When Barack Obama asked Hillary Rodham Clinton to be his secretary of state, the former first lady reluctantly confessed she had a big problem taking the job — her headline-grabbing hubby, the authors of a new book on the 2008 presidential campaign claim.
Clinton at first rejected Obama’s offer flat-out without explanation, but when the then-president-elect called a second time, she admitted her dilemma, one of the book’s authors tells “60 Minutes” tomorrow night.
“At that point she says, ‘There’s one last thing that’s a problem, which is my husband. You’ve seen what this is like. It will be a circus if I take this job,’ ” John Heilemann,who co-wrote “Game Change” (HarperCollins) with Mark Halperin, tells the CBS show. The book’s due out Monday.
Obama — who reportedly nixed offering Sen. Clinton the vice presidency because he, too, had reservations about Bill Clinton — insisted he needed her on his team. “Obama comes back and shows vulnerability to her. He says to her, ‘Given the economic crisis, given all I have to deal with, I need your help,’ ” Halerpin, who writes for Time magazine, tells “60 Minutes.”
He says “Game Change” also reports that Clinton was so convinced she’d win the Democratic nomination, she instructed two top advisers to plan the transition for her presidency.
Meanwhile, a strategist for Sen. John McCain‘s campaign, who is also interviewed on tomorrow’s “60 Minutes,” claims staffers had such a hard time prepping Sarah Palin to debate Joe Biden, they were convinced it would be a “debacle of historic and epic proportions.”
Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief campaign strategist, says, “She was not focused . . . She was not engaged.”
Part of the problem, which Palin discusses in her own book, “Going Rogue,” was the Alaska governor’s penchant for referring to Biden as “O’Biden.” To solve the problem, Palin started the debate by asking her opponent, “Can I call you Joe?” Biden obliged.