There is a line from the 1973 movie The Way We Were, where Katie Morosky, played by Barbra Streisand, talks about Hubbell Gardner, played by Robert Redford. She says of Gardner/Redford, “In a way he was like the country he lived in; everything came too easily to him.”

And that has been a narrative, albeit, often a false one, of ease and grace that the public often seeks to buy into with respect to its leaders. Certainly Kennedy successfully exploited it, maybe even laid the political predicate for it, in his race against Nixon in 1960. In a way it was even a part of the Obama narrative.

On the flip side, it may have very well worked against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It seems that for Hillary Clinton, nothing came easily. Everything she had ever achieved was, or appeared to be, a struggle. One that played out on the public stage for more than 40 years.

Jennifer Palmieri got to see this up close and personal as Hillary Clinton’s Communications Director, and herself a veteran of many years in politics and in the White House. She brings it all into focus in her new book Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World

My conversation with Jennifer Palmieri:

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