I am eagerly anticipating this book release this month! Salon is featuring excerpts (long ones) from this book all week long, fyi.
Fascinating stuff.
Quote:
The West Wing during Clinton's presidency was the most integrated place I've ever worked in. Blacks held positions of responsibility throughout the staff. They were anything but token figures, as they had been in Republican administrations. They attained a critical mass at every level, from director of the Office of Management and Budget to deputy legal counsel to political director to chief speechwriter.
They were perhaps the greatest meritocrats of all. |
Quote:
| Clinton had promised to appoint a cabinet that looked like America, and he did. Forty-four percent of the administration appointees were women. There were seven black cabinet secretaries. And there were the first openly gay appointees in any White House. |
Clinton talking about Lewinsky (to Blumenthal):
Quote:
| He said she responded by threatening him. She said she would tell others they had had an affair. She said that her name among her peers was "the Stalker," that she hated being called that. If Clinton had sex with her and she could say she had had an affair, she wouldn't be known as the Stalker anymore. |
and the Starr scandal:
Quote:
| Much much later, after the release of the Starr Report, I learned that almost everything he had told me was true. Almost. He had spoken with Morris, who had run a poll. (When I saw the poll reproduced in the Starr Report it struck me as mostly worthless as a political document, because all the key questions had the word "crimes" attached to them, ensuring negative responses. The statistics indicating the public's inclination to forgive incidents that were just sex, Morris misinterpreted.) Clinton had called Monica about Betty's brother's death -- one of several calls. Lewinsky had, in fact, demanded that he engage in sexual intercourse with her, which he refused. It was when he broke off with her, according to the Starr Report, that she made her demand for intercourse and her threat to expose him. |
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...al1/index.html
