YouSaid · the spoken record

Sarah Hurwitz

lines on the record: 89
first: 2019-12-23
most recent: 2019-12-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Easy to You're so right, especially because it's not like there was like a six month healing period, and then there was the speech. It was like very quickly, right? It's a very quick turnaround. Suddenly you go from saying, you know, this toxic primary to, okay, now I'm on board and supporting you, it's challenging. So I think, you know, there's the wanting to honor supporters and also wanting to make a statement about what this candidacy meant for history and for the future. Those are three kind of different things. And to do all of them was tricky and was challenging. And, you know, and they're also contradictory, right? In the full-throated endorsement of Obama, I think some of her supporters may have heard, well, what about us? We were, you know, we were kind of taking him on. But I think...”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was tough. It was tough because there was a lot of business that needed to be done in that speech. First of all, she needed to give a full-throated endorsement of Obama. Second of all, she needed to honor all these supporters who would put their hearts and souls into her. And I think if you just get up and you say, well, sorry, it didn't work out. Support Obama. They don't feel heard and seen.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we perceived you as As someone sort of an upstart, like sort of a, you know, it was just you were pulling so low. I don't think that I didn't see it as like, oh, this guy is really a threat, right? Just because of polling. I realized pretty quickly that this, you know, Obama was a singular talent, right? And I think in the, I'd say in the final months of the campaign, I began to feel like, okay, I can kind of see where this is going. You know, I actually remember listening to his Dr. Martin Luther King Day speech, which I think it was 08. And, you know, I was soon there crying, listening to it. You know, he ended it with that beautiful story about the young woman named Ashley. It just, you know, I thought this guy has something really special.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did towards the end. You know, you're right. At the beginning, it really did feel like okay, she is the presumptive favorite, this is going to work out. And you guys, I think, were polling in like the single digits. It was really low down.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a lot about the generational issues here, where I think that when she was coming up as a young lawyer, you know wasn't really valued for you to be warm and fuzzy and fun and charming. You had to be tough and strong and you had to know more than the men in the room. That was how you succeeded as a woman. And to do that for decades and then suddenly be thrust into this arena where you have to be funny and warm and likable and not offend anyone. And, you know, that's a very different, it's a big transition. So I kind of, I think it's a generational issue, honestly. I do.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, it's, I have the same impression of her. I mean, she's someone I'd always have admired from afar as one of my heroes growing up, frankly. And then when you actually meet her, you realize she is funny, she is sassy, she's like your warm Jewish mother. She'll be like, are you eating enough? Are you happy? Are you married? She's so... Loving, and she's very funny, right? She's very edgy and warm.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Felt like Hillary Clinton. I mean, one of my heroes, I'm not qualified. I had been Deputy Chief Speechwriter for both Clark and Carrie. Just footnote there, but nope, not qualified. Came back a month later, asked again. I said no. Came back a month later and said, okay, I think they might hire co-chief speechwriters. Would you do that? I said, okay, that feels safe. I think I can do that. Go through the whole interview process, meet with Hillary, whole thing. I get a call from Josh, okay? They want to hire you, but they don't want coach speechwriters. They just want one. And I thought, wow, I think he may have tricked me. It's possible. But you know, I'm grateful, right? He may have realized I was just lacking in confidence and kind of tricked me into doing it, but I'm so grateful because that job was a really important part of my career.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was. And it's actually a funny story. Josh came to me, and maybe November of 2006 or so and said, look, Hillary's looking for a chief speechwriter you should apply. And I was like, absolutely not. I am not qualified.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I worked at a great firm called Wilmer Hale, and I did white collar congressional investigations. And this was a firm where there were a lot of Democrats kind of riding out the bush ears there. And I got to tell you, they literally, they just threw a book party for me earlier this week. You know, like they are like my family. You know, it was 12 years ago that I left there, but a lot of them were kind of mentors and friends and they actually, many of them wound up in the Obama administration. So I would kind of see them, we called it the Wilmer Diaspora. I would sort of see them around. And, you know, I love the people I was working with. The work was not probably well suited to my strengths. I am not, I was surrounded by a lot of great legal minds. I am not one of them.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I learned that it's really tough to have a lot of different voices on a campaign without someone in charge making a decision at the end of the day when it comes to messaging. And pulling. Like, you know, it's great to have lots of different voices. I'm a big fan, but at the end of the day, a decision has to be made in a clear direction, has to be charted. And I think without that, you get kind of a muddle.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He does have a distinct style. I remember I wrote Senator Carey's 9 11 radio address, his sort of memorial about 9-11. And I remember Bob kind of really getting in it with edits and wording. But yeah, he was definitely in it”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was Exactly, because I showed up in the last three or four months of the campaign, which is not really the time to sit down and kind of have a getting to know you with the candidate, right? They just needed another pair of hands to just crank out these speeches. So it was hard. I didn't have a sense really of who he was or his cadences. I respected and admired him, but that's very different from actually having a sense of someone. So it was tough.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it was challenging, right? It was challenging because I think. We were struggling at the end, and there were a lot of kind of consultants and pollsters and folks being brought in. And I think as a speechwriter, it's challenging when there are a lot of different voices and input. So it was tough. And I have a lot of respect for Secretary Kerry. This is a very impressive guy who was a”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it was. I joined it. Let's see. I finished the Clark campaign in February of 04, finished law school in May of 2004, took the bar, and then joined the Carey campaign, I think, around July and stayed there until the end.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone introduced me to Favreau and they said, Oh, yeah, this kid wrote something. And I just thought, come on, this kid's 22. I don't know. Then someone showed me what he'd written. And I was blown away. He is a naturally gifted guy. So I've been really just impressed with him as a writer and as a human being. Moment I first met him”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I actually worked at the law firm after I graduated from law school. I did the Clark campaign, then I worked on Senator Carey's primary in 04. After Carrie lost, then I went to a lawyer.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did not have 56 billion dollars. So I think it was you need a little time to ramp up to kind of learn how to be a candidate. And he didn't really have that time. So I think early on, I think there was just struggles to adjust. So it was a lot of fun. It was a great, it was a lot of really great people working on that campaign.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's a very smart, talented public minded, really decent guy. I think that race to me was a lesson in the reality that you can't just kind of wake up one morning and decide you're running for president, right? Especially if you've lived life very far out of power.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good speech writing is not scripting, it's channeling, right? It really is channeling that person's voice listening very carefully, capturing their cadence, their rhythm. Their sensibility, that's what good speech writing is.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. I mean, it kind of annoys me a little bit when people say, like, oh, you scripted Michelle Obama. Okay, first of all, have you met Michelle Obama? No one is scripting Michelle Obama.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally different skill sets, right? So I'm going to pause there. I just said totally different skill sets comma write question mark. If you saw that written on a page, you'd say, well, that's a sentence fragment. That's not grammatical. But knowing listening to this was thinking, well, that was just not grammar, right? When we speak, you can be ungrammatical. You can be colloquial. You can have sentence fragments. It's really like the rhythm that matters. It's a much looser form of writing. Writing to be read, it's grammatical. It's tighter. It's more formal. If you read out loud something that's meant to be red with the eyes, it sounds a little awkward, right? Sounds a little stilted. So I think making that transition from that more polished, formal writing to be read to the more rhythmic, kind of lyrical, informal colloquial writing to be heard, it's a hard transition to make.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. He was a classmate of mine, though, and he had been a speechwriter for President Clinton. So we started freelancing together, and he actually taught me how you structure a speech and how you write to be heard rather than read to very different skills. That really helped me. And so he got called to work on the Clark campaign and kind of took me with him. That's how that ha”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not technically, technically, I was a third year law student Kind of moved from Cambridge to Arkansas. I actually had a, we actually had an apartment in a car in Little Rock, Arkansas, and an apartment in Cambridge. And I was technically back and forth, probably a little more forth than back. Flew back for exams in December. It was fine. And then after he lost, flew back again in February.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it wasn't subtle. I think I got the hint. So I thought, okay, you know, I just didn't know how to write a speech. I didn't know how to get someone's voice. So I thought, well, I'm bad at this. I'll just go to law school. And I did.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was one of very few non Iowans, and I actually was not the perfect choice because I was a good writer, but I didn't know how to write a speech. And after nine months, this chief of staff sat me down and said, we hear you're thinking about law school”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I did. Actually, they let me do a lot of research. I think maybe I wrote a video script, you know, like when the vice president would tape a 60 second video on whatever I think they let me write that, although I'm sure they pretty heavily edited it.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, not this one. President's schedule. Happened to meet one of his speechwriters and convinced them to let me move over there. So that's sort of a winding road to get there.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A crazy story. I showed up, and there were six people who had a pink dot on their folder, and they gathered us together and said, you're going to come back later for an interview. We didn't have a placement, so we come back and it turned out we were interviewing to be an Oval Office intern. And we were interviewing with Betty Curry and Anthony Aaron Reich, the president's, you know, folks in the Oval Office. Is there Feel about like wrapping presents and answering phones. And I think I said something like, well, I was hoping to do policy, which like.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I entered into his speech office in the summer between my junior and senior year. And that's where I first got the sense of what speech writing could be and of how cool it is as a job.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always, I think I always wanted to go into politics in some way. We took an eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C. with my eighth grade class, and I totally fell in love with it. We got to meet our congressman. We got to go roam around Capitol Hill and see all where the action was happening. And I just was totally taken by it. So I knew I wanted to do something in politics.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But my dad, as a lawyer, he's a good writer, he's a really aggressive editor, so he would edit my school papers. He would sort of sit down with me and say, okay, how can this sentence be tighter? Okay, he was always asking questions, right? He wouldn't do the edits. He would ask me questions when he was constantly making me re-look at my writing and tighten it up, make it cleaner, make it clearer. So I think he had a lot to do with my writing.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She not only was she working full time raising two children, she was volunteering in our community, unpaid, right? But that's work. At our school”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, my mom, she was a social worker, and then once we were born, she worked full-time raising us. You know, my dad is.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I wouldn't say we were discussing politics around the dinner table, but my parents were always following what was happening. My mom was involved in the League of Women Voters. My dad was always following the news really closely, and he kept a quote book of quotes that he loved from the Kennedys, Dr. Martin Luther King, all the people who had inspired him growing up. And when I turned about 12 or 13, he gave it to me. And so I've actually been adding my own quotes that I love.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did my dad after law school was a speechwriter for congressional candidate actually named John Dyson, who was running in upstate New York. He lost, but if he had won, my dad probably would have gone to Washington and worked for him in Congress, but instead he became a lawyer.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they moved to Massachusetts. My grandmother was raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which is where she met my grandfather. They had my father and my uncles. And he then went to college, law school.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was, they fled and they kept trying to persuade some of their family who remained to come over. And they didn't, and they were killed. So, I feel a lot of gratitude to this country for a safe haven for Jews.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Daughters, that's it Then they left New York, moved elsewhere, and my grandmother, one of those daughters, she never got to go to school, always wanted to go to law school, be a lawyer, and go into politics. And two generations later, I have a law degree. I became a lawyer and I have had a career in politics. Pretty special”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came from Poland, Lithuania. And my great grandmother was actually really excited to settle there because the City College of New York accepted women, Jews, and poor people.”
2019-12-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 361 — Sarah Hurwitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source