Study after study confirms that even when you control for variables like profession, education, hours worked, age, marital status, and children, men still are compensated substantially more - even in professions, like nursing, dominated by women. No wonder there's a gender gap.

While eschewing emotion - and its companion, vulnerability - Obama should be careful not to sacrifice empathy, the 'I feel your pain' connection that sustained Clinton. This connection is the shorthand people use to measure their leaders' intentions. If people believe you're on their side, they will trust your decisions.

Washington is still very much a male-oriented culture. Being from Los Angeles, I think it is less so there - there is less attachment to tradition, perhaps, there is more flexibility, more acceptance of change generally. That is partly because of Hollywood.

You as the press secretary have to protect the president's interests and the White House's interests more broadly. And a lot of people inside the White House, as you learned, sometimes with painful experience, have competing agendas, have differing points of view, have priorities they're trying to protect.

President Clinton intentionally created a structure that was a little loose. And one that kept him a little in the center. He didn't want one person filtering all the information that went to him. He had always operated with a lot of information coming in and a lot of stuff going out.

Clinton's resilience became sort of the secret weapon of the campaign. He was never going to just give up and get out.

On the day I started college in 1979, no woman had ever been on the United States Supreme Court or served as the Speaker of the House. None had been an astronaut or the solo anchor of a network evening news broadcast. Not one had been president of an Ivy League college or run a serious campaign for president.