Jack & Jill Politics

Westboro Baptist Church, the fringe-of-the-fringe anti-gay group famous for protesting at military funerals and claiming that God is punishing the country for its tolerance of homosexuality, was spotted this morning protesting outside Sidwell Friends, the school attended by Sasha and Malia Obama.

Protesters were carrying signs with anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-Obama slogans, slowing down traffic all along Wisconsin Avenue this morning.

I had a friend visiting me this weekend who had fervently backed Barack Obama for President (against the “devil-woman” Hillary), but who now thinks Obama has betrayed his followers – most recently by agreeing to disastrous compromises in the health insurance bill. We argued the point on Sunday morning, while reading reports of the passage of the House bill.

I told my friend that some of the most important features of bill were overlooked because they were so obvious – for instance, the ban on insurance companies denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. My friend, who has insurance with his job, responded, “Does that really happen?” I told him that it does indeed -- that our youngest and perfectly healthy daughter, when she had gotten too old for our insurance policy, had been denied coverage by an insurer in San Francisco because she had taken an anti-depressant drug six months before.

And in discussing the House leadership’s concession on abortion, I pointed my friend, who compares Obama unfavorably to Franklin Roosevelt, to what actually happened to the Social Security Act of 1935. That act, when it passed, was a bare shell of what it became in the 1950s after amendment. Benefits were nugatory. And most important, coverage was denied to wide swaths of the workforce, including farm laborers.

Why farm laborers? Well, because Franklin Roosevelt and liberal Democrats needed the vote of racist Southern Democrats who wanted to deny benefits to blacks, most of whom were farm laborers. Yes, the anti-abortion provision in the House bill is very bad (subjecting the poor, but not the rest of us, to the strictures of conservative Catholics and Southern Baptists), but it will at some point (one hopes) be removed. In fact, the bill that the House passed last Saturday is considerably more robust that the original Social Security bill. But don’t tell my friend that.

Charlie Rose:
Is part of this, from what you just said to me, part of the way you thought about losing the presidency, losing the nomination, and losing [unintelligible]? What you had to deal with?

Hillary Clinton:
Of course. You know, I am a, you know, a true believer in the American political system. And I think that it's rooted in who I am and how I was raised and my sense of patriotism and all these wonderful passions but very important values that I hold. So, I did the best I could, I fought as hard as I could, I made my share of mistakes, I did better in some areas than I thought I would, I was very gratified by the support that I had, but it came to an end. And I wanted to support at that time Senator Obama because he and I were much more in line on our world view, and what we wanted to see happen domestically, than the other party was, and so I threw myself in to helping to elect him. And nobody was more surprised than I when after the election, he called and asked me to consider taking this position.

Charlie Rose:
Is that the first time he'd mentioned it?

Hillary Clinton:
Absolutely.

Charlie Rose:
You'd never thought about it. I know—because he now says that he'd been thinking about it, for a while, he saw in you qualities that he wanted in a secretary of state. And he looked at all the other possibilities, and he said--

Hillary Clinton:
Yeah. Well—

Charlie Rose:
But he didn't bring it up to you until after the election?

Hillary Clinton:
Not at all. And when I started--

Charlie Rose:
Not the nomination, but the election.

Hillary Clinton:
The election? Absolutely. I mean, first of all, it wouldn't have been appropriate, and you know, I would have been incredulous.

Charlie Rose:
Well, there are some people who thought you promised it to him, my dear--

Hillary Clinton:
Well, that's—that's, I don't know anything about that, but what I do know is that after the election, when stories start coming out, I thought that it was absurd. Unbelievable.

Charlie Rose:
Why?

Hillary Clinton:
Oh, for a million reasons. But I--

Charlie Rose:
Well, name one. Why is that absurd because, I mean, he read team of rivals, he believed in the idea, it may have been overblown.

Hillary Clinton:
Well, I think I was very much happy about going back to representing New York.

Charlie Rose:
And playing a part in health care reform.

Hillary Clinton:
Absolutely.

Charlie Rose:
The passion of your life.

Hillary Clinton:
Passion of my life. And I'm thrilled by what happened in the House.

Charlie Rose:
And think it will pass in the Senate, and the president will sign it before 2010, you think?

Hillary Clinton:
Well, let's hope, as we're going to work for it. You know, as soon as the vote was final in the House, I called the president, I called the Speaker, I mean, I was thrilled at the, what has been such a long journey, and now the attention turns to the Senate.

Charlie Rose:
Okay, so you're now the Secretary, you acknowledge—you decided to accept it, because?

Hillary Clinton:
Because, when your president asks you to serve your country, I think you should say yes, if you can. And I also thought that--

Charlie Rose:
But you had moments in which you said, I said this is not my best interest, I'm the best person, whatever you thought.

Hillary Clinton:
I said all of that. Never again. I can't say, well how about so and so, don't you think so?

Charlie Rose:
Exactly, and I have a great life, in the Senate--

Hillary Clinton:
Absolutely.

Charlie Rose:
You could have Senate Majority Leader, perhaps?

Hillary Clinton:
I want to return to the Senate and I want to catch up on my sleep, all of those things. But I also thought --

Charlie Rose:
You were wrong about that.

Hillary Clinton:
I was very wrong about that -- that if the shoe had been on the other foot, and I had been asking him, I would have hoped that he would have said yes. And so how could I be standoffish and say, “Well, you know, I'd rather be a Senator, and you know, I want my life back,” and all these things that were certainly going through my mind.

Charlie Rose:
Someone watching the campaign, the Democratic campaign, might have said there's some space between how you view the world and he views the world, you being more hawkish, more something.
[laughter]

Hillary Clinton:
Well, look, I am very pleased at the relationship that the president and I have.

Charlie Rose:
What are you pleased about?

Hillary Clinton:
That it is very -- it's very collegial. It is personally, very positive. We see each other all the time, and we work very well together, and I think that we probably had people in both of our camps who were surprised by that and somewhat skeptical, but both of us understood what it is we had to do and do together given the array of problems we faced. So I am -- you know, look, I'm very committed to doing everything I can on behalf of my country and the president and the agenda we've set forth.

Charlie Rose:
There's no sharp disagreements between the way you two see the world?

Hillary Clinton:
Well, if there are, I wouldn't tell you.
[laughter]

Charlie Rose:
That suggests there are some.

Hillary Clinton:
No, no, no. No, it doesn't.

Charlie Rose:
But in the end it's his --

Hillary Clinton:
Look, he's the president, but what I really appreciate is we have a very robust process where everybody is heard, and there is quite a good back and forth, testing assumptions, you know, coming up with ideas. And on a couple of occasions I was kind of in a somewhat solitary position vis-à-vis the rest of the NSC.

Charlie Rose:
Look, just give me one example of that.

Hillary Clinton:
I can't, but I --

Charlie Rose:
Oh, just one.

Hillary Clinton:
Someday, Charlie, someday. You know, in about 10 years, we'll do this interview. But I went to the president and said, you know, “this is really what I would like you to think about, and here are the reasons for it,” and on one very important matter, you know, he agreed with me. And so, it's not just that you have, you know, discussions between the two of us, which we do, where we look at things from different angles, where we try to come up with an approach, but it's the larger team. Sometimes, you know, both the president and I are pushing the people on our teams to think differently and more creatively.

Charlie Rose:
All right, you have said you'll never run for president again.

Hillary Clinton:
Yes, I said that.
[laughter]

Charlie Rose:
Any other things you've said you'll never do again?

Hillary Clinton:
Oh well, yes, I'm sure there are, but at the moment I can't think of them.

Charlie Rose:
Thank you for this time. It's a pleasure to have this opportunity to talk to you.

Hillary Clinton:
Thank you, Charlie.

Charlie Rose:
From Berlin, Germany, a conversation with the secretary of state. This is, as we record this, November 9, 20 years after the wall came tearing down with momentous consequences, as the secretary has said, for Europe, for Russia, for the United States, and for the world. Thank you for joining us. See you next time.

As President Obama’s plans to overhaul the health care system hinge on the Senate, former President Bill Clinton is headed to the Hill.

Clinton, the last Democratic president to attempt health care reform, will address Senate Democrats at their weekly caucus meeting Tuesday at 1:45 p.m, a senior Democratic aide said.

The aide did not know if Clinton will speak specifically on health care, but it is hard to imagine the topic would not come up given his legendary, failed, effort to reform the system in 1994 and the top spot the issue occupies on the Senate’s agenda.

Last month Clinton’s wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, addressed the caucus’ weekly lunch to discuss foreign policy issues.

UPDATE: Clinton will be talking to the Democrats about health care, a source close to the former president said. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked Clinton to address the caucus, the source said.

Charlotte Observer's Mary Newsom writes:

Amid the bloviation-fest following Tuesday's election, Charlotte's mayoral election seems to have kept on flying under the national political radar. Odd.

Think about it: A young African-American Democrat, raised by a single mom and his grandparents, now a successful lawyer, aims for a seat that's been Republicans for years. He mobilizes young and African-American voters and wins in a strong showing. Sound familiar?

If that isn't a good enough political story, consider that the last Democratic mayor in this Southern banking citadel was Harvey Gantt, the African-American architect who won fame for trying, twice, to unseat arch-conservative U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. Here, I restrain myself from the phrases about kudzu and NASCAR that national political analysts would use, if they had noticed this story....

Democrat Anthony Foxx's win over Republican John Lassiter is not an insignificant anthill on the political landscape. The largest city in the nation's 10th largest state elected its first Democratic mayor in 22 years, an African-American in a majority-white Southern city, a progressive mass transit supporter and an environmentalist.

Foxx's biography ads (above), perhaps not incidentally, were made by AKPD, David Axelrod's old firm.