Dee Dee Myers Quotes
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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.
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Research confirms that both Republican and Democratic women are more likely than their male counterparts to initiate and fight for bills that champion social justice, protect the environment, advocate for families, and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.
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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.
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The press never accepts at face value that the President is taking a certain action because he wants to create jobs or because he believes that it is in the best interests of the American people or that he is genuinely committed to making life better for people.
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Clinton had absolutely zero honeymoon, none whatsoever.
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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.
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I think a lot of presidents learn to be president by being president.
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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.
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The dirty little secret is that the pool man, who's making $30,000 a year, is subsidizing the million-dollar mortgage for the family whose pool he cleans. No wonder people want to get rid of tax breaks for corporate jets.
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Democrats single out glaring examples of tax preferences or spending priorities that favor the wealthy and Republicans cry 'class warfare!'
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When I first started working in politics, as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign, it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.
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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.
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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.
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Having a sense of humor has served me more than it has hurt me - just in the sense that it has allowed me to keep my sanity.
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As women have played an increasingly important role in politics, there is no question that they've brought a different perspective, focusing attention on a broader set of issues and building alliances with other women.
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As women slowly gain power, their values and priorities are reshaping the agenda. A multitude of studies show that when women control the family funds, they generally spend more on health, nutrition, and education - and less on alcohol and cigarettes.
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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.
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It isn't fate but fecklessness that has shoved Sarah Palin to the sidelines of national politics. The real tragedy is that she's taken a lot of other serious Republican women with her.
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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.
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I worked for a lot of candidates, in tough campaigns that lost. Most of my candidates lost until Bill Clinton. There was always a point where you look in their eyes and they knew it was over. And there was never that point with Clinton. He never quit. He never gave up.
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Barack Obama is the most famous living person in the history of the world.
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I was supposed to be authoritative, but at the same time had to be likeable, a quality that is a bonus, not a requirement, for men in the same position.
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To compare Whitewater to Watergate is a travesty.
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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?
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Obama has made America cool again - and more than that, he's made his own brand arguably the most powerful the world has ever known.
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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.
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Palin was a political Hail Mary, a long bomb in the closing minutes of a game that John McCain and Co. were certain to lose. They didn't care if she had the policy or political or emotional capacity to serve as vice president, let alone president. They were willing to drive the country off a cliff, if that's what it took to win.
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Women have to be the biggest champions in the world of other women's choices.
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'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.
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No reporter is flying around in borrowed twin-engine airplanes.
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