The 0.1% Difference — Why Clinton's Human Genome Project Made Me Understand Myself Again
In February 2005, President Clinton was four years out of office. That year, I met him face to face for the first time. Five years later, in November 2010, we spoke in depth a second time.
Before that first interview ended, he told me something I've remembered for twenty years. He said that in the final year of his presidency, the research project he funded most heavily was the sequencing of the human genome. The finding: across the three billion base pairs in human DNA, any one person and any other are more than 99.9% identical.
He looked at me and asked: "Even though our skin color differs, our height, our depth, our dress — the real difference is tiny. So why do we spend 90% of our time every day fighting over the less-than-0.1% that separates us?"
My answer, in my heart, later became the opening line on the cover of my book: Mr. Clinton, I have to tell you — you're wrong. Precisely because you created that 0.1% difference between me and every other reporter, I became so distinct on the battlefield of the news.
December 1994. I was still a young reporter at TVBS. I heard that former U.S. President George H. W. Bush was coming to Taiwan on a private trip. I knew nothing back then — I just had drive. I dug up the hotel where Bush was staying, waited at the door, and seized my chance to ask what he thought of the story of the moment: that opposition candidate Chen Shui-bian had won the battle for the capital, becoming Taiwan's first DPP mayor of Taipei. Bush answered on the spot: "It's very difficult; democracy has been witnessed in Taiwan. Every one of us in America respects the choice of the Taiwanese people. No matter who wins or loses, we respect it." Just like that, I got the exclusive: a former U.S. president on Taiwan's democratic election.
After the interview I wrote a thank-you note, and the next day went back to the heavily guarded Taipei Guest House to wait for another chance. When an American Institute in Taiwan diplomat came over, concerned, I asked him to pass the note to President Bush. A few weeks later, to my astonishment, a handwritten reply from Bush himself arrived. A few short lines:
"I was delighted to accept your interview, and I thank you for your letter. Had I known in advance how important the interview was to you, I would gladly have talked with you more. I hope we can meet and talk again soon."
That handwritten letter became a treasured keepsake, and a source of drive in my career.
I was only in my twenties then, barely into the profession. On the streets of Taipei there were plenty of reporters smarter than me, better connected, better spoken. But the ones who would dig out a hotel and wait at its door, who would write a thank-you card after an interview, who would treat every encounter as the starting point of the next chance — those were the few among the few.
That is the 0.1%.
I carried that 0.1% for twenty years.
In July 2019, I began preparing for something everyone thought impossible: interviewing U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In that period I was juggling two tasks — preparing to start my own company, a media and international public-policy advocacy firm, and arranging visits to Washington for politicians across parties. Every quarter I flew to Washington, D.C., calling on the three Republican-conservative think tanks umbilically tied to the White House — Hudson, Heritage, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — plus Brookings, the Democratic stronghold. I also cleared a U.S. State Department background check.
In the tug-of-war among Taiwan, the U.S., and China, no one imagined a journalist from Taiwan could interview a U.S. Secretary of State. In May 2021, I did it.
I felt no particular sense of triumph. I had simply faced, again and again, an impossible task and overcome it. I thought back to that February afternoon in 2005, to what Clinton said in front of me. And in my heart I answered him again: you're wrong. It was precisely that 0.1% difference that let me do what 99.9% of people cannot.
In some quiet way, I believe in fate. In 2002, at the World Economic Forum in Kuala Lumpur, I was selected as an outstanding media figure, and walked for the first time into the Malaysian Prime Minister's office, face to face with the strongman premier, Mahathir. Sixteen years later, in May 2018, Mahathir returned to the premiership at 92 — the oldest elected head of state in the world. A month or so after that, in July 2018, I stepped once more into that same office to interview him again, becoming the only journalist in the world to interview a sitting prime minister in the same office sixteen years apart.
That day, I gave him my book, Facing Presidents; he signed and gave me his, A Doctor in the House. Looking at our photo from 2002, he laughed and said to me: "Oh, look — my hair was all black back then!"
At the end of every speech I give, I say the same line: When you really want something, the whole universe will conspire to help you in achieving it.
That line has lived in me for twenty years. I've proven it to myself many times.
People often ask me: "Rebecca, how did you do it?" My answer is always that 0.1%.
The 99.9% is the entry ticket — a good degree, a good background, good eloquence. The 99.9% gets you into the room, but it doesn't hand you the microphone. The 0.1% is the microphone.
That 0.1% isn't talent, and it isn't luck. It's whether you're willing to wait at the hotel door, to finish that thank-you card, to fly to Washington twenty times, to believe that a handshake sixteen years ago will happen again sixteen years later.
To my generation — those born and raised on this land of Taiwan — I want to say one thing: you don't need to envy anyone, or chase anyone. You only need to find the 0.1% that is yours, and hold on to it.
The heavens will open for you.