Hillary Clinton on Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Year of the Girl

We are delighted to share this conversation with former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. She graciously spoke with us about the conflict in Israel and Gaza, the delicate balance of diplomacy, the impact of social media on our modern democracies, and the Year of the Girl. We could not have enjoyed this more and we know you’ll feel the same.

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EPISODE RESOURCES

• You and Me Both episode with Bill Clinton 

• Hillary Rodham Clinton: The Weaponization of Loneliness (The Atlantic)

• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (Amazon) 

• Habits of the Heart, With a New Preface: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Amazon)

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC, and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.  

[00:00:34] We're so glad you're here today for a very special episode of Pantsuit Politics. We are joined by former Secretary of State, Senator and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sarah, when I tell people about this strange thing that I do for a living, often they will say, "Pantsuit Politics. Is that like a Hillary Clinton tribute?"  

Sarah [00:00:53] Yes.  

Beth [00:00:55] Well, the truth is Pantsuit Politics is a name you came up with for an entirely different concept than what we do today. Since this feels like a full circle moment, though, can you set the record straight? Is Pantsuit Politics like a Hillary Clinton tribute?  

Sarah [00:01:07] Well, ain't that so much of how I move about in political spaces as a tribute to her? Yes. I learned a lot about how to be in the world from working with her and watching her over the years. And now you can't separate the word pantsuit from her at this point. And you can't separate so much of our politics and conversations about politics from her and her life in American civic culture over, what, four or five decades at this point? But what is a real gift is when you get to spend time with her and realize the very real human being behind all those myths and perceptions. And she brings such a complexity and richness to everything she does that I absolutely try to mirror that here at Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:01:52] Well, we're thrilled that she's here. Secretary Clinton was very generous with her time and perspective in this conversation. That includes everything from the objectives of Israel's military, to the role of expertise and diplomacy in an increasingly post-truth world, to how she is processing 2023 as the Year of the Girl. So here is Secretary Hillary Clinton.  

[00:02:12] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:02:31] Secretary Clinton Welcome to Pantsuit Politics. We are thrilled to have you!  

Hillary Clinton [00:02:35] I am thrilled to be here with the two of you. It's great.  

Sarah [00:02:39] Now, we're going to start off with your decades of experience and expertise inside the Middle East. And with that perspective, the first thing we wanted to ask you is what do you see as similar continuing patterns in the current conflict in Gaza? And what do you see is different? Because we've had experts on who say everything is different now, this is a new era and we wanted your opinion on that.  

Hillary Clinton [00:03:07] Well, I think it's a really good question because there are both similarities and differences. And among the similarities is that there has not yet been a resolution of the right of the Palestinians to have a homeland of their own. There has not yet been a guarantee of security to Israel so that it can live in peace with its neighbors. There has been a lot of hopeful moments going back to the very beginning of Israel's founding as a state when both Israel and the Palestinians were offer states and Israel accepted and the Palestinians then called mostly Arabs, but we know them as Palestinians, refused. And the wars that were fought and the extraordinary pain that was experienced by people in that region. And so when I look at it, I just did a podcast with my husband for the finale of my podcast, You and Me Both, where he recounted his own efforts and experiences starting really from the beginning of his administration in 1993, all the way to the last days of his second term in early 2001, the offer that was made to the Palestinians then under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, for a state that was now unimaginable. Literally all the territory they'd been offered, a small portion being kept by Israel, made up for by territory inside Israel. And it just breaks my heart that the Israelis offered that and the Palestinians under Arafat just could not find a way to yes. And then there has been so much turmoil since then, because I think as Billy explains on my podcast, once that offer was made and declined, Israelis were like, well, we can't do more than that. There's no way we can offer more than that. That is our best offer. And we don't know how to deal with this now.  

[00:05:32] And unfortunately, there was what was called an intifada, which is an uprising, resistance, a lot of violence. And as you know, when Ariel Sharon was prime minister, he unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and forcefully resettled 50,000 Israelis live in Gaza to be governed by the Palestinians. And one of the most tragic outcomes of that particular move was that the Israelis had a very flourishing industry of greenhouses. They were a big supplier out of Gaza to the Middle East, to Europe, even beyond of fruits, vegetables, flowers. And the most extreme members of the resistance, the rejectionists, (now we know them as Hamas) destroyed all of that. So it's so difficult when you look at the one step forward, two steps back history. There was another effort when I was Secretary of State, we got Netanyahu to do a settlement freeze. We couldn't make much progress. There was more efforts made when John Kerry followed me. And then when Trump became president, the Palestinians were basically out in the cold. Everybody thought there's no way we can deal with them. The Arabs wanted to deal directly, the Arab states like in the Gulf. But also in North Africa, wanted to deal directly with Israel. So all of this has been a tragic historical unfolding. And the similarities are we still don't have any kind of peace effort that would engage the Palestinian leadership that renounced violence against Israel. Actually, Bill and I were in Gaza when he was president and saw the Palestinian Liberation Organization vote to take out a provision in their charter calling for the destruction of Israel, committing to nonviolence, committing to a peace process.  

[00:07:41] But the leaders who try to make peace, whether it's Anwar Sadat, who made the peace between Egypt and Israel when President Carter was in office, or Yitzhak Rabin, who was very heroic with the Oslo Accords and then looking for peace, both of them were murdered. Sadat was murdered by an Egyptian who was radical and thought he was selling out Egypt to the Israelis. And Rabin was murdered by an extreme Israeli settler who thought Rabin was selling out Israel to the Palestinians. So the violence is not new. What is new is the very close connection between Hamas and Iran and the efforts by Iran to create pressure on Israel and beyond that, on the West through the use of its proxies, Hamas. Hezbollah in the north, in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen, who are now firing missiles at Israel, firing missiles at ships going through that very narrow strait at their southern border. So there there are some new features to this. But I think people need to understand there is no way to make peace with Hamas. It is not in Hamas's interests as they see it, to make peace. They are a dedicated terrorist organization to the destruction of Israel. And now as part of this broader Iranian effort to undermine not just Israel, but undermine the West, they are not going to in any way be the leaders that could at the end of this war possibly chart a more peaceful, better future for the Palestinians.  

Beth [00:09:32] Given that Hamas does not exist in a vacuum, given this connection to Iran, all of these other proxies, and the fact that it's always difficult to eradicate terrorism, what are the objectives here and how do you measure them? We understand that everything that has unfolded beginning on October 7th has come at such enormous human cost. How do we know when there has been a just pursuit of doing whatever can be done to take Hamas out of power?  

Hillary Clinton [00:10:07] That's a really important question, Beth. I think anyone who sees what's happening right now should feel great concern and compassion both for the Israelis but also for the Palestinians. But what I want people to understand is Hamas cares nothing for Palestinian lives. And I don't say that lightly. It's like Russia's emptying its prison, drafting people to go into its war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin doesn't care about his own people that he is sacrificing in his savage invasion of Ukraine. Well, Hamas doesn't care about the Palestinian people. I've seen interviews, obviously translated interviews of the leaders of Hamas. And the political leaders are sitting very comfortably in Doha, in Qatar. But they're also doing videos about how they will do it again and again. October 7th was just the beginning. They will never stop. And when they're asked questions that you or I might ask, like, well, what about the Palestinian people in Gaza? You built hundreds of miles of tunnels. Did you not think to build bomb shelters or not put your munitions under schools and hospitals and mosques? Their answer is that's not our problem. That's not our concern. In fact, I heard one of them say that's up to the U.N. The U.N., for heaven's sakes. The U.N. to protect Palestinian civilians. We know they use civilians as shields, and we know that they are in the name of martyrdom, willing to sacrifice innocent people and children, which is so tragic.  

[00:11:56] So from I think a perspective of when does this stand, I believe when Israel has killed or captured the significant military leadership of Hamas that is still hiding in those tunnels. From what I know, they have killed or captured a number of such leaders. But remember, Hamas could end this at any time. Hamas could very well say we've accomplished our goal. We've turned much of the world against Israel, thanks to videos on TikTok and propaganda from Iran and others. So we want safe passage. We're getting out of here, and here are your hostages. Good bye. They could do that at any time. But if you are the leader of a country-- and put aside who the leader of Israel is because I want him to go as soon as as possible. But if you're the leader of a country and you've been so brutally attacked and you've had cease fires over and over again-- I negotiated a ceasefire when I was Secretary of State in November of 2012. So you've had ceasefires, you had a ceasefire all the way up until Hamas broke it on October 7th. And you're hearing what all of us are hearing, that they don't intend to stop. They're still coming after you. If you can at least try to get their leadership, that doesn't mean it's the end of the struggle, because it's an ideology as well as a military movement. So I think there will hopefully be sooner instead of later, an end to the fighting with the capture or killing of Hamas leaders and hopefully the freeing of the remaining 140 or so hostages.  

Sarah [00:14:01] As I was listening to that conversation with you and President Clinton, which I highly recommend to everyone listening, I found it so informative. I thought about the conversations I've been having with my own 14 year old who's moved far to the left of me in the conversations that are happening in America around this conflict. And I thought, man, it feels like we need to be listening to people with expertise and a history on this issue. But the conversation, the dialog, especially on social media and on the Internet, it's like if you have expertise, you have power, and the power makes you inherently unbelievable. You can't trust somebody with power, you can't trust somebody. So it's like it's excluding people by definition with expertise on this issue. And I wonder how you think about that. I think there's a generational component, but I know that you started your long civic life protesting and speaking out. And how do you put those pieces together? How do we say expertise matters? We understand the generational critique. It just feels like it's at a boiling point right now. And I wonder how you think about that.  

Hillary Clinton [00:15:07] Well, I think you're absolutely describing the situation that we are living with. And it's not only your 14 year old, it's young people generally. First of all, we've learned through surveys that many, many young people I've seen numbers between 20 and 40% don't know about the Holocaust or don't believe it. I mean, this is a failure of education of the first degree. Because how can you forget the most horrible mass murder that we know of in certainly recent history? So there is a big gap. And you don't have to be an expert to know about the Holocaust. I mean, that's just part of what you should know about the 20th century. But a lot of our kids and young people-- when I say kids, your teenager. But I'm teaching at Columbia University now and there are a lot of people, a lot of students who don't have the history, don't have the context, don't know the laws of war. A lot of important points. And I think several things. One, there's a real preference for the victim. And I get that. I mean, if you are young and you see someone who you think is being victimized by someone more powerful, you have a kind of visceral reaction like that's not right. Why is that person being picked on? Maybe they're being picked on because they're LGBTQ or they're being picked on because of their race or their religion. Or maybe you think they're being picked on in a sense of Israel exercising self-defense against the people living in Gaza. There's also a real lack of understanding of what Hamas is. People try to portray Hamas as some kind of freedom fighter or some kind of anti-colonial, anti-oppression group. And they have never been part of a peace process because they are only about literally ending Israel.  

[00:17:11] And as the spokesperson, former Admiral John Kirby at the White House said the other day, people are going to throw around the word genocide. It more properly applies to what Hamas's goals are, the complete elimination of Israel and of the Jewish people. That is their goal, which is genocidal. Israel, on the other hand-- again, young people may not know this or pay attention to it. The rules of war permit Israel to defend itself, and it must try to minimize civilian casualties. It has done things like give warnings, drop pamphlets, do loudspeakers, try to move people out of areas that are going to be targets. Russia didn't do that when it invaded Ukraine. And I don't see young people protesting Russia. Russia has bombed hospitals. Russia's bombed schools. Russia has tortured and raped its way through Ukraine. If you really are on the side of the oppressed, Ukraine is oppressed. I've seen the same thing with what Russia and Iran did in Syria, literally bombing Syria into oblivion, destroying ancient towns like Aleppo, forcing millions of people to have to flee for their lives. I don't see people protesting against Russia and Iran over Syria. So there's something about this, and I believe it is because the propaganda on this issue has frankly been very effective. You go look at TikTok and other social media sites, there's no nuance, there is no history, there is no context. Israel, bad. Hamas, good. Palestinians always good. No kind of even objective effort to try to find where both sides have done what they should or shouldn't, because Hamas got its own propaganda tool. And, of course, Iran and Russia, of course, who's weighed in on the side of Hamas, China, which always wants to upset the United States and undermine our position.  

[00:19:13] So the propaganda is incredibly powerful. But when young people chant or protest in favor of Hamas, I like to ask them, "Oh, would you want to live under Hamas? Would you want to live under their disregard for human life? Would you want to live under their theological misogyny? Would you want to live as an LGBTQ person and probably be executed for your sexual orientation?" I mean, there is no counter propaganda. And, of course, the death in Gaza is horrible. It's horrible. And I was in favor of these humanitarian pauses. I would like to see more aid in, more hostages out, more safety for the Palestinian people. But no one should be on the side of Hamas. It's like being on the side of ISIS. They are the same kind of theologically driven terrorist group. And so a lot of young people are caught up in what they view as being on the side of the little guy against the big guy. Going to your point about expertise, is so disregarded these days. People didn't want to take the vaccine because they saw on some cite on social media that Bill Gates had put a chip in it. I mean, just nonsense stuff. And so we are in a post-truth world. So even if you know something and you can prove it like the Holocaust happened, the voices that too many people (and particularly young people) are paying attention to, have agendas.  

[00:20:57] The 12 biggest sites pushing anti-vaccine information were making money. They were selling herbs or they were selling veterinary medicine or whatever they were doing. They were making money off of people's gullibility. Well, here you've got people promoting a political ideological agenda that doesn't benefit the United States, doesn't benefit your child, doesn't benefit my students at Columbia, but does benefit Iran, Russia, China, autocracy, terrorism. And we are in a terrible moment right now because those of us who say, look, life is complicated. History is complicated. People should be held to the highest standards. That's what I've said consistently about Israel. You can keep all these thoughts in your head at one time. Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed a barbaric, savage attack. Israel has a right to defend itself, and under the laws of war, Israel must do everything it can to minimize civilian loss. But then you have to also add, but Hamas doesn't care about civilians, so it's really difficult to minimize civilian loss. I mean, these are what an education is supposed to give you, the ability to parse and think and draw conclusions. But the addictive power of social media is shaping minds in a way that we have never, ever, ever seen in human history.  

Beth [00:22:24] I somehow got a peek into a corner of the Internet that believes Taylor Swift could just stop what's happening in Gaza if she would speak up about it. 

Sarah [00:22:34] What? Oh, no. 

Hillary Clinton [00:22:34] Oh, yeah, that's right. Hello? Yeah, that's exactly right, Beth. Between some people on the Internet attacking Taylor Swift, who is a really wonderful human being, who has got great talent and has been successful, good for her, you've got people endowing her with powers she could never have. It's crazy.  

Beth [00:22:57] Well, and I wanted to ask you about this. I wonder if this propaganda is so effective, in part because my generation has not seen a lot of diplomacy or heard a lot of pro diplomacy discussion. I look at the way the administration has responded to what's happening with Israel, and I see President Biden looking for that combination of pressure and release that we give Israel enough space and respect that it wants to listen to us when we have critiques. I wonder how you would share with our audience and with all of us who who don't have that diplomatic experience, what are the alternatives here? If he were behaving like an activist, which is what I hear a lot of people calling for him to do, what would the result of that be?  

Hillary Clinton [00:23:50] It would be exactly as you are implying. It would be the Israelis feeling abandoned, feeling that their losses, which if you look at it in terms of a proportion of population, they lost like 1200 people. That would be a loss of like 65,000 for us in America. And if somebody had come across one of our borders and killed 65,000 Americans, we would want our friends to be on our side as they were after 9/11. And so you would basically be setting up exactly, as you said, a situation where we would have no influence. If people, for example, had said about us after 9/11, "Too bad, we don't care. Go your own way. Whatever," would that have changed our attitude? I think it would have hardened our attitudes. It would have made us even more determined and more stubborn about doing things. And, frankly, we did some things that don't make a lot of sense in retrospect. Basically, out of that emotion that we were experiencing. And, yeah, people can say in a very rational time, "Oh, but don't act out of rage. Don't act out of fear." But you know what? When people are hurting and they've been attacked, it's really hard to find your way forward. And so with the Israelis, I think what Biden has tried to do is exactly as you described, and that's the way diplomacy with your friends and oftentimes your adversaries has to work. You are supportive or you are quiet in public and you are critical and pushing in private. And you are much more likely to get the results you eventually want if you are not embarrassing or shaming or rejecting the counterpart in your diplomacy, in this case would be the U.S. and Israel.  

[00:25:48] But even if Biden had rejected and said, "Oh, we're very sorry, all these people were murdered. We're very sorry that you're in a state of trauma, but you can't defend yourself. Don't go into Gaza because it's got 2 million people and it's incredibly dense. And because it's war, you're going to end up killing innocent people." Would they have listened? No. So what I think has been accomplished by Biden being very embracing of Israel, both by Biden, by Blinken, by others who I've talked to in the administration, we did get those humanitarian pauses. The military in Israel is saying like, we can't stop. We know now where some of these people are. We know that they have fled their positions in the north, heading south. And the Israeli government under U.S. pressure, basically said, no, we're going to stop. We're stopping the fighting. So, yes. And I think the other important piece of this is what happens the day after. At some point, hopefully, as I say, sooner instead of later, the Israelis will have captured or killed as many leaders of Hamas as they can possibly reach. And remember too, the Egyptians are not opening their borders to the Palestinians because they don't want the possibility of terrorists coming out with innocent civilians into Egypt. So their borders are closed. Lebanon is not opening its borders to the Palestinians. So the war has to end and then we have to say what's next. And the United States will be the only country, in my opinion, that will have any influence on Israel.  

[00:27:31] There has to be a change of leadership in Israel. The intelligence failures are just beyond anything I've read about. There have been a lot of intelligence failures. I teach about this at Columbia, but the intelligence failures here were so profound. So the government has to go. Netanyahu has to go. There has to be accountability for all of the mistakes that were made, the intelligence that was ignored. And just as an aside, (because your podcast is called Pantsuit Politics) the warnings that were the most persistent and detailed were from women intelligence officers. And they were ignored. And so I think there will have to be a huge and it must be a huge reckoning in Israel. And then the United States will have to try to piece together a Palestinian Authority that can govern Gaza again. We'll have to put together the money to rebuild Gaza. We'll have to figure out how to get Israel to even talk about some kind of new process that could give life to a potential state for the Palestinians in the midst of their own trauma. So your question is so important. As a former secretary of state, there were some things I said in public where I blasted people, where I question people. But a lot of it is done literally behind the scenes where you're trying to move people to some kind of outcome. And it's really hard work.  

[00:29:13] And in our time of constant posting about everything in the universe, not being able to talk about what you're trying to accomplish, then people don't even know you did it. It's a really difficult balancing act for diplomacy. And I gave the Trump administration credit for the Abraham Accords, making deals between Israel and various Arab states like the UAE. And part of the reason we believe that Hamas acted when it did, was to blow up a potential deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. So there is some diplomacy, the results of which you can point to. But a lot of it you didn't know it was happening when it happened. And you can't hear the dog that doesn't bark. In the old days, the old days when I was younger, when you didn't have instantaneous communication, I used to tell the late Henry Kissinger that his secret mission to China, to try to open up China to the world and to create normal relations between China and the United States, could never happen in the cell phone era. You can't go and hide out in Pakistan for a while and sneak over to China. Somebody in the airport is going to see you, somebody serving you food is going to see you. They're going to take a picture.  

Sarah [00:30:38] He's tracking your flight.  

Hillary Clinton [00:30:39] They track your flight. So diplomacy is much, much harder. That doesn't make it less important. In fact, it's probably more important because there's so much misinformation and, yes, disinformation that people have to contend with.  

Sarah [00:30:54] Well, that's what I was thinking about. How your public life and your experience just sits at the intersection of so many of these things, that diplomacy doesn't lend itself to social media in the same way activism does, that we have this growth of social media and this need that people have because they're living in this time of loneliness. I'm waiting for your follow up. It takes a village to be a person. Too it takes a village to raise a child because it feels like in this misinformation, this post-truth world, where what can you believe? What can you trust? I mean, you have the Venn diagram of your life touches on so many of these circles. So how are you thinking about this moment in American history where we have institutions, distrust in institutions, disinformation in a post-truth world, social media, loneliness, and this election that could be the future of our democracy on the line.  

Hillary Clinton [00:31:48] I am really worried. I do like to say I'm an optimist who worries a lot, in tribute to my late friend Madeleine Albright, who famously coined that phrase. But I am really, really worried. And I'm worried because certain of the phenomena you just described, Sarah, are cultural. They're psychological. They're technological. They probably would be happening regardless of our politics. Technology always changes how people interact, how they see themselves, how they plan their lives. When you went from the horse to the car or you invented television and all of a sudden it was not just a special machine, it was in everybody's home. I mean, all of these technological advances, both in social life and military life, caused changes. And so technology drives a lot how people are making choices in their own lives. The loneliness epidemic, which does seem to track the rise of screen time and the addictive nature of social media, all of that would have consequences. But as I tried to talk about in my article about the weaponization of loneliness, there's a political agenda to keep us divided, to keep us frightened, to keep us uncertain, to have us question everything our institutions, medical advice, everything. Now, I'm not one who says every institution and every leader and every medical expert is right. I think you have to be well enough educated, confident enough to be able to question where appropriate. But it's really hard to run a democracy if you have no trust, if you can't find in yourself the capacity to trust your neighbors, to trust your colleagues at work, to trust your local government, your state or national government.  

[00:33:58] I mean, everybody is in this crouch. People are coming after me all the time. It's like a paranoia that I think has been part of the American skepticism about government from the very beginning. But now it just seems to be much more prevalent. And as I said in my article, very clever militias people like Steve Bannon have figured out ways to weaponize that. So let me take an example from Beth's question about diplomacy. Well, we all know that Donald Trump met with the leader of North Korea because he told us and he went and there were pictures and we saw it. Nothing happened. But I bet if you were to question people, the image of Trump being there with them, people would think, oh, wow, that was great. No, it wasn't great. Didn't stop his missile program. Didn't stop his weapons program, didn't stop the oppression and starvation of his own people who take great risks to try to escape his hermit kingdom. But people would think, oh, there he was. And so we don't know what to believe. And if you're a clever enough demagogue, you can get people to believe all kinds of things and you can repeat a message, which is really the definition of propaganda that turns a lie into a believable fact. So I really am worried because left to our own devices, we would figure out as every generation has had to figure out how to deal with new technology. The Industrial revolution, people flooded off of farms into cities. It was horrible at first. They were living in terrible conditions. Little children were working in factories, something that some states are trying to bring back, frankly. But it was horrible.  

[00:35:51] Eventually, people began to organize themselves, stand up for themselves, create pressure for better working conditions, better living conditions. Left to our own devices. I think we could do that. But we are being pressured into thinking that we can't work together. We can't cross partisan divides. We can't find common ground because it's all or nothing. You're either all on my side or you are all on the other side, whether it's from the right or the left-- wherever it's coming from. And what is particularly troubling is how certain elements within our country's politics have made common cause with adversaries. Whether it's people on the far left chanting from the river to the sea, (which despite their efforts to explain it away, is a call for the end of Israel) who are in league with Iran and Hamas. Whether they know it or not, they are. Or people on the right who are trying to remove our support for Ukraine, because for some bizarre reason, they either don't view Putin as a threat or they kind of like that he is a white Christian avatar that is going after gay people and removing protections for women in Russian legislation and all the rest of it. So there are these really unholy, dangerous alliances between our far right and our far left. And I just want to say a word about Biden. I mean, part of the problem that Biden has, it's not that he's old, he's old. Okay. That's that's an issue. It's a reality. He's gotten more done as an old man than many people half his age could have gotten done.  

Sarah [00:37:40] So true.  

Hillary Clinton [00:37:40] But he's boring. And why is he boring? Because he gets up every day and does a job and he models responsible leadership. And he's not a performer. And he's not constantly in our face saying something outrageous so that we all going, "Oh, my God, I don't know what he's going to do next and we can't turn away." It's a huge problem because performance politics, whether it was Boris Johnson in London or Donald Trump in the United States, is a form of entertainment that kind of helps people avoid being citizens. I'm a consumer of entertainment, and this is entertaining to me. Biden, yeah, he passed all this legislation and they're fixing my bridge and they're putting a chip factory in the neighboring county and they're putting people to work and they're doing more clean energy and they've dropped the price of insulin and now they're dropping the price of other pharmaceutical drugs, etc., but it's not very entertaining. It may help my life if somebody can actually make the connection for me, but it's not entertaining. So this is a multi layered problem that we have to figure out how to deal with.  

[00:38:56] Music Interlude.  

Beth [00:39:14] I wonder if a positive trend (as we kind of move to close with some delight here) is that in 2023 women have been very clear about what our entertainment is. We wanted to ask you about the Year of the Girl and Beyonce and Taylor and the Barbie movie and girl math and girl dinner and all the ways in which there has been a counterpoint to that sense of loneliness and that hunkering down and this real building of community around things that are communal experiences. And I wonder if having our boring, competent administration and our fun concerts and tours and movies can help us chart a healthier path forward?  

Hillary Clinton [00:40:05] I love that question. Beth, I thought about that a lot because my daughter took my granddaughter and her cousin to a Taylor Swift concert. And Chelsea, who has been to big events from inaugurations to World Cups to Super Bowls, all these, so there was nothing like it. She had never experienced anything like that Taylor Swift concert. And it was the sense of community and it was the joy of these little girls, teenagers and not so young fans. And so I think you make a good point. And it was true with Beyonce and it was true with Barbie. There was a kind of social rebuke to people who basically try to dismiss the lives of women and girls. And I found it fascinating. And again, this is social media analysis. The right attacked both Beyonce and Taylor Swift and Barbie. And you I think could put your finger on one of the reasons why. Because if there's a healthy community, if people come together first and foremost because of a love of an entertainer, then at least they're in a community. And certainly Taylor Swift has said, okay, it's not enough just to come to my concert. I want you to register to vote. And oh my goodness, the right hated that. Or if Barbie is filling our movie screens and people are seeing the kind of subversive message that Barbie is portraying and America Ferrera's amazing speech at the end about what do you expect from a woman? I mean, we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. I think that is a kind of social statement.  

[00:42:00] And of course, Beyonce, a beautiful, young, vibrant black woman just out there telling her truth, being who she is, is similarly upsetting as we see from the right attacks on social media. So what do we do to try to take that sense of a communal experience and turn it into community? How do we get people to say, I want to feel like I felt at that concert or watching that movie of the concert or going to Barbie, whatever it might be. And I think that's one of our big challenges. And I don't pretend to have any answers, but I think the answer is there. Because if you look at De Tocqueville, if you look at research on everything from social capital to communities able to solve problems together, it has to start at the local grassroots level. People have to be willing to sit at tables where they don't agree with each other. And to go back to your diplomacy question, Beth, when my husband decided that we'd get into the peace process in Northern Ireland and appointed George Mitchell to be the negotiator, he sat for a year at a table with the parties on the opposite sides who would not talk to each other. Then there would be a breakthrough where they would say to George, "Tell so-and-so on the other side of the table that what they said last week was deeply offensive." And then George would have to turn and say, "So-and-so says what you said was deeply offensive." The slow, boring work of diplomacy.  

[00:43:47] And there was nothing to report day after day, month after month, until there was something. And I kind of feel like we need to get a big collective shot of patience and try to figure out how we make some common ground with people. We're not going to be able to do it with everybody. I mean, we have our own ideologues and religious rejectionists and partisans in our own country. But there are enough people, I still believe, who would come together to try to resolve things. We could resolve immigration, in my view, relatively soon. People on both sides would have to give. That's what a democracy requires. You compromise, you give a little and you come to a solution. But I voted for immigration reform when I was in the Senate, and George W Bush said he would sign it and it passed overwhelmingly in the Senate and they wouldn't even give it a vote in the House because they'd rather have a problem than a solution. So we have a lot of work to do to both create political pressure on the anti-democratic forces within our country in order to open the space for community. And that doesn't mean we all agree, but it means we are respectful. We listen and we try to find common ground.  

Sarah [00:45:08] Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for all your time. This has been such a pleasure.  

Hillary Clinton [00:45:14] I have to tell you, it's a pleasure talking to you. And I really want to just end by telling you how much I love your podcast. And doing a podcast myself, You and me Both, I know it's not easy. You do it twice a week. I do it once a week. But I think that it's part of the effort to try to keep a conversation going and to give people a chance to hear maybe something they agree with, but hopefully something they don't agree with, but which causes them to think. And if we can do that, heaven help us, maybe we can make progress again.  

Sarah [00:45:46] Well, my favorite thing about podcasts is you need patience. You can't skim it just to find something to be mad about. And it builds trust over time. All the things that we've been talking about throughout this conversation, it's a long form media that's quite, I think, a good contribution. And then you also said De Tocqueville, and I thought, oh, 2024 that's a good year to reread that. I think that's a Pantsuit Politics book club idea right there.  

Hillary Clinton [00:46:12] And there's a book that goes along with it, which is called Habits of the Heart. Because De Tocqueville basically said that Americans have developed what he called the habits of the heart of cooperation, of banding together in local communities to solve problems, whether it's helping to raise a barn or take care of somebody who has been orphaned or whatever it might be. So, yeah, Habits of the Heart, that's what we need to get back to.  

Sarah [00:46:39] Okay. I like that. I'm going to do that. Thank you so much.  

Beth [00:46:41] Thank you so much.  

Hillary Clinton [00:46:42] Thank you all. So great to talk to you. Thanks for what you're doing.  

[00:46:46] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:46:56] Thank you so much to Secretary Clinton for joining us. Thanks is not a big enough word, but thanks to her team for their efforts to make this conversation happen. And as always, you can join the conversation by writing us at Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com.  

Beth [00:47:09] We'll be back with you on Tuesday. Until then, have the best weekend available to you. 

[00:47:14]  Music interlude.  

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.