She was sacked midway through the campaign via e-mail, but when former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle talks now, it’s a mix of regret and appreciation.
“I’m over it now,” she said Monday night at the National Press Club, brushing off the idea that there was still bitterness. “I owe Hillary a great debt for a lot of reasons,” Doyle said.
One of which is that her own daughter wants to become the first female president.
“I hope it doesn’t take that long, because she is 11,” she said, noting the characteristics needed to win. “I’d say be tough, be thick-skinned, because you are under a microscope, and do your homework — you cannot go out there and not know what you’re talking about, or not know what magazines you read, or which newspapers you read.”
Though Doyle’s “over it,” she again rehashed some of the biggest issues that paralyzed the Clinton campaign. A huge problem was the split within the inner circle, with half wanting to humanize or feminize Clinton and others wanting the New York senator to look tough and steely.
“Those who wanted to humanize Hillary remembered what we had learned in ’93 and ’94 — no one was willing to listen to Hillary until they had a reason to like her,” said Doyle, who clearly took that view during the campaign.
She said she also cringed about the campaign’s reluctance to point out that Clinton’s nomination, along with Obama’s, would have been historic.
“She embodied change, she embodied the idea because of who she was, but we never wrapped our arms around it,” Doyle said.
Doyle was the guest of pundit Leslie Sanchez, who was at the Press Club promoting her book “You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah, Michelle, Hillary, and the Shaping of the New American Woman,” which examines how prominent females were portrayed in the 2008 election cycle.
