Robert Barnett to Visit Friends on Oct. 28

We have the esteemed pleasure of welcoming Robert Barnett to Friends Seminary this Friday. Friends Seminary parents: please join us for an Upper School talk with Mr. Barnett, a Washington lawyer and one of Hillary Clinton's and Tim Kaine’s Debate Advisors, on Friday, October 28 from 9:30-10:30 AM in the Meetinghouse. Mr. Barnett is a proud Friends grandparent. During the talk, his daughter, Meredith, will be interviewing him about the upcoming election, the campaign, and the debates. View a recent feature on Mr. Barnett here.

 

Robert Barnett has worked on ten national presidential campaigns, focusing on debate preparation. Most recently, he assisted Hillary Rodham Clinton with her 2016 debates, playing the role of Bernie Sanders in practice debates during the primaries, and playing the role of Mike Pence in preparations for the VP debate. In addition to playing a major role on the debate preparation teams in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012, he played the role of George Bush in practice debates with Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, with Michael Dukakis in 1988, and practice debated Bill Clinton more than twenty times during the 1992 campaign. In 2000, he played the role of Dick Cheney in practices with Joe Lieberman. In 2004, he played the role of Dick Cheney in practices with John Edwards. In 2000 and 2006, he assisted Secretary Clinton with her Senate debate preparations and helped prepare her for 23 presidential primary debates in 2008. He assisted Barack Obama with debate negotiation and preparation in 2008 and 2012.

 

Mr. Barnett was ranked Number One on Washingtonian magazine's list of "Washington's Best Lawyers" and as one of "The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America" by The National Law Journal. He was also named one of the one hundred most powerful people in the entertainment industry by Entertainment Weekly Magazine.

 

He is also one of the premier authors' representatives in the world. His clients have included Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Laura Bush, Bob Woodward, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, Alan Greenspan, James Patterson, Katharine Graham, Ben Bernanke, Paul Ryan, Tim Russert, Barbra Streisand, Khaled Hosseini, Phil Knight, Mary Higgins Clark, several former U.S. Secretaries of State, numerous U.S. Senators, Tony Blair of the United Kingdom, Queen Noor of Jordan, The Prince of Wales, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, and many others, including journalists, novelists, business leaders, sports stars, politicians, and others.