E-mail a friendCarl Bernstein
airdate June 13, 2007
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein helped unearth President Nixon's role in the Watergate scandal. He went on to become ABC News' Washington Bureau chief and senior correspondent and a contributing editor at Time and Vanity Fair magazines. He's also a best-selling author, whose books include Loyalties: A Son's Memoir and, his latest, A Woman in Charge—a controversial look at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Earlier in his career, Bernstein covered police and court beats for The Washington Post.
Carl Bernstein on Hillary Clinton's faith. (2:10)
Carl Bernstein discusses his biography of Sen. Hillary Clinton. Full Interview. (13:16)
Carl Bernstein
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Carl Bernstein to this program. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, of course, helped redefine journalism during the Watergate era along with his former "Washington Post" colleague, Bob Woodward. His latest project is one of the most talked-about books of the early summer, a biography of Hillary Clinton. You might have heard of her. Hillary Clinton - "A Woman in Charge."
Carl Bernstein, nice to have you on the program.
Carl Bernstein: It's good to be here, Tavis.
Tavis: Good to see you. Eight years. Was it worth it?
Bernstein: Yeah. She's the most interesting woman of our era, and the least known, even though she's the most famous.
Tavis: When you say the least known, what do you mean by that?
Bernstein: That she has tried very hard for us not to know who she really is. She's camouflaged herself. She's a very vulnerable person; she's a very private person. She would like to be perceived as she sees herself, and in the process she's rounded all these rough edges, many of which make her more appealing, not less appealing.
Tavis: Of course, a couple of years ago - and I talked to her then - she put out her own book about her own life, and put it on the "New York Times" bestseller list, not unlike yours. What did she not tell us about her that you are telling us about her?
Bernstein: Almost everything. (Laughter) It's about omission, it's about obfuscation, it's about self-perception, but more than anything it's about opening up. And it's very hard to open up when you're in public life, and what I was able to find out by talking to the people who know her best from childhood and especially women is what a struggle her life has been.
Beginning in a home with an abusive father toward her mother, who humiliated her mother constantly, in college she almost left college because she got very depressed and thought she was out of place when she went to Wellesley. She's always been in struggle, and she once described herself as a mind conservative and a heart liberal. And that struggle has marked all of her years and when you see how it defines her life, it's fascinating.
Tavis: How fascinating for you - because it's certainly fascinating for me to hear you say it - that she is self-described as a mind conservative, a heart liberal? How ironic for you, how interesting for you, given the hell that she has caught from the folk who are in her mind, the conservative movement.
Bernstein: Well first of all, there are two real platforms of Hillary Clinton's existence: family and religion. She was brought up in the Methodist faith, and almost before she was in her mid-teens, she had been exposed to the teachings of John Wesley, do all the good you can all the time you can wherever you can, came under the influence of a youth minister who exposed her to EE Cummings, to Bob Dylan's recordings, to Picasso's "Guernica," the great picture about the Spanish civil war, took her to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak.
She lived in an isolated Chicago suburb, had never gone to school with Blacks. She was in the largest all-White public school in America, and her world changed. And she learned how to meld her basic faith with a spiritual aspect that borrowed heavily from early twentieth century theological philosophers who believed that the gospel of Christ was really meant to help people.
Tavis: How do I read - and I'm not casting aspersion on her; I think I actually like what I'm hearing with regard to this part of Ms. Clinton - but how do I read the fact that she is such a woman of faith that it's influenced and inspired and been at the center of her life since she can remember, and yet I don't view Hillary Clinton as a person of faith? I don't see her putting that out there in that way.
Bernstein: Well, again, the people I talked to in the White House who were closest to her, some of them said, "The best thing about her is this faith that animates all she does," and then there would be others very close to her in the White House who said, "But she uses her faith in a self-righteous way." Her deputy for press relations on the healthcare project said, "Her self-righteousness killed healthcare," tells me while I'm reporting this.
So there are two sides about all aspects of her, and particularly in terms of covering up her worst traits and Bill Clinton's worst traits. She has used religion to hide those things from herself, certainly people close to her believe.
Tavis: Since you went there, what would you -
Bernstein: The example would be love the sinner, hate the sin. So what do you do with that? Well, then, you forgive Bill Clinton, forgive Bill Clinton, but not forgive the women that he is involved with. The important thing about the women is not what Bill Clinton did but rather that Hillary Clinton, very early in their marriage, realized, like many people, she was married to the greatest political talent of our time and he would not be politically viable if his sexual compulsions were known, and the effect of acting those compulsions out.
So she sought to contain them, hide them, cover them up, and that is a very real part of her story as a woman. It's not about the sex. It's like she says in this book, "There are worse things than infidelity." But think about how this tore her apart, having to do this as she saw it, to make their political journey possible.
Tavis: While I'm sure viewers are titillated by the whole sex stuff -
Bernstein: Well, titillated, I'm not interested in.
Tavis: I know you're not. No, I know, I understand. I'm just saying I know you've been asked about that a thousand times and you went there on your own, and I don't even want to follow up on it. That said, what I do want to follow up on, though, is what she learned - because she's out pushing this issue now on the campaign trail - what did she learn, from your perspective - I had her on my radio show last week? No, this weekend. She was on my radio program this weekend.
Bernstein: How was she?
Tavis: She was good, it was a good conversation. We taped it I guess yesterday, so it's going to air this weekend. I asked her this question, but I want to ask you what you think of this question. I asked her what she learned from getting her behind kicked on that healthcare plan in the White House, and she gave me her answer. What do you think she -
Bernstein: What was her -
Tavis: I want to ask you first, though.
Bernstein: Okay.
Tavis: Yeah, I'll tell you what she said.
Bernstein: Well, I think that she learned that she needs to compromise.
Tavis: Oh, she said that.
Bernstein: Because she didn't. And that was the fatal flaw, but again, it goes back to this self-righteous aspect and she, in the third month of the presidency of Bill Clinton, she goes to talk to the Democratic senators at a retreat. Bill Bradley, the great senator from New Jersey, says, "I think we need to ask some serious questions about the timing of your healthcare bill."
And she says, "Look, I'm going to demonize - “her word - "anybody that slows down this train." And Bill Bradley says to me, "That was it for me as far as Hillary Clinton was concerned.”The arrogance," as he put it, to think that U.S. senators - and Pat Moynihan was another one who was alienated by that. She's learned, I think, to move away from that.
The Senate has taught her that politics is about compromise, and of course does she have the temperament of a real politician? Which involves compromise, yet maintaining principles.
Tavis: Either she's reading your talking points, or you're reading hers, because her answer was eerily familiar to what you've just said. So maybe she did learn the lesson.
Bernstein: I think in the last few weeks, we have seen her move from what many were perceiving in this campaign to be her inauthentic self, which has always been her biggest problem, when she tries to put on this robotic front.
Tavis: Is that her worst trait?
Bernstein: No, I think there are two worse traits, inauthenticity and trimming the truth. But they go together, to some extent, and when she moves back to telling the truth - which is hard for her at times, because she's been under siege. She was under the threat of indictment for three years, perhaps, as her lawyer tells me when I was reporting this book. No person had gone into the White House, no president, no first lady, pursued like that.
Tavis: You called it inauthentic. I've had any number of -
Bernstein: And I don't mean earth tones, like with Al Gore.
Tavis: Exactly, yeah. I've had any number of conversations with her over the years, and I've tried to find my own way of saying to her, without using the word inauthentic, that I wished that she would be more open. That she would -
Bernstein: She's that way with her friends.
Tavis: Yeah, exactly.
Bernstein: And she's probably that way with you on the air.
Tavis: Yeah, but not on the campaign trail, though.
Bernstein: And not on the campaign trail, but also there is an underlying anger that many people have seen - those who have been closest to her in the White House. I think that since she has been in the Senate, out of his shadow, to some extent, some of that or a lot of that anger has dissipated and it has served her very well.
Now, early in the campaign, she seemed to be going back toward what we saw in the White House. But the last few weeks, I just get a feeling that somebody - some people, including Bill, have been talking to her and saying, "Hey, go out there and do what you do best, be yourself."
Tavis: Aside from - let me offer my assessment first, I want to get yours, check it against yours 'cause you know the subject matter much better than I do. My sense is that aside from her Iraq vote, which she's going to have to explain, and she's getting her behind kicked about that, and she'll figure that out. Aside from the Iraq vote, I think that she has done a masterful job of fitting herself into the Senate and using that platform to run for president. I think it's been nothing short of masterful.
Bernstein: I think it's masterful in terms of becoming a senator and member of the club and delivering for the people of her state money, programs, etc. I think it's been disappointing in terms of being a national leader on the great issues. She is a senator apart from all the others with a national constituency, and on the - flag-burning has been her big issue.
And I don't even believe she believes in her own stand on flag-burning, that she wants a constitutional amendment. She went to law school, she practiced law, she studied constitutional law, she believes in the First Amendment. So I think there's a record of trying to play it very safe in the Senate. Just the opposite of what she did in the White House. So I think the Senate term is two-sided like that.
Tavis: Yeah, that's a fair assessment. Let me go back right quick to the beginning, since you mentioned her service in Washington. What did she learn - we're seeing her now in real time, of course, in her political career and the blossoming of it. But what did she learn way back when in those Watergate hearings? What did she learn politically, substantively, out of that experience?
Bernstein: Sadly, I think she learned that one of the reasons that the House Impeachment Committee investigation, of which she was a staff member, succeeded in part because of the extraordinary secrecy that John (unintelligible), who supervised the inquiry, conducted the inquiry with. And she then took that lesson - the press finds out nothing, even the congressmen involved find out nothing - and she has applied it, I say this in here, to her conduct in the White House, which is a far different thing than an investigation of a president about to be impeached.
And so I think she learned the wrong lesson, and at the same time, she researched the history of impeachment and learned what high crimes and misdemeanors were, and they certainly were not what Bill Clinton was impeached for. And she is really the reason that he was not ultimately convicted. She defended him very effectively.
Tavis: I got 30 seconds here left, you can't do justice to a book this dense in 30 seconds. Let me ask one quick exit question. With regard to the text, what is the lesson that you think the reader most takes away that they can use to contextualize her presidential campaign?
Bernstein: That you see her from her childhood through the Senate years as a real person. And you see her at her best, and you see her at her worst. But it's a great saga of a woman struggling, and it is a great struggle and a great story.
Tavis: Well, no better person than Carl Bernstein to tell a wonderful story, given his history. The new book by Carl Bernstein is "A Woman in Charge," of course, a story about the life and times of one Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now, of course, running for president on the Democratic ticket. Carl, good to have you here.
Bernstein: Good to be here, Tavis.
Tavis: Enjoyed talking to you.
Back to June 13, 2007