George Stephanopoulos

George Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) was a senior political adviser to the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and later became Clinton's press secretary and communications director.

Early Life

George Stephanopoulos grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, the descendant of Greek immigrants. His parents followed the Greek Orthodox faith, and Stephanopoulos, whose father was a minister, had long considered entering hte profession himself. However, when he was a freshman in high school, he decided that he would rather pursue a different profession. Stephanopoulos attributes his experience as an altar boy, where he played a behind-the-scenes role helping the person in the spotlight, his father, as the formative experience that made him well-suited to political spinning.

Education

Stephanopoulos wrestled competitively in high school, though he was a lousy wrestler. He reports being a short, chubby kid, and was very awkward in his high school yeaers. However, he was accepted to Columbia University in New York, where he "came into his own." Stephanopoulos received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1982, where he was a Truman Scholar, member of Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in philosophy.

Stephanopoulos' father had always wanted his son to become a lawyer, if not a minister, so he promised his father that he would attend law school eventually. For the time being he took a job with a Congressman from Cleveland, and served as an aide in Washington D.C. Nevertheless, his father persistently questioned him as to when he would attend law school, so Stephanopoulos agreed to attend law school if he were denied a Rhodes Scholarship. Though he had been rejected for the scholarship during his senior year at Columbia, Stephanopoulos was successful in his second attempt.

While at Oxford, Stephanopoulos earned a master's degree in theology at Balliol College. He reported spending much of his time trying to root his political leanings in deeper philosophies that he studied while at Oxford.

Political Experience

Stephanopoulos was, along with James Carville and Paul Begala, a leading member of the 1992 Clinton campaign. Later, he was promoted to Senior Advisor on Policy and Strategy. His role on the campaign is portrayed in The War Room.[1]

After leaving the White House, he became a political analyst for ABC News, as a correspondent on the ABC Sunday talk program This Week, World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and various special broadcasts. In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host of This Week.

His 1999 memoir, entitled All Too Human, was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a #1 New York Times Best Seller. [2] In his book, Stephanopoulos spoke of his depression and how his face broke out into hives due to the relentless pressures of spinning the Clinton White House message. Bill Clinton referred to the book in his autobiography, My Life, apologizing for what he felt in retrospect to be excessive demands on the young staffer.

Both Michael J. Fox's character in The American President and Rob Lowe's character on The West Wing are modeled after Stephanopolous.