Former Clinton White House staffers Dee Dee Myers, George Stephanopoulos and Paul Begala came together at the Newseum on Monday night for a screening of the celebrated Clinton-era campaign doc “The War Room.” But the conversation, moderated by American University’s Nick Clooney, kept coming back to their old boss, Bill Clinton himself.
Of the scandals that began to plague the Clinton camp during the campaign and early administration, such as Troopergate, Gennifer Flowers and his alleged draft dodging, Stephanopoulos remarked that “the most difficult thing was Clinton trying to fix it himself” rather than let his team do their jobs.
“You just knew you weren’t getting all the facts” from him, Myers added.
Begala even said he specifically objected to Clinton’s campaigning and fundraisring tactics during his 1996 re-election campaign. Clinton told him not to worry, because once it was over, “We’ll have four years to run the country scandal-free.”
Of course, that turned out not to be the case, as the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke a little more than a year after the election. Begala now concedes he wanted to tender his resignation in the early part of the second term, but waited until Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. He said he did it to protect the Constitution, not Clinton himself, which is why he gave his two weeks notice on the day of the acquittal.
All of the three said it had been at least a decade since they’d seen the film. “I thought it looked like a covered wagon compared to now,” said Myers. “Things were running pretty fast without an Internet. Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet.”
Stephanopoulos recalled the first time he met Clinton. He had recently been involved in the Michael Dukakis campaign. Clinton asked him, “I hear you write jokes for Dukakis.”
Well, clarified Stephanopoulos, “I was the short Greek guy with no sense of humor that they could test the jokes on.”
