Thoughts on the Hillary Clinton Interview

There were a couple thoughts and impressions I took away after interviewing Hillary Clinton Sunday in Rhode Island.

First of all, she's much different in person than the impression you get on TV. Don't take my word for it. Most journalists who have interviewed her recognize the fact that the public caricature of Hillary is different from dealing with her one on one. She's warmer and much friendlier than she appears on TV. Some of her handlers have told me that it's too bad most Americans don't really get the opportunity to interact with her privately one on one. The fact that she has a dedicated staff should tell us something.

The interview was supposed to go 15 minutes or so. It went 25. She just kept talking and I just kept asking. Obviously the Clinton camp saw this as an opportunity to talk about her faith and humanize her to a certain degree. But I think they saw something else too. They know that The Brody File is all about fairness. We here at The Brody File have always talked about having a "right down the middle" attitude and it is here where newsmakers can come to explain their side of the story. I think this interview speaks to that.

As for what she said, I thought she opened up about the 'celebrity of Obama" quite a bit and was basically saying (without actually saying it) that he's mostly style and very little substance. I guess the "actions speak louder than words" line is as close as she came to saying that. But look, here's my impression. She's clearly frustrated with all this Obama hype. She's banking on voters coming to a common sense decision based on the experience she brings to the table.

I thought her comments about her faith; her marriage and the 1990's were particularly insightful. Look, I don't pretend to be Barbara Walters. I wasn't going to ask her Walters's famous question, "If you were a tree, what kind would you be?" but she did offer some interesting thoughts about her tough road through the 90's. It's not often she goes down this road. She definitely feels misunderstood. The Obama campaign knows she's vulnerable to the "politics of the 90's" theme and have made sure to mention it as a regular part of his stump speech.

One final thought: on national security because we are a nation at war, I really got the sense she's very concerned about Obama leading that effort. She never said that and really can't because if Obama is the nominee, those comments would come back to haunt him, her and the party in the General Election. When I asked her if she was concerned about Obama leading the country in a very dangerous time she said this:

"Well I think it's up to the voters to determine how they judge this, but I think it's important that voters think hard. We have no margin for error. The velocity of problems that come at the president of the united states is not going to slowdown, it is, if anything going to accelerate because as we saw when Gordon Brown became prime minister after Tony Blair, there was an immediate attack, and thankfully they were unsuccessful, but we just can't assume that you have anytime to figure out what it is we need to do, and I think that I walk into the Oval Office ready to be commander-in-chief."

Watch clips from the interview here.

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