Word: begala
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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...
...about last year's Clinton campaign, but that's probably because many of those watching were too choked up by the memories, and their own performances. About half the audience at the Key theater in Georgetown were veterans of the campaign, and half of those were on-screen. Paul Begala, James Carville's partner, wiped away a tear as he watched the scene in which he is a voice speaking from the campaign plane to his spiritual twin on the ground in Little Rock, Arkansas, George Stephanopoulos, the day before the vote. "Paulie," Stephanopoulos says in his power whisper...
...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...