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Cbs Radio Network news and former managing editor for the broadcast division of united press international, the boys on the bus was required reading. And i had the pleasure and the challenge of having on my upi team one of the boys, the legendary chamberlain of upi. A prospect. Sounds like a lot of you knew him. Looking forward to a terrific discussion this evening and now i have the pleasure of introducing the chair of the National Press club history and heritage team, the 87th president of the National Press club the your chief of the gaylord News Washington bureau for university of oklahoma, and a different mr. Gil klein. [applause] thanks so much, mike. The legacy of the club 112 year history as well as to explore the history of journalism especially in washington. We are pleased on april 27 a new book, new history of the club called tales from the National Press club is scheduled to be published by the history press. It explores the events that happened at the club that it had an impact on american and world history. This event tonight was proposed by our moderator, Edwin Grosvenor who was part of the great journalism family. For generations they publish National Geographic magazines, founded by his greatgrandfather Alexander Graham bell, who, by the way, invented the telephone. And it is to and publisher of the American Heritage magazine, a magazine that has inspired generations of young historians. Ed is also the publisher of 13 history excuse me, ed is also the author and editor of 13 13 history books and hes the thirdgeneration club member. Ed will introduce our distinguished panel who not only randa Campaign Chronicle by the book the boys on the bus but also covered president ial politics and many of the 12 elections have followed. We will have about an hour with our panel and then open it up to questions from the floor. I will pass on the microphone for you see you can consider question can be picked up by cspan. I ask you to ask succinct questions, and if you ramble, the microphone might disappear. Immediately after the program please join us for a reception for our guests. Ed, thanks much, much for doing this. The floor is yours. [applause] thank you, gil. And also congratulations on your book that just came out on lafayette square. I dont know how you found so many good history stories and amazing come great book. Welcome everybody. Were really pleased with this crowd. Were going to have a lively discussion tonight about political campaigns and journalism, specific about the experiences of our three distinguished panel members. When the boys on the bus book came out, a reviewer wrote it described a whole gaggle of political reporters, pundits, pontificated, network clamber boys, drunks, fornicators, hacks, hatchet men, commerce all crammed like monkeys with typewriters in the press bus, frenetically dogging the candidates are looking for a piece of the story, something to pay their best work on. That may be a little over the top, with the book really did provide fascinating window into how we learn about political campaigns and the people who bring those stories to us like that distinguish journalists on our panel. For most of you, they dont need an introduction but i will give brief ones anyway. Carl leubsdorf a lift as a columnist for the Dallas Morning News and was that papers Washington Bureau chief for nearly three decades. On the bus he covered the Montgomery Campaign for ap which given special status with reporters looking over his shoulder to see what his lead was the next morning Mcgovern Campaign carl is past president of the White House Correspondents Association where he had the distinction of being roasted by jon stewart. Karl published his memoirs entitled appropriately adventures of a boy on the bus. Tom oliphant you all know, tom was not as a kid on the bus. Even though he worked for the boston globe for four years, after the 72 campaign he helped manage the globes coverage of School Desegregation in boston which won a Pulitzer Prize tom was later a long time washington correspondent for the globe and reported on ten president ial campaigns. Hes been a frequent commentator on pbs and the networks known for his insight with and handsome bowties. [inaudible] is also written five books including most recently the road to camelot with curtis wilkie. Connie chung, last but not least, were so delighted honey has come down from new york to join us. A true pioneer pictures only the second female coanchor, to coanchor a a Network Newscast s part of cbs evening news and itf an anchor and reporter for nbc, abc, cnn and msnbc. Thats in the band. Couldnt hold a job. [laughing] kim krause and the book refers to connie disrupted, the cozy, clubby male world of the boys on the bus. By oversight of wellprepared. Brian early with microphone early and never hung over. [laughing] right. [laughing] was a real advantage. Alltel you about that. Anyway, i was wondering if each of you could tell us, just tell us briefly i you came to be on the campaign in 72 and your career at the time. You of course have given most of my cover and at least since that date i had joined the ap in 1960 out of columbia journalism school. I was assigned to the tampa bureau. Fortunately three days after i was assigned a spot opened up into new Orleans Bureau and i figured new orleans has to be more interesting than tampa. What i did know is there are about to desegregate the schools there and was about to get very interesting. The next three years i covered a lot of the desegregation, most of the legal end of it. June of 1963 after a brief tenure in new york i got to the Washington Bureau, courtesy of my bureau chief and put in a good word for me. How long ago this was, this was six months before john kennedy was killed although the day that kennedy was shot i was due to come in at 10 30 p. M. When i called in and heard what happened i called and its it should become in a . They said dont come in at 10 30. You can set was a very significant at that point, but as the world war ii generation of journalists begin to retire and die off, spots begin to open up and in the mid60s i covered the house of representatives for two years, then i covered the senate for silver years, and in the 68 campaign i spent some of the campaign covering Hubert Humphreys campaign. By the time i considered to came around i was one of the main ap Political Writer along with walter mears, another boy who still is about in north carolina. I was assigned mostly to mcgovern. I covered mcgovern virtually the whole year, and after that i stick with the ap a couple years but i went to the Baltimore Sun at the end of 1975. I thought i would probably go to work for newspaper and they gave me a good offer to cover politics and the white house. And in 1981, a former editor of mine from the ap became the editor of the Dallas Morning News and hired me to be the Washington Bureau chief. As you correctly set i lasted 28 years as bureau chief and a retired ten years ago, but im still writing the column i wrote all those years. Thats how i got where i got. Tom . 1972 was my second of 11 president ial campaigns. I had covered bob kennedy and George Wallace in 1968, but 72 i started in New Hampshire where i met this one, im pretty sure. And so that was my second. Tom and i are actually about the same age but we didnt we shared the number of bits ago but thats off the record. Okay. But he had a lot more experience than i did. I had just started at cbs news, and i was in my mid20s. I had only been there a few months and i was suddenly assigned to cover George Mcgovern 72 president ial campaign. I was really surprised. But it was great but i was a cub reporter. The third string. In other words, usually there was a first string correspondent, and that was bruce morton primarily. He was smart and respected by even the print journal list. The print did not respect any television journalist, truly. I mean, we were, people who talk for a living, didnt think about what we were saying. We were glamour book boys. But bruce was good, and i think most people respected him. There was a Second String, and often that was david was very aggressive. And i would then be bumped out to third banana so i primarily covered for radio. That was my job. I obviously didnt know what i was doing, but i persevered. So theres a lot of interesting details in this book. What did you guys think when it came out . Just briefly, why do think think we are still reading it today . I was just happy my name was in it. [laughing] i didnt like the picture much but better than no picture. Im not really sure, i think it captures a time and a place that somehow kind of an romantic atmosphere about a part of it was the hunter tops inside of it. It. The Mcgovern Campaign was one of those things, he carried one state. He didnt do very well and yet there was a sort of a romance about it that Mcgovern Campaign bringing is almost up to the point where he died a few years ago. I dont think there was much has changed in some ways. In the boys on the bus Timothy Crouse says, he called jo crap the same we have to Pay Attention to what joe craft what Rural America centric really . Its a thing today, right . One of my favorite moments towards the end, what came to be known in our slang as big feet, columnist, the most Senior Network people, didnt come out all that much during the general perkins fact one of the things i learned about that part of the trade was how little those guys worked. Were you no. For some of us who had correspondent responsibilities in those days, arrival of the bigfoot was very much to be appreciated. Because the good ones would do your job for a day, and file, and you could rest so i was kind of nice. I remember toward the end, two of the most hawkish of the washington columnist, jill also and joe craft who was famous for his association with kissinger at that time, and the mcgovern people, god bless them, what kind of tough with that sort of thing. And i think they showed up thinking it was 1960 1960 and y would illegally be shown to the kansas plains and ushered up to have a drink the nominee, blah, blah, blah. It was cleveland and they told craft and mr. Allsup that they would be riding on what we called the zoo plane, which [laughing] connie can describe what the zoo plane was like. We were the press and there was an elite group becket law on mcgoverns plane, and it often part of the pool. But then there was the rest of us. We were this, the scum we were animals and not to be respected. Acted like it, too. Yes, we did. I think carl was a bigfoot. Well know, because he ap didnt have a bigfoot problem. We had a couple people who were on the plane every week. The main plane had about 40 journalist, all the major papers on. It was the backups and the tv crews and when you with a third person with an organization you ended up on the zoo plane. It wasnt only kraft and also, a funny story that shows in some ways things are not just one of the people who was exiled to the zoo plane was bob novak, another conservative columnist because mcgovern did like and think about and put them on the zoo plane. If you think anything has changed, i remind you of the story the other day about the npr reporter was not allowed to travel with secretary pompeo. Thats about what happened then. I traveled some with spiro agnew in the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun were not allowed to go with them because they had liberals. That part is not changed. I will never forget mcgoverns plane. It was called the dakota queen two because he the first one was a world war ii plane. He flew Bombing Missions during world war ii, but anyway, the dakota queen two pulling away from the tarmac in cleveland and everybody waving byebye out the window at joe also and joe kraft. So for a lot of younger people to date it must be just difficult for them to fathom what it was like for us to file articles when there were no computers, no internet, no email, no cell phone. Not even a fax machine. We had a technologically advanced carl had more gizmos anybody else. It shows what a different world that was. For example, i remember coming back from south dakota after the summer sender mcgovern and senator eagleton had their famous meeting in the government had not announced or told anyone he was going to dump eagleton speedy will get to that story. This is a story about technology. The ap reported with me had written the store for morning papers. In those days we wrote separately for morning and afternoon for the wire. I said you give me your copy ill find a a phone because wet to mitchell, no filing centers. There were no cell phones. You had to find a pay phone somewhere where you could call your story in. I said you go with mcgovern, all find a pay phone. Sometimes the secret service regarding the payphones and you couldnt get to them. What did you do for radio on a pay phone . Unscrew it, yes. The receiver part, you had to be able to unscrew it and use your alligator clips to your reporter for a little phony reporter. It was really hard to unscrew. I mean, really hard. I think i recall being asked over to your yes. I am sore. But connie, film, you would have to get that back to new york well before seven so you would have to send your you sok in the morning. Yes. I had a notorious story. My husband told me you have to tell it because it just shows how aggressive and brutal you were, you know . She can be pretty aggressive. Little old me . I wasnt that way, was i . Ill just tell it to you quickly because its true. In those days you had to fly your film to a location where it could be indeed developed and fed, or unit, literally flown back to new york so we would take these rickety planes. Maury, i cant do this. I was always accused of trying to go around the big guy, whether it was the first string guy or the Second String guy. David said he was supposed to show me around, show me the ropes and everything, and i kept going around calling new york and trying to sell stories directly were for me to do. This time my father had a heart attack, and so they said you can come home. I said great. But since im flying to the location with the film, instead of having that kind to the report, why do i do it on the evening news . They went no. You are outrageous. It with all through the bureau and everybody was appalled. Groups, you know did you ever hear of Andrew Mitchell and chuck todd . Its cutthroat. Im sorry. Just one thing that i can add first of all, in the world of print they were portable typewriters, typewriters [talking over each other] i hadnt underwood that dated to the late 1930s and you had these little typewriters and you had to have paper. The tape recorder was just beginning to be miniaturized that you could hold it in your hand. In 1968, for print people, tape recorders were ridiculous because i just got in the way of taking note and whatever. But there was Something Different that is long gone because of the demise of monopolies in communication, but once you had a nominee, the candidates plane always had a guy from this monster called at t whose job was to make sure that whatever you stop there was a big, several rows of telephones that worked so we didnt have to fight for pay telephone space like a during the primary. And there was a Western Union guy and you could write your story. A couple of times i wrote stories in the middle of nowhere on i did once on toilet paper with a pin, and the Western Union guy would take it and there would be operators waiting at the next stop who would do the transmission. Very cool. At all of that is gone today. I wanted ask something to the point about life for connie. Because she really, one of the things about them that perhaps is different from now is this was at the dawn of the let women in age. In 1972 saw the arrival of three people. One, and absolutely sightless correspond as cbs2 was just marvelous especially in New Hampshire and laid at the convention, Michele Clark who was lost in a plane crash the last year. She was africanamerican, and when i was hired the equal Employment Opportunities commission was pretty great pressure on networks to hire women and minorities. And so cbs news, which was into the end of fall years, and still kind of is [laughing] hired four women in one fell swoop, and black woman, Michele Clark. Me, a chinese person. Lesley stahl, a nice jewish girl with blonde hair, and sylvia chase, i should start with blonde hair. [laughing] it looks like one of those tickets in the old new York Democratic party for you. You had one of everything. That was one of the woman, a third woman that youre in 1972 who broke through the wood been a print reporter for the hearst newspapers, and cast arrived on the scene also in 1972, lit up the set at the convention. With nbc. She is gone, sadly in the early 80s. Cancer. Thats really all there was. These, i mean, connie would go through a stonewall for a story. But then you saw the story and you realized, it was a generational thing at that time. The younger ones, we had grown up with a television. We were totally comfortable with it. Most of us in personal life or political life had become comfortable with the Womens Movement that was gathering steam. It was the poor older guys who had trouble, with women and with television. But tom married spencer was a force to be reckoned with on her own. Shes a Television News correspondent long time at cbs. And for a girl, trying to think of a career or trying to wonder if theres some way to have a meaningful professional life, to see these three that long ago early in 1972, it was the breakthrough and it only got, i mean, it remains, sadly, very male in a lot of respects. It took a lot longer on the print side. In 76 there were a few women covering the campaign. By 80 there were quite a few women covering the campaign and things have changed. Elizabeth, on your bus there was Elizabeth Drew from the new yorker sometimes 72, no, no. Elizabeth rarely came out. At that point mary is different. And you know i read what she wrote for the star, and later for the post of course, and they used to watch a because i always thought she was an incredible writer. Im sure everybody did. I was such a poor writer. I would be sitting there one night in the press room, the two of us would be the only ones there and i was just trying to come up with something mundane that i could just, so that i could convey what had happened. And she was toiling away in the middle of the night writing and rewriting, and i would watch her out of the corner of my eye trying to give it to me, you know . Give me some vibe, please. Should already achieved that status, but she was a charact, too. I remember the night of one of the primaries, and im going to take a wild guess and think it was wisconsin. We were in a press room, and since mary is not here to jump down my throat, she might have had a couple at dinner before the returns came in, and she was a boston tough talking gal, but she was very fastidious about her appearance, and her hair was always done. At any rate, there we were in this newsroom as the returns started to come in that night, and mary allison was a little off, but she had a cigarette and she was on the phone and gesticulating. A a bunch of us were watching ts cigarette getting closer and closer [laughing] to her hair. [laughing] and all of a sudden it lit up. Know . Mary liked young men to carry her bags. And on this occasion young man sprang forward and poured water on her. [laughing] you know what . Can i tell you that, you know, being the only woman, there was a lot of gameplaying, right . But i refuse that because it was in everyday affair. There were all these things these pioneers did that helped us establish the idea of women doing this and one of the things was they really were one of the points and especially this one, member one night in the general election, we were somewhere and sometimes after we were all filed we would go have a couple before we turned in and connie was pretty good about hanging out with us a little bit i realized thats howyou were getting your stories. I was always in bed in my room , number he never said who i was inbed with. No. He said that when i realized powell was breaking stories right and left and i said how did this happen . I realized if you go down to the bar and if you get whoever you can on the campaign a little snickered, they might be able to tell you something. There we are, its three or four of us including connie and how many timeshave you seen this happen , some ball bearing salesman in a leisure suit i guess started to hone in, obviously and awkwardly making passes in connies direction. And i was struck first of all by how calm and cool she was about it as if she didnt really notice the guy and he didnt understand and he kept circling and coming back the way these bar flies do sometimes and finally i was just, he come back and was starting in again and i was just starting to get out of my chair to short of shoe him away when connie gave him one of the most withering stairs i have ever seen in my life. And said a line that has stayed with me forever. He said connie, look, you dont want to go to bed with me. Youd just be horny 20 minutes later. From that moment on, connie was one of us. We were emailing back and forth and he said he had a story. I said i have no member a anymore so i forgot it. But i had to develop a little repertoire because there were so many of these things coming out every day. One time i have to tell you, roger mudd reminded me, when roger was working on his book he called me and he sent jim not. New york times. Jim norton of the New York Times and there must be another one, jewels with pepper who was at that time working for the l. A. Times for he came to the post. I was i think it was at the Biltmore Hotel in philadelphia on the phone. On a pay phone, the kind, the oldfashioned payphone with the accordion glass door and a big black payphone and a seat. So i was sitting there talking to somebody who i had been dating and they came up and their noses against the glass harassing me and i thought they were sexually harassing me and so they pushed their way in and since i was sitting here i could see their belt buckles. They were at thatheight so to get rid of them , i went through and i pulledtheir flies down. And roger said to me did you do that . And i said i think so. On that note. , thats a hard one to follow. So did you feel you had a lot of access tomcgovern . Im just curious about how all the journalists, when they were covering the campaign whether they would get close to the candidate enough that they felt almost possessive of somebody. Krause writes about after musky tank in the polls seeing a group of his journalists and just knocked down five rounds of whiskey because there guy was out. That was one of the things that was most different i think about 1972 is the access. First of all there on the same plane with the candidates and the staff and there are really no barriers there, you could go up and talk to mcgovern and do things like that and i remember being in New Hampshire in early january 1972 and i wanted to do a story about mcgovern, i went around with him in the car and the only otherperson in the car was the driver , a press aide there and i dont know if you want me to tell the story about 1000 percent. You must. Its so good. I wrote the story that prompted mcgovern to say he was 1000 percent behind eagleton and mcgovern and eagleton had had a press conference that they announced he had had treatment for depression including electric shock treatment and after that story we with the wires youve got to think whats the next cycle, with the followup . And i saw, of the post go into mcgoverns cabinet and i said hes got an interview with mcgovern, ive got to figure out how to get an interview and i found out he wasplaying tennis , he had an hour tennis lesson i went over to the tennis court where he was and asked if when he was finished i could ride up with him to his cabin and talk to him and he said sure. You couldnt get within 10 miles of the candidate today in most cases you dont fly on the same plane with them to go to dinner though i went back to the press room. We didnt have one of those little tape recorders yet, the 80 couldnt afford it, we had one of those big things and we had one for the tour bus and i got it from my colleague not telling him why i wanted it because i didnt want to tell anyone what i might have and i interviewed mcgovern and in the course of the interview i asked him what do you think the public reaction to eagletons announcement would be and he had been supportive of eagleton and when i asked that question he said we will have to wait and see area the lead, mcgovern can support eagleton but says we will have to wait and see how the public reacts. A simple wire service lead, totally innocuous. I finally. Now, you have to understand about the medications in those days, of mcgoverns is in south dakota, half is in washington. They barely have phone communication, they dont have a wire, they dont have an internet, they have no way to see my story for hours and hours and when they see my story go crazy that hes pulling back from eagleton, we have to do something about it and they have a hurry up meeting and mcgovern says well, i will deny it and the press secretary her secretary said i dont think you can do that and of course i had it on tape so his solution was to put up a statement saying in response to the ap story im 1000 percent behind eagleton. And by the way, the statement was put on the wall at the press room of the lakota live. On the high home best western. And the person who did it is here in the third row. She had red hair then. She went on to join our racket after the election and had a great life and that was for moment in history and she pulled it offbeautifully. But, and heres the more serious point i think. Jimmy in the book. Did he get somethingwrong . No, he got something right and we all got it wrong. Jimmys thesis in this book is that the established way of covering politics was full of it. Full of it. That it created a twodimensional linear reality that, unreality easily manipulated by politicians. On the eagleton mcgovern thing, his point was that overall he had blown the story because we failed to transmit how manipulative, i love it eagleton but how manipulative he was in trying to stay on the ticket and then how skillfully manipulative mcgovern was in trying to grease the skids for getting rid of him without having a Dramatic Press Conference saying im getting rid of the guy. You had this confusion, but timmy was that all of it was farce and not genuine drama. That is the larger point that he was trying to make in the book. And i think thats one reason it is still studied today because theres something wrong still with twodimensional journalism. And in many respects, the hero of this book, not with stories about drugs and booze and sex though there are a few of those is hunter thompson. Who could make a campaign more real by going off to pluto and back with these wild, i mean, our favorite one remember in New Hampshire that he had discovered that the reason muskie was a lousy candidate was boring as hell, stiff as a board, etc. Was that somebody had smuggled up to new england this drug from brazil and he even had a name for it. I will gain and it made you boring. Whatever, then he would go on to describe and an actual appearance by muskie which could be like if the real guy was very funny, very profane, worried about his stature, but a very obviously uninteresting man but this thing that was campaigning was just not, anyway,hunters descriptions of muskie were more real than ours. And thats tims message. Also the wholesale decision about everyone, i dont think its true with every single reporter. No, i couldnt agree more. If you look at david broder. But see, you have to weigh in in a second, one of the questions tim is wrestling within this one and it would come up repeatedly in campaigns later, all the way to today. Is how could the whole institution have been dead wrong about ed muskie . Not about whether he was a good guy or a bad guy but just what the situation was. 71 until practically the eve of the New Hampshire primary, there was this massive structure known as the muskie Campaign Area it dominated all the coverage. Everyone was wrong about hillary to. Alive and well today. We were just beginning to have a debate in 1972 among ourselves, usually in bar rooms about whether our coverage was about candidacies and what they were about or hear it came, but for the first time you hear that termis in 1972. In our daily stories, yours as well as mine, if a nominee went somewhere and said something, that was the story. And what they usually did was they had one in a standard speech and that gave you your lead. Because you could fight the deceit with him but we could hear one new parts. Driscoll would sit there now in the speech and pretend they were giving it. One of mcgoverns traveling gurus in 1972 was a guy who had been control to president ial politics since 1960. Brent dutton. That was his name. Later went on to become the washington operator for the government of saudi arabia. Boy, did he get rich. But he was marvelous at his craft and one thing he always had the candidates he was inviting do is to personalize something about the stump speech so at least everybody could have a laugh and theres one example that involves you and me, mcgovern would have lines in his stump speech about classic liberal that he was and the line was every day, the big rich businessman can deduct the price of his three martini lunch and the line in the speech would be the poor working guy cantdeduct the price of his bologna sandwich. By what you would do just to lighten things up a little bit, he said and a poor working step like carl lube store cant deduct the cost of his Peanut Butter jelly sandwich in an erie pennsylvania i think why did he do this and i realized it gets back to access, i was talking to mcgovern on the plane, just before we got off so i was probably slightly in his mind but by then also, he was losing the election and he was sort of trying to have a little fun caused this was not going to endwell. He had a great one for bob kennedy to who always closes speech with the famous quote from George Bernhard shaw, some people see things as they are and ask why, i dream things and that never were and asked why not . Several times Robert Kennedy would say into the microphone and so, as George Bernard shaw said, lets all get to the pressbox. The mood would lighten. Access was very different. And the contrast was so profound because nixon was invisible. Absolutely invisible. He was nowhere to be found. It finally became astory at the end of the campaign. And i think all of us felt that no one was pressing him from that side to come out of the bunker and meet with the press area. He would engage, just before 72, one of the boys on the bus at the time was representing the gannett newspaper chain and would later be far more famous deservedly for that was jack jim on. And raman, no, it hasnt happened. Technically it was albany i think but gannett was the chain at that time, it was a real chain and a serious one but things like you and usa today had happened yet and they did the column at the washington star but anyway, jack had the idea after the 60s that we needed, the people who did politics regularly needed to have regular access to the people who were running, just to talk and get to know each other. So he organized something which one of us, i cant remember, anyway it was called lyrical writers for a democratic society. And there were maybe seven or eight of us and we would have supper at somebodys apartment or house. And the candidate and 188 only would come and it wouldnt be off the record. It would be on what they call around here the background. Meaning that you couldnt tribute anything, you couldnt even allude to your having talked to the fellow area and you couldnt use a quote area you could say its , there are ways you could say it but you couldnt sayit directly and of course no pictures. And no broadcast and no wire. You famously, did you ask gingrich onceon camera . Just between you and me . My wife had some dumb congressman in upstate new york who everybody knew was thinking of endorsing ted kennedy for president. And this guy was batting the tennis ball back and forth a bunch of us one day and my wife finally said, the cameras are running, off the record, are you going to endorse ted kennedy . Oh yeah. The lights were on, the cameras were rolling and they got a microphone on. But these things were in credibly different. I was very young then, im very old now but i felt like i knew these people and in a pinch you could have a candid conversation. But do you think you guys were more irreverent . He quotes you at one point when gordon while comes out to give a talk to the boss on mcgoverns new economic plans that hes just released and he starts talking and he quote you as saying boy, ive heard a lot of bullshit before but that takes the cake. It kept going, we eventually in effect through gordon off the bus. There was another moment which tested all of us. And it was very illustrative of what was happening then and can compare it to now. Mcgovern was an early proponent of whats been called in economics the diagram. Every citizen has a certain account theystart out in life with. Thousand dollars a person . How is that different from its more common today. Yang doesnt now. Nixon had a version of it in 1969 believe it or not but this thing came out and it was all new. It was called not liberal at the time, it wasnt clear how much it would cost but anyway, about a month ensued of almost roundtheclock ruthless examination of this proposal. They didnt know how much it cost. Nobody had ever gone into an issue like this with a candidate that deeply. And after the election, i wish i could remember which journalismschool did it. There was more ink spilled exposing the decision of mcgoverns economic proposal and had been expended on watergate to that time. [inaudible] that of course, made it, but there was no internet it wasnt written about. You could say things off the record and talk to candidates off the record and itwouldnt be quoted. If a reporter today turns to another reporter in the White House Press room, assuming they have a press room still and says something, its likely to be on theinternet 2 minutes later and hes going to have to explain it to his editor. I would also say the Eastern Liberal establishment press alliance as it probably is today and i would guess that most all of the reporters did vote for mcgovern. They probably did not vote for nixon and yet, i think all of us believed so strongly that if we happened to be as an individual citizen someone who might want to vote for that person, we would bend over backwards to be critical and i thought that every reporter went overboard being critical of the government, just because they did not want to be accused of soft peddling him or his message. It happened with the times coverage of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and its happening with the times coverage of biden today. Look at the times, every day theres a story about something biden is doing wrong, i assume you going to finish eighth in iowa from what ive read in the times. I was going to pick on up on what connie was saying and ask you something and that is when you are out there, when you were out there with the microphone, how did you know what to ask . You were not just sticking the microphone in peoples faces. You were one of these people who prompted people like mcgovern to say something. To get some fresh sound or something. But if, it required that you be completely up to speed first thing in the morning so when he came out of the hotel to get into his car in the motorcade, if you had a newsy question, you were likely to get a newsy answer. And thatswhat you did. Right . Thank you for knowing that. The way it was done then is that everybody didnt travel or on the ground especially in one giant scrum of 50 to 100 people. Particularly in general elections after the conventions. Reporters are divided up into shifts, morning, afternoon and evening usually and seven or eight of them will represent all their colleagues. At stuff where they cant fit everybody in and theyre called cool reporters. So i would maybe have that duty every other day or something, but you had it 24 hours aday. Were about out of time, the audience can have a couple questions. Carl, in talks about the folly of trying to cover a campaign from 30,000 feet. And still, a lot of the reporters got it wrong about the Mcgovern Campaign because you said you told me you were going around seeing large crowds and enthusiastic once but there were no poles, pulling was really in its infancy. At one point mcgovern was 20 points up in the field in california. But we thought it was probably losing, but he had these enormous crowds everywhere area and i got off the plane about a week out to go back to 80 headquarters and do main stories and i was stunned to discover that no one thought he was going to carry anything. So you did not really have the same information that everyone has today. Now, i would say today, everything is so older but thats anotherstory but i have one lastquick question before we go to the audience. One quick question , what was the best prank, because there were cracks in the boss. Yes. God. Maybe you cant tell. One of the things that was different about 1972 was you started to get something that was a common feature of the president ial Campaign Seen today and that the arrival of somebody from vanity fair or gentlemens quarterly or esquire. Some kind of magazine bigshot. Sometimes they come out now to write about the press. There was a big story in the style section this morning of the Washington Post about whos screwing whom. Out in iowa, i didnt know they did that. They werent doing that in 1972. Can i quickly ask you, wasnt there this woman who was a nixon spy . With the cigarette holder. Lucienne goldberg who was a nixon spy and was on the plane and later reappeared some years later as a friend of monica lewinsky. And help break that story. Is still a columnist i believe. She was there every day, we shot but she was writing a book and then she was see her standing there, she had a cigarette holder and her drink, more oftenthan not. She talked into a tape recorder and supposedly she said she was doing a book and she would mumble these ridiculous, detailed things into it. There are 500 people here, mcgovern looks tired. Ridiculous things. But it turned out this was going to haldemans office every night. And it didnt come out until the hearings the next year. Anyway, one of these, and i going to tell it . I told the one on you already. So what. One of these fancy magazine reporters showed up. And dress beautifully. Sachs at least if not a designer. And i handbag that had to have cost for figures. I just could not take my eye off the thing. And the campaign was going to sanfrancisco that day. And by the time we got there, we were pretty lubricated and not particularly pleased with this bigshot arrival and she was sitting towards the front ofthe bus , the hardcore tended to sit in the back and she put this, i dont know purse, whatever it was, spectacular thing in the island. Well, in those Days Campaign buses, press buses did not come equipped with restrooms. And one of our number had an emergency, as we were driving in from the airport. I wont say who. And he just couldnt wait any longer and on the back seat, he tried to use a beer can. And mostly failed. And this little rivulet, this is San Francisco so youve got hills and allof this. Do you remember the story carol . This rivulet began to make its way down the aisle across the boss towards the purse. And pretty soon the entire bus is cheering every inch of it and then there was this huge cheer when it hits home. And like, welcome to president ial politics, miss bigshot. [applause] this is a very very hard thing to break into i like to give the audience chance to ask questions. Ask a question, make it six, dont make acampaign speech. Yes sir. Greg sherman, formerly with uti. Back in the days when this book was written, the three of you, colleagues like walter mears, johnny apple were sort of gatekeepers who i think sort of got to decide in a way ran for president , if you thought they were a serious contender or not and in our last couple of administrations we had a president who only had 2 Years Experience as senator, since then we had a president has no political experience whatsoever. In the days of the boys on the bus when either of those have been takenseriously and would they have gotten enough coverage to get elected . Obama and trump. Not a problem. Remember when mcgovern ran, when 1972 started to happen for all of this way over the top concentration on musky, everybody covering that campaign had been through the birthplace of 1968 when the same thing and happened. Also in New Hampshire with gene mccarthy. And as somebody who went throughit , there was never , the one thing that i thought was unfortunate looking back is that there was not much attention paid to what really was a historical change and that was the candidacy of shirley chisholm. I dont think any of us understood what a big deal that was. But remember how big the field was in 1972. There was one debate in New Hampshire where they had know, they had to use two tables area they have been stacked up on top of each other somehow atsome dinner. This crazy guy who through the raft on the table and said theres not enough being done about hunger , some guy named ed cole. Still alive. His big cost was Public Access to beaches but anyway hes running for president , wilbur mills isrunning. Anyway, they had been stacked up like this and it was New Hampshire but must be dominated so much but before i shut up, theres a message behind your question that im not sure i accept, one thing i learned from 1972 is the impact of what we do is almost 0. People have their own ways of figuring out what the hell is going on. We play a role that i think most of us tend to exaggerate and its true people dont get mentioned who should. Im sure everybody whos dropped out of the democratic race so far feel in some way slighted. But the truth is its afair fight. But the mistake you can make is in thinking that you are impact is colossal. We really dont matter atall. Theres a big change in the new paradigm now. In print, television, the way i knew it, television networks. Its actually lacks relevance in any way today because of the internet. Information exists through the cloud. But they asked about trump, a lot of the things that were written, they had written stories about all the crooked things hes done and all the stuff he did and his people didnt care and they still dont care. And it didnt matter that everyone wrote about it and it didnt matter that it was all true. Nixon was an early believer in that. And his operation was the first one to be structured that way. They link some of it with television in 68 but in terms of content and scheduling they had it down pat. Reagan did it in 84. But in contests for nominations, i think the experience shows its a freeforall. Its a fair fight read frontrunner doesnt mean anything to that word finally got its comeuppance in our year. When musky was thefront runner , before mcgovern had announced a year earlier he was going all around the country, no one was paying any attention to him. Finally about six months in there was a story in the New York Times saying mcgovern spent a candidate for six months and hes not going anywhere and for some reason he called me up. I dont know why, but what should he do about this and i am a straight reporter, its not my job to tell him what to do and i said the first thing that came into my head, i said its simple senator, all you have to do is win the New Hampshireprimary and he didnt win the New Hampshire primary but he did well enough and the press said he won. That marked another moment where 1972 is a turning point, up until that point there had always been a lot of attention paid to the following word. Expectations. And when you had a front runner, there would be a game in the 60s and into 72, how much does he have to win by . Whats the expectation and every night in a campaign setting, i credit jules went over with coming up, a bunch of us would write a song, a mocking song about some event or theme in the campaign and in New Hampshire, the expectations one was done to the tune of rock of ages. And if iremember the lyric , its david roeder, right for me. Tell me whats is victory. And the number at the musky people fastened on was 55 percent. 55, the famous quote is marie currier. And if he doesnt get 55, she said ill eat my hat. What was it, 47 . And mcgovern one with 36 percent. Theres still people who havent learned but that was the first moment you just dump all over. There are stories being written today about the expectations of monday in iowa. Before i forget, tim krause said of nixon, no president had ever worked so lovingly or painstakingly to emasculate reporters. Im sorry. Trump knows where he got it from. He probably doesnt, actually. Could we get a word in edgewise here . Ill ask you to not find my name in tim krauses boys and the bus but i did have one small measure of advantage and that was that i had covered mcgovern in south dakota, but fresh out of iowa i soon found myself in south dakota here in sioux falls and they kept mentioning about this young rising Young Democratic politician, out in south dakota named George Mcgovern area i had never heard of large mcgovern and he was a debate coach at dakota west as you know and he was about to run for the house against job loss, the world war ii flying ace. Afl commissioner. And he one, too. So that was a small advantage that i had. Tim krause said to me later he said, sometimes we will have totalk about what it was like to cover mcgovern in the earlier days. We never had that talk alas. But one way that mcgovern did campaign better, the ub bureau in sioux falls on the fifth floor of a rundown office building, the elevator didnt start running until Something Like 8 00 and i had to file the weather and every morning during thecampaign , many mornings during the campaign, George Mcgovern went up those five floors without an elevator and stopped by with a handout that he probably had written and typed himself. Before going off to a sailboat or whatever but i had never heard anybody quite so articulate or moving. You know what a modern, it was illegal to be a democrat in south dakota mcgovern started in the early 50s as a college guy and he drove himself around in a beat up station wagon. And built that party all by himself. Im going to test guild motor skills by making a brief statement and having my question the weather you come along for the ride or whether im barking up the wrong tree. We heard about the importance of staying lubricated as a reporter, it strikes me as an interesting story of journalism to look at the amount of money or list are willing to pay for what they do and what establishments a drink in so i wonder going from a time when somebody dressing in very expensive tire on a bus would be looked down upon to a time now where a lot of people are drinking in graduate school to go into journalism and having different kinds of drinks at different kind of bars, i wonder if anybody has thoughts on the challenge for journalists today to connect with readers and viewers when maybe theres a bigger gap between the way they are living their lives . Actually a Mcgovern Campaign did provide didnt they . They had charters. Before the regulation, so everybody wanted to keep their monopoly area and thats meant that. American airlines, Western Union, the phone company and my god, the first thing in the morning. I think it was provided area. Im sure, on the plane, sure it was. Its always been true on white house charters, there was always blames to drink but the differences today reporters dont drink asmuch, its simple as that. You notice during the campaign over theyears when it switch from blood he marries in the morning to mineral water. And you got to the mid80s or the early 90s and there were only two or three of the older guys were still drinking and then all the new breed to come along were not. They tended to work harder to. A line i use to use, it was expected that you always dove at the table and picked up checks. I was trained andexpense living , dont leave a check on the table. And so i would reach in and somebody would object and say no, ill get something and i said its only money and its not mine. Good evening, djcaulfield, member of the press club. Mister marker, your times editor said several years ago at the dawn of journalism was first evolving, what you see is news. What you know is background. What you feel is opinion. With increasing frequency, we see reporters on cnn, msnbc or fox offering opinions 24 seven area is this moving journalismforward . As the husband of a distinguished analyst susan page often appears on television, i think actually its something of a problem. There are many people, there are some people i would say and susan is certainly one of them who can find themselves through analysis and explanation of what they see is coming and then many others are expressing points of view and im amazed to see a reporter from the Associated Press where i once worked expressing opinions on morning joe morning after morning but it seems like the news organizations like of prominence that their people have, prominence on tv leads to. On the website and clicks on the website means someones paying attention and the line has gotten very, very blurred and i think its not good. Jonathan solanki, you talked about the opinion of you think the bend over backwards not to say mcgovern, this is the First Campaign after thewhite house uses platform to attack the press , nattering nabobs of negatives, do you think that influenced your coverage and you think even today knowing these organizations out there going after the press, that thats why the New York Times is going after joebiden as you said or Hillary Clinton, you think thats influencing Coverage Even now . There are a lot of premises there. The question is connie has more perspective i think that either of us. What your sense . Because i lost you a little bit there. Did we bend over backwards, two years into the agnew attack when we all made up out there. I dont think it had any effect. Honestly i think we are just normal people and i think when you are a normal reporter , you want to be, we all want to be fair and if we had a personal bias in one direction or another direction , we would try very hard to push our personal bias out of the way and be fair. So consequently, we were at that time appalled with what spiro agnew said, i think we tried very hard just to be objective and we are all, we are all part of our own experience so we can help being slightly subjective. But we try not to be. Plus you know theres a reportorial fact thats worth putting on thetable. I didnt know many nixon or agnew people who really believe all that malarkey. It was a way of doing politics that they discovered could work. And there were times when it was almost a game. After that first speech, when bill safire and buchanan are still ill from the grave and thepatent is still arguing about who wrote it , natteringnabobs of negativism. But there would be games played at night with them to come up with other alliterative phrases, some of them not printable and they all indulged in this and it transmitted to me a feeling that this is moreof a game and it is something. Even today, it just strikes me as otherworldly. What i was talking about with the times is i think that its bending over backwards to show that in the times case theyre not for the democrats and against trump. So you do it by being as tough as possible on theother side. And i think they sometimes carry it to an extreme, frankly. You mentioned that people dont have direct access that they used to have, they cant get in and have direct conversations but at least the political journalists are on the campaign trail with the candidates and it seems like now weve got this intermediary layer of the curator, and the people are getting the news not from the people who are in direct contact with the candidates, but through whether its blogs or an article or something, that their compiling stories and become that intermediary. Does that seem to, who arethe intermediaries . Whether its bloggers, whether its someone at the newsroom that polling and information from the people on the frontlines, were not getting the stories directly from the people on the front lines following the campaign. Do you study all this westernmark. We do online news. As a consumer, heres what id like. Take a 24 hour period. And somehow, get it all. Stream some events. Theres a handful of these blogs, whats the thing that has the circle with the line in it and then you can only writehundred 50 words or something . Twitter. The people read that stuff . Anyway, yes. But get it all. Give me a day in the life of 21stcentury media and tell me what its like and if you learned anything, if it was all just a bunch of jibber jabber and then heres a picture of mylunch or something. Because its so diffuse now. I cant learn very much from the coverage, can you . I cant find the truth. Im having such a hard time to find out what is accurate, what is true. Ive taken to streaming events or getting video so you can watch a candidate just to find out what theyre saying and whats going on. The horse race which was what, three paragraphs and a daily story in 72 is now the story and believe me, its still reads to me like 90 percent baloney. And it doesnt have anything to do with educating me about anything going on in the country or whatever, its just if you get as much in iowa,can you translate it to newhampshire and then to nevada. And i want to say shut up. Its all the around the holes which are mostly built on sand. Every poll you have seen New Hampshire of nevada, South Carolina and nationally will be worthless next tuesday after iowa quotes. Everything, every word thats been written about them and whatshappening in those states will change. I dont want to wholesale criticize journalism today either i think such incredible Investigative Journalism is being donetoday. Some phenomenal and i think it runs across the board. In print in the New York Times and Washington Post but also some of the broadcast networks are doing great Investigative Journalism. So i dont want to dump on the media in a wholesale way because i think a lot of people do but i do have a problem with the social media and misinformation gets disseminated very quickly with nobody checking it. The oldfashioned way was we had editors and producers and so many layers of people breathing down our throats making sure that what we were reporting was accurate. And i mean, i was deathly afraid of being fired the cause i didnt want, i mean it was really a question of whether or not i got this right. And if ididnt have it right , i knew my head would be on the chopping block. But today, not because people are not dedicated or whatever but there are certain outlets that allow into mind, out of mouth or into mind on the paper and disseminated instantly. And thats where i have a problem. I cannot ferret out the truth. So i have to read all kinds of things to sort of come to my own conclusions as to what might be the truth and probably the best is actually to watch it,whatever it is , whatevers going on, you watch it yourself and you come to your own conclusions. And the democratic side id say 90 percent of what i know about the race comes from watching each of them. I tried to do even now in retirement a couple of events a day beginning to end to just have a sense of what they are like, that i use to get from my buddy here. I think one thing is there is in a way too muchcoverage. Everything is written and everything is breathless and no one is stepping back and saying this is important or this isnt important and you read the post has done a wonderful job in some ways, theyve got a terrific bunch of comedy fired every reporter in the western world who doesnt who doesnt work for the times. God knows whats going to happen to them after the election but theres so many stories about so many people that i dont know where the truth lies area. I was going to say some up after the last question but that was a beautiful summer so lets just go to the last question. Last question. I guess coming from someone who has worked both sides of the bus, my name is bill outlaw. I used to work as a reporter in South Carolina on the bus with the Jimmy Carter Campaign traveling around there and later worked for the Associated Press and Washington Times and worked the other side of the bus for a long shot candidate p dumont in delaware. I think i dealt with you guys someone that so i wasnt very successful i guess but my question is , in todays world with the focus and the use of the term take news, and the first, how do you think the media are dealing with that and what would you advise the media to do to deal with that . I think we have to do our job frankly. And there are people in the journalism world who can take on the forums and the seminars and on tv the concept, but we got to make sure we dont fall into the traps and start doing things that cater to that or to oppose that. I think most of the people in this room have a good sense of what makes good journalism. And when political candidates for their own purposes do what the president has done, you can really not counter except to do your job the right way, i think. Theres a piece of video might illustrate my point, i think. Every few weeks or however often it is that the president goes off to one of these shows, ive been able to find, theyre not cutaways, i dont know what you call them. Pictures of the press 10 about an hour before the event. And you see our children and grandchildren arriving here and you see the taunting and in your face and at timesits almost physical. Its always extremely loud. And im struck at the quiet dignity of these people who just go in to the pen and do their work and leave and dont pay any attention to whats happening. Its a nice example of grace under pressure. I think the accusation of fake news hurts. It hurts those of us who believe in the fourth estate, who believe that, in what we were doing. We pursued a worthy profession and we were trying to right the wrongs of government or society or social ills and we considered it an honorable profession. And even though others dont consider us pursuing an honorable profession, i think there are plenty of reporters today who are, who still have that mindset. Granted, theres a whole section of people who dont. And they engaged in opinion and they engaged in biased reporting. But honestly, my old friend , my old colleagues, the people that i knew were honest people whowere just pursuing the truth. Just know one thing, shes being very erudite and wise and eloquent, but i guarantee if anybody in 1972 had treated connie the way some of these fake news criers do today, she would have flattened them. [applause] spurt time, god bless you. The bar is open here and there are cheeses and things to eat over here. So please stick around and maybe have a couple oneonone. [inaudible conversations] and next on booktv, historian Fergus Bordewich argues congress, led by the republican party, played a vital role in the unions victory in the civil war. Check your Program Guide for more information. Good evening, everyone. What a great crowd. Welcome to book passage. Thank you for coming out tonight on a tuesday night. There are so many things you could be s doing. You made a really good decision coming here. This is a smart crowd

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