“HC says press has big egos and no brains. That [the White House is] just going to have to work them better; that her staff has figured it out and would be glad to teach [Bill’s] staff.”
Archive of ‘closest friend’ paints portrait of ruthless First Lady
Alana Goodman
The Washington Free Beacon
2/9/2014
On May 12, 1992, Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake, top pollsters for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, issued a confidential memo. The memo’s subject was “Research on Hillary Clinton.”
Voters admired the strength of the Arkansas first couple, the pollsters wrote. However, “they also fear that only someone too politically ambitious, too strong, and too ruthless could survive such controversy so well.”
Their conclusion: “What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary.”
The full memo is one of many previously unpublished documents contained in the archive of one of Hillary Clinton’s best friends and advisers, documents that portray the former first lady, secretary of State, and potential 2016 presidential candidate as a strong, ambitious, and ruthless Democratic operative.
The papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton described as her “closest friend” before Blair’s death in 2000, record years of candid conversations with the Clintons on issues ranging from single-payer health care to Monica Lewinsky.
The archive includes correspondence, diaries, interviews, strategy memos, and contemporaneous accounts of conversations with the Clintons ranging from the mid-1970s to the turn of the millennium.
Diane Blair’s husband, Jim Blair, a former chief counsel at Tyson Foods Inc. who was at the center of “Cattlegate,” a 1994 controversy involving the unusually large returns Hillary Clinton made while trading cattle futures contracts in the 1970s, donated his wife’s papers to the University of Arkansas Special Collections library in Fayetteville after her death…
…On Feb. 23, 1993, Blair joined the Clintons for a family dinner at the White House. The subject of health care reform came up.
“At dinner, [Hillary] to [Bill] at length on the complexities of health care—thinks managed competition a crock; single-payer necessary; maybe add to Medicare,” Blair wrote.
The account is at odds with public statements by the former First Lady that she never supported the single-payer option.
In an interview with the New York Times as she ran for president in 2008, Hillary Clinton said she had never seriously considered adopting a single-payer system, in which the government, using funds appropriated from taxpayers, pays for all health care expenses.
“You know, I have thought about this, as you might guess, for 15 years and I never seriously considered a single payer system,” said Clinton in the interview…
Read the complete article at The Washington Free Beacon.
Related: Video: ABC’s David Muir Hypes David Petraeus Endorsement of Hillary Clinton, Omits Benghazi
…2016 is a long way off, and it appears that ABC has already begun doing its best to protect Ms. Clinton from criticism despite the myriad of questions surrounding the Benghazi attack as well as the rest of her career in public life.
Update: What difference, at this point, do The Hillary Papers make?
Confirming the bitter, brutal, belligerent Hillary … who secretly supported single payer
NBC’s Mitchell: Hillary Wooed Big Donors at State Dept Events— video
…Hillary remained close to these wealthy donors during her time as Secretary of State, Mitchell said. ”You would see, at State Department events, a lot of the big money people,” Mitchell explained, speaking as someone who obviously attended those events. ”They have always been part of her circle.” …
