First program on my watch, as the former general manager of 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 in the challenge, the legendary pie chamberlain of upi, a lot of you knew pie chamberlain. 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 80 seventh president of the National Press club, the bureau chief of the gaylord News Washington bureau for university of oklahoma and a dear friend, mister gil klein. [applause] thanks so much. The role of the National Press clubs history and heritage group, the legacy of the clubs 112 year history as well as to explore the history of journalism especially in washington. We are pleased that on april 20 seventh the new book, new history of the club called tales from the National Press club is scheduled to be published by the history press. Export events that happened at the club that had an impact on american and world history. This events tonight was proposed by our moderator who himself is part of the Great Washington journalism family. They publish National Geographic magazine founded by Alexander Graham bell, his greatgrandfather who invented the telephone. Edwin grosvenor is editor and publisher of American Heritage magazine, inspire generations of young historians. He is publisher of 13 Edwin Grosvenor is author and editor of 13 history books and the thirdgeneration club member. Edwin grosvenor will introduce our distinguished panel who not only were on the campaign chronicled by timothy cratchits book the boys on the bus but also covered president ial elections that followed. We have an hour with our panel, then we open up to questions from the floor. I will pass around the microphone for you so your question can be picked up by cspan. I ask you to ask 6 think questions and if you ramble the microphone might disappear. Immediately after the program please join us for a reception for our guests. Edwin grosvenor, thank you for joining us, the floor is yours. [applause] thank you and congratulations on your book. Dont know how you found so many good history stories. Great book. Welcome, everybody. We are pleased with this crowd. We will have a lively discussion about political campaigns, specifically the experiences of our three distinguished panel members. When the boys on the bus book came out, a reviewing kirkus said it described a gaggle of political reporters, pundits, pontificated, Network Layer boys, drunks, fornicators, fire service virtuosos, all crammed like monkeys with typewriters in the press bus frenetically dogging the candidates all looking for a piece of the story, something to take their best words on. That may the a little overthetop but the book provided a fascinating window into how we learn about political campaigns and the people who bring those stories to us like this thing wished journalists on our panel. For most of you, dont need an introduction but i will give brief ones anyway. Carl leubsdorf on my left, columnist for the Dallas Morning News, the Washington Bureau chief for three decades. On the bus he covered the men covering the Mcgovern Campaign which gave him special status with reporters looking over his shoulder to see what his lead was the next morning. Carl leubsdorf is Vice President of the gridiron club, the White House Correspondents Association where he has the distinction of being roasted by jon stewart. Carl leubsdorf recently published his memoirs entitled appropriately adventures of a boy on the bus. Tom oliphant you all know, cruise reports he was known as the kid on the bus even though he had worked for the boston globe already for four years. After the 72 campaign he helped manage the globes coverage of School Desegregation which won the pulitzer prize. Tom was later the longtime washington correspondent for the globe and reported on ten president ial campaigns, has been a frequent commentator on tbs and the networks known for his insight with enhanced bowties. He has also written five books including most recently the road to camelot with fellow boy curtis wilkie. Connie chung, last but not least, so delighted connie chung has come down from new york to join us. A true pine or, only the second female coanchor to coanchor a Network Newscast as part of cbs evening news. Also an anchor and reporter for nbc, abc, cnn and msnbc. That is in demand. Timothy crouse said that connie chung disrupted the cluby mail world of the boys on the bus by always showing up ill prepared, bright and early with microphone ready and never hung over. Never what . Never hung over. Right. A real advantage. I will tell you about that. Any way. If you could tell us briefly how you came to be on the campaign in 72. Given most of my career since that date, i joined in 1960 out of Columbia Journalism School at the tampa bureau three days after i was assigned there a spot opened up in the new Orleans Bureau. I figured new orleans has to be more interesting than tampa. I didnt know they were about to desegregate the schools there and for the next three years i covered a lot of desegregation, mostly the end of it that was legal. In june of 1963, a brief tenure in new york i got to the Washington Bureau courtesy of new Orleans Bureau chief who put on a good word for me. How long ago this was, six months before john kennedy was killed although the day kennedy was shot i was do to come in at 10 30 at night. When i heard what happened i called in and they said dont come in. I wasnt very significant in the eighteenth bureau at that point. The world war ii generation of journalists began to retire and die off, spots began to open up. In the mid 60s i cover the house of representatives for two years, then cover the senate for several years and in the 68 campaign i spent some of the campaign covering Hubert Humphreys campaign and by the time 1972 came around i was one of the main ap political writers along with walter mears who is around in North Carolina and was assigned mostly to i covered mcgovern virtually the whole year but i stayed with a be a couple years but went to the Baltimore Sun at the end of 1975. I thought i would always go to work for a newspaper and they made me an offer to cover politics in the white house and in 1981 a former editor named osborne became editor of the Dallas Morning News and hired me to be the Washington Bureau chief. In 28 years as bureau chief and retired ten years ago but still writing the column i wrote all those years. That is how i got where i got. 1972 was the second of 11 president ial campaigns. I covered bob kennedy and george wallace, 72 in New Hampshire. That was my second. We are the same age. We shared the number, that is off the record. The number it is off the record. But hed had a lot more experience than i did. I had just started on cbs news. I was in my mid20s. I had only been there a few months and was suddenly assigned to cover George Mcgoverns 72 president ial campaign. I was really surprised, but it was great. I was a cub reporter. Usually there was a first string correspondent, that was bruce morton primarily. The print journalist and not respect any television journalists, truly. We knew people who talked for a living, didnt think about what we were saying, we were glamour boys. But this was good. I think most people respected him. There was a Second String and often that was david who is very aggressive and i would be bumped to third banana so i primarily covered the radio. That was my topic. Obviously i didnt do what i was doing but i persevered. A lot of interesting details in this book, why are we still reading it today . I was just happy my name was in it. I didnt like the picture much but it was better than no picture. I think it captures the time and place that somehow got a romantic atmosphere about it and part of it was Hunter Thompson, and he carried one state, didnt do very well and there is a romance about its, even up to the point where people died. I dont think much is changed in some ways, and khristine hvam, Timothy Crouse he quotes joe kraft as saying we have to Pay Attention to what Middle America thinks. It is the same today. One of my favorite moments in the general toward the end, what came to be known in our slaying as big feet, the most Senior Network people. One of the things i learned about that part of the trade was how little those guys were. Were you for some of this who have correspondent responsibilities in those days the arrival of the bigfoot was very much to be appreciated because the good ones would do your job for a day and you could rest. It was kind of nice but i remember toward the end two of the most hawkish of the washington columnists, joe walston and joe kraft who was famous for his association with kissinger at that time at the mcgovern people were kind of tough with that sort of thing and they showed up thinking it was 1960 and show the candidates play and ushered up a drink with the nominee. It was cleveland and they told kraft, they would be writing on what we call the zoo plane. Connie can describe what the zoo plane was like. There was an elite group that could fly and they were often part of the pool but there was the rest of us and we were the scum. We were animals and not to be respected. Acted like it. Carl was bigfoot. The ap didnt have a bigfoot problem, a couple plate poor on the plane every week. The main plane had 40 journalist, all the major papers and the backups and tv crews, you were the third with an organization. The funny story shows in some ways things have not changed. One of the people who was exiled was bob novak, another conservative columnist. They put him on the zoo plane. If anything changed, i remind you the npr reporter was not allowed to travel with mike pompeo. I traveled with the row a gnu and the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun werent allowed to go with him. That part has not changed. I will never forget mcgoverns claim, the dakota claim. The first one was a world war ii plane, he flew the Bombing Missions during world war ii. The dakota queen 2 pooling away from the tarmac, waving goodbye out the window. So a lot of younger people, must be difficult to fathom what it was like to file articles when there were no computers, no internet, no email, not even fax machines. A technologically advanced person covering the nominee with the ap guy, carl had more kids most than anybody else. It shows what a different world it was. I remember coming back from south dakota after the summer when senator mcgovern and senator eagleton had a famous meeting and mcgovern told everyone he was going to dump eagleton. This is a story about technology. 18 reporters with me had written for morning papers, they were at separate forties for the wires. I said you give me your copy, i will find a cone. We had them out there with no filing centers or cell phones. You had to find a pay phone to call your story in. You go with mcgovern and i find us pay phones. The secret service regarding payphones couldnt get him. What did you do for radio on a pay phone . The receiver part, you had to be able to unscrew it and use your alligator clips to your reporter, so a little sony recorder was really hard to do. Finally, really hard. I think i recall i have sure. The film, you have to get that back to new york well before 7 so you have to send your film back in the morning. I have a notorious story. You have to tell it because it shows how aggressive and brutal you were, you know . She could be pretty aggressive. I wasnt that way, was i . So i will tell it quickly because it is true. In those days you had to fly your film to a location where it could be developed or flown back to new york so you would take these rickety planes. 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, i kept going around trying to sell stories directly for me to do. This time, my father had a heart attack. They said you can come home. I said great but since i am flying to the location with the film instead of having that side do the report why dont i do it . And they went now. You are outrageous went through the bureau and everybody was appalled. I wasnt supposed to you know . That still happened. Ever hear of Andrea Mitchell and chuck todd . It is cutthroat but i am sorry. The one thing that i can add. In the world of print there were portable typewriters. Did you i cant remember. I had an underwood in the late 1930s. You had these little typewriters, the tape recorder was just beginning to be miniaturized, you can hold it in your hands. In 1968 tape recorders were ridiculous because they just got in the way of taking notes or whatever. There was Something Different that is long gone because of the demise of monopolies. Once you had a nominee the candidatess plane always have a guy in this monster called at t whose job was to make sure wherever you stopped there was several rows of telephones that worked so we didnt have to fight for paid telephone space during the process, the Western Union guy and you could write your story. A couple times i wrote stories in the middle of nowhere. I did it once on toilet paper with a pen and the Western Union guy would take it and there would be operators at the next stop who would do the telex transmission and all of that is gone today but i want to ask something to Connie Chungs point about life for her because she really, one of the things about them that is perhaps a different from now is this was at the don of the let women in age. 1972 saw the arrival of three people, and ambulance fabulous correspondent with cbs who was just marvelous especially in New Hampshire and later at the convention, Michelle Crowe who we lost in a plane crash the following year. She was africanamerican. When i was hired the equal Employment Opportunity commission put great pressure to hire women and minorities, so cbs news which was in the neanderthal years and still kind of is hired four women in one fell swoop. A black woman, michelle clark, me, a chinese person, leslie stall, a nice jewish girl with blonde hair, and sylvia chase. They were like we are done the, we are done. It looked like one of those tickets in the old new York Democratic party where you had one of everything. There was one other woman. A third woman in 1972 who had been a print reporter for the Hearst Newspapers and cassidy arrived on the scene in the primaries in 1972, lit up the set at the convention with nbc. She is gone sadly. In the early 80s. But that is really all there was. Connie would go through a stonewall for a story. But then you saw the story. It was a generational thing. The younger ones, we had grown up with television. We were totally comfortable with it. Most of us in personal life or political life had been comfortable with the Womens Movement that was gathering steam. It was the poor older guys who had trouble, a, with women and be with television. But tom, tom married Susan Spencer who is a force to be reckoned with on her own, she is a Television News correspondent, long time at cbs news. For a girl trying to think of a career and 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 it remained, sadly, very male in a lot of respect. It took longer on the print side, 76, a few women covering the campaign. By 80 there were quite a few women covering the campaign and things changed. On your bus there was Elizabeth Drew from new york, mccrory from the posts. Elizabeth rarely came out. At that point mary was there. The great mary mcgrory was there. I read her when she wrote for the star and later for the posts and i used to watch her because i always thought she was an incredible writer. Im sure everybody did. I was such a poor writer i would be sitting in the middle of the night in the press room. The two of us would be the only ones there and i was trying to come up with something mundane so that i could convey whatever happened and she was toiling away in the middle of the night, writing and rewriting and i watched her out of the corner of my eye trying to give it to me. Give me a vibe. She had already achieved that status but she was a character too. I remember the night of one of the primaries and i will 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 and she was a boston tough talking gal but she was very fast eddie us about her