Obama, Bush, Clinton, Palin — Deborah Charles covered them all. Here’s what it was like for a woman on the campaign bus.
What word best describes Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton? George W. Bush?
Deborah Charles covered four U.S. presidential campaigns, and she offers us her insights on those politicians in this video.
Charles, who was White House correspondent for Reuters during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, tells us what emerging democracies can learn from the expensive, drawn-out U.S. primary system for choosing candidates.
She says most candidates tell voters what they want to hear but remembers one candidate standing on a principle that was unpopular among many at the time — and still is for some.
She also has an explanation for Bernie Sanders’s strong showing against Hillary Clinton in this year’s primaries.
During her 24 years with Reuters, Charles worked on four continents, from bureaus in Madrid, Bangkok, Montreal, Toronto, New York and Buenos Aires, and covered fighting in Kosovo and NATO bombing of Belgrade.
Currently she is a communications consultant at the World Bank Group.
(This is the third in a series of interviews with News-Decoder correspondents. Earlier, we interviewed David Schlesinger and Gene Gibbons.)