How Hillary's Past will Play in 2016
KING: Welcome back. Our puzzle this week, piecing together the many looks and many roles of Hillary Clinton and posing this question: will an old friend's candid notes of their conversations help or haunt a 2016 Clinton White House run? First a trip down memory lane. I remember this day like yesterday. I was there 1992, a diner in Chicago. The first lady of Arkansas in those days answering questions about her law work. Why was she a high-powered corporate lawyer when her husband was the governor of Arkansas?</s>CLINTON: I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas. But I decided to do is to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.</s>KING: Sixteen years later, a United States Senator, a Democratic candidate for president, bowing out of the race. Barack Obama wins but Hillary Clinton suggests women win, too.</s>CLINTON: Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it's got about 18 million cracks in it.</s>KING: More recently near the end of her tenure as Secretary of State, defending herself and her department, after the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I understand.</s>CLINTON: Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they would go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?</s>KING: Many looks, many roles for Hillary Clinton over the year. So perhaps no surprise, she's had a bit of a roller coaster when it comes to public opinion. Let's look at some highs and some lows. One early high, look right here, Bill Clinton just inaugurated as president, the country warming to its new president and its first lady. Look, she's near 70 percent right there, but didn't take too long. Here's the low, 1996. The Rose Law Firm -- that's where she worked in Arkansas, some of her law records had mysteriously disappeared. Then they suddenly showed up at the White House. Immediately under subpoena by the independent counsel, Ken Starr -- his investigation, remember, started about Clinton family finances. A couple of years later, back above 50 -- a political high point of sorts, impeachment, Monica Lewinsky -- the country was mad at him, sympathetic to her. Then you'll see here pretty much a flat line through the George W. Bush administration, she's right around 50 percent -- some people love her, some people not so sure. But then look, above 60 percent early in the Obama administration; even a lot of Republicans came to admire her work as Secretary of State traveling the globe representing the United States. Now these new notes -- the Diane Blair files and the question, Maeve Reston is this. Are the Republicans who say Hillary Clinton's past is the way to block her from living in the White House in the future -- a smart strategy?</s>RESTON: Not a smart strategy. I mean, you can bring this stuff up. You can churn it up, but when you talk to Republican opposition researchers who really are going to be the ones that are doing the digging, they say you have to find something new, you have to find something fresh. Voters when they heard all of this before have had a much more limited effected. At the same time the Republicans also have the possibility of overreaching by going too much into like the far, far past because as we've seen in the past that ends up making her look like a victim and then people rush to her.</s>KING: Right -- Republicans overreaching when it comes to the Clinton? That's impossible.</s>HAMBY: And yet we're talking about the past -- right.</s>KING: Right.</s>HAMBY: And aren't elections about the future?</s>RESTON: Right.</s>HAMBY: And I think that's is what was actually kind of sophisticated about what Rand Paul is doing which is just you bring this issue up and all of a sudden splash it across Web sites and newspapers and TV -- you know, pictures of the Rose Law Firm and the Clintons, and you know, just raising the specter of this baggage --</s>KING: And raising -- raising money. There's no question Republicans can use these to rile their base. But those people aren't going to vote for Hillary Clinton anyway. But you can raise money, you can prove you're tough. So let's go through some of it because I think, to your point, the question is did we learn anything fundamentally new. We get some great new quotes, we get some new color but do we learn anything new about the character of the person. Here's one of them and this one is interesting. "The first lady asked a close friend and confidant for advice on how best to preserve her general memories of the administration and of health care in particular? When asked why? Clinton said revenge." We don't like vengeful politicians. We've been through this with Chris Christie's controversies. Does that hurt her?</s>LOWREY: I think again, it's going to be more impressionistic. Like any one little data point there is probably building a larger picture. And I think the expense of this is going to make her seem like kind of a political sleaze ball from the 90s, it's going to be pretty powerful in the general election especially as you have a new, fresh candidate that Republicans are going to seek out. I don't think that this is going to have much effect during the primary -- I really don't.</s>KING: That's a great point.</s>LOWREY: But during a general election -- sure.</s>KING: That's a great point. A show of hands at the table if anyone thinks access to the Diane Blair files and recycling all of this is going to lead somebody credible to decide I can challenge Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Seeing no hands --</s>COSTA: I think it's going to be some ambitious Democrat, maybe not a well-known Democrat who sees this sense of Clinton nostalgia among Democrats but also really Clinton antagonism among the Republicans saying that's my opening. Maybe it's not Warren or O'Malley, maybe it's someone else. But there is going to be space that's going to represent the new Democrats.</s>HAMBY: One thing that seems to me to be pretty resonant from 2016 is this memo from Stan Greenberg (inaudible) that surfaced from 1992 that said, you know, voters kind of perceive Hillary Clinton as a little bit chilly. They're not sure what to think of her. And secondly they are skeptical of this notion of a co-presidency that you get two for one. This came up a little bit in 2008 with Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and it probably will again in 2016.</s>KING: I remember when it came up in 1992. I was there; I got a lot of these gray hairs back in those days. This is my favorite, our CNN team in Fayetteville pulled this out of the Diane Blair files. According to Blair Clinton told her that when the Clintons are done with this, meaning her husband's presidency, the first lady will go be a kindergarten teacher and never have to hold hands on the Hill again. She decided not to be a kindergarten teacher, Maeve.</s>RESTON: I think that, first of all, it's not a surprise, but I think also that some of what these files showed was a little bit of that real Hillary Clinton that actually some people like. I'm not going to put up the facade, I'm not going to be someone that I'm not. I hate this, you know, the hand holding pictures, and I think to some extent that humanizes her a little bit. Kind of makes her more interesting to voters.</s>KING: When I went through the polling, Robert, saw the high point after Secretary of State. And I think that's the fundamental question for her. She wants to be president. She wants to be the first female president but does she want to go back through that again and become a polarizing figure like she was in the 90s and to a degree when she ran for president in 2008? Here's something in the Blair files that I think tell us a lot about how Hillary Clinton used this. She's talking about after impeachment. They go out to dinner, Bill and Hillary and Chelsea. They go out to a play. Their public appearances jolly (ph) because he has survived impeachment and actually the Republicans are back on their heels. She says, "This" she said "is what tries their adversaries totally nuts, that they don't bend. They don't appear to be suffering." If you remember those days that did drive Republican nuts. How did Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton survive all of that?</s>COSTA: I think that's right. And my big takeaway from reading these files is that the Clintons play tough. They play political hardball. Democrats who are thinking about challenging her in the primary better remember that. And Republicans -- as much as they're seizing upon this as opposition research, this is still the Clinton machine. You go at them you better go at them to win.</s>HAMBY: Well, speaking of the Clinton machine, one thing -- putting aside the fact that there's no old news in today's news cycle. One thing that these files crystallize to me is that the lack of coherent response and messaging from the Clinton universe. They keep saying she's a private citizen. We're not going to respond to e- mails. We're not going to address this. This might not be a bad story for her but the Clinton people are not in the conversation. They say they are not going to be, you know, until she runs for president perhaps. And I think that's a real problem or her because there are plenty of Republicans from Rand Paul to these Republican research groups who are absolutely willing to flood the zone with negative Clinton stuff and they better be better equipped at responding to them.</s>RESON: Instead they have these shadow groups that are coming out -- the hangers on around her coming out and defending and sort of speaking for Hillary Clinton world when really they are not actually in it, and that's a dangerous way to go.</s>LOWREY: I do think it is strategic in the sense that I think they want this to kind of peter out. I think they want to kind of just get all of this stuff out there so it's not just from 20 years ago. Oh -- that's from six months ago. Like forget about all of that. Focus on this new Hillary. I do think that there's -- you can criticize the strategy but I think there's a strategy there.</s>KING: We couldn't get a response from her office. And she has not answered any of this directly, but she did do an event on Thursday morning with her daughter. Listen to this, Hillary Clinton thinks before she speaks, and she knows people want to know what she thinks about the Blair files and all this focus on her. Listen.</s>CLINTON: One of the best pieces of advice that I've ever heard from anyone is Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1920s who said that, you know, women in politics or in public roles should grow skin like a rhinoceros. I think there's some truth to that.</s>KING: And Eleanor Roosevelt didn't know about Twitter. Good advice, skin like a rhinoceros? Does she have it? Some people say she's thin-skinned. Some people --</s>COSTA: I think she's trying to give the image of having a skin like rhinoceros when it comes to politics. I think Annie is right. I think the Hillary Clinton strategy right now is as all this noise starts to really become an issue for her. How could she stay elevated above the conversation? How in 2014 can she help out some strategic Democrats in races? How could she just stay above the fray so she can enter strong?</s>KING: She's working on a book, too, so she will try to reshape this --</s>KING: -- and she'll try to steer the conversation back to where she wants to get it. Everybody stay put. Next our reporters empty their notebooks, including you won't want to miss this, a coming judgment day for Chris Christie. A glimpse at tomorrow's news today, next.