Clinton, Inc. Quotes

“Clinton got out there and created a new narrative on the economy, which took some of the needles out of Obama,” says Republican strategist Mike Murphy. “It was the biggest single number-moving event in the entire campaign. It was devastatingly important to the Obama guys. And he put him back in business.” (It also helped, Murphy adds, that “the Romney campaign was totally incompetent.”) In 2000, Clinton had famously faulted Al Gore for not letting Clinton rally the base in key swing states. It was not a mistake Barack Obama was going to repeat. In addition to his convention speech, Clinton stumped for Obama in swing states like Florida and Ohio. Unlike Gore and his campaign team, “the Obama people, despite whatever hard feelings they had, were pretty dispassionate and not afraid to let him come in and steal the show, if they thought it would be helpful,” says a former Clinton official who worked in the Obama administration. Clinton even starred in a widely seen advertisement for Obama, declaring that “President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up, investing in innovation, education, and job training. It only works if there is a strong middle class. That’s what happened when I was president.”15”
― Daniel Halper, Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine

“In the battle to turn the tide against Barack Obama’s primary victories, Mills was candidate Clinton’s de facto campaign manager. At Foggy Bottom, she was Secretary Clinton’s chief counsel and chief of staff. And if the Clintons make it back to the White House, Cheryl Mills will be the second most powerful woman in the world. She will be Hillary’s Hagen.”
― Daniel Halper, Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine

“Once she got the hang of New York, she was a meticulous campaigner. One former Secret Service officer on her detail remembers driving her around and learning very quickly that Mrs. Clinton is a backseat driver. “She’s a bit of a micromanager. She’d always kind of tell us . . . thought she knew New York really well and didn’t know the streets, I think, as well as we did.”
― Daniel Halper, Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine

“She knows that she’s probably better than him on the intellectual stuff—though not a lot—but he blows her away on the retail.”
― Daniel Halper, Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine