• Michelle Obama to grads: Focus on what unites us

    By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Reaching across the aisle can be helpful not only in politics but also in the personal growth of recent college graduates, first lady Michelle Obama said in a commencement address at Eastern Kentucky University over the weekend.

    “If you’re a Democrat, spend some time talking to a Republican. And if you’re a Republican, have a chat with a Democrat. Maybe you’ll find some common ground; maybe you won’t,” she said to about 600 graduating seniors on Saturday.

    “We know what happens when we only talk to people who think like we do," she added. "We just get more stuck in our ways, more divided, and it gets harder to come together for a common purpose.”

    Michelle Obama was just one of hundreds of commencement speakers imparting their wisdom to college graduates this month. Over the weekend, the first lady, former President Bill Clinton and NBC News’ Tom Brokaw highlighted the speakers circuit with a common theme: Focus on the things that unite us, not divide us.

    "You can either choose to use those opportunities to continue fighting the fights that we’ve been locked in for decades, or you can choose to reject those old divisions and embrace folks with a different point of view," Michelle Obama said.  "And if you do that, the latter, who knows where it might take you -- more importantly, where it might take our country."

    Since her husband's 2008 election, Michelle Obama has had a front row seat to experience the gridlock that partisanship has caused in the federal government. Like the first lady, Brokaw urged graduates of Loyola University in New Orleans to focus on the "common pursuit of the goals that we all have, not small ideas that divide us."

    "You are prepared to do all that to make us better,” he told the Class of 2013.

    Brokaw also told the graduates that the next 100 years will be known as the century where women will fully be viewed as equals to their male counterparts.

    “The 21st century will be remembered, I can assure you now, even though it’s a long way from being over, it will be remembered as the century when women finally took their rightful and fully recognized place in society here and around the world,” he said to thunderous applause.

    Clinton told Howard University graduates that they are part of a small minority of the world's population that has the privilege of choosing how they want to earn a living. His advice: Do what makes you happy.

    "Most people are happiest doing what they are best at. You have been given that gift," he said.

     Below are some excerpts from their speeches:

    Tom Brokaw

    Address to Loyola University in New Orleans on May 11.

     

    “Leave here today determined to be the generation of big ideas that unite us in the common pursuit of the goals that we all have, not small ideas that divide us. Adopt the mantra of the generation that gave you all those apps, the instruments and the capacity that so change your life. In Silicon Valley they wake up every morning saying, ‘How can we be disruptive? How can we challenge convention and make life a better place? You are prepared to do all that to make us better.”

     

    Former President Bill Clinton

    Address to Howard University on May 11.

     

    “Even with the employment situation and the economic challenges, virtually all of you have the power to choose what you will do to earn a living. It may seem self-evident, but most people who have ever lived, including hundreds of millions even billions on the face of the Earth today, never had that choice.

    "… You have a choice. The only bit of personal advice I have is this: Try to do something that will make you happy. And most people are happiest doing what they are best at. You have been given that gift." 

  • Mark Sanford and the 5 greatest comebacks in U.S. political history

    Bruce Smith / AP

    Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, with his fiancee Maria Belen Chapur, right, addresses supporters in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on April 2, after winning the GOP nomination for the U.S. House seat he once held.

    By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

    As political comebacks go, Mark Sanford's could be pretty epic.

    Nearly four years after a vanishing act that led to revelations of an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman, the former South Carolina governor has won the GOP nomination for a House seat he once occupied.

    And during his victory speech, his former mistress — now his fiancee — stood smiling at his side.

    If he achieves his quest for redemption by defeating Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Sanford will join a string of politicians who have bounced back from disgrace or disaster for impressive second acts:

    Richard Nixon

    He was the king of the comeback.

    Nixon was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1952 when allegations he profited from a political slush fund threatened to get him tossed from the ticket. He took to the airwaves to clear his name, making an emotional defense in which he talked about his family finances and talked about his kids' dog, Checkers.

    AP file

    President Richard Nixon

    The speech was a massive success, and he survived the tempest to become President Eisenhower's No. 2. But after eight years as veep, Nixon was defeated by John F. Kennedy in a squeaker of a presidential election and then couldn't get elected governor of his home state.

    "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more," he bitterly declared.

    Wrong. Nixon, of course, made a second big rebound, defeating George McGovern in 1972 to become the nation's 37th president. After resigning in disgrace, Nixon slowly refashioned himself as an elder statesman and foreign policy expert but never fully escaped the shame of Watergate.

    Marion Barry

    Charles Dharapak / AP file

    Former Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry

    The onetime activist and hostage-siege survivor served three terms as mayor of Washington, D.C., but was dogged by corruption scandals and finally undone by a 1990 sting operation that caught him on tape smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room with an informant.

    A national punchline, he didn't run for a fourth term as mayor, but he did make a bid for a city council seat, losing to an elderly woman soon after being sentenced to six month in federal prison. And just two months after his release, he began pursuing a political resurrection — with surprising success.

    He was elected to the City Council and served as mayor again from 1995 to 1999. In 2004, after a stint as a consultant, he ran for the Council again and won. In recent years, he's faced a tax lien, a a stalking arrest and rebukes by his colleagues, but he remains in office.

    John Quincy Adams

    Library of Congress via Reuters

    President John Quincy Adams

    He won the White House in 1824 by a one-vote margin in the House of Representatives, which was called on to pick the next commander-in-chief after Andrew Jackson received the most popular votes but fell short of the electoral college threshold.

    Adams' father had managed only one term as president, and the son wouldn't do any better. Four years later, a mud-slinging Jackson drubbed him out of office in a landslide, amid accusations that Adams was a pimp and his wife was an adulteress.

    But the sixth POTUS was not the retiring type. Just two years later, he ran for Congress, won and served nine distinguished terms. He died in office, after suffering a stroke on the floor of the House of Representatives.

    Jerry Brown

    His two terms as governor of California in the '70s and '80s were eclipsed by his failures: three unsuccessful presidential bids and two dead-end Senate campaigns.

    Nick Ut / AP

    California Gov. Jerry Brown

    He was written off by some as a flake — "Governor Moonbeam," they called him, after a nickname given him by girlfriend Linda Ronstadt — who traveled the globe searching for spiritual fulfillment.

    After six years of self-exile, Brown began working his way back from a political no-man's land. As a two-term mayor, he tried to revitalize the gritty city of Oakland, then served two years as state attorney general before he replaced Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor in 2011.

    He's gotten high marks and during his state of the state address in January he declared, "California is back." Looks like Jerry Brown is, too.

    Bill Clinton

    Monica who?

    Clinton was originally dubbed the Comeback Kid after he finished second in the 1992 New Hampshire primary despite accusations of infidelity and draft dodging — but his real rehabilitation wouldn't come until after he was president.

    Seth Wenig / AP

    President Bill Clinton

    The 1998 scandal over his sexual liaisons with White House intern Monica Lewinsky threatened to drive him from the Oval Office; he became the second president in history to be impeached.

    Yet despite all the jokes about thongs and cigars, Clinton ended his term with his highest-ever approval rating — above 65 percent — and remains a hugely popular figure.

    He created a global charitable foundation and helped free two Americans held in North Korea. His nomination speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention stole the show and while his days as an elected official are over, he could end up back in the White House one day.

    Related:

    Sanford nomination gives Democrats hope in special election

    Alex Wagner and the NOW panel look at former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's political comeback and his chances for defeating Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the District 1 congressional race.

     

     

  • William Ginsburg, who represented Monica Lewinsky, dead at 70

    Tim Sloan / AFP-Getty Images File

    William Ginsburg, who represented Monica Lewisnky for six months during the Clinton sex scandal, has died.

    By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

    William Ginsburg, who rocketed to fame as Monica Lewisnky's attorney during the Bill Clinton sex scandal, has died at his Los Angeles home after a battle with cancer. He was 70.

    The obituary notice in the Los Angeles Daily News didn't even mention the six-month gig that made him a household name, focusing instead on the meat of his practice: swimming pool injury lawsuits, a dispute over Liberace's remains and right-to-die cases.

    It was through Ginsburg's medical malpractice work that he met Lewinsky's radiologist father, who tapped him to represent the White House intern in 1998 after her affair with the president became public.


    He brought a fatherly air to the case as he locked horns with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. He didn't shy from the limelight, once appearing on all five Sunday morning news shows -- a feat that is still known as "the full Ginsburg."

    His handling of the case drew mixed reviews. When he was replaced, he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he noted he had kept Lewinsky out of the grand jury and away from indictment for six months and insisted the parting was amiable and mutual.

    "A person apparently needs a passport to get into Washington, and that the city is one where even the natives eat their young," he wrote.

    "It is a disgrace that our governmental city is so insular and out of touch with the people of the country they govern. I am not a Washington insider but a hell of a trial lawyer, with an innate sense of right and wrong and up for any fight, even with an anti-constitutional monster."

    Ginsburg's obituary said that in 45 years of work he tried more than 300 cases in 21 states. He is survived by his wife, three children, two grandchildren, his mother and a brother.

     

     

  • 'Full of chutzpah': Ex-NYC Mayor Ed Koch remembered fondly at funeral

    Seth Wenig / AP

    A casket containing the remains of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch is brought into Temple Emanu-El.

    By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Former New York Mayor Ed Koch was remembered Monday as the embodiment of the city he led for 12 years — feisty, restless, self-sure and larger than life.


    At a funeral in Manhattan, former President Bill Clinton produced a sheaf of personal letters in which Koch held forth on just about everything: Democratic politics, gun control, the obesity epidemic, teen smoking. The former mayor also sent Clinton the political columns he wrote after leaving office.

    “He had a big brain, but he had a bigger heart,” Clinton said. The former president said that no politician he knew had a better grasp of how “the real lives of people” are changed by the decisions of government.

    The funeral, at Temple Emanu-El on the city's Upper East Side, drew the full complement of New York’s political elite. All three of Koch’s successors were there. So were New York’s two senators, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo.

    Mayor Michael Bloomberg remembered a promotional video Koch shot for the city in which Koch stood at the entrance to the Queensboro Bridge, just renamed for him, and shouted at commuters: “Welcome to my bridge! Welcome to my bridge!”

    What no one knew, Bloomberg said, was that Koch stayed there 20 minutes after the cameras stopped rolling, in the rain, shouting proudly about his bridge.

    New York Mayor Ed Koch's memorial service was held Monday, and his casket was carried out to the song popularized by Frank Sinatra, "New York, New York." NBC's Brian Williams has more.

    “No one has ever embodied the spirit of New York City like he did, and I don’t think anybody ever will,” Bloomberg said. “Tough and loud, brash and irreverent, full of chutzpah, he was our city’s quintessential mayor.”

    Koch, who served from 1978 through 1989, died Friday of congestive heart failure. He was 88.

    Bloomberg praised his predecessor for helping rescue a city that, when he took office, was unsafe and unattractive, broken and broke.

    Family and friends took note of his relentless boosterism for his relatives and for his beloved city. One said that Koch, in his post-mayoralty, agreed to leave the city for speaking engagements only on the condition that he return the same day.

    A grand-nephew, Noah Thayer, said that while Koch was often portrayed as a lonely bachelor, “In actuality he was a vibrant and vital part of our family.”

    Besides the turnaround of the city’s finances, Koch was remembered for a mastery of retail politics — rallying New Yorkers to walk to work during a transit strike, for instance, or for his penchant for giving a thumbs-up and asking: “How’m I doin’?”

    Bloomberg imagined that Koch, in heaven, was asking how he did. The current mayor, apologizing to a nearby cardinal, said that he had spoken to God and received the answer: “Ed, you did great. You really did great.”

    Clinton described a close friendship among Koch, former New York Sen. Al D’Amato and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was elected to two terms as senator before resigning to become secretary of state.

    Clinton said he had sent Koch a note for his 88th birthday, last December, and that Koch had written back inquiring about his wife’s health. Hillary Clinton suffered a concussion and was diagnosed with a blood clot in December.

    The former president said that he answered Koch: “She’s doing all right, but she misses you.” Bill Clinton continued: “We miss you so much because we all know we’re doing a lot better because you lived and served.”

    Koch’s casket was carried out of the temple to applause, as an organ played “New York, New York.”

    Slideshow: Ed Koch: 1924 - 2013

    Launch slideshow

     

  • The making of Hillary Clinton: 15 moments that define her public life

    By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Perhaps no person in America better reflects the possibility and peril of a life lived in the public eye than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    From lashing out at a “vast right-wing conspiracy” when news of her husband’s infidelity emerged to finding her “own voice” after a teary answer to a voter’s question on the campaign trail, Clinton has never failed to confound her critics and inspire her fans.

    As Clinton’s final day at the State Department closes the latest chapter of her public life, here is a look at 15 key moments -- from the 1960s through today.

    First big speech: Hillary Diane Rodham gives the commencement address at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in May 1969. It establishes her not just as respected but as outspoken: She criticizes a previous speaker, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke, and suggests that he is out of touch with the action her generation craves. Weeks later, she is featured in Life magazine as a shining example of the Class of ’69.

     

    William J. Clinton Presidential Library

    Meeting her match: At Yale Law School, Hillary Rodham meets Bill Clinton. She would write later that the attraction was immediate, and that they shared an intellectual bond that never broke: "Bill Clinton and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971," she wrote in the memoir, "and more than 30 years later, we're still talking."

    AP

    ‘If that's not enough ... don’t vote for him': Bill and Hillary Clinton go on “60 Minutes” in January 1992, in an interview that airs immediately after the Super Bowl, to deny that he had had a 12-year affair with an Arkansas state employee, Gennifer Flowers. In the interview, Hillary Clinton says: “You know, I'm not sitting here — some little woman standin’ by my man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together. And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him.” The couple are pictured with “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt.

    Paul J. Richards / AFP - Getty Images

    Health-care advocate: As first lady, Hillary Clinton leads a presidential effort in 1993 and 1994 to reform health care, a policy role unprecedented for a first lady. The plan ultimately aims for universal coverage by requiring employers to provide health care. But some Republicans, and notably the insurance industry, attack the plan as hopelessly bogged down in bureaucracy, and it dies in Congress. The defeat is a huge setback for a woman who aspired to be a non-traditional first lady but who opponents feared had designs on being a co-president.

    Doug Mills / AP

    Making her mark: In September 1995, Clinton goes to a U.N. conference in Beijing and delivers a forceful critique of abuse of women in China, using language that would be considered strong for any American leader but particularly out of the ordinary for a first lady. She declares: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.”

     

    Conspiracy theory: In January 1998, just after allegations surface of a presidential affair with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton goes on TODAY and dismisses the matter as a "feeding frenzy." She stresses that the president has denied the suggestions of an affair. She goes on to tell Matt Lauer: “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

     

    Luke Frazza / AFP - Getty Images

    Between the two of them: The Clintons, with daughter Chelsea famously clutching their hands, leave the White House for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard in August 1998. A day earlier, the president had admitted on national television that he had had an improper relationship with former White House interview Monica Lewinsky. Hillary Clinton later writes of this period in her memoir: “Although I was heartbroken and disappointed with Bill, my long hours alone made me admit to myself that I loved him. What I still didn't know was whether our marriage could or should last.”

    Richard Drew / AFP - Getty Images

    Engaging debate: Clinton makes a point during a September 2000 debate with Rep. Rick Lazio for a Senate seat from New York. During the same debate, Lazio produces a pledge against “soft money” political contributions and walks over to Clinton’s lectern, encouraging her to “sign it right now.” Some Clinton supporters later say the move was bullying. Clinton wins with 55 percent of the vote, and in 2006 trounces another Republican opponent with 67 percent. She generally wins praise as a hard worker in the Senate, and after re-election quickly turns her attention to a bid for the presidency.

    Jim Cole / AP

    Finding her voice: Clinton exults after defeating Sen. Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary in January 2008, resuscitating her campaign after a bruising defeat in Iowa days earlier. Clinton, asked by a New Hampshire voter how she deals with the stress of campaigning, had choked up and said: “You know, I have so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards.” In her victory speech, Clinton says she “found my own voice.”

     

    Elise Amendola / AP

    The laugh: Nearing the end of her primary campaign, Clinton enjoys a drink and some laughs with reporters on her campaign plane after a stop in South Dakota in May 2008. Her laugh — with a boisterous crescendo that borders on a cackle — becomes so famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) that it inspires a parody by Amy Poehler on “Saturday Night Live.”

    Mark Wilson / Getty Images

    End of a long battle: Clinton waves to supporters at the National Building Museum in Washington in June 2008 after endorsing Obama for president — the end of their historic prizefight of a Democratic primary campaign. In a reference to her popular-vote count in the Democratic race, she says: “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.”

    Pool / Reuters

    Globetrotter: Clinton, as secretary of state for Obama's first term, visits the historic Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, in October 2009. She would say later that it was “hard to believe” that no one in the Pakistani government knew where al-Qaida leaders were hiding. By the end of her tenure as secretary, Clinton had visited 112 countries, logged 956,000 miles and spent the equivalent of 87 days traveling, according to an official State Department count.

    Pete Souza / The White House

    Finding Osama bin Laden: Clinton, with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and members of the president’s national security team, waits out a tense moment just off the White House Situation Room during the May 2011 raid that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Asked later why she had her hand over her mouth, Clinton would say: “Those were 38 of the most intense minutes. I have no idea what any of us were looking at that particular millisecond when the picture was taken. I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs. So it may have no great meaning whatsoever.”

    © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / REUTERS

    Hillz, the meme: Her popularity as secretary of state spills over to the Internet when, in October 2011, she is photographed checking a mobile device and wearing sunglasses aboard a military C-17 plane bound from Malta for Libya. The shot inspires a Tumblr site, Texts from Hillary Clinton, in which the "secretary" sends snarky texts to the likes of Ryan Gosling, Mark Zuckerberg ... and Mitt Romney.

    Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

    ‘Prevent it from ever happening again’: Clinton testifies to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Clinton is pressed by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about why the administration had not learned quickly that the attack was a planned assault, not the spontaneous result of a protest. She answers: “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator.”

     

    RELATED: Clinton steps down, but a reluctant style legacy endures

    Slideshow: A political life

    AP

    Full slideshow: Hillary Clinton's life has taken her from first lady to senator to secretary of state.

    Launch slideshow

  • In North Carolina gay marriage vote, it's Bill Clinton versus Billy Graham

    Stephen Chernin / Getty Images

    President Bill Clinton and evangelist Billy Graham have lent their voices to opposite sides of North Carolina's gay marriage debate. Here, they are shown together during Graham's Crusade at Flushing Meadows Corona Park June 25, 2005 in Queens, New York.

    By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

     

    As North Carolina prepares to vote on a controversial amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage as between a man and a woman, both sides are making their final push, including enlisting high-profile backers -- such as former President Bill Clinton and evangelist Billy Graham -- to their cause.

    The amendment, also known as Amendment One, would make marriage the only domestic legal union that would be valid in the state. Opponents say the measure is unnecessary since North Carolina already has a statute in place banning gay marriage, and it could jeopardize domestic violence protections for women and affect health benefits for domestic partners. But backers say those fears are overblown.

    Voters head to the polls on Tuesday to cast their ballot on the amendment and candidates races in the 2012 primary, but 508,000 people already have participated through absentee ballot, according to the State Board of Elections. That record turnout surpassed even the 2008 primary, which included Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the ballot, according to Democracy North Carolina.

    On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of North Carolina homes received an audio recording of Clinton encouraging people to vote against the amendment. In it, he raised the health care and domestic violence concerns, and also said it could hinder efforts to lure new business to the state.

    "So the real effect of the law is not to keep the traditional definition of marriage, you’ve already done that," Clinton says in the recording. "The real effect of the law will be to hurt families and drive away jobs.  North Carolina can do better."
     
    “Somebody like Bill Clinton doesn’t just come out on anything and speak against it,” Jeremy Kennedy, campaign manager of Protect All NC Families, which is against the amendment, told msnbc.com on Monday. “His office looked at this for a very long time before they decided they even wanted to get involved.”
     
    President Barack Obama’s campaign office in North Carolina has released a statement saying he opposes the amendment, too, Kennedy said.

    On the pro-amendment side, Billy Graham and former Republican presidential candidate and House Speaker Newt Gingrich have given their support.

    "At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage,” Graham said in a full-page ad that was to run in 14 North Carolina newspapers. “The Bible is clear -- God’s definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to urge my fellow North Carolinians to vote for the marriage amendment on Tuesday, May 8. God bless you as you vote.”


    Rachel Lee, a spokeswoman for pro-amendment Vote For Marriage NC said his endorsement was exciting, noting, “He rarely speaks on political issues but he did offer support.”

    Obama's education secretary: I believe in gay marriage
    Related: The life and times of Billy Graham

    She also said they have more than 6,000 churches, a number of policy organizations and state civic groups in their corner.

    Of Clinton’s robocalls and Vice President Joe Biden’s comments on Sunday backing gay marriage, she said: “They certainly have a right to their opinion. However, I would say that they are misguided as to what they claim the consequences of this amendment would be. This amendment is very simple and straightforward. It preserves marriage between one man and one woman in our state constitution. It will in no way impact on domestic violence protections, child custody or end of life desires. So these claims brought on by the other side are simply false.”

    John Dinan, a professor of political science at Wake Forest University, said the issue has really "polarized the state," with city councils and county commissions taking a stance for or against the initiative. 

    “We’re in the midst of a serious campaign that has all the trappings of … a national campaign,” he told msnbc.com, referring to all the attention from outside groups and national figures.

    If the North Carolina amendment passes, the state would join 30 others that have passed similar amendments. Recent polling by Public Policy Polling, a group that works for Democratic candidates and progressive causes, finds the amendment has the support of 55 percent of the state's voters, with 39 percent against.

    "Opponents of the amendment had an uphill battle in convincing voters that it was anything other than a referendum on gay marriage, even though it does go a lot further than that," said the firm, which has done some private polling for the anti-amendment campaign but whose public polling on the issue isn't sponsored by anyone.

    Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a Morning Joe panel that he agreed with Vice President Joe Biden's stance on same-sex marriage. That was the first time Duncan announced his views publically. Duncan also talked about Teacher Appreciation Week and explained the government should keep interest rates on student loans down because going to college remains "an important part of the American dream."

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