Part of Obama's persona is self-reliance. He's calm; he's cool; he's self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton's sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism.

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.

After I left the White House, I kept a foothold in the business of American politics; as a talk-show host, analyst, commentator, speechmaker, and occasional writer. I was no longer a practitioner, but I was still a partisan, a Democrat, a blue-stater through and through.

Barack Obama is the most famous living person in the history of the world.

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.

Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him, became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of, you know, not sensitive to what people wanted.