And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Act Spiles, with your host, David Axelrod.

When I was working on the Obama campaign for President in 2007 and 2008, and then when I went to the White House, a ubiquitous presence on the scene was Jessica Yellen, who was a correspondent for CNN, an incisive correspondent, always in the front lines asking tough questions.

And now she's a fellow at the Institute of Politics, having taken some leave from journalism, and is sharing the lessons of her experience with people here.

And I'm really, really pleased to have her here today.

Jessica Yellen.

Hi.

Journalist extraordinaire, fellow at the Institute of Politics and a friend of mine.

But we had a start here. We got to start with how we got to know each other, because it really was kind of an unusual introduction.

I love that you don't let this go. Okay, let's go.

It was a story. We were, it was December, end of December, 2007. We were in the midst of the presidential race. I was obviously deeply involved with the Obama campaign.

And in the midst of this, Benazir Budo, the once and potentially future leader of Pakistan was assassinated.

And the question came, I was in a scrum of reporters. I think you were one of them. 25 reporters or something there.

At an event about whether this didn't underscore, I think this was the line the Clinton campaign was pushing, that Hillary's experience was important in order to grapple with world events like these.

And me doing my job, I responded and said, I think it's judgment that's important. And had people exercise better judgment, we would have not been distracted by the war in Iraq.

And we would have focused here. And maybe they wouldn't be the flourishing terrorist networks that apparently resulted in Benazir Budo's death.

You reported that I was, now you should say what you reported because I want to mischaracterize what you reported.

So I deliberately did not pull the Nexus research on this. So I'm going to characterize my experience of this.

This is good. We can both live with our memories because I feel like this is a roshamon. And you had yours. And I would make a play of it someday.

You could tell a story of that campaign. As I recall, the experience was that there was a phraseology was essentially that Hillary Clinton's the policy, Hillary Clinton had endorsed created an environment in which these facts, this was allowed to arise.

What ended up happening was what I think you said may have not been the full intention. Perhaps it wasn't as artfully phrased as if we could both go back and do it again. You might have done it.

And it became a mini tempest in a teapot that day that died for almost everybody except for you and Bill Clinton. And I would say that there are a lot of people I pissed off that year.

I don't know that Bill Clinton has forgiven me for asking him whether he injected racial politics into this campaign, which is what I asked him in South Carolina.

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