Elisa.

Mr. Monaco, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Your second book.

So here's the thing.

So here's the thing.

Notes on growing up, getting older and trusting your gut.

This is actually your second book.

The first one was a bestseller.

So how does former presidential scheduler, director, international traveler GAO decide to write a book about basically how to do your life?

So after the first book, the the response was a little bit different than I thought.

I thought it would be.

Mostly like, oh, we miss and love Barack Obama, which of course, part of it was.

But a lot of it was a response to some of the stories that I was telling, some of the more vulnerable tme stories.

And so as the sort of year or two went on, after the first book, I kept a list of all the things that young women wrote to me that they wanted to hear more about sort of like underserved topics.

And so lo and behold, they wanted to hear more.

And I went even more TMI on this one.

And it seems to have worked out people seem to be enjoying it.

You really put it out there in a way that I think people do know you.

Then obviously they're not surprised.

But she doesn't think about women in politics is having to be very buttoned up and told kind of keep everything to yourself, in some cases, not even really acknowledge that they're women.

And I wondered in a way where you like pushing against that.

I was I was because I always felt that I didn't see myself, you know, in any in any sort of walk of life, people are drawn to professions or things where they see themselves reflected like where they see a possibility of belonging.

And so I didn't really see that for myself.

So I stuck to myself into Spanx.

I wore pencil skirts I wore buttoned down shirts, even though I have like a terrible sweating problem and always felt like you can see me sweat.

And so I decided, you know, the more comfortable I got, the more I pushed the boundaries within the White House and the more President Obama had no problems with it.

First Lady had no problems with it.

So I dressed a little bit more like myself.

And I found that I was more comfortable in the more comfortable I was, the more comfortable people were coming to ask me questions.

And so I really sort of like, you know, after the first two or three years, I started finding my groove.

If you look at the time lapse of photos, I definitely started looking a little bit more like you see me now towards the end.

I don't remember seeing the poncho in the denim shirt.

So there was and I'm sure there were a lot of pantyhose.

There was actually a website or blog back then dedicated to how when Nancy-Ann DeParle, who was the deputy chief of staff for policy, who was the architect of the Affordable Care Act, when she and I were both elevated to deputy chief there was a blog dedicated to the shoes and clothes that we wore, and it was not positive.

It was like these disrespectful women.

They should have high heels on, they should have pantyhose on, and at first we were really nervous because we didn't want to reflect poorly on the president.

And so I mentioned it to him once and he was like, What do I care?

And I was like, Okay, great, thanks.

You know, you don't want to reflect poorly on your boss, especially like the first African-American president.

You don't want people thinking that he has these, like, children working in the West Wing.

If you could just pick one story from, say, your international travels where you really learned something important.

Oh, my goodness.

In international travel, I just can't even during the one that where you were being spied on or where you realized that there were cameras in the shower that was jewelries on the desk that you wrote, like, wow.

So everything really was, I think in terms of like a preparedness, because foreign travel in so many ways is about preparedness.

Like even on my book tour last week, I did like five cities in a carry on bag because, you know, what do you not want?

You don't want your luggage to get lost.

You don't want to have to go scramble.

And so at the White House, that was for the most part, how we traveled.

But once the president wanted to do me a real solid and knew that I would die to see the inside of Buckingham Palace, but we were not intended to go to Buckingham most of us were going straight to the airport because we were leaving.

And so Reggie Love, then his personal aide, comes to the door and he says, Boss, boss wants you in the car over to Buckingham.

Take the helicopter, Marine One over to the airport.

And I start negotiating with Reggie as I but I'm in jeans and a blazer.

And he's like, That's a personal problem.

What do you want me to do about it?

And so I asked the valets, who are members of the military, and like, let me carry some of the stuff so that I can hide, like what I'm wearing.

And they're like, get away from us.

And so we end up at Buckingham Palace that did have the nuclear codes.

They had everything.

They're like, stop.

And they're like, you're not touching any of this.

And so we get to the drawing room or at Buckingham Palace, we're in the drawing room.

I'm so nervous.

I'm standing behind a couch.

So you can only see actually it may have been this exact shirt cause I've had it for a hundred years and my blazer and not see that I have jeans on.

We walk out the back of Buckingham.

All of the house staff is there.

They're waving goodbye to us.

We get on Marine One.

The president is very proud.

He's done something so nice for me.

And he turns around and he's like, jeans, Melissa jeans.

And I know, I know.

I'm sorry.

I didn't think we're going to be going in.

And then he just looked back.

It was what's in your hand?

And in an effort to not look like I was totally fidgeting, I stole a copy of the Tatler from Buckingham Palace.

So I'm sitting there on Marine One, and he and the first lady just looked at me, and they're like, Stop it.

So the point was, though, never did I ever wear jeans.

Ever since I was the moralist to wear jeans ever.

Don't wear jeans if you're working in the White House, just save the jeans for when you know you're already going where you got to be like, don't, don't, don't do the transit jeans or casual clothes because you never know when you're going to be in the presence of the queen.

Obviously, Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States.

Was that like a part of your consciousness?

Always when you were there in every that way?

I think that there were a couple of things.

One, you didn't want to be you knew the scrutiny was going to be different.

You know, I think that or even if it wasn't, you thought it might be.

And so you wanted to be at 150% every day because you never wanted the real dark side of the right to say, see, this is what happens when you give people who look different than past presidents champs.

Was that ever communicated to you or is that just no Just something that I felt personally that I wanted to make sure that I did my best every day.

You know, and there was a generation of kids who will never know what time when there wasn't an African-American president.

And like, how important is that?

Like, imagine when we have our first female president and there will be kids who are like, what do you mean?

Of course there's a woman president.

Of course, it's no big deal.

Like, it's fine.

And so I think that we all wanted to make sure that we got to that point.

You know, we have a chapter in the book.

Oh, here it is.

How do I get to be you by the time I'm 35?

And one of the points you make is don't ask that question that you're saying that doesn't really work that way.

Right.

But one of the other points that you make in book, you can't plan and micromanage every single step of the way.

I think that one of the interesting things for me was that I, you know, was born in the seventies.

It was when I went through middle school, high school, college.

It was still much more like choose your own adventure in a way that was fine.

I feel like things have gotten so competitive and people getting into schools.

It just didn't feel that way when I was growing up.

And as long as I was not in trouble, my parents were more than happy to sort of let me find my way.

And being in the Senate, being in the White House, I encountered so many kids that were so programed that were so, you know, they get the chance to talk to someone like me and they didn't ask about the experiences or the trips or what's the most interesting thing or the saddest thing.

They were like, How do I get to be you?

And I thought that was such a sad use of their time that I would stop them dead in their tracks.

And I'd say, If you wanted to be me, you could.

I could never have asked that question of anyone because I wouldn't have ended up here because if I had asked that question years ago, would I have picked Barack Obama?

Rock Hussein Obama, Hussein Obama, junior Senator from Illinois, or Hillary Clinton like who would have been more?

I go.

But the truth is, I was with the man I believed in who before he even decided to run for president, looked at the six of us or eight of us around the table and said, Here's the deal.

I'm running as me.

I'm going to win is me, or I'm going to lose me because I would rather lose as myself than win trying to be someone else.

And we're like, great And that sort of instilled in us this, you know, if we were on the high wire every day taking risks and if we messed up, he wasn't mad as long as we were still out there taking risks and and doing what we thought was interesting and new.

And so for the young people now, I'm like, if I had used your mentality where would I have ended up?

And the like.

But you got to be deputy chief of staff because I was with him from the beginning.

He trusted me when I didn't even think I was ready to be deputy chief of staff for operations.

He was like, well, you're the only one who doesn't think that, so stop.

It's kind of the anti lean in.

You can't sort of plot, you know, A to B to see.

There is no way anybody would have plotted my trajectory.

Is that mainly for women?

Is it just different for women or.

I think it's different for women.

But I also think that if men sort of listen to some of the stories, that they might lighten up a little bit and that it won't just be.

So I'm a man.

Here's what I've been taught.

Here's what I'm supposed to do.

If we can all just sort of like loosen up a little bit and not think about everything that's happened before us and think about how we want to live our lives going forward, that I think that's good for everyone.

So how are you dealing with the present moment when the current occupant of the White House are very different people?

How how are you dealing with.

So, you know, the one thing about working in the White House that not all Democrats like me to say or like to hear from me is that, you know, the Bush administration could not have been more generous or kind to us.

They could not have helped ease the transition more than they did.

They were extraordinary.

And, you know, after we'd been there for a year, we would always talk about that.

You really don't understand it.

So you've walked in the shoes, you know, that like yeah, they made a lot of mistakes.

But but now we understand a bit more how those mistakes could have happened.

And so I tried to be after the election in 2016 and Barack Obama came on television, you know, the day after and he said, we support the new president elect, you know.

And I was like, if he can do it, I can do it.

And because I know how important the institution is, it's not politics at that point.

It's governing.

And you're not the president of the group that elected you.

You're the president of all the people.

So I had hope I was like, Donald Trump is going to ascend.

He is going to lower expectations.

He is going to understand the weight of the job.

And you still think that.

No, no, no.

Not not shortly after.

You know, I tried to stay upbeat and positive.

But for me, the thing that upsets me, you know, the tweeting and all that garbage, that's one thing to me.

The thing that shatters that I know things that the Clinton administration, that the Bush administration that we did was that opened up the government and the White House to all the people in the country that made it feel accessible, that that really understood the importance of the ceremonial parts of the job.

And so the thing that makes me the saddest are all of those kids and all of those Americans who aren't going who aren't seeing the respect that, you know, when you walked into the Obama White House, when we walked into the Bush White House, I mean, it was a it was so serious and so aspirational at the same time.

And I think that when you have people who so openly take public servants who have given their lives to their country, to me, that's something that I hope we can bounce back from.

You have a chapter in the book about Monica Lewinsky.

Yes.

And you say that, you know, she hasn't.

How can we say she hasn't gotten her due that she has not really been given the respect that she deserves?

Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Well, I think it's happening.

Part of what I wanted to talk about was that even though she and I were the same age roughly when she went through what she went through, becoming a public like some one of the most recognized people in the world at the age of 24, that there are interesting things that we need to take from that which are back when I was sitting on my living room floor with my roommates watching the impeachment trial on a black and white television, we got our news from Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings.

Right.

It never occurred to me that the story being told by four white men would be different if if if there was a woman telling the story.

When we sat down every night at 6:00 to watch the news So on the one hand, we were getting sort of straight facts, right?

And I think now we wish we could get more of a coalition around what straight facts are but what's important is a point of view.

And the point of view that was missing back then was Monica's point of view.

And if you asked people to think back on 1998, 2000, and you asked them who the victim was, if you were a Democrat, they'd say, Bill Clinton.

Wow.

Like the thought that people didn't see her as a victim of power, of a man in power of the media.

And so for me, when I became friends with Monica, and part of why I wanted to write this essay is because we all have to think about things from the other person's point of view.

And I wish that I had been more aware and more curious back then and thought more about what she might have been going through.

And so now I think that I try to do that in as much as I can with other people.

And yet it just seems as though the way our kind of fresh look occurs is still within the context of a polarized experience.

I mean, I'm thinking about Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had information that she wanted to have considered.

And yet it still seems as though the information can't be considered on its own merits.

It still has to be filtered through the prism of a polarized political perspective.

Right.

And the thing that I felt, at least this time around, is that Dr. Blasey Ford knew she wasn't alone.

If it taught us nothing, it's that we couldn't be silent, that people did take to the streets.

I can't tell you how many like rallies I spoke at just so that we could say, we see you and we hear you and you're not alone.

And so that's definitely not the third way.

But I do think that there's a, you know, hashtag never forget for the things that have happened before, where we look back on the impeachment hearings, we look back on Anita Hill, we look back on Anita Hill standing in front of a sitting in front of a of of white men and trying to impugn her character.

And so change is not happening as fast as it should.

But there is it is heartening, I guess, to see that at least we have found a way to pull together and tell these women when they come out that they're not alone.

There is unprecedented number of women running for president.

All right.

Six now.

Right.

And there was also a record number of women in Congress.

And I just wonder if you think that's going to change things I do think it's going to change things now.

How long have we been hearing when this is such a tongue twister when women run, women win.

And I think that we've all been like, okay, sure.

Because okay.

But now they actually all did run and so many of them did win.

And so I do think that it's going to change governing going forward, if only because now the more that women run, I think the more I mean, who ever thought that Joe Crowley would lose a primary to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

So I think that one people are going to take their positions in power more seriously.

You know, when you think about how dismissive some people are when they have a primary opponent who could potentially be 28 and a woman, you know, they're going to take it more seriously now.

There's nothing but good that comes from that.

It's interesting that of the class of new members elect members, the people who have become lightning rods are all women.

And I thought, why do you think that is?

Well, I think that they're the ones really putting themselves out there.

Like, I think that in a lot of ways, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez only wants to be in Congress if she's going to do and fight for exactly what she believes in.

If that means she's a lightning rod, so be it.

And also, there was there's strength in the women that came in together.

And so you're not going to push that hard and then get into Congress and sit there with your legs crossed and your hands on your lap and just do what people tell you.

Well, there it is.

There it is in a nutshell.

In a nutshell.

Alice, Ambassador Monaco, thanks so much for talking.

Thank you for having me.

This is a real honor.

So no more being good girls than staying in your lanes.

Now it is time to get things done.

And that's it for our program tonight.

Thanks for watching.

Amanpour and Company on PBS.

And join us again tomorrow night