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. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1982, where he was a Truman Scholar, member of Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated Summa Cum Laude. He earned a master's degree in theology at Balliol College of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Stephanopoulos, the son of 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 course for his life. A Greek American, his father had always wanted his son to become a lawyer, if not a minister, and Stephanopoulos promised his father that he would attend law school if he were denied a Rhodes Scholarship (this was several years after graduating from Columbia, when Stephanopoulos worked for House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D, MO)). Though he was rejected for the scholarship during his senior year at Columbia, Stephanopoulos was successful in his second attempt.

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.