George Catches Up

Retna Ltd. The supremely well-connected ABC newsman George Stephanopoulos on closing the Sunday ratings gap, his Clinton ties, the health-care battle—and whether he really does have a daily conference call with Rahm Emanuel, Paul Begala, and James Carville.

After seven years at the helm of ABC’s Sunday show, the host of This Week With George Stephanopoulos is within striking distance of NBC’s Meet the Press. For much of the past year—especially since the untimely death of MTP moderator Tim Russert and the inauguration of President Barack Obama—Stephanopoulos has been closing the ratings gap with Russert’s replacement, David Gregory.

The 48-year-old former Democratic Party operative—who became one of Bill Clinton’s top aides after serving as House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt’s floor manager—reinvented himself as a television journalist in the late 1990s, after writing All Too Human, a bestselling tell-all about his Clinton White House adventures. The Clintons and their loyalists were enraged by the book and by Stephanopoulos’ less than supportive Monica Lewinsky commentary on ABC. The aide and his ex-bosses have since made amends, but some of the loyalists cling to the sour nickname “George Step-on-top-of-us.”

“I talk to Carville, I talk to Rahm, I talk to Paul, but we never have been on a conference call once in our lives. Ever.”

Today Stephanopoulos, who also is ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, is supremely well-connected in the Obama White House. One of his closest friends is Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a comrade in arms from the Clinton days. Stephanopoulos dished to The Daily Beast about his reporting advantage over lifelong journalists, his tumultuous relationship with Bill and Hill, the future of the GOP, and reports that he participates in a daily phone call with Emanuel, Paul Begala, and James Carville.

So you now have been in the journalism business for what, a dozen years?

I started in 1997.

You obviously have removed any and all skepticism about whether a partisan political operative such as yourself can become a sterling journalist.

Well, it was an evolution, not a revolution. I wasn’t certain what I was going to do when I left the White House. In fact, when I left I was deliberately doing a lot of different things. In addition to coming to ABC as a commentator, I was teaching at Columbia, working on my book, doing writing for Newsweek, because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. A couple years in, I did really decide that I wanted to plunge full-time into another and different career, which was journalism at ABC, which is something I’m incredibly grateful for. It really gave me the opportunity to learn the craft.

Your relationship with the Clintons has been through many different phases, and it was no secret that they weren’t happy about your book. How is it now?

Very good. Actually I flew back from Cairo with Secretary of State Clinton. I did an interview with her there [in June, when President Obama delivered his speech to the Muslim world]. I haven’t spoken to President Clinton in a while, but I’m hoping to have him on the show soon.

There’s been some talk, recently denied, that the State Department is getting old for Hillary and she’s considering perhaps running for Senate again, and there are also New York governor rumors in the mix. What do you think the likelihood of that is?

Who knows? It doesn’t seem likely to me, and it seems she’s pretty engaged as secretary of State. That’s certainly been my impression covering her and when I’ve spoken with her, so I’d be surprised. But we’ll see.

When you worked in the Clinton White House, you suffered from bouts of depression, you broke out in hives, you had some very tough moments. Is journalism more fun?

I did write about that, that’s true, but that’s only one part of the experience. You know, working in the White House is an incredible privilege and something I wouldn’t trade for a second. But journalism is incredibly meaningful to me, and I think it’s part of making a difference as well. I don’t know if it’s fun. What I like about journalism is I get to work on the same issues and engage them the same—just from a different perspective—and clearly I have a lot more independence. There are times when working in the White House was more fun; there are times when journalism is more fun. I guess that’s not the only measure I apply to work.

You went on The O’Reilly Factor and you didn’t flinch and you didn’t correct him when he said, “I’m an independent and you’re a Democrat.”

I don’t self-identify. I didn’t think it was worth getting into. I’m not like some journalists who don’t vote at all, and I think that there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think I’ve proven that I can separate my personal opinion, my personal feelings, from my professional work. It’s just a question of whether you’re going to take on that fight at that moment, on live television.

I guess you learn how to pick your shots. Speaking of which, how do you think the Obama White House has been doing compared to the White House you’re most familiar with? Arguably you made some rookie mistakes in the Clinton White House. Have they avoided some of those?

I think they went to school on some of the mistakes that we made early on. That’s no secret.

Indeed, some of the people in the Obama White House, like Rahm Emanuel, were involved in the Clinton White House mistakes.

Right. Arguably on the health-care battle, I think the president really repositioned the debate on Wednesday night. I think you can even argue that they might have gone too far, been too distant from the legislative battle early on. But there’s no question they did [learn from the Clinton experience]. It’s also a very, very different time, and they have very different challenges. Fighting two wars in your first six months of office, and trying to help your country recover from a financial collapse—that’s very different from the situation we faced in 1993. There are clearly similarities in the health-care fight, but the context is very different.