A few weeks ago Carl Bernstein described himself as a missionary for A Woman in Charge, his biography of Hillary Clinton. And why not? It’s an excellent book and, as I said in April and will say again, an important book. As he has pointed out, had there been real biography about our current president before the 2000 elections….
Bernstein’s recent appearance at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA was taped by fora.tv, an absorbing site focusing on world affairs and the arts. Takeaway: Donna Shalala, Lloyd Bentsen and others urged Bill Clinton not to let Hillary lead the health care initiative, which she did and it was a disaster for his first term.
Hillary, of course, is emphasizing health care in her campaign; I can’t remember the last time I saw one of her ads that was about anything else.
Fora’s player conveniently allows chapters for easy navigation of long videos; the health care remarks are in Chapter 4 – Doubts About Hillary. Also of special interest, from the audience questions, is Chapter 13 – Hillary’s Fear of Embarrassment as President, in which Bernstein talks about “It’s the marriage, stupid” and whether Washington wants the circus back in town.
This link to the video is cued up to the clip about the book, which is Chapter 11.
My archive has more about the book, including posts with links to excerpts. And thanks to fora for contacting me.
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Once again I have to thank you for the site link. This new news source looks to be useful as this election and all of the issues it involves devolve. My thought right now is that it is really going to be hard to avoid falling into the trap of personality that keeps me from seeing what the candidates are capable of doing about the real problems this country is facing. I know I want the blogosphere to help remedy this by providing an open forum and a continuing discussion. So again, thanks for the reference point.
You’re welcome! I think it’s a really interesting site that makes room for topics and people the mainstream media do not or will not cover.
I think the blogosphere is going to impact the elections a bit, especially huge sites like HuffPo. Just a gut feeling as I hear more and more people say they’ve given up on traditional media.