Yes, Bill Clinton is a big flirt.

'Not again!' I thought to myself this morning, as news trickled out that John McCain was set to pick Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Not again, because too often women are promoted for the wrong reasons, and then blamed when things don't go right.

In the run-up to the 1992 Democratic convention, Clinton's campaign realized that voters thought the young governor had a privileged upbringing. They didn't buy his alleged concern for the middle class.

Every press secretary faces an enormous amount of information. Events move really fast. You're responsible for a tremendous amount of information, and again, a tremendous amount on competing agendas. Not everybody grease in the White House.

There's no question almost press secretaries talk about the sense of serving two masters. On the one hand you want to protect the president's interests, and you represent his interests to the press. And the press is a proxy for the American people.

I think how pay gets determined is pretty broad - experience, how people look, what they bring to the job. But there's no question women are paid less. Women don't ask.

I know I made plenty of mistakes in my tenure. But one of the things that you learn is to be very careful and to protect yourself down the road a little bit, which is to say you've got to think ahead and think where is the story going to go? What are all the possible outcomes? And how do I protect the president from unexpected twists and turns in the road?