Advisory Opinions - The Hillary Story

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

The president addressed the nation on the coronavirus outbreak, Harvey Weinstein gets 23 years in prison, and Hulu's new docuseries 'Hillary' is now streaming. David and Sarah have thoughts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Broad-spectrum protection and all-day hydration in one lightweight formula from the number one recommended brand by pharmacists and physicians. It's the unskippable SPF for your unstoppable day. New Umbrelle Daily UV Moisturizer, now available online or at your local retailer. Ready? I was born ready. online or at your local retailer. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger from The Dispatch Media. We've got three main things we're going to talk about today. One of them is going to be much more dominant than the others, but we would be remiss if we did not start with

at least briefly discussing the president's coronavirus address yesterday. We're also going to talk a bit about the sentencing of Harvey Weinstein. And then we're going to have an extended conversation about a documentary that I didn't want to watch. And my wife said, oh, come on, let's give it a try. And then I couldn't stop watching it, and it's the Hulu documentary on Hillary Clinton. Sarah has watched it as well. We've all seen it, and we have lots of thoughts. It was very well done, very thought-provoking, so we're going to talk about that, but before we get to the main subjects, once again, I'd ask you to please subscribe to

this podcast at Apple Podcasts. Also, please rate us on Apple Podcasts and please consider becoming a member of the dispatch. We just had some tremendous growth and membership, and that's so encouraging to see. And we thank you for that very much. But let's get started. Sarah, so the president's address did not go as planned or did it? That's what my 401k told me this morning. So he made three mistakes in his prepared remarks. He misstated the extent of his travel ban to Europe. He misstated our travel ban from Europe.

He misstated the its applicability to trade goods. And he misstated the agreement with the insurance companies saying that it would deal with copayments for coronavirus treatments, not just coronavirus tests. How does this happen? I don't guess we have any reporting on what precisely broke down, but it was one of the more surprising moments and an address that was otherwise welcome based on the sobriety of its tone. And finally, the president very publicly taking this very seriously. So we do have one clue, which is the White House Twitter feed also tweeted incorrect, the same incorrect information, which to me means that it was in the text of the speech.

Therefore, I know everyone, and it does start with the president, it's still the president's responsibility to ensure that the text of the speech is correct. But the fact that the text of the speech was, I think, most likely wrong goes to a core competency of the White House staff. And what we've seen so far is that the president's staff is different than the people running the coronavirus task force, which is being run out of the vice president's office. Right. And so for me, the interesting thing would be, did the president's staff write this and then not share it with the vice president, the people running the Coronavirus Task Force staff? How did that disaster sort of come about? And to some extent, it doesn't matter because it happened.

And I think you can't totally detangle it from the Tom Hanks announcement and the NBA announcement as far as the economic effect that it had. Right. And it just felt to me... I think for a lot of people, it just started to feel real last night. Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. Everything sort of came down, came to a different level of reality in really about an hour span of time. And we're seeing that at grocery stores today. And that we do have some reporting on, which is Americans are going to grocery stores during the day, during work hours today in unusual quantities. And that is clearly a reaction to that hour last night, which included the president's speech, the NBA and Tom Hanks.

So it's a problem. And it's certainly there's a public health aspect to it. I thought the order of the president's speech last night was well done. He started with the public health stuff, ended with the economic stuff. Right. perhaps I can convince you that the credibility that his team has lost with reporters and the media by, you know, owning the media sometimes, not being fully forthcoming, attacking the media, and that was always going to be the case that if there was a moment of public crisis, that credibility is what you need in those moments, and they don't have it anymore. And that is having both public health effects and economic effects that I think would be very different in a different administration. It doesn't make it, you know, I get that there is also then this knee-jerk pushback to everything

Trump says. And, you know, you saw it last night of, you know, he had a travel ban. It's not enough. He should have done it earlier. He has a travel ban. Why does he have a travel ban? That's racist. Like, I totally get that that's silliness. But some of it is self-made as well. Well, I think that it's absolutely true that the silliness of others does not relieve the president of the United States from the responsibility of competence. So, you know, that that's one of the things where this sort of whataboutism gamesmanship sort of fails is, OK, yeah, I can point to any number of tweets last night. And at some point I just had to get off Twitter. It was it was so vicious and vitriolic. You can point to any number of tweets that are... On both sides. Yes, of course, that are silly, that are frivolous. I find this whole

debate about whether or not it's racist to call the virus, the Wuhan virus, to be just a frivolity, a ridiculous sideshow in a very serious time. So yeah, you can absolutely point to things where you can say, well, what about this person from the New York Times? Or what about this person from Fox? And you can look at all of that silliness and that partisanship, which by the way, occurs in every kind of national crisis. I think the only time in my adult lifetime that I remember a crisis being totally free or almost totally free of partisan sniping was in the hours moving into a few days after 9-11. But other than that, if you have a challenge in this country, there's partisan sniping that goes along with it.

But none of that relieves any government official of the responsibility of sobriety and competence and accuracy in this time. And that's what was so troubling to me. The president had been, I think, kind of frivolous in a lot of his public statements about this. There's a timeline in the Washington Post of his public statements, and a lot of them look really, really bad with the benefit of hindsight, especially when he says we have 15 cases and we're going to go down to zero when he should have known better. But so none of the sniping all around relieves him of the responsibility of accuracy and sobriety. And his lack of accuracy took away from the quality of his sobriety last night. That finally, his public statements were mapping and matching the public statements of other

aspects of his administration. And it was tainted by all of this. And these mistakes have real consequences. But there was two things that we talked about yesterday that I think are worth some discussion. One, and I would just be curious if listeners have thoughts on this, you know, my students are all between the ages roughly, you know, 19 to 21. And this is their first experience like this as a nation. They did not experience 9-11 even if they were alive. They weren't conscious. And I tried to explain to them that this was their 9 11 it's very different than 9 11 yeah as 9 11 was very different from the kennedy

assassination um but this is their 9 11 it will be the thing that they talk about for their lifetime and compare other things to they will talk to each other about where they were and um and it And it's something that will affect the whole country. And I think that's interesting to reflect on as we go through this, of how history will view this month, two months, whatever it ends up being, and how teenagers will talk about it. Because I was in college for 9-11. And so I'm their age that they are for this. So it's very interesting for me. The second point that I make to them is, and this is really what the whole class is maybe about, lying to reporters. The easiest thing in any given moment when you

get pushed against a wall is to lie. We do it from the age, you know, from two years old, we start lying to our parents because it's easier. Did you eat that cookie? Nope. Why do you have cookie crumbs on your face? Dunno. Not my, didn't want me. There's, you know, a whole shaggy song dedicated to it not being me when you're caught in the act. And I think it is, to your point, competence, maturity, all these things that you take short-term pain to tell the truth because credibility in the long-term matters. Relationships matter. And I think what really broke down, not just in these three years, it is the escalating war between political voices and the media has been going on for a long, long time. Yep. And distrust has been sown from the Iraq war through Obama prosecuting reporters.

But it has escalated even more so now. And so now we have a 9-11 event 20 years later where that trust between the media and the administration is at an all-time low. And I do think we're seeing really negative consequences from that. No, I agree with that completely. I think that one of the things that we talked about in our Dispatch podcast. Now, just as an aside, we have been calling it as a matter of internal style guide, the flagship Dispatch podcast. Now, just as an aside, we have been calling it as a matter of internal style guide, the flagship Dispatch podcast. But Sarah, this podcast is so good that I do not want to yield the flagship title to the other podcast. But that's neither here

nor there. That's internal office politics. Yeah, we'll have to fight Jonah and Steve. Yeah, exactly. But we talked there about how differing messages and differing media outlets were leading people to behave differently in the real world. And I think one of the in other words, Republicans were less likely to take the coronavirus seriously. They were more likely to say that they were going to go to large group gatherings, et cetera, et cetera. And I think the benefit by 30 points, by 30 points, I mean, a huge gap. And the benefit, I think, of the Trump address is I hope to see us narrowing that gap. But I will tell you this. It has been infuriating to me, the process of talking to people who are consuming conservative media a great deal, who are disproportionately older. That's not a stereotype. It's just the actual demographics of different media audiences who are disproportionately older and therefore disproportionately more vulnerable. Making more dangerous choices because voices they trust are saying false things to them. Now, I don't think that

a Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or the president, when he was downplaying this thing and minimizing this thing, I don't think, and you might disagree, I don't think they're intentionally saying things that they know to be false. I certainly don't think in a million years that they want to endanger their audience. I just think their partisan mind is not interpreting events accurately or competently. And that has real consequence. And, you know, I have this newsletter going out today, and the title of it is A Competence is a Character Trait. And I call back to that because of something Jonah has been saying for a long time, which is character is destiny. And I think a lot of people have been

looking at the administration and looking at public officials and defining character narrowly too. Is somebody telling the truth in a given moment? Is somebody, you know, has somebody, some of the classic things like truthfulness and fidelity in marriage, etc., etc. But I also think that competence is a character trait, that developing expertise and developing competence in any given area requires a degree of self-discipline. It requires a degree of honest reflection. It requires a degree of openness to ideas and information that are all character traits.

But all the things you're describing are not qualities that can be reflected in our current media environment. And I don't mean right wing or left wing. I mean the shortness of Twitter or the length of having a three-hour radio program for the purpose of attracting listeners, which is normally to say things that are counter to common wisdom. If he was saying the same things that everyone else was saying, no one would tune in. Therefore, he has to find other things to say. I completely agree with you that these are not done intentionally. But I also think, generally speaking, political media deals with things that don't matter. I'm trying to come up with a better way to say that. But whether Chuck Schumer threatened Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch on the steps of the Supreme Court matters rhetorically,

matters for our public discourse. I don't mean to say it doesn't matter, but no one's life is at risk from this. The public isn't at risk. Dealing with a pandemic is just a very different factual thing. There's some math involved. Yep. Exponential growth rates. And political media is not set up to deal with that. And I think to your I take your competence point, but to me, it's almost like a system wide problem, not just a competence problem. I think it's I think it's the system enhances the competence problem. And, you know, you raise a really interesting point with the Schumer statement, which is not to say that the Schumer statement was right. It was wrong. He shouldn't have said that. But one of the interesting things is this rise that I've been

noticing some smart writing about is, especially with the growth of Twitter, social media, the ability to, you know, before that 24-hour news is the rise of what's called the political hobbyist, the person who, politics is sort of like their NBA. It's like their sports. They are as in tune with the ins and outs of any given news cycle as they are know, your NFL fanatic is in tune with the results from the combine. And there is a degree of that that can be productive if it translates into real informed activism on issues and real informed public engagement on issues. But there's a part of it, there is underlying sort of infotainment aspect of it. And there's a part of it that's a sort of a very much performative aspect of it. And so you've, I feel like we've developed this kind of degree of

frivolity. And I use the term frivolity not to imply sort of happiness, but irrelevant. So sort of a degree of frivolity around an awful lot of our public communications and politics. That's all fun and games until lives are at stake. When I've worked on three presidential campaigns, numerous other campaigns down ballot, worked in administration and executive branch and the judicial branch, etc. It is difficult for me to see people on TV described as political analysts who have not worked in politics. It very much, I compare it to the NFL all the time. Like we don't have NFL announcers who've never worked for the NFL or played football. And yet we have people in politics talking to the American public about politics all the time who have not worked in politics. And it's like, I don't mean to compare myself to Nick Saban here.

But, like, honestly, you know, Nick Saban has to be so annoyed if some random person is on ESPN is like, I've watched lots of football for years. And let me tell you what Nick Saban should be doing. And he's like, what? Right, right. So anyway, as much as I, as much as I obsess over the NBA, it would not be fair to call me an NBA analyst. It would be very fair to call me an NBA fan or hobbyist, but not an analyst. And by the way, since we've been on this podcast, the NHL, the Major League Baseball, NBA obviously went last night. And basically everyone is, oh, and the NCAA tournament, March Madness, have all been canceled. Oh my goodness. So March Madness has been canceled or.

Yep. Wow. I've seen the SEC basketball tournament had been canceled and I just saw the news alert about the NHL. This is, you know, this is a you your your comparison to 9-11, obviously different in kind. But it is this is a national moment unlike anything I have ever experienced. And as we talk about often on this podcast, I've been around a lot longer than everybody else at the dispatch, with the exception of months younger than me, Jonah, but I've never experienced anything like this. Well, should we move on to our... Yes. And I have a transition for us, a unique transition that will move...

If you announce it as a transition, it makes it even extra transitional. It does. And I have to bring it if I'm going to say it's a unique transition. But this will transition us from your point about don't lie to the media to a Me Too discussion. So you may recall that in 2016, I spent about three to four days thinking hard, and I still, it's still difficult for these words to come out of my mouth, like this actually happened, thinking hard about running for president. That actually occurred. And after Bill Kristol tweeted in May of 2016 that there was going to be a third party contender, he did not tweet that the person he was thinking about was me. And so that launched this sort of mad scramble amongst, you know, a small coterie of Washington journalists to find out who was Bill talking about. And there were lots of big names that were tossed around. But

a couple of people found out that it was me. And I had, while I'm sitting there trying to figure out whether or not to run, I was not answering my phone. I think Bob Costet, the Washington Post, figured it out before anybody else, left me a very nice voicemail. I didn't respond to it. And so long as I didn't confirm or anything, I was kind of left alone. The rumors were spreading, but my life was still my life. But then I get a call and I just impulsively answered it. It was from a New York number. I thought it was National Review's publicist. It was not. It was Mark Halperin from Bloomberg. And he said to me, I have two sources who say the person Bill Kristol is thinking about, two sources who say it's you. What do you have to say about that?

And at that point, I had this thought. My first thought, Sarah, you know what it was? Deny. Oh, shit. No. Well, that could be one. deny. Oh, shit. No. Well, that could be one. No, it was, hey, if I deny this, maybe I buy myself some more time. And I had this impulse to deny. And while I'm working through this moral dilemma, but I was also, if I was going to run, I was going to be running as a campaign based on

integrity as a contrast to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. So I'm in real time processing this, man, I really want to deny this, but hey, I'm supposed to be running a campaign based on truth and integrity. And so here's what actually came out in my, out of my mouth. Something along the lines of, I really don't want to talk about that right now and so Mark says shall I quote you as I really don't want to talk about that right now and my response

and before he could say anything he said how about this I have two sources that confirm that you're that you are Bill Kristol's choice do you deny it? And at that point, it crystallized in my mind. I'm not going to lie about this. I said, I don't deny it. And he said, OK,

in 10 minutes, the story will be up on the Bloomberg site or MSNBC. I can't remember which one it was. And he wasn't exactly accurate. I think it was seven minutes later, it was up and all hell broke loose. But that's a story for another time. I think I wish you and I, I wish you'd been in my class. A, you would have known right away to give an attribution before you started talking. You know, is this off the record, et cetera. And B, there are many things you can do that aren't lying, but also aren't basically causing a firestorm in your own home. But again, a story for another time. Well, that's why no one would ever put next to my name on a chyron in a media appearance, David French, politician. Okay. So we get to the sentencing. Yes. Yes. And the Me Too transition, just to be clear,

was Halperin ended up having his own issue, but that's not what we're going to talk about. Harvey Weinstein was sentenced yesterday to 23 years, correct? Yeah. And when we were talking about topics for this podcast, you and our wonderful producer, Caleb, raised this issue. And my knee-jerk reaction back to you both was, I don't care. And it actually sparked kind of an interesting conversation about why I didn't care about the 23-year sentence. It's great. He should be in prison, right? It's not that I don't care, meaning I want him walking around the streets. And I explained it as, I don't care, meaning I want him walking around the streets. And I explained it as, I don't care.

This was a rape trial. We've always said rape was wrong. We taught men a long time ago that you cannot force a woman to have sex with you against her will. That was never in question the me too movement was never about rape right we dealt with that many many years ago thankfully the me too movement is about something much more important now and a conversation about what consent means when you have consent right if you don't have consent you get charged with rape and you spend 23 years in prison. And so to me, Harvey Weinstein, who kicked off this entire Me Too movement with some great reporting from, you know, Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker, won the Pulitzer for that. It was interesting because he ends up being charged for rape and rape-related allegations. But the thrust, if you will, of that article was actually about all the times he did have consent, but it's not what the rest of us think of as true consent.

It was consensual asterisk, but it was never criminal. So the fact that he's being charged with a crime and going to prison for a crime. OK, great. All for it. If he committed crimes. Right. But that's not what the Me Too movement conversation is about. And I certainly hope that we're not like, OK, Harvey Weinstein went to jail. We good now. Yeah, that's that last part is a really good point. This is this is not this does not put a period at the end of the meat. This is not the period at the end of the Me Too movement. This verdict and no and most Me Too behavior is not illegal. It's just wrong.

And there's a difference between morally wrong and illegal. And there should be. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, the way I've construed and interpreted a lot of this is it's what is consent. It's also how should you use and exercise your power? And yes. And that was a particularly in Hollywood, particularly in some of the media stories. the media stories. A lot of these terrible stories, there would be no law against it,

and it wouldn't even arguably involve sexual harassment. In other words, not criminal. Tough, tough, tough, tough to prove, tough to prove as violating civil law, and yet at the same time, deeply exploitive, deeply wrong, and which leaves people in conduct that it's, which leaves people with lifelong consequences. And which I think is another thing that is come out of the Me Too movement is the this idea that you don't close the book. It's hard to it's very hard to close the book on exploitation in a person's life. And this, of course, the best example of a Me Too issue for me, because I think it draws that line between the illegal behavior that we've always said is wrong and the Me Too behavior, and watch this transition, David,

is Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Now that's a transition. That was obviously consensual. It was, there's nothing illegal about that relationship. But it was the President of the United States and a 22-year-old intern. And we have reevaluated what we think about that relationship in the context of this conversation. And I mean, this national conversation, which I think is fabulous with a capital F underlined exclamation point. Right. I mean, there was a lot of talk in 1998 that there was nothing wrong with this relationship

because the evidence indicated that Monica was pretty thrilled about it. That there was... Maybe even the instigator. Perhaps. Right. Exactly. And so that she was the instigator. She was perhaps the instigator. She was obviously, at least according to available evidence, really happy about this relationship. But that's what made it so exploitive. Here's the most powerful man in the world

dealing with a very young woman who is probably quite obviously starstruck. And what do you do with that? And if you're a terrible person, with that? And if you're a terrible person, the answer is, I exploit that. Right. Because to be clear, she was, and I'm going to extrapolate from what we actually know as fact, but we'll get maybe into more of this in a minute, but she was in love with him. Whether she thought she was going to run away and marry him, have children with him, et cetera. You know, having been a 22-year-old female, my guess is she thought about it. Like she daydreamed about it. He used her for a very different purpose.

Right. He was never in love with her. He never considered her his best friend, confidant. It's not even, I don't think fair that he considered her his mistress. I don't think he did. No. It was a means to an end. Yes. So let's talk. And that's what's exploitative. Let's talk about this Hillary documentary. So as I said at the start, my wife, Nancy said, Hey, I I've heard this is good. Let's, let's give it a try. I said, I don't really want to. And I started watching. I couldn't stop watching it. It's four episodes, about an hour each. Watched it in two nights,

two hours per night. And I thought it was really fascinating. And it's hard for me to unpack all the reasons why I thought it was fascinating. But let me give you some top line. Let me give you some some top line conclusions. Wait, I have a real I want I want all of these. But I have to ask, did you watch the A&E documentary from sort of the Monica side, the six hour A&E one? I did not. Did you? Yes. Oh, OK. So and there's there's another one

as well. So there's three Clinton related documentaries that have come out in the last year and a half. OK, go go on your things on this. OK. Number one, it reminded me again how the volume of unfair criticism can make someone blind to fair criticism. can make someone blind to fair criticism. Number two, for the first time ever since the news broke in 1998, I actually believed Hillary that she did not know about the Monica affair and did not know that it actually happened until Bill fessed up after well into the investigation. Now, that's totally subjective. That's totally subjective. And then number three was I was unbelievably unimpressed with sort of the coterie of people around her. And so those were sort of three top line conclusions I took away from it. And we can talk about any of those, but I'd love to hear some of some of your conclusions.

So the Clinton affair is the name of the A&E documentary, by the way, and it's, as I said, about six hours, maybe longer. And it has interviews with Monica Lewinskyinsky so that part makes it different and it dives into a lot of the details over the star investigation as a whole what was interesting about this to me is it didn't try to do any of those things it didn't try to do any of those things. It didn't try to answer that documentary. It was not a Hillary Clinton puff piece either, but it was meant to tell her story and her story alone. Right. It did not relitigate the 90s.

Right. If anything, it spent a lot more time on her presidential run and sort of the post-2000, post-Clinton presidency era, which I think was to their benefit, it did remind me a little bit, again, high-level stuff here, of the Mitt documentary in the sense that it's hard to come away not being more sympathetic to the main character of a documentary. So if you hate Hillary as a 10, maybe you're at a nine after watching this. If you liked Hillary at a three, maybe you now like her at a four after this. You know, watching someone for four hours tell their version of events, it's a human reaction

to say, oh, wow, that's a human being who I've been caricaturing for 30 years in public life. Yeah. I mean, I think there is a, you're obviously, as you say, when you hear someone talk for four hours, you're going to begin to understand them from their perspective better. Yeah. No one thinks they're the bad guy in their own story. Right.

Of course. Yeah. No one thinks they're the bad guy in their own story. Right. Of course. And going back to the first point, I think that those of us who and and so Bill Clinton became president in 1993. I was 24 years old. I was distraught that H.W. had lost. I was never one of these Republicans who turned on George H.W. Bush. I hated that he lost. I admired the man. You know, already in 1993, you're dealing with sort of the draft Dodger allegations, the scandals with Jennifer Flowers. And, you know, one of the things that was stunning about that documentary is they reminded, I'd forgotten that she had alleged a 12-year affair. Like, had alleged a 12-year affair. Like, that's a long time. So I really did not like Bill Clinton. And at the same time, there was this deranged side of anti-Clintonism on the right. And we forget about it because if you're on the right, you sort of like, oh, those are, you know, who's going to listen to our crazies, whatever. But there was sort of the steel dossier of the right that was unleashed on the Clintons throughout, you know, Bill's presidency. And it was, you know, I went by various names like the MENA Chronicles or the MENA files.

And there was this allegation, you know, there were allegations that they were responsible for murders. There were allegations about Vince Foster. There were. Don't forget the cat episode. Do you remember the cat? Oh, I forget the cat. Remind me. I forget which woman. She wrote a whole book about how the Clintons killed her cat. Oh, yes. Right. Right. And so you had all of this way over the top, all of these way over the top attacks on them. And I felt like what I began to see was this idea that we're so far removed from that kind of misconduct that who do they think we are? that who do they think we are? We don't have to think hard about things like the email situation, which was bad. Like she had top secret information on an unclassified system. I know from my military experience, I would not survive that as a military officer. I would not survive

that. And so their actual conduct was so far removed from many of these wilder allegations that they, you know, they got in this bunker mode. And I feel like there was zero, you saw zero evidence of self-reflection over the things that were actually wrong other than self-reflecting upon them as tactical bad choices from a political standpoint. At least that's the... Asterisk, exclamation point. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Right.

Oh, good. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that. But I actually think that, to me, that's where I was like, oh, I actually think I do understand the psyche, if you will, of Hillary Clinton a little better. Because I think she was being honest. I think, or forthcoming is a better word for that. She does see the world through tactical choices, mistakes, pluses, minuses. She doesn't see it through character, flaws, mistakes.

Yep. And that is really her way of approaching it. When it comes to the emails, she really doesn't think about it as whether she should have done it or not from a big picture standpoint. Was this a good idea? Yeah. What she thinks about is, well, it wasn't a good idea because it turned out to be a tactical mistake. And we can talk about whether that's, you know, a quality you want a president, whether this goes to her character flaws, forget all that. It's actually just fascinating to watch. Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And there's this really sent this real sense of absolute confidence in her own abilities, that she was ready for, she was able to do

whatever job she was called to do. She had absolute confidence in her abilities. And I think it's interesting if you have such confidence in your abilities, any attack on you that is unrelated to that, like what did the private email server have to do with my performance as secretary of state? Or what does the email have to do with what I would do in response to a crisis in the Middle East? Nothing. Therefore, it's irrelevant. Was sort of this sense that I got that there was this one thing about I am a, you know, I am a smart, capable problem solver. And all of this other stuff was noise and it was unfair noise. And to the extent that I'm to blame for anything, it was that I had some unforced errors that made the noise louder. Exactly. I wasn't able to quell the noise. That's the problem. Okay. So, you know,

I love making everything about my like feminist tirades. Oh, go for it. Well, and that you just raise an interesting point. And in fact, one of my students asked me this yesterday in class. We were talking about very big jobs that young people get put into. And she basically said, you know, obviously I would say yes to the job, but what do I do about the fact that I know that I'm not actually ready for this job? And I pointed to books like Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In or Tina Fey's Bossy Pants that this imposter syndrome, and I don't think it's gender specific, by the way, I would, maybe I'm wrong, but I think men have imposter syndrome too from time to time in their lives. I think it may come at different times of their lives than women's lives.

But, you know, the sort of fake it till you make it thing, lean in, pretend you belong there. Like it's advice we all get. And it's advice that 22 year olds need to hear and so when i saw that i totally agree with you and i wasn't sure whether which one it was are you right that she is blissfully comp has this self-confidence that nobody else that i've ever met in my whole life seems to have? Or is it so ingrained in her? You know, she talks about the Yale speech that, or Wellesley, sorry, it was Wellesley, right? The Wellesley speech. I don't know. You're 22 and you're asked to give this big address

about like your place in the world at a time where America is having this tumultuous political fight. And the guy who speaks before you kind of is patronizing and you go up there and you're like, okay, I got to own this moment. I'm not saying I've been exactly there, but I think we've all had some version of that moment where you either crumble or you turn that anxiety and fear into energy and self-assuredness and then you're like i got this and and those are the moments that you crush and that you're proud of yourself that's like that's bravery right overcoming fear has she had so many of those moments and so many times where people doubted her where she had to say like nope i've

got this that it comes so second nature to her that you think it's actually part of her character? Or is she a once in a generation person, which I think she is in a lot of other respects, where no, she actually does feel that self-confidence that the rest of us wish we had all the time. Well, I do think there's a time, there's a point in time if you really hone your craft that you reach a point where you say, oh, I might be a good lawyer now. You know, sure. You have you begin to have confidence in your abilities. And I'm not a politician, but I'm sure there's a point in time in which you might say, I think I'm good at this politics thing now. Or, oh, by the way, I think that I'm getting the hang of this incredibly important job called Secretary of State. And if you get enough of those markers in your life, I think it does begin to build momentum towards a certain degree of

self-confidence, which is also communicated in decisions you know, decisions to run for president more than one time, for example. I do think that there is there. And if you look at her, she I think it was ridiculous when people tried to say she was the most qualified person ever to run for president. But she did have a lot of markers to look back on moving from Wellesley into Yale and the Watergate Committee. And then, you know, so she did have marker after marker after marker after marker. And it's one of those things that she communicated to the public in a way, and this is where we can kind of get into the feminism, sexism conversation. She communicated that confidence

to the public in a way that a lot of people found off-putting um not just off-putting like it inspired a derangement against her a hatred for her uh that is fascinating to me where her husband is the one accused of rape yeah and yet they hate her for and when i ask people about it they're like yeah but she's the one who slut shamed these women or she's the one who vilify them or she's the one who stood by him and defended him yeah but he's still the rapist right like if you believe that that he did that and And the hatred that those people feel for Bill Clinton is just a – they hate him. They don't want to vote for him. But they hate Hillary Clinton. Well, I mean, here's some more fuel for that particular fire.

When was Hillary at her most popular? She was at her most – When she wasn't anything. When she was the victim of Bill. Yeah. She really, you know, and a lot you can go sort of back and forth. And she had a lot of popularity when she was secretary of state. And she was more she wasn't so much in the public eye. There was sort of this more idea of Hillary that she's doing a good job as secretary of state, this sort of consensus. But she wasn't day to day in the public eye. But

she was when the Monica thing finally all came out and Bill confessed, she was a very popular person. She was a very popular person. But here's the weird thing. So was Bill. Yeah, also true. Yeah, I mean, so was Bill. And and he remained popular amongst Democrats in particular for years later. I mean, I think some of that is being reassessed now is like millennial Democrats are Googling. So what what it was it with Bill Clinton? And they're going, what the heck? Oh, a great podcast is the Slate podcast on the Clinton stuff. They did Watergate and then they did Clinton for the second season. And you think the whole time they're kind of giving him a pass on this stuff and you're like, oh, this is pretty biased. And then at the end, he's like, oh, no, he definitely raped Juanita Broderick. And you're like, oh, this is pretty biased. And then at the end, he's like, oh, no, he definitely raped Juanita Broderick. You're like, whoa. I listened to that. I listened to that. And

the funny thing is, he went through the evidence very fairly. And when you hear that evidence now, it is shocking. It is really shocking. And I think, you know, to bring this back to Harvey Weinstein a little and the Me Too movement and all of that, it tells you where we were in the 90s that you then skip ahead 25 years or whatever and we see it so differently. differently. It's why the Me Too conversation was necessary and why it's happening now versus the 90s, because in the 90s, we still weren't really believing women when they said they were raped despite having evidence. Yeah, I mean, that when I compare the evidence of that, that Juanita Broderick brought to the table, including contemporaneous corroboration of her story. And and I know there if if I was Bill Clinton's defense lawyer, it's not like I wouldn't have defenses. He has defenses to these claims. But the contrast between the evidence brought into the public square with Juanita Broderick and the evidence brought to

the public square in any number of modern recent controversies is pretty, pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And it goes back to the political tribes. We want to talk about polarization now, and it is the worst that it's been measurably. But don't think that we weren't polarized then. A lot of it was that the left said there's nothing there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. And, you know, there was this effort with Lewinsky sort of to redefine amongst not, you know, certainly not the mainstream of America. The mainstream of America was more like, OK, he said he's sorry and it's not enough to impeach him. But there was definite a strain on parts of the left to say, well, we want to redefine sexual morality in the context of Monica Lewinsky, that our idea was, our idea is you should have the wife and the mistress at the funeral.

No, it's the biggest failing, I think, of the feminist movement of the last 60 years. Yeah, it is remarkable. It is remarkable, especially on the heels of the Clarence Thomas controversy. Because the Clarence Thomas controversy, which I remember vividly, I was in law school at the time, that was the moment when sexual harassment as a large scale cultural concept was put on the map. It had jumped completely from sort of the plaintiff's bar. Some of the big sexual harassment cases were decided in the 1980s, but that wasn't a big part of American culture. This is when it had jumped into the culture. A huge moment where a coalition of feminist lawmakers sort of stopped the presses on the Thomas nomination process to introduce the Anita Hill hearings, huge national conversation. And then, and then less than a decade later,

later, I mean, there was the famous Gloria Steinem op-ed in the New York Times that people sort of summarized as one free grope, basically saying the Kathleen Willey story was fine because even though he may have groped her, he stopped when she said stop. thing that I always think about, like how movies follow culture and reflect our culture. And you and I had that great pod about The Morning Show sort of being the first take at the history of the Me Too movement from a cultural standpoint. The movie Disclosure coming out in 1994 as like the sexual harassment movie. Oh, right. And now, of course, it flips it, right? Michael Douglas is being harassed by his female boss. I remember that. But like what a see that through the cultural lens now. Yeah. Coming after the Clarence Thomas hearings. And like you see it in this historical light of like, oh, yeah, we were really still trying to figure out what the hell we were doing around that.

I know. I remember that movie. It was controversial because they flipped the roles. And Demi Moore, of course, as the sort of masculine boss, you know, my second wave feminist thing about Glenn Close and Fatal Attraction, Demi Moore is probably a better example of a masculine woman being the villain. Yes, yes, exactly. She, it was, it was kind of clear in watching that movie. And it's funny how when you just mentioned the name of the movie, all the memories of it flow, fled back. She was almost the, just applying sort of like gender stereotypes. She was almost like the biggest man in the movie, like in the way in which she took over meetings, the way in which she took over, you know, sees the moment in conversations and relationships. Yeah. And I think Hollywood reflects culture. That's up for debate, I suppose. But in that sense,

it's reflecting what we already disliked in women, that second wave feminist, masculine. we already disliked in women, that second wave feminists, masculine, they hate men, they're trying to be like men, and they're bad, and they're villains. Again, Fatal Attraction, Disclosure, plenty of movies along those lines. But here's what's bringing it back to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is of that same generation, and she's learning feminism from second wave feminists. And so for decades, culturally, through Hollywood and others, we were taught to hate those types of women.

Fast forward past the 90s, and now that type of woman is trying to become president. She wears pantsuits. She has a short haircut. She is aggressive, bossy, whatever term you want to use. Yeah, of course, that inspired a certain amount of hatred. Well, so for listeners who are not up on the various waves of feminism, how would you characterize the differences culturally and sort of presentation-wise, et cetera, et cetera, from first wave, second wave, third wave feminism? Okay, well, I do not want to purport to be a feminist historian. Well, we'll put underneath in the chyron, it does not say feminist historian.

It will definitely not say that. But, you know, first wave feminism is clearly going to be sort of the suffrage movement through women, maybe post-World War II, breaking down some of those very basic barriers to working outside the home, to having any say over their marital situation, you know, being at all considered independent of their husbands. So from Susan B. Anthony to Rosie the Riveter? Yeah, roughly for me. That's how I'm defining it second wave feminism is like that's not enough it's not just that i don't want it to be okay that as long as he's married to me he can

hit me or i'm finally allowed to own property or vote i i actually want equality to men but they were the first ones to say that and And that was controversial. It was met with a lot of disdain. There's a point in the Hillary documentary where she talks about taking the LSAT and she talks about men in the room telling her, you know, if you take my place and getting into law school and then I get drafted, you're responsible for my death. And by the way, side note, that continued through my time in law school of men saying that I was taking a man's place in the classroom of someone who wasn't going to drop out and have kids and get married. Really? Or taking a clerkship from someone who was actually going to put it to better use. Yeah.

Really? Oh, OK. I think it was far less widespread by that point but you know to have the toughness and the grit to be one of those women when there were other women who were like i'm perfectly happy at home i like taking care of my husband and you're like nope i just i want more um they had to dress like men because the norms in businesses were set by men. The norms in the boardroom were set by men. So in order to get into that room, you had to act a certain way,

dress a certain way, be a certain way. You had to basically be a man. The problem is a woman is never going to be as good at being a man as a man is. I strongly believe that. And so that's where you get third wave feminism, which is I'm not a man. I'm not trying to be a man. I have my own strengths as a woman. And that's what you want in your boardroom. And I'm going to wear high heels and I'm going to wear, you know, skirts and wear my hair long. And my my sexiness, my femininity, and my sexiness, my femininity, motherhood,

all of those things make me better at my job. You can be a man and do man stuff. I'm not competing with you over manliness. I'm not going to go golfing with you and try to prove that I can drink scotch and smoke cigars with the boys. Instead, I'm going to have manicures and damn right, my nails look good. So Susan B. Anthony to Hillary Clinton to Nikki Haley.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. That's that's yeah, that I think I was in law school sort of at the tail end of the second wave feminism. And it's interesting that you say that you face something different in law school. I have to think that a lot of my classmates, if they had confronted any kind of sentiment like that, the vigor of their response would have been something to behold. Oh, I had one classmate who said that the 19th Amendment women's suffrage caused World War II. And this was like his shtick. Oh, gosh. He constantly said that women getting the right to vote killed, you know, 400,000 Americans or something.

Oh, my gosh. So, look, it was a very small portion of the class. It, I think, was attention-getting behavior. it, I think, was attention-getting behavior. And that's why it wasn't particularly meaningful, because that behavior they were mimicking from earlier generations. Well, and also that sort of early, what that sounds like to me is proto-own-the-libs intentional trolling. Because political correctness in the early 90s when I was in law school was very strong. Like anyone who thinks that political correctness was started in the last few years, you're just way off base, just way off base. I mean, we had the shout downs in class. We had angry arguments over how you spell woman.

You have. Yeah. I mean, this is the era of W-O-M-Y-N, right? And people would even be upset if you called something a manhole cover. I mean, it was, you know, we had big arguments. And now it wasn't, it hadn't spread across the whole culture, but it was definitely at Harvard for sure. And every time there's an action in society, there is a reaction. And and there has, of course, grown up this reaction in a lot of the right wing culture, which is if if they're going to say everything, if they meaning some the extremes of the left are going to say that everything about Hillary is due to sexism. Well, then I'm going to just say none of it is due to sexism. Oh, so well put. Yes. And of course, neither are true. Exactly. Nothing is ever that way. I know very few things in life, very few that are that

way. And there's also this weird thing in parts of conservative world that you're giving in. It's a sign of weakness if you say that there is at least some sexism, that you're just giving them too much. You give them an inch. They'll take a mile when the reality is, I just kind of want to know what's true. You know, OK, it's interesting you raise that because I think that's where my generation, whatever that is, whether we're still third wave or whether I'm third and a half wave or whatever, I think that we, when I was in my 20s, it was very much, there was a lot of pressure on me to back up that. There's no sexism. Right. And let me defend all of the things that the liberal feminists are calling sexism. And I think

as I've evolved, I actually see my role as something very different now, which is to say, Elizabeth Warren didn't lose because of sexism. You know, and you and I had this conversation. There's 10 reasons why she lost, but absolutely her gender is one of them. Right. Or it was a negative. It was a downside. It was a, you know, subtract points off the board.

I think it's important for conservatives in particular to hear that message from credible sources. And I regret to some extent, although I think I learned a lot from it, and I don't think I'd be where I am today if I hadn't sort of felt that pressure to be part of the like, absolutely not, nothing's wrong over here, we can't give an inch. Well, and a lot of that also, that translates also into things like Black Lives Matter. Like you can look at Black Lives Matter and look at some of the elements of their platform and their support for these convicted cop killers who have fled to Cuba. I'm talking about the actual formal organization, Black Lives Matter. Or you can look at the way in which they, many activists, told things that were just flat out

not true about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri. I mean, in the hands up, don't shoot, which was not true and was ultimately debunked by the Obama DOJ. But that doesn't mean that what happened to Philando Castile is OK. Yeah. You know, or that doesn't mean so. Or that doesn't mean so. But we always do this. We always do this where something being debunked by a political opponent means that I don't have to listen to anything anymore. So, David, here's my question to you. 20 years from now, we have had a female president. We have far more female representation in every part of our lives.

You know, fifth wave feminism is upon us and it's glorious. How do we remember Hillary Clinton? That's a really good question. That's a really good question. I think that I honestly have to say this. I think that we may remember her in much the way the Hulu documentary portrayed her as a very smart, very capable, undeniably groundbreaking. I mean, you can't say that, you know, it's the first major party nominee for president as a woman. She isn't groundbreaking, but who had profound flaws and was blind to those flaws. And and I think that that's I think that she won't be remembered.

The emotion that accompanies her,, that real fury against her. Future generations won't have that and they won't have any visceral memory of it at all. And they won't understand it. Probably not. Probably not. It'll be confusing to even try to explain it, I think. I think that's, yeah, I think that's, that's right. I think that the... Why did you hate her? Well, she was married to a bad guy. But you hated her? Well, no,

she kind of had this way about her that was smug. What? So how about if I say this? I think the Hulu documentary was the first draft of the second draft of history about Hillary Clinton. I think that's fair. I think the one thing I would disagree with in your scenario, I think there's a decent chance that it's actually just a very rosy picture of Hillary Clinton. I think that Hillary Clinton should actually feel pretty confident in her legacy in the way that we turn people into pretty one-dimensional characters in history. we turn people into pretty one-dimensional characters in history um and i think that hillary clinton may become a very one-dimensional in a positive sense character in american history the first woman to get the nomination she lost because america wasn't ready for a female president

because she was still part of this early feminism developing itself still. It'll be put in the context of Trump and all that other stuff. The fact that she was the wife of a president, it won't be that she was the wife of Bill Clinton. It'll be seen far more as how early in feminism we were that the first female nominee was the wife of a former president that that in and of itself is concerning about how young we were and how to treat women that you had to be the wife of someone powerful and i do think history will be less kind to bill than to her i think that's i mean he did commit perjury in office he did obstruct justice. He was impeached and he was subject to a very credible, heavily substantiated rape allegation. And yeah, I think that history will look back at his

short-lived blaze of popularity in 98 and 99 and 2000 with a bit of befuddlement. A little bit like Andrew Jackson, an incredibly popular president when he was there. in 98 and 99 and 2000 with a bit of befuddlement. A little bit like Andrew Jackson, an incredibly popular president when he was there, who we now have like side eye about. Who had real negative consequences for our country and our culture. Yeah. Yeah. That's a... Well, this was fun, David.

As we say in the biz, you have a hard out in about five minutes. Office hours. My students all have to flee the jurisdiction here soon. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you all for listening. This has been an Advisory Opinions Podcast with David French and Sarah Isger. And I'd be remiss if I didn't give you one last reminder to go ahead and rate us on Apple Podcasts.

We've really appreciated the feedback. Thank you again for listening.