Garry Wills

From Steven Kurutz's October 2010 Q & A with Garry Wills, author of Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer:

The Hillary Clinton you describe in the book is warm, funny, irreverent. Why didn’t that Hillary come through during her presidential campaign?

There’s still a lot of misogyny out there. Look at what they’re doing to Nancy Pelosi. She’s also a very warm and funny person. They’ve turned her into this Nazi. It’s very tough being a woman in politics — or in business, for that matter. Some of those that survive are tough, like Carly Fiorina. But Hillary was very winning and, as I say, humble. She’s not a proud person at all. She tells a story really well.

You also write of your long association with Bill Buckley. You say your wife warned you about him because he “absorbs people.”

Bill had a voracious sense of life himself and he swept you up in it. She sensed that right from the beginning and, of course, I found it confirmed over and over with other people. He was dangerously charming. I’m glad she warned me early on.

What’s your take on Obama’s presidency so far?

Terrible disappointment.

In what ways?

The whole...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue