Informant38

Well, I think doing the job has changed me for the better. I think it has made me more knowledgeable, more able, probably a little more wise. I will leave the office more idealistic about America and its possibilities than when I entered it. And because I labored from the first day I was in office, and even in the campaign, under a virtually unprecedented barrage of attack, both political and personal, it helped me to develop a certain discipline and a certain humility about�that it made me sort of get up and go to work every day no matter what else was going on. And it was hard, it didn't come easily. There were days when I was angry and days when I gave myself a pity party. But I worked through it, and it was, on occasion, almost surreal. But it also enabled me to learn all those old lessons�it's not what happens to you, it's how you react to it; no matter what people say to you, you can't define how you view the world�all those old lessons I really had to learn on a daily basis.

And so I think that it helped me personally to be a better person, to be constantly judged and condemned and torn apart, then to have to confess error and be publicly humiliated and all that�it really helped me a lot, because I think that one of the greatest sins of character almost everybody is vulnerable to is pride. And we all tend to look at other people who do things we don't agree with or think are bad things and say, well, whatever is wrong with me, at least I'm not that. And I think sometimes we are too harsh on other people because it's like a crutch, we don't have to deal with whatever is going on in our lives