
like, and it’s hard to imagine going back to pre-Obama is going to be a
very satisfactory answer,” he added. “They may just decide that’s the
default position but they could also decide to look elsewhere.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) could be at the top of that list for
Democrats. She’s been a fundraising powerhouse and gained momentum recently
among some on the left who are seeking a liberal alternative to Clinton.

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  November 15  – Little Rock, AR: Sec. Clinton hosts No Ceilings event (NYT
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/10/17/?entry=2674&_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0>
)

·  November 19  – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton is honored by the National
Breast Cancer Coalition (Breast Cancer Deadline
<http://www.breastcancerdeadline2020.org/donate/fundraising-events/2014-NY-Gala-Evite.html>
)

·  November 21  – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton presides over meeting of the
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Bloomberg
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-02/clinton-aides-resist-calls-to-jump-early-into-2016-race>
)

·  November 21  – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton is honored by the New York
Historical Society (Bloomberg
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-02/clinton-aides-resist-calls-to-jump-early-into-2016-race>
)

·  December 1 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton keynotes a League of
Conservation Voters dinner (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-green-groups-las-vegas-111430.html?hp=l11>
)

·  December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts
Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>)

·  December 16 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton honored by Robert F. Kennedy
Center for Justice and Human Rights (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-ripple-of-hope-award-112478.html>
)