Word: clinton
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...Clinton is not an easy interview. She is preternaturally cautious, a consequence of her Methodist propriety and 20 years of insane public scrutiny. She does not like to talk about herself, but she did tell me one interesting story about Bhutto. When her husband was governor of Arkansas, she and Bill and Chelsea visited London and stood on the sidewalk outside Bhutto's hotel, waiting for the then Pakistani Prime Minister to arrive. "She was wearing a yellow embroidered shalwar kameez with a chiffon scarf. I was just a fan, standing on the sidewalk with everyone else...
...When Clinton and Bhutto met formally, on the first day of the 1995 trip, they hit it off immediately, in part because Bhutto was also obsessed with the impact the Islamist tide was having on women and children. I remember asking Bhutto that day what the biggest change in her country had been over the past 25 years, and she said, "I used to be able to walk down the street wearing jeans, without a headscarf. Now I can't." When I asked her why, she said - bluntly - "The Saudis," who had been aggressively funding religious schools. Of course, Bhutto...
Ironically, the rise of Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaeda has brought Clinton's interests - microfinance, education and health care - to the center of national-security policy for the first time. The impetus came not from the State Department but from the military, where counterinsurgency doctrine demanded that social services in war zones - schools, justice, economic development - reinforce the military's efforts to secure the population. As a result, there was immediate chemistry between Clinton and General David Petraeus, author of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, who became one of her prime military mentors when she served on the Senate...
...Clinton who brought together Petraeus and Holbrooke ("my two alpha males," she calls them) for the first time - at her home in Washington on the Friday before the Obama Inauguration. The affection and respect she gained for the military while serving in the Senate has helped make the relationship between State and the Pentagon less fraught than usual - although Defense Secretary Gates' insistence on the need for bigger State Department budgets hasn't hurt. In fact, relations with the Pentagon have gone smoother, at times, than Clinton's relationship with the White House staff. Clinton was particularly irritated...
Another of Clinton's military mentors, retired General Jack Keane, once told me, "I'm a Republican. I disagree with her about practically everything, but she'd make a hell of a Commander in Chief." There is a palpable toughness to the woman, a hard edge that contrasts with the President's instinctive impulse toward conciliation. One of the sharpest exchanges of the presidential campaign came when Obama accused Clinton of echoing the "bluster" of George W. Bush after she said the U.S. would be able to "obliterate" Iran if it used nuclear weapons against Israel. Clinton's edgier tone...