Tag: book tour
Hillary Clinton Book Tour Offers A Campaign Preview

Hillary Clinton Book Tour Offers A Campaign Preview

By Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times

The world may have to wait until 2015 for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s decision on whether she runs again for president, but the last 48 hours have offered a preview in miniature of what that campaign would look like — with all its advantages and burdens.

With Tuesday’s splashy publication of her new memoir, “Hard Choices,” Clinton demonstrated the unprecedented attention she would draw, with wall-to-wall coverage on every television network in which she tossed off zingers and parried unwanted questions.

Hours before she breezed onto the set of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” breathless fans were lined up for blocks around a bookstore in New York’s Union Square (some having waited since Monday) in hopes of getting orange wristbands that would give them a chance to have their copies signed in person.

But the downside of the heavy scrutiny was also apparent. The former secretary of State was drilled in television interviews on the Benghazi, Libya, controversy, which threatens to shadow her potential bid for office, as she was pressed repeatedly to admit that she had made a mistake leading up to the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound, in which four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed.

And she was already cleaning up a clumsy assertion in a prime-time ABC special that aired Monday that she and her husband, President Bill Clinton, were “dead broke” when they left the White House and had struggled to come up with the money for multiple mortgages and their daughter’s education. Although they had incurred millions in legal fees, each also is a bestselling author, and Bill received a pension and Hillary a U.S. Senate salary.

“Let me just clarify that I fully appreciate how hard life is for so many Americans today,” Clinton told ABC’s Robin Roberts, after Republican critics had disseminated photographs of the Clintons’ five-bedroom house on D.C.’s Embassy Row and their spread in Chappaqua, N.Y. “It’s an issue that I’ve worked on and cared about my entire adult life.” And, as the video below shows, Clinton again had to clarify what she meant by her comments when speaking to her old pal and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Pushing back against Republican attempts to paint her as out of touch, Clinton detailed how both she and her husband had worked multiple jobs to pay off student loans, and said her husband’s experience growing up poor had made him a “hard worker.”

“We have a life experience that is clearly different, in very dramatic ways, from many Americans, but we also have gone through some of the same challenges,” she said on ABC.

Her misstep also illustrated what even her allies have said for months: After four years largely outside the political fray, Clinton needs practice. And the practice that the book tour can offer may be even more important since she has essentially frozen out Democratic rivals, whose challenges might otherwise have helped her sharpen her arguments.

With Clinton’s announcement months off, her memoir serves as a suggestion of what her campaign might emphasize. “Hard Choices” is an exhaustive account of her tenure as secretary of State, with colorful anecdotes that establish her gravitas, her foreign policy credentials and her command of issues around the world.

Early on, Clinton outlines what some have called the “Hillary Doctrine” when she writes that she combined elements of the traditional foreign policy approach of “hard power,” or military force, and the “soft power” of diplomacy. She defines her strategy as finding “the right combination of tools — diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural — for each situation.”

The administration’s approach to Iran, she writes, exemplified that style: using economic sanctions to cut Iran off from the global economy and using social media to communicate with Iranians as they pursued “old-fashioned shoe-leather diplomacy” to advance U.S. objectives.

By far the chapter that has drawn the most attention is Clinton’s account of the terrorist attack in Benghazi. She says the events unfolded in the “fog of war” and that the administration did everything it could to save U.S. personnel. But she disputes the notion that she should have seen cables requesting enhanced security in Libya. They were addressed to the secretary of State as a “procedural quirk,” she said.

“I’m not equipped to sit and look at blueprints to determine where the blast walls need to be or where the reinforcements need to be. That’s why we hire people who have that expertise,” Clinton told Diane Sawyer in the prime-time interview.

Pressed by Sawyer on whether Americans were waiting for a statement from her on Benghazi that begins with “I should have … “ Clinton crisply cut off that line of inquiry. “I take responsibility. But I was not making security decisions,” she said.

Although Clinton’s book does not delve into the details of her marriage the way her first memoir did, the issue clearly continues to be a topic of fascination with the public.

In her interview with Sawyer, she testified to the strength of her marriage and dismissed the re-emergence of her husband’s one-time paramour, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“I am 100 percent in the camp that says forgiveness is mostly about the forgiver. I know too many people, having now lived as long as I have, who can never get over it,” Clinton said.

The former first lady added that Lewinsky was free to say what she pleased and that she hoped she would “construct a life that she finds meaning and satisfaction in.”

Clinton seemed to almost dare her rivals to continue using the topic against her as political ammunition. When told by Sawyer that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul had called it “fair game,” Clinton coolly replied that “if he decides to run, he’ll be fair game, too, for everybody.”

That steeliness is, in part, what has inspired the loyalty of supporters like Holly Vichers of New York, who lined up at 6:30 a.m. to get her copy of “Hard Choices” signed and hopes to see Clinton as the next president.

“You need someone up there who’s not afraid to take on the world,” she said.

AFP Photo
Video via NDN

The Hillary Circus Is Coming To A Town Near You

The Hillary Circus Is Coming To A Town Near You

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a book tour on Tuesday to promote the release of her new memoir, Hard Choices, beginning at a Barnes & Noble in New York City. Hundreds of supporters flocked to the first stop in downtown Manhattan, bearing their “Hillary” t-shirts, hats, and stickers — and making the event an all-out spectacle.

The crowd began queuing up on Monday evening, and by 10am on Tuesday the line for admission stretched around the block. A Barnes & Noble employee told The National Memo that security began clearing people to enter at 8am, and within two hours nearly 200 were already inside awaiting Clinton’s arrival. Over 100 more supporters waited outside for their chance to meet the potential presidential candidate.

Several organizations that support a potential Clinton candidacy were also in attendance. The most notable was Ready For Hillary, a SuperPAC that bills itself as a “nationwide grassroots movement encouraging the former Secretary of State to run for president in 2016.”

The group arrived with over 30 volunteers on hand to collect signatures and hand out Ready For Hillary stickers, pins, signs, and bumperstickers.

Last week, the PAC unveiled the Hillary Bus. The tour bus, which was built in Iowa by union workers, made its debut at Tuesday’s event.

“In addition to generating excitement among millions of individuals who are already signed up with Ready for Hillary, the Bus is a mobile advertisement allowing our organization to reach new supporters in every corner of America as Hillary backers who see the Bus are prompted to sign up at readyforhillary.com,” the PAC’s website explains.

The Hillary Bus will follow Clinton’s book tour  on a cross-country trip through Chicago, Washington D.C., Austin, and San Francisco. Once the book tour concludes, the bus will continue traveling to “Democratic events, state fairs and community festivals, followed by college campuses and key midterm states in the fall.”

Smaller groups also turned out on Tuesday to voice their support for Clinton.

2016 Elect Hillary, a group that operates separately from RFH but donates some of its proceeds to the PAC, set up shop on the sidewalk selling its own independently designed t-shirts and tote bags. One t-shirt caricature depicts President Obama and former president Bill Clinton standing behind Hillary, giving her the thumbs-up on a presidential run.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit began as a joke in 2008 when Hillary Clinton told late-night host Conan O’Brien to stop making jokes about her wardrobe. A group of women in New York was listening, and formed the organization bearing that name, which remains dedicated to encouraging Mrs. Clinton to run for office. Women affiliated with the group passed out various pins on Tuesday, one of which read: “Clinton. Again.

Of course, not all in attendance were there to voice support. Fox News sent Jesse Watters — host of Watters World, a by-product of Bill O’Reilly’s O’Reilly Factor — to ask New Yorkers about Benghazi (of course). As The Wire reported, this wasn’t well received by many in attendance; volunteers deemed Watters “an idiot,” and called O’Reilly “a farce.”

The hype surrounding the mere chance that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016 is palpable — and a big business. Seventeen months before the 2016 general election, and before Clinton has announced her plans, the circus-like publicity surrounding Hard Choices provides a preview of the inevitable media circus to come.

Photo: @TheHillaryBus via Twitter

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Some Questions For Dick Cheney

Book-tour media rules for former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is out promoting his new memoir (The following is a list of interview questions that Mr. Cheney has agreed to answer forthrightly.):

1. What’s the title of your new book? Do you think you’ll sell more than Tina Fey?

2. Did you enjoy cowriting it with your daughter Liz?

3. Is Liz a good writer? Does she work on a Mac or a PC? Which of you two was in charge of spell-checking?

4. How’s that dog of yours? Isn’t it a yellow Lab? Are they crazy or what?

5. Do you and former President Bush chat very often? Did you send him an early copy of your book? Maybe an audio disk, or a download for his Kindle?

6. How’s your health these days? Did you get to do some trout fishing this summer in Wyoming? All things considered, do you prefer rainbows or cutthroats?

7. Do you miss being the second-most powerful person in the whole world? What’s the toughest thing about retirement? Did they give you a decent health plan or are there, like, ridiculous co-pays?

8. Who’s your favorite commentator on Fox News? And what’s your most enduring achievement as vice president?

9. On a scale of one to 100, how dangerous to the future of America and the free world is President Obama? How long would it take our country to be overrun by jihadists and North Koreans if a Republican isn’t elected to the White House in 2012?

10. Can we take a peek at your portable heart machine?

(The following is a list of questions that Mr. Cheney might answer partially, with varying degrees of deception, or not at all.)

1. In your memoir, you seem resentful toward Colin Powell. Is this because he was an actual soldier with leadership experience in the first Gulf War and possibly he knew what he was talking about, whereas you never put on a uniform in your life and had no freaking clue?

2. Would you be willing to go on the Jay Leno show and let yourself be waterboarded if you thought it would sell more books? What if Condoleezza agreed to get in the tank, too?

3. Why do you suppose nobody else in the Bush administration wanted to spontaneously bomb Syria except you? At that point, did any of your close friends or family members suggest an extended vacation? A brain scan?

4. During all those White House meetings about Iraq, did anybody ever mention what would happen to our nation’s economy if a war were launched at the same time taxes were being slashed? If so, how many seconds did it take you to change the subject?

5. Did you have trouble keeping a straight face when you kept insisting that Saddam Hussein had an “established relationship with al-Qaida?” Was it satisfying to know that many Americans were misled into believing that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks?

6. Any thoughts on those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction?

7. Why did you keep ranting about WMDs years after the CIA and the military had given up looking? Was this a period when your medication was being adjusted, or were you just spuriously trying to justify the U.S. invasion?

8. Speaking of which, remember when you went on TV and predicted that American troops would be “greeted as liberators”? Is it possible you were drunk at the time?

9. And, oh yeah, remember when you declared that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes?” Way back in 2005? Of all the dumb things to come out of your mouth, where does that whopper rank?

10. Does the number 4,465 hold any special meaning? Would you be surprised to learn that’s how many American troops have been killed in Iraq since the occupation? Just out of curiosity, have you taken a stroll through Arlington National Cemetery lately?

11. Finally, Mr. Vice President, when is the last time you were right about anything?

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.)

(c) 2011, The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services Inc.