Paul Begala on Bill Clinton and the Clinton White House

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2015

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Paul Begala is a political adviser, commentator, and former Counselor to President Bill Clinton. In this conversation with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, Begala gives an inside account of the 1992 campaign and tells the story of how the Arkansas governor won the Democratic nomination and the presidency. Begala also looks back on key moments in the Clinton White House and shares his experiences working with the president. Finally, Bill Kristol and Begala consider the 2016 field of Republican candidates.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Welcome back to Conversations. I'm Bill Crystal and I'm very happy to have with me today.
0:18.6	My friend Paul Bogala, a prominent political operative thinker about politics, a commentator on
0:26.2	television and I get first met you I think when you were a key operative in the
0:30.0	Bill Clinton 1992 presidential campaign and I was going down with a ship on the
0:34.4	Bush quail campaign.
0:36.4	That was not your fault though.
0:37.8	Oh thank you.
0:38.8	That was good to you.
0:39.8	That was good to you. That was, you said the right thing there.
0:40.8	That was appreciative.
0:42.0	Well, let's begin with that.
0:43.0	I mean, that was exciting to be part of a winning presidential campaign.
0:46.4	How did you get involved?
0:47.4	How does it all happen?
0:48.4	I mean, afterwards, people become well known and they think, oh, you were there forever,
0:52.1	and you and Carvo and Clinton but that's
0:54.2	kind of like anything though it's a lot of it's just word of mouth and it's luck and
0:58.4	actually one of my beliefs in life and I teach at Georgetown I tell my students is
1:03.0	careers are mostly about attitude and timing you have to the right attitude you have to be
1:08.1	willing to move to Kentucky or New Jersey or Georgia or Pennsylvania or all these places I moved to to work for very little money.
1:15.0	That was the attitude.
1:17.0	But then if you're lucky, the timing comes around.
	...

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