E-mail a friendDee Dee Myers
airdate February 25, 2008
Dee Dee Myers is a political veteran, who's worked on a variety of local, state and national campaigns. Her efforts resulted in her appointment as press secretary to President Clinton—the first woman and youngest person ever to hold that position. Since, she's run her own business, consulted on the TV series West Wing and served as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. In her book, Why Women Should Rule the World, Myers offers a look at the challenges women must overcome on the path toward success.
Former White House press secretary explains how being a woman has impacted Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. (4:02)
Dee Dee Myers
Tavis: Dee Dee Myers is a former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, the first woman in U.S. history to hold that position. She is currently a political commentator for MSNBC and a contributing editor at "Vanity Fair." Her new book is called "Why Women Should Rule the World." She joins us tonight from New York. Dee Dee, how are you?
Dee Dee Myers: I'm great, Tavis, how are you?
Tavis: I'm wonderful. I think I'm wonderful. When I saw the book, I was like, should I read this or not? Should I be insulted by this?
Myers: You should absolutely not be insulted by this, Tavis. I know it's subtle. (Laughter) But it's really an argument for why there should be more women in public life. Not at the exclusion of men, not to replace men. I love men. I'm married to a man, I gave birth to a little baby man, my dad's a man. But I think there's plenty of room for women, and not because it's the right thing to do but because it's in our self-interest.
I think more women in public life make the world a better place. They make the economy work better, they make government more responsive, they improve the quality of life for not just women but for children and for men as well. So I think everybody wins with more women.
Tavis: And they do that why? What are the reasons why you think that automatically happens because women sit in these seats of power?
Myers: Right, yeah, I don't think it's, like, automatically that every time a woman enters the room, things get better - although sometimes that happens. I think that women have - women are different than men, and that's sort of at the heart of my argument. Not every woman is one way and every man is another way, but I think women bring a different kind of scope of life experiences, of sometimes priorities, of ways of looking at the world.
Women obviously have a different biology, and I think that affects the way that we are oriented in the world in a lot of ways. And so what I think happens is that when you bring all those experiences and you bring all that brain power and you bring all those different ways of seeing the world, you get more information on the table and you can get a better result.
And I think that's clear if you look at - I think more women in Congress, for example, has brought problems to the fore that weren't necessarily taken seriously, and I don't just mean child care, although I think that's really important. I think women have also helped focus attention on things like healthcare and an aging population and greening of our country.
They've also worried about problems like transportation and nuclear safety, too. It's not just those kinds of issues. But I do think they expand the scope of problems that we're addressing. If you look at business, one of the things that really stunned me as I was doing research for the book was that studies show that companies with more women on their boards and more women in senior management positions do better.
They have a higher return on equity and they're more profitable than companies with the fewest women in senior positions. So there's an economic argument, there's a self-interest argument here that I think is really important. And again, it's in many ways because women are different. It's not that we always do things exactly the same, and those differences strengthen us.
Tavis: And yet all that said, Dee Dee, you're very open and rather honest in the book about talking about your own experiences inside the Clinton White House as the first woman, of course, as I mentioned earlier, to be the press secretary. And you talk candidly about this line between being given responsibility and a lack of authority. You had responsibility but not the authority. Talk about what you share in the book in that regard that other women, I suspect, have to deal with as well.
Myers: I went to work on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign in '91. I was one of the initial crew. And I spent a year on the campaign and when then-Governor Clinton was elected, I was eventually appointed White House press secretary. But the process that led to that appointment was kind of complicated. Bill Clinton had campaigned, among other things, on a promise to have a government that looked like America, and he was under a lot of pressure to appoint women and people of color to high-ranking and visible positions and he was struggling to find women for certain jobs.
And so one of the jobs that was open was the White House press secretary. I was 31 years old, I'd never lived or worked in Washington, I was a woman. I sometimes call that a trifecta of how not to go to Washington. (Laughter) But nonetheless, I think he wanted - we had a great working relationship, I think he wanted to find a place for me.
So in spite of some of his reservations he gave me a job that he wasn't totally sure that I was ready for. So being a woman cut for me and a little bit against me. I got the job, but I had a lesser rank, a lower salary, and a smaller office than my previous male predecessors, and the net result was it was hard for me. I had a lot of responsibility but I didn't always have the authority I needed because the job was somewhat diminished.
And I think that happens to women. You have more responsibility than you do authority, and then you're blamed if things don't go well. And some days, I really struggled with that during my tenure as White House press secretary, and I think it's important to talk about because I think women need to both be aware of it and to know when it's happening to them that they can survive it.
Tavis: We talked about one Clinton. Let me shift quickly to the other Clinton who, in fact, is a woman who wants to rule the world, as we speak. Assess for me, from your womanhoodness, how she has been treated or maltreated in this campaign, as you see it.
Myers: Yeah, I think she's had a difficult road, and obviously there are many ways in which her troubles have nothing to do with her gender, and there are other ways in which I think they have everything to do with her gender, and I'll give you some examples.
I think that there - and I have nothing but great respect for Senator Obama. I haven't endorsed either candidate, although I am greatly sympathetic to both of them. But I think there's a different threshold just for getting into the race for men and women. I think one of the things women always have to do is they have to prove they're qualified.
I think it's easier for men. People sort of assume that men are qualified a lot of times. I don't think a woman with Senator Obama's credentials - eight years in the Illinois state legislature and two years in the United States Senate before he announced his candidacy for president - would have been taken seriously. And I think it would have been very - I think she would have been treated like a nut job, to tell you the truth. But that's not true for men.
So I think just the threshold of who gets into the race, the standard is different. I think the press has been harder on Hillary. I think you can still say pretty much anything about a woman without much penalty, and I think we've seen that both - protestors at a rally screaming things like iron my shirt. General Merrill McPeak, a former chief of staff of the United States Air Force and a senior adviser to Senator Obama said all kinds of I think undeniably sexist things about Senator Clinton.
The Obama campaign disavowed the remarks, but no one called for him to be fired, no one distanced themselves, said he had to leave the campaign. Rush Limbaugh has said horrible things about Hillary Clinton. And Rush Limbaugh says horrible things about a lot of people, but nobody reacted to the really sexist nature. He said, "Does America really want to watch a woman get old before our eyes?" As if men don't age in the White House, by the way.
So I just think all those things are kind of undermining of her candidacy and her campaign. Look, there's plenty of other things that have nothing to do with gender, but I think as we look back on this, one of the things that we will, I think, realize is that there are still a lot of obstacles. Some of them are overt, some of them are more insidious, that make it harder for women to succeed going forward.
Tavis: I was in a conversation yesterday, Dee Dee, speaking of going forward, just trying to think aloud about what happens if Hillary Clinton doesn't pull this off, if she isn't the nominee, if she doesn't get elected. I'm trying to just think, and I'm just curious as to your take on this, trying to think of what other woman in the entire country is remotely positioned at this point to make another serious run for the nominee of a major party any time soon. And I, quite frankly, can't think of a single woman.
Myers: Right. I think it's tough. I've played the same game of sort of female presidential candidate roulette. I think Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas, is somebody who could potentially be a presidential candidate. She's been a terrific governor of a red state. She's served as insurance commissioner before that, was in the state legislature before that.
She's the kind of person - she might need one more step of national security credentials, because women do have to be more credentialed than men, I think just to get into the race. I think there are some interesting women in the United States Senate. I think Kay Bailey Hutchison could end up as a vice president. Certainly I think she'll be on a short list.
Whether or not that translates into actually being chosen, who knows? But I think she's another person who has very good credentials. But again, I think the bar is very high for women, and I think as you look around, it isn't like there's a long line of women just waiting to get in.
Tavis: Let me ask a quick exit question. Tell me why you're hopeful that it will become more balanced in the coming months and years.
Myers: Right. I think that there's sort of an unstoppable force of history, and if you look around the world there are still too few women in places, I think, like Fortune 500 companies or heads of state or heads of government. But if you look around, there are more and more women in different positions than in singular positions, whether it's the first female president of Harvard - and by the way, four of the seven ivies now have female presidents.
There are several very successful CEOs of big companies like Meg Whitman at eBay. There are women being elected by - not just in parliamentary systems where they're chosen by their parties, but in direct elect like in Chile and Argentina, where you have women being elected in what are very macho cultures where you wouldn't expect to see a lot of women.
Angela Merkel in Germany is having a lot of success. In Ireland we've had two female presidents. In Switzerland, same thing. In the Nordic countries you're seeing not only women as heads of government but a lot of women in the legislature, and that's, I think, creating this dynamic where more women begets more women. More is actually more.
And I think also on the economic front the success of programs like microfinance programs where you give small loans to women who not only use those loans to make themselves healthier and more economically secure, their families and their entire communities. And slowly but surely, their nations become more economically independent and successful.
And so I think there's just the tide of history is in our favor. Again, not because it's the right thing to do, not because it's politically correct, but because it's the smart thing to do. And I think the final area, of course, is peace. I do think women are absolutely, urgently needed in both building peace and sustaining peace and building post-conflict societies, because I do think women are less violent.
Tavis: The new book by Dee Dee Myers, the first woman to be White House press secretary, is called "Why Women Should Rule the World." Dee Dee, nice to have you on, all the best to you.
Back to February 25, 2008Published February 25, 2008
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