Word: begala
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Aides preparing Clinton for his CBS interview last week began with a blunt sample question, phrased by political adviser Paul Begala: "Your health-care reform is in trouble, the polls look bad, ((Senate Republican leader Bob)) Dole says your plan is dead." (Actually, Dole carefully qualified his statement, saying "in its present form.") The President's response, says Begala, "was all energy, energy, energy. To Clinton the notion that he's getting into trouble is invigorating." The President and Hillary Rodham Clinton plan an intensified grass-roots campaign to build public support. Bill Clinton gave an example Wednesday by phoning...
Meetings at the Clinton White House are informal affairs, beginning late and ending later. So when political consultant Paul Begala stumbled into an 8:30 a.m. health-care meeting last month just 14 minutes late, he was certain that he was right on time. Instead, the first thing he saw and heard was deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes close his notebook and say, "O.K., let's get to work." Dumbfounded, Begala rechecked his watch. "It said 8:44," he recalled. "I thought, 'Man, I like this guy!' Never before in the recorded history of the Clinton presidency has there...
...Clinton fights his schedulers for free time every weekend, but then gets jumpy by midday Sunday and is often working in some fashion by Sunday night. Last August, as he was preparing to leave Washington for his longest vacation in four years, he suddenly got cold feet. Consultant Paul Begala started throwing fastballs. "Mr. President, if you don't go on vacation, the American people are going to think you're weird." Replied Clinton: "I am weird...
...contract. (In truth, a recent Social Security beneficiary gets back what he paid with interest by age 71; anything after that is free). The Clinton political team believes the most serious problem is not Social Security but the runaway costs of Medicare and Medicaid. As outside political adviser Paul Begala argues, "All those ivory-tower elitists who talk about entitlement reform and really mean entitlement cuts should roll up their sleeves and help us reform health care...
...biggest hiss went to Pat Buchanan, the second biggest to Ross Perot; a dog wearing a "Barkin for Harkin" sandwich board got an arf (former Harkin aides were present). The eeriest reverse deja-vu moment came when the camera caught Begala outside a hotel doing his drop-dead Perot imitation to abc's Mark Halperin's decent Al Gore, a preview of the matchup the night before on Larry King Live. The deepest groan sounded when, on-screen, campaign chairman (now U.S. Trade Representative) Mickey Kantor, in his power tie and suspenders, enters a room full of jeans...