Notes:
Neil: If you aren’t already a fan of Hillary Clinton, you still may not want to vote for her after watching this documentary, but you will respect her elite drive and intelligence and may examine what it means for current and future generations of American politicians that it’s still such an uphill battle for a woman to win our highest office.
- This post is part of my series of Notes collecting quotes from my favorite documentaries, interviews, and speeches.
- Book Recommendation: Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes (2018)
- Link to Video: Hulu
Quotes:
Nanette Burstein (Director): “Do you feel frustrated that you’ve been in public life for 30 years yet people feel that they don’t know who you really are? That you seem inauthentic?” Hillary Clinton: “I do! I do feel like… what is this about? I mean when people say I’m not authentic… what you see is what you get. I’m sorry if I’m not brilliantly charismatic on TV, but I’m the same person I’ve always been.”
Hillary Clinton: “The neighborhood was pretty conservative. They were all Republicans. I remember one time playing pinocle… We got into a big card fight. And I said to my father, “I’m quitting, and I’m leaving, and when I grow up I’m going to marry a Democrat.” Like it was the worst thing I could think to say to my father.”
Hillary Clinton: “Being a Methodist was a big part of my upbringing. ‘Do all the good you can, to all the people you can, in all the ways you can.‘”
[1969 Wellesley College Commencement] Senator Edward Brooke (R – MA): “There is a fine line between productive dissent and counter-productive disruption.” Hillary Clinton: “What I’m speaking for today is all of us… And I find myself reacting, just briefly, to some of the things Senator Brooke said…”
“For too long, our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible, and the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.”
Hillary Clinton: “In those days, you got no points for being emotional. You’d get no points trying to fight back or defend yourself. You just put your head down, you worked hard, you got to where you were going despite whatever obstacles were put up. And when you train yourself like that, and then fast forward into an age where everybody wants to see what your emotions are and how you respond and all that… It’s really a different environment in which we find ourselves now.”
Hillary Clinton: “Bill was just, for me, in a different universe, different level of connection. He was so incredibly charismatic, filled with positive energy, really smart. I just felt like he was the most interesting man I’d ever met and probably ever would meet. And I would never have a dull or boring moment. And that has proven to be true (laughs).”
Bill Clinton: “I never thought I would be married. I thought I’d, (there’d) be a good chance I’d spend my life alone. I just, cuz I had a complicated childhood, you know, and I worried about it. But I said I really want to marry you but you shouldn’t marry me. And she said, “that’s not a very good sales pitch.” And I said, “well you shouldn’t because I have to go home to Arkansas, I love the place, I want to spend my life there, I want to be in politics. If I can. And if I can, I want to live there. And I won’t be me if I don’t do it.”
Bill Clinton: “I said, “You’re the most gifted person that I know. You should go home to Illinois and run for office or move to New York or someplace else where you can run for office. And she just laughed at me and she said, “Are you kidding? No one would ever vote for me. Who would ever vote for a prissy woman like me?”
Robby Mook (Campaign Manager): “I felt very aware of how powerful (Sanders) was as a messenger. He had been saying the same stuff for 20 years.”
Robby Mook: “People’s greatest strength is usually their greatest weakness too. Hillary Clinton’s greatest strength was that she knew this policy stuff back and forth. And she was enormously effective at getting things done. And so when someone says to her, “How do we bring down college debt? Immediately this complicated calculus formula is going in her head, thinking through all the different funding streams that could go into that, all the different pieces of the bureaucracy that would be responsible for managing that, and she comes out with a policy that she thinks can go get done. That is absolutely her superpower. In a campaign, it is her greatest weakness. Because voters need clear, clean, definitive answers on things.”
Hillary Clinton: “Millennials love the idea of free college. I said, “No I’m not going to do that.” I think you should level with people even if you’re not playing into their emotions. And that makes me a less than ideal politician. I really understand that, I mean I’m a really good public official. I really do a good job. But I do suffer from the responsibility gene. I’ve said that for years. Because I don’t like to say something that I know is not true.”
Hillary Clinton: “I am the most investigated innocent person in America… That’s why this is not just politics, it’s deep cultural stuff.”
Hillary Clinton: “Every day started with me doing hair and makeup. There was 600 days give or take in the campaign. And it was an hour to an hour and a half. So being very conservative, say an hour to do hair and makeup. I calculated it, and I spent 25 days doing hair and makeup. And I knew that the men I was running against didn’t have to do any of that. You know, get up, take a shower, shake their head, they were ready to go.”
Hillary Clinton: “Honestly, Bernie just drove me crazy. He was in Congress for years. Years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him. Nobody wants to work with him. He got nothing done. He was a career politician. He did not work until he was 41 and then he got elected to something. It was all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
Hillary Clinton: “Iowa has never been particularly receptive to me. In 2008, it was not at all. And by 2016, it was tough. And it was tough in part because it was so close. And we were fighting for every vote and every delegate.”
Bill Clinton: “The 1992 election was a populist election. But it wasn’t insane. It was more about positive populism.”
Hillary Clinton: “Bill had served five terms as governor and was thinking about the presidency. Anybody who knew him knew he would do it eventually and it was just a question of what was the best timing. And when everybody thought after the First Gulf War that George H. W. Bush was absolutely unbeatable, I thought he could be beaten. The economy was shaky, debt was rising. There was pieces of the American Dream that were battered.“
Bill Clinton (1991 Announcement for President): “For 12 years, the Republicans have tried to divide us. They want us to be angry at each other so we won’t be mad at them. They want us to look at each other across a racial divide. Fixated on one another so we cannot turn our heads and look to the White House and say, “Why are all our incomes going down? What is happening to all of our jobs? Why are we all losing our futures? I believe that together we can make America great again.”
Hillary Clinton: “I think that we were no means perfect. And we had challenges, like any married couple would have. I’m not going to be further than that.”
Hillary Clinton: “I think it’s important to be a private person when you’re in the public arena because of the crushing intensity of total wall-to-wall coverage, the expectation that you share your inner-most feelings with other people. Is there anything left if you’ve lived everything out in public?”
Hillary Clinton: (Reporter: “Doesn’t being the Governor’s Wife make you an important rainmaker for your firm?”) “I wish that were true. But no. (Reporter: “Doesn’t that create the appearance of conflict?”) “You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.”
Hillary Clinton: “When you’re in a campaign, you can’t think about anything else. You just get up every day and you get out there and you do your best to make your case.”
Hillary Clinton: (RE: Likeability) “ They bring that up about a lot of women. There’s certainly reasons personal to me. I also think though that my bluntness, my outspokenness, my pushback, all of that creates cognitive dissonance in people. Because I came to national public attention as a “First Lady” and there are a set of expectations about a First Lady and I violated them from the very beginning.”
Hillary Clinton: “I thought a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt saying “Do the thing that you’re most afraid of. You want to make a difference, you want to make an impact, well then you got to get into the arena.”
Hillary Clinton (1993 Congressional Hearing About Healthcare): “Every American will receive a Health Security Card guaranteeing a comprehensive package of benefits that cannot be taken away under any circumstances.”
Hillary Clinton: “Going all the way back to the Whitewater days. I don’t understand, I’ve never understood this. And I will probably go to my grave not understanding it. All of these things about us get disproved. But the press, and I’m talking about the major organs of the press, not the Breitbarts and the InfoWars and the crazy people, they always bite. And I don’t know why.”
Hillary Clinton: “I take responsibility for the unfortunate relationship that I have with the press. I was too quick to be defensive. I didn’t play the game well enough. I knew there was a game to be played. And I was striking out all the time.”
Bill Clinton (RE: Whitewater Special Counsel): “I got enough… I felt to go ahead and do it. It was the worst mistake I ever made. It was a terrible mistake.”
Hillary Clinton (RE: Universal Healthcare): “We made so many mistakes. I mean, we were trying to do something that had never been done before. I don’t think I would have taken the upfront role. I think that was a mistake.“
Hillary Clinton: “If somebody, not just somebody, but a number of somebodies, are attacking you, lying about you, making up stuff about you, you’ve got two choices. You just could walk away and say, “I don’t care what they believe…” or more helpfully, you can say “I’m not going to let it bother me, and I’m going to fight back.“
Hillary Clinton: “I felt compelled to get up and keep going and not get knocked down. You can literally pull the covers over your head and say ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t deal with this,’ or say ’Screw you! You know what? I’m getting up, I’m getting dressed, getting my hair done, getting my makeup on, and going out there.’”
Hillary Clinton: “You take criticism seriously, because you may actually learn something. I say that all the time. But don’t take it personally, because it can knock you to your knees if you take it personally. And you begin to doubt yourself.”
Hillary Clinton: “Senator Teddy Kennedy said to me, ‘Well, I think I might be able to get Orrin Hatch (Republican Senator from Utah) to work with us.’ And we were able to get it through the Senate, and get it through the House. And passed the CHIP program. That literally provides health insurance for kids, about 10 million a year. We didn’t get to Universal Healthcare coverage, but, you know I think the debate we have, all or nothing, is the wrong debate. How do we get something done, in an environment that’s very partisan, filled with powerful special interests, and then keep going?”
Hillary Clinton (1995 World Conference on Women): “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights. Once and for all.”
Hillary Clinton: “I was running a (kind of) textbook campaign. Meanwhile my Republican opponent was just ranting and raving and it just sucked up all the oxygen.”
Hillary Clinton: “This was one of the biggest debates I had with myself and with my campaign –what do you respond to and what do you ignore? I saw what happened to the other Republicans that were running against him. They tried all kinds of tactics, to respond, to shame, to try to out-insult, none of it worked. He seemed almost impervious to it.”
Robby Mook: “The problem with Trump was his utter ability to drive the news. Donald Trump effectively decided what was in the news every day.”
Bill Clinton: “You’ve been in a 15-round prize fight that’s been extended to 30 rounds and here’s something that will take your mind off it for a while. That’s what happens… Everybody’s life has pressures and disappointments, terrors and fears of whatever. Things I did to manage my anxieties for years—I’m a totally different person than I was.”
Cheryl Mills (Advisor): “I would say, ‘I know many people sometimes have to make hard decisions themselves. And she made one. She loves her husband. I know people find it difficult to believe you can love your husband who did something like that to you. But she loves her husband.’ And in that moment, some woman always in the room would say, almost wistfully and tentatively, ‘My husband cheated on me. And I was devastated, but I decided to stay.’ And it would open the floodgates. ‘My husband did the same thing…’ And by the end… someone would say, ‘I think I’ve been unfair.’”
Joe Klein (Columnist, Time): “Being a politician is a very visceral thing. Greatness of spirit is the most important quality that a president can have. The successful Democrats, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, have all had it. And to have greatness of spirit you have to be optimistic. And you have to at least give the appearance of openness.”
Hillary Clinton (2008 Concession Speech): “Now on a personal note, when I was asked what it means to be a woman running for president, I always gave the same answer, that I was proud of running as a woman but I was running because I thought I’d be the best president. But you can be so proud that from now on it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories. Unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee. Unremarkable to think that a woman could be President of the United States. And that is truly remarkable my friends. And although we were not able to shatter that highest and hardest glass ceiling this time,thanks to you it’s got about 18 million cracks in it.”
Hillary Clinton (RE: Benghazi): “There was nothing there. And I thought, ‘Great! Moving on…’ But here is what I want people to understand. Even when something is disproved, people remember that the allegation was made. For people who are only intermittently paying attention in the midst of their very busy lives, and, ‘Oh my god, Hillary Clinton had to go talk to Congress about something she did wrong?’ And over year after year after year, that kind of constant character assault takes a toll. Even people who are supporters, or familiar with you, friends, they brush it off, they don’t believe it, but it still has a little space in the back of their heads. So if something else happens, the space gets a little bigger. And that’s been the story of my public life.”
Hillary Clinton (2016 Concession Speech): “To all of the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”