Posted by Jed Lewison on Mon Apr 21, 2008 at 4:23 PM Pacific

The more things stay the same...

An excerpt from Chapter 3 of All Too Human: A Politicial Education by George Stephanopolous:

Clinton went on Nightline. Answering the questions was our only hope. Koppel first asked Clinton if he wanted to read the letter on the air, but we weren’t that dumb. A clip of Clinton reading one damaging line out of context would be replayed endlessly. Instead, Koppel read the letter and gave Clinton the whole show to explain himself. Clinton was masterful – calm about the past, impassioned about the future, with just the right degree of indignation about the kind of issues that ought to matter in electing a president. In the final minute of the show he squeezed in a sterling sound bite: “Ted, the only times you’ve invited me on the show are to discuss a woman I never slept with and a draft I never dodged.”

Even had I known for certain then that Clinton’s closing statement wasn’t really true, I would have had a hard time admitting it to myself. I was in battle mode, and nearly anything we did, I believed, was justified by what was being done to us. Tabloid reporters were prowling the streets of Little Rock, offering cash for stories about Clinton. Almost all the rumors swirling around our increasingly gothic campaign – that Clinton sanctioned drug running from Arkansas’s Mena Airport, that Clinton was a cocaine fiend, that Hillary was a secret lesbian – were both malicious and untrue.

Experience can be an asset. But when you've learned all the wrong things from that experience, it becomes a liability. And that's the situation that Hillary Clinton finds herself in today.

The more things stay the same...

An excerpt from Chapter 3 of All Too Human: A Politicial Education by George Stephanopolous:

Clinton went on Nightline. Answering the questions was our only hope. Koppel first asked Clinton if he wanted to read the letter on the air, but we weren’t that dumb. A clip of Clinton reading one damaging line out of context would be replayed endlessly. Instead, Koppel read the letter and gave Clinton the whole show to explain himself. Clinton was masterful – calm about the past, impassioned about the future, with just the right degree of indignation about the kind of issues that ought to matter in electing a president. In the final minute of the show he squeezed in a sterling sound bite: “Ted, the only times you’ve invited me on the show are to discuss a woman I never slept with and a draft I never dodged.”

Even had I known for certain then that Clinton’s closing statement wasn’t really true, I would have had a hard time admitting it to myself. I was in battle mode, and nearly anything we did, I believed, was justified by what was being done to us. Tabloid reporters were prowling the streets of Little Rock, offering cash for stories about Clinton. Almost all the rumors swirling around our increasingly gothic campaign – that Clinton sanctioned drug running from Arkansas’s Mena Airport, that Clinton was a cocaine fiend, that Hillary was a secret lesbian – were both malicious and untrue.

Experience can be an asset. But when you've learned all the wrong things from that experience, it becomes a liability. And that's the situation that Hillary Clinton finds herself in today.

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