Yesterday, I interviewed author, columnist, and PR exec Tony Blankley.

One of the many interesting jobs Mr. Blankley has held over the years includes serving as press secretary to Newt Gingrich for seven years.  (He was there when Newt became Speaker, and for many years after). As such, I wanted to ask him to compare how Newt dealt with Bill Clinton’s efforts to pass “Hillarycare” — and other liberal legislation — to today’s health care debate.

Following are a few of the many interesting observations he shared with me regarding how Gingrich approached managing the Clinton years:

… We tried to figure out what made Clinton tick… but I came to the conclusion over the years — and so did Newt – that it was more important for us to understand what made us tick … if you know yourself well, you’re probably going to be able to engage them better than simply trying to figure them out.

… I think Bill Clinton wanted to be president more than he wanted to use the presidency for something.  That was our judgment … In the beginning, we judged that he would be content as long as he was surviving as president.

… Once Newt became speaker, we blocked all of Clinton’s liberal ideas. People forget, he had plenty of liberal ideas when he came in … Newt decided that as long as Bill Clinton could figure out a way to continue to be acceptable to the country, he’d go along with a lot of our stuff.

On getting inside President Obama’s head …

… (President Obama) could be anything from a fairly liberal conventional standard person who just is glad to be president and just wants to get a few things done, to an ideologue…to a person who doesn’t have any ideology and just wants to be popular and successful — which I think ultimately Bill Clinton probably was.