Archive for the ‘Hillary Clinton’ Category

1990s advice to Hillary Clinton: 'Don't be defensive'

Through many years in the public eye, Hillary Clintons image has evolved from that of a sharp-edged campaigner, who in 1992 offended legions of women with her comments seeming to dismiss baking cookies, to the experienced stateswoman of today.

New memos released Friday from Hillary and Bill Clintons eight years in the White House chart the exhaustive work that went into crafting the first ladys image revealing the advice Clinton received and the debate among her aides about how to help her as she embarked on a controversial attempt to transform the nations healthcare system, as well asinitiatives to draw attention to the rights of women and girls.

The most direct of the newly-released memos was a July 1999 missive from advisor Mandy Grunwald to Hillary Clinton as the first lady was preparing for a tour that would launch her 2000 bid to become the U.S. senator for New York. Grunwald advised Clinton to adopt a chatty, intimate, informal tone keeping her public discussions conversational rather than raising her voice and turning her statements into a speech.

Dont be defensive. Look like you want the questions, Grunwald wrote, warning that reporters would pounce on any answer that seemed testy. Even on the annoying questions, give relaxed answers.

Grunwald urged Clinton to be real and assume that New Yorkers knew little about her beyond her interest in healthcare, children and then a lot of tabloid junk.

Look for opportunities for humor, Grunwald wrote. Its important that people see more sides of you, and they often see you only in very stern situations.

As Clinton prepared to move into her own political career, Grunwald argued that she should create distance from her husband rather than using the administrations record as your own.

Youve spent a lot of years saying, My husband did X. This trip is about you. And you are not an incumbent. If you want to talk about something like the (Children's Health Insurance Program), talk about what you did, the memo said.

The missives, circulated among the heavily-female cadre of Clinton's top advisors, show early in the White House careful attention years to convincing reporters that Clinton was not locked down in a bunker mentality, and to fostering Clintons connection to American women as she spoke on womens rights at events around the world.

As Clinton prepared for an appearance at the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing an event that laid the groundwork for a Clinton Foundation initiative on women and girls that the former secretary of State spoke about a few weeks ago Clinton aide Lisa Caputo stressed the importance of bringing your trip to Beijing home through listening sessions with working women and young women in the U.S.

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1990s advice to Hillary Clinton: 'Don't be defensive'

Papers offer peek into Hillary Clinton's failed healthcare initiative

WASHINGTON As Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to reshape the nation's healthcare system in her husband's first term as president, she got all the right advice from senior aides: Consult closely with members of Congress, build bridges with business leaders, communicate clearly to nervous voters, move swiftly.

The first lady and her husband ultimately failed in nearly all those efforts, nearly sinking Bill Clinton's presidency.

Thousands of documents released Friday, which detail that failure as well as other policy disputes of the Clinton White House, provide new details on what remains one of the defining chapters in Hillary Clinton's career. The papers also foreshadow the challenges the Obama administration would encounter as the current president worked to pass the Affordable Care Act 16 years later.

Nervous and egotistic members of Congress, difficult policy issues such as whether individuals should be required to buy insurance, and worries that the administration might be promising more than it could deliver all feature prominently in the documents, released Friday by the National Archives.

So, too, does a steady current of concern by White House staffers over the arcane policy as well as the process that the first lady had established.

"By far the biggest problem is the complexity," White House advisor Mike Lux noted in a January 1994 memo. "The complexity of the bill is not only confusing, but frightening."

The roughly 4,000 pages of documents the first of as many as 33,000 pages scheduled to be released in the next several weeks do not appear to contain bombshell revelations. The papers had been sealed for more than 12 years under the Presidential Records Act, which allows certain memos to be withheld if they contain confidential advice or information related to federal appointments.

The ardor with which both Republican and Democratic operatives dissected them testified to how much the 2016 presidential election already has come to focus on Clinton's so-far-undeclared candidacy.

The documents clearly illustrate the central role that she played in advancing what was her husband's top priority after he took office in 1993. As first lady, Clinton led a massive task force to draft a plan to build a new health insurance system to control costs and expand coverage.

Clinton's advisors repeatedly warned her that the White House should be deferential to Congress.

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Papers offer peek into Hillary Clinton's failed healthcare initiative

Obama & Methodist Hillary Clinton Covered Up Ambassador’s Paedophilia – 2013 – Video


Obama Methodist Hillary Clinton Covered Up Ambassador #39;s Paedophilia - 2013
Steven Greer/Kerry Cassidy/Bill Ryan/Project Camelot/Alex Jones/Mark Dice/David Icke/Peoples Voice/Queen Elizabeth/Prince Philip/Price Charles/David Cameron/...

By: Gaia Militia

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Obama & Methodist Hillary Clinton Covered Up Ambassador's Paedophilia - 2013 - Video

Hillary Clinton: My future is still ‘TBD’ – video – Video


Hillary Clinton: My future is still #39;TBD #39; - video
The former secretary of state is keeping quiet when it comes to a possible run for the White House in 2016. In a Q A session at the University of Miami, she ...

By: puuh37

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Hillary Clinton: My future is still 'TBD' - video - Video

Hillary Clinton open to "evidence-based" Obamacare changes

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a baby step into the radioactive politics of Obamacare on Wednesday, using a pair of speeches in Florida to stake out a nuanced defense of the law that Republicans have used to criticize President Obama for years - and one they hope to deploy against Clinton if she runs for president in 2016.

"I think we are on the right track in many respects but I would be the first to say if things aren't working then we need people of good faith to come together and make evidence-based changes," Clinton said during a speech in Orlando before the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, according to CNN.

She singled out Obamacare's impact on small businesses for review, particularly the law's requirement for businesses with over 50 employees to provide health coverage to those employees. But she embraced certain aspects of the law, including the provision of free preventive care and the retention of young adults on their parents' insurance plan through the age of 26.

"Part of the challenge is to clear away all the smoke and to try to figure out what is working and what isn't," Clinton explained, blaming "misinformation" from the law's opponents for much of the confusion. "What do we need to do to try to fix this? Because it would be a great tragedy, in my opinion, to take away what has now been provided...I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bath."

Republicans, whose criticism of Obamacare shows no signs of abating, quickly slammed Clinton for her defense of the controversial law.

"We're glad to hear Hillary is embracing Obamacare and look forward to her campaigning on it in 2016," the Republican National Committee said in an email shortly after Clinton spoke.

Earlier on Wednesday, the RNC previewed Clinton's remarks with another email: "Even as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a strong supporter of Obamacare." That charge stemmed from a new book, "HRC," that says Clinton played a "pivotal, if underappreciated" role in corralling support for Mr. Obama's proposed health-care reforms among his cabinet members.

Clinton is no newcomer to the tricky politics of health care reform: During the 1990s, when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president, the then-first lady led an unsuccessful attempt to overhaul America's health-care system. Her proposal at the time came to be known as "Hillarycare."

After her address in Orlando, Clinton traveled to the University of Miami to speak to over 6,000 students and faculty members, urging young people in the audience to sign up for insurance.

"You can't sit here today and tell me for sure you won't have a car accident, you won't have a slip or a fall, you won't have some kind of disease that you never thought you would ever be stricken by," she warned, according to the Washington Post. "You just don't know - nobody knows."

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Hillary Clinton open to "evidence-based" Obamacare changes