Customer Reviews

Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House

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Much to my complete surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I'm not much for memoirs. In fact, most of the time I'm lucky to get 2/3s of the way through a memoir before becoming bored and moving on to something else. Not so with Stacy Parker Aab's "Government Girl."

I thought this book might focus extensively on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Lewinsky was only one of many characters introduced in this book, and certainly didn't play a particularly prominent role.

The book was exactly as it should've been; the experiences of a young woman coming of age while working directly with White House staff during the Clinton Administration, and how that young woman learned to juggle the personalities and politics within the politics.

Truly an excellent read.

For all political junkies, or anyone just plain curious about what it means to work in the White House, Stacy provides a vivid look behind the scenes of the Clinton White House. She offers a candid look at the players of the day, including George Stephanopoulos and Paul Begala, both of whom she worked for, and Clinton himself.

Thankfully this is not a steamy, slimy, shock-value tell all. Instead this is an interesting, fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read. No dry telling of day-to-day tasks here, Stacy share interesting accounts from her several years in the White House--from intern to paid staffer to volunter RON (coordinating travel for the President)--with insights on the major players of the day. It is most interesting to learn how the various staffers relate to one another, especially those on different levels. At heart this is a story of a young woman who made the most of the opportunities before her,in all the right ways, and as she might say, if only Monica had made the same choices, for it is always about choices...

I really loved this book! How wonderful that Stacy shared so much of herself in this book--it adds depth as we read and "watch" Stacy come of age through the pages and root for her all the way watching her make the right choices and becoming the wonderful young woman we feel we know by the end of the book. I look forward to reading more by Stacy Park Aab.

In the open and thoughtful Government Girl, author Stacy Parker Aab describes her years working in the Clinton White House--first as an intern for George Stephanopoulos while studying at George Washington University-- then as staff when she became Special Assistant to Paul Begala. The memoir reads exactly as one imagines Stacy's experience to be: first a fresh, young wide-eyed 18-year-old becomes a White House intern. Powerful men [not many women about unfortunately] like President Clinton. George Stephanopoulos, Rahm Emanuel, Vernon Jordan are all in her midst. She ends up asking Jordan for a recommendation and has some interaction with the others. Nine years later, by the end of her experience, she doesn't particularly enjoy her job which is more administrative than using her skills as a writer [been there/ done that] and the sparkle and luster have fallen off The White House after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Although she doesn't speak of sexism, there aren't very many women in positions of power at all. Although in some of her stories on the road, she gets hit on by married Secret Service men and has an awkward encounter with the President in 2000 in Japan. She doesn't speak of any contact with any women in particular besides some lower level staff members. This makes me sad and I hope that young women in the Obama White House aren't experiencing the same thing but guess what? Many of the young guys [Rahm Emanuel from the Clinton White House] now work the Obama White House. It most likely is just that she worked in communications with George. She spoke of Dee Dee Meyers but Meyers did not stay very long. As an African-American, she also says that she faced no racism, which is fairly easy to believe for the Clinton White House.

Most of her challenges were due to her age and experience. How can a young woman be expected to take on these responsibilities? Stacy proved herself to the right people and had numerous unique and challenging experiences especially when she worked on the Advance Team and traveled with the President and his staff. She would go ahead to make sure the accommodations were just right: she traveled to Africa, Japan, and several other places including Steven Spielberg's home in the Hamptons.

I wish Stacy had touched more on what she learned while in The White House instead of the day to day. After finishing the memoir, I was jealous of her experience and knew she did a lot of constituent outreach [which I've done on a local level]--by answering letters. She did say she was excited to be part of anything to do with The White House and its administration. And I know that many of her responsibilities allowed her to take on greater challenges later on. However, I still didn't have enough of a grasp on her learning curve during her nine years there. But she chose Government Girl to be about her experience as a woman learning to navigate the intricacies and dangers of power and privilege. She entered The White House perhaps naïve and awe-struck at 18 and left at 26 with a completely different attitude. For anyone interested in politics or the inner sanctum of The White House, Government Girl is the ideal memoir.

Stacy Parker Aab's Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House chronicles her time in the White House during the Clinton Administration from the age of 18 to her early 20s. Expecting the bulk of the memoir to be about the Monica Lewinsky scandal or the like would be a mistake, although Monica's fall from grace could have just as well been Stacy's story if she did not have the personal drive to achieve more, live within the confines of her duties and principles, and focus on self-satisfaction.

Being young and in politics, Stacy had a daunting task of navigating an adult world when she was not quite secure in her self-identity and still evolving as a woman. She's a product of a single mother, an alcoholic father, and her mixed heritage as an African-American with a mostly unknown-to-her German ancestry. All of these elements come into play as she navigates the White House media and policy web and the knotted ropes of her possible career ladder.

The narrative of this memoir is smooth in its transitions between her intern days and her past in Troy, Michigan. The struggles of family life and the dedication of her mother to help her out with schooling expenses and other costs clearly influenced Stacy's drive for financial independence, even if the job opportunities at the time were not the most fun. Politics is at the forefront of her work in the White House, but it often takes a backseat to her internal struggle to become a strong, independent woman with a clear idea of where she wishes to be and what she wishes to achieve.

In many ways, what drives Stacy is the hole inside her -- an absence of fatherly love -- as she falls into transient relationships with co-workers, fellow students, and others. While this desire to fill this emptiness does little to improve her romantic life, it does often push her to perfection in her work life. In terms of memoir, readers will find Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House is deliberate, vivid, and eye-opening -- especially in terms of behind-the-scenes politics. Readers will find Stacy's prose frank and honest, almost like a friend telling a portion of her life story to another friend.

So often when we speak of American politics, we speak of the political machine or the administration. We think of government as an entity unto itself. We imagine huge power brokers sitting, all powerful, in their offices at the White House making decisions about things that we can only watch on the news. What I truly loved about Stacy Parker Aab's Government Girl is how she brings humanity to these people of power that is so easy to overlook.

As the subtitle alludes, Government Girl biographically tells the reader what it was like to be "Young and Female in the White House" during the Clinton administration, not so much focusing on the policies and laws that were getting pushed through, nor even a who's who of the major players, but on what it felt like to be working in an environment surrounded by these major players.

Parker Aab, now 35, was born in Detroit, MI. Her family moved to the suburbs in her youth. From there she attended George Washington University and started as an intern under George Stephanopoulos when she was only 18. At the beginning we see Parker Aab wide eyed , looking to measure up and make a difference. She's detached from the personal aspects of working in the White House and, like many of us starting our own careers, looking to live up to the standard she sees people like Clinton and Stephanopoulos as having attained. She wants to do good for the people she sees as doing good for her country.

Parker Aab is just out of high school and star struck. And who can blame her? As the book moves on, she starts developing relationships with other White House interns, staff and advisers. In these passages of the book, she shows insecurity about being good enough for the job. Parker Aab talks about craving attention from these powerful people. My first reaction was to scoff a little, but after brief contemplation, I had to be honest with myself. I do the same thing. We all do. When we see someone as brilliant, we crave their attention, whether they are politicians or musicians or authors, etc. We want them to see something in us that we aren't sure of or that we don't see at all. She brings up Kundera's concept of poetic memory: the place where our brain stores things that moves us. I certainly get moved by the uber programmers at work. I love when they take time to show me something cool because I can only assume they do it because they see me as becoming one of them. And in being honest, I have to admit, just as Parker Aab does, that there is a certain kind attraction to these people.

In this context it's easy to understand how Parker Aab could at one time crave the attention and question the motives of people like FBI Special Agents, Vernon Jordon or even President Clinton. Even after marrying a completely brilliant woman, I can't say that having the President think to grab me a slice of pizza or Vernon Jordan invite me to dinner wouldn't totally throw me.

This is what takes this Government Girl from being a run of the mill telling of life in politics to a compelling understanding of something most of us will never experience. Parker Aab brings humanity to the White House. Her own journey is not about becoming disillusioned with politics, but about demystifying herself as well as these public figures that have become so big that it's hard to see them as regular people who may have flaws. In the end, there are no regrets, but certainly a new understanding and even empathy for what goes through the brain of someone like President Clinton on a daily basis.

As much as Government Girl is about what it feels like to be a young, black woman working in politics, it's more about what it feels like to be human, whether you are a young, black woman working in politics, a senior White House staff member defending your boss when he does something that you don't agree with or even the President himself.

Stacy Parker Aab currently blogs for The Huffington Post, where among other things she keeps us informed about the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

For more information, please visit the Government Girl fan page on Facebook.

My expectations were high for this book, and they were met and exceeded. I must disclose that I know the author, so I know how willfully passionate, bitingly funny, and refreshingly joyful she is. I don't know her so well, however, that I'd give her a pass (and a good review) just for having something published.

In a book filled with the boldface names of the Clinton years--Vernon Jordan, George Stephanopoulos, Paul Begala, Monica Lewinsky, and, naturally, the Clinton Triumvirate--Stacy's own story is the one that comes across most clearly and compellingly, no small accomplishment given how easily THE story could have eclipsed HER story.

One of my favorite moments comes when she recounts her trip to New York as a winner of a Glamour magazine contest. It evoked Sylvia Plath/Esther Greenwood's magazine contest experience, but only inasmuch as it demonstrated how driven by happiness her life is in comparison to Plath's.

Not that she skips through life oblivious to the weight of a thousand worlds on her shoulders. The book provides excellent insight into the way working in politics feels like working hundreds of feet below sea level in an unpressurized submarine, where having a system in place for sorting the communications director's fan mail, and a Type-A overachiever in charge of running the system, is as mission critical as knowing where the guy with the football sleeps.

But it also showed how those Type-A overachievers, a phrase I use with much respect and admiration, as I hope to be one again some day, get in a place where they can even score a White House internship when they are only 18 and their parents aren't maxed-out federal campaign donors.

And, it showed how even those kids, the ones who did Model UN and Girls' Nation and debate, aren't so risk-averse that they won't commit fraud to tear it up in urban dance clubs before they turn 18.

Stacy's exuberant embrace of political service, even in the face of the deeply disappointing scandals of the Clinton presidency, is what earns her Andrei Codrescu's book-jacket acclamation:

"Stacy Parker Aab's journey of self-discovery makes for a delightful page-turner, a classic coming-of-age story that will inspire the young to take up public service."

A delightful page-turner would, in itself, be a remarkable accomplishment for a first-time author. Winning an endorsement from Andrei Codrescu is another. I agree with him, however, that Stacy accomplishes even more, writing a book that shows you just what you'd be getting into if you got involved in politics and public service, and exactly how rewarding it would be no matter how bad it got.

In Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House, Stacy Parker Aab recounts her time in the Clinton White House. Though she spent a large chunk of her time running the correspondence operation for George Stephanaposnuffleupagus, she also worked on Presidential travel detail and zomg it's cool enough already like I even need to say more.

Parker (this all happened before she married the Aab) started as a lowly correspondence clerk. As you can imagine, there are lots of people here in D.C. who get letters, they get letters, they get lots and lots of letters. While 80% are routine requests, there are always a few white powder-holding, hand written crazies. Plus, when you're working for someone like George Stephenpapadupakis, the normal-to-fangirl ratio is even more out of whack.

After a successful run laboring and then leading the correspondence shop, Parker moved to Presidential travel, getting to be the RON (Remain OverNight) at each location the President traveled to. She got to scope out the rooms, making sure everything was just so. Also a cool job, if you like traveling and the occasion awkward sexual advance.

Because, oh yes, this was the Clinton White House. And, oh yes, Parker was an attractive young woman with not a ton of authority. And, oh yes, she was dealing with powerful men, like top level staffers and Vernon Jordan, on a pretty regular basis.

Don't worry--there's nothing graphic. There's not even anything too painful; it's not The Lovely Bones. But there are a few uncomfortable moments, some of Parker's making. It was the era of Lewinsky, and that shadowed every young girl working in that White House. You can't help cheering for Parker, though; this is truly a Detroit girl done good.

What a disappointment! Stacey Parker Aab comes across as entitled, spoiled and thoroughly delusional in her attempt to place herself as anything more than a White House support person. Having read books by George Steph., Didi Myers,Paul Begala, James Carville, and even Bill and Hillary Clinton, I already knew what was really going on in the White House. Glad that she didn't focus on the Monica L. scandal and loved her positive attitude after the "Take Back America" scam of 1994 but overall I came away seeing this young woman as a conceited wannabe who was always throwing around the race card. Stacey is a very lucky lady and I wish her the best of luck in her career. Read this book only if you have never read any real political biographies. Very light with little substance. And oh yes, I almost forgot. If you like books about young girls being hit on by older powerful men, you will love this.