It was at a student political meeting in ohio in 1962, the summer between my sophomore and junior years of a college, and we were writing notes back and forth to each other during some very important session or whatever students do, and he had something sort of typically 19yearold boy pompous, and i wrote back, im the youngest of five. I have an insane family. Host who are they . Guest my family is a wonderful family. My father and mother were some of the most dedicated public servantses in the history of the country, and my father, hail boggs, elected before i was born. 26 years old. My mother was 24. They had a baby girl, the day of his elects, and eight days later a baby boy, and they came here, and i think about it now, you know, in my old age, and think about these kids coming to washington. In this day and age theyd still be on their Parents Health insurance, and there they were, the member of congress and his wife. Of course they werent kids in that era. They were fully grownup people. But here they were, preworld war ii washington, and according to my mothers account, it was very similar to the period of washington that i write about in my history book. You had to go calling, and the women were expected to call on ill get the days wrong the cab nat wifes on monday, the senate on tuesday, the house on wednesday, the Supreme Court on thursday. And receive on friday. And it was very formal, and very organized. And mama told the story of the first day she had to go calling, the issue was, a very young woman, new to washington, and they were living in an Apartment Building on connecticut avenue, and a horn honks and she runs downstairs and gets in the car to go calling and it was Lady Bird Johnson and pauline gore driving her, and they became quite a fearsome group, that group of women. Host what happened october 16th, 1972 . Guest october 16, 1972, my father, who by that tile was majority leader of the house of representatives, in a spirit that was very typical of him, went to campaign for a freshman member of congress in alaska, and it had been a very tiring session up until that point. He was exhausted. But he had made a promise and he was going to keep it, and they took off in a small plane from anchorage, alaska, headed for juneau and the plane disappeared and has never been found. Host where were you. Guest i lived in california. I was a young mom. I had a couple of kids. I had a child who just turned two, and my little boy turned four while i was in alaska, looking for my father. Host lindy boggs. Guest my mother is was. We last her last year but two years ago. Absolutely remarkable human being. A day does not go by without someone coming up to me and telling me Something Else my fabulous mother did. She was from a long line of politicians. In fact, just recently, steve hess here at the Brookings Institution came out with a reprint of his 50yearold book americas political dynasties and realized my fathers family, the clayburns, were actually after the roosevelts, the second most flit political family in terms of office and all of that. And she came out of that long line of public servants, and of course, when she married my father in, i guess, 1937, women werent going into office, but then when my father was killed, his plane disappeared, she ran for his seat in a special election, in march of 1973, and served until she decided not to run again in 1990. She made that decision because my sister was dying at the time. But then she, as i always joke, discovered retirement was very hard work because everyone asked her to do everything and she didnt have an excuse to say no. So, at the age of 81, she took a new job, offered to her by president clinton, as the ambassador to the vatican, and that was a wonderful, wonderful experience for her. Host you write in your book. I we are our mothers daughters. That her friends and she was also fearful of taking the seat because she would lose influence in a sense. Guest it was interesting because as a political wife, she had had a tremendous amount of influence. She and people like mrs. Johnson, mrs. Ford, the rest of them, they were quite a cohort, and they really ran everything. They ran the political conventions, they ran Voter Registration drives, they ran their husbands offices. They ran us kids. And it was before home rule when they first started out in washington, so they worked with the africanamerican women here in washington, to run all of the social services. Family and Child Services and those kind of things. So they were a powerful group of women, and of course, one of the things that my mothers power sometimes was that people were never quite sure where she stood. She made them always think that she was with them, because she didnt actually have to vote, and my sister said to her, mom, what youre going hate about being in congress is voting because there is no maybe button. You have to actually declare yourself, yes or no. But she ended up being a very powerful member of congress. Host you also write about the fact that she went to get a loan for a condo in Downtown Washington. Guest after she went to congress this is a thing that is very true, as you know, peter. Still to this day, women in congress find that they not only represent their districts or their states if theyre in the senate but they represent the women of america, and women come to them with all kinds of issues and problems that they do not come to the male members of congress with. And one of the things that became very clear was that women lost their credit when they lost their husbands, and either because the husband died or he took off with some chippy, and so my mother went to congress in march of and went on to banking committee, and they were considering a bill to end discrimination in lending, and it said on the basis of race, creed, or national origin, and as mama told the story, she went into the back room and wrote in, in long hand, or sex or marital status, and xeroxed it and brought it into the members of the committee and said in a very polite southern way im sure my colleagues just omitted this by depends, and that is how women got credit. And then years later, several years later, not that many years later, we bought her house. The house i grew up in, where i still live, and she was moving to Downtown Washington into a condominium and was having trouble getting a loan, and she called the bank and said, i since my income and assets are a matter of Public Record as a member of congress, i find it passing strange that im having difficulty with this loan, and also the author of the equal credit act, im worried that this is because i am female and elderly, and she had her loan that afternoon. Host well, lets take a quick look at lindy boggs. Its my great honor to welcome you to this joint meeting and commemoration of the 200th anniversary of congress. This occasion is a very special part of the bicentennial observances of the congress which will be marked by historical publicitieses, ceremonies, exhibits, a special film, and other activities during 1989. All three branches of the federal government traces their beginnings to 1789 but the coming which assembled first and successfully launched the United States of america. Guest well, my mother was a great historian, and she is a person who really imbued a love of history in me, and she was the chairman of that bicentennial of congress. She had been chairman of several bicentennials along the way. My sister said to her, this is a great gig. Everything is likely to turn 200 at some point. But she particularly, of course, appreciated that one, as i said, maybe members of her family had been in congress, and she they then assembled in independence hall, where the constitution was written, and establishing the congress, and she was the person who was assigned to preside over it so she sat in that big chair of George Washington with the half moon on the the sun on the back, and her feet didnt touch the floor. Host you referred to your sister a couple of time. Who is barb. Guest my stir barbara was a really incredibly intelligent and humorous and beautiful and delightful human being. She was a politician. She was in local politics in new jersey, for many, many years, ending up as the mayor of princeton, new jersey, and she died at 61. Host you had a brother tom. Guest my brother tom, very prominent lawyer in washington and lobbyist, and he was really a very again, very smart, very funny, very affable, hail fellow well met, wellknown person in washington, again, someone who was incredibly generous with his time and his talents and his treasure, and he died last year. Host from your book we are our mothers daughters as children my brother and sister and i thought of people like sam rayburn, lyndon johnson, Hubert Humphrey and gerald ford, at Family Friends who would come by for a casual dinner picked from the vegetable garden. Guest thats true. One of the great benefits of our lives. Barbara and tommy both always said we might not have had the kind of money that some of those people we knew had, grow up in washington, but we had treasure well beyond anything that you could put in the bank. Host coke cokie robert is washington still the same. Guest not even close. Its tragically different. I had the incredible honor a couple of years several years ago now to be asked by get e betty ford to be a eulogist at her europe recall, and i joked i would have been scared to death except mrs. Ford told me exactly what she wanted me to say. She wanted me to talk about the washington of that era, when everybody was friends, and gerry ford and betty ford and my parents were very good friends, and president ford said to me, dont understand what is going on in washington now and that was well before it was as bad as it is now, and when your dad and i were majority leader and minority leader of the house, wed have billing big debates but then still be very good friends, and he said for heavens sakes, we were the leaders of our parties in the house, then the debate would be over and wed sit down together and be good friends, and they were. They were quite good friends and susan ford and i are still good friends. Host we are our mothers daughters. Lets take a moment to explain what the womans vote is and what it is not. It is not a vote based on abortion or other socalled womens issues. All of our polling tells us that men and women vote exactly the same on to the questionses. The womens vote is an economic vote. Guest for most its an economic vote but true about the womens vote. The womens still feel themselves economically more vulnerable than men because they are. Its a correct perception. And there is still the last hired, first fired knock. But women also have a very different relationship with the role of government. That is not say that women love government, but they hate government less than men hate government. And that is when you think about it, peter, its for very natured understandable reasons global of the biggest beneficiaries of government programs, medicare and Social Security, women . We wished you guys lived longer but you dont. Who are in the people taking care of people on those programs . Women. And who are the people who are on welfare, women with children. On one didnt unmarried women with children. Who uses food stamps, all of those things. You go down government programss and the recipients are either elderly women or younger women and children, who works for government and works in all kinds of governmentally funded institutions like Arts Councils or libraries or hospitals in many cases . Its women. So, theres a different attitude about government, and that is what women bring to the voting booth. Host one good example, gun control. Women see this as a mommy issue, no machine guns on playgrounds good idea. The ban on assault weapons would never have hassed congress had there been fewer women in 1993. Only 23 of republican men voted for it but 67 of republican women voted for it. Guest then it expired and was never renewed. But you see, may be very salient right now, and theres no accident that Hillary Clinton is talking a lot about guns and gun control and a lot of it is to appeal to women. Host Cokie Roberts, a lot of your history books all of your history books for cussed on women. Where did you get the idea. Guest not like there arent history books about men. There are a lot of those. But the first one that i wrote was about the women of the founding period, and really i got the idea from the women i was just talking to you about, the women of my growing up years, who were so influential, in washington and in government, and you know, as somebody who has covered congress and politics as long as i have, you spend an enormous amount of time with the Founding Fathers. Theyre invoked all the time as you well know. The founders said this about that. And almost biffle the way, almost always id say 99. 9 parts of the time that somebody in congress invokes a founding father, its wrong. But so i felt tremendous need and continue to feel a tremendous need to read what they actually said about the right to bear arms or religion in the public square, or why you have to be born in america to be president , although apparently canada works. So, i started wondering about the women of the of this incredibly important, crucial period of our history, and figured they had to be at least as influential as the women of my period, and when i went back to learn about them i had a hard time. It was very, very difficult to find out what they were up to because there was so little by way of letters and diaries and reports. With the exception of Abigail Adams who thankfully wrote and wrote and wrote, and her family, who saved her letters, the rest of them were really hard to piece together. Host you lament in the introduction to ladies of liberty that mar that washington burned all her letters. Guest right. Just today i was reading the review of a new book about martha and george, and it highlighted the fact, its very she is elusive because she has burned her own letters and his to her. So, what we have is this little snippets of their relationship, and then letters from other people about them that youre able to piece together, and the mt. Vernon ladys associating has done a very fine job of trying to find everything they can to try to flesh out a portrait of martha washington. Host good afternoon and welcome to booktv on as soon as cspan chance. This is our in depth program. We invite an author on to talk about his or her work. This month its Cokie Roberts. She has written several books, many history books, couple of autobiographical books as well. To participate 2027488200 in the east and central time zone. 748801 for those in mountain and pacific time zone. You can also send cokie robert aztecs e text message. This is only for text. Please dont call this number but send a text, 202179684 is that number to call. Now, if you cant get through on the phone lines, you want to make a comment, try social media. Email, booktv . [ horns honking ]. Org. Twitter, booktv, and finally, leave a comment, facebook. Com booktv. Youll see a promotion there with Cokie Roberts speaking. Just make a comment underneath that, and we will find that comment. Well begin taking those calls in just a minute. Guest who is steve rogau . Guest steve we his birth certificate said rogo. Run reason they changed it. When he was two his father changed their name to roberts but steve and i met in the summer of 1962. He was at harvard, i was at wellesley, and we were at Student NationalStudent Association meeting at the university of ohio in columbus, and i had actually met his twin brother, mark, before that, in boston, and i kind of looked across the campus and i saw this guy who looked like mark roberts, but he didnt look exactly like mark roberts, and then i went we a all had name tags on so i went up and looked at his name tag, and i said, so, are you mark roberts brother . And he looked at my name tag and said are you Barbara Boggs sister . Thats how we met and we started dating off and on then, and then more seriously later, and then married in 1966. Host he was several years with the New York Times. Guest with the New York Times. 25 years. And he went to the times right after college. He had the wonderful experience of being an intern for or assistant whatever they called it for scotty reston, james reston work was most powerful journalist in washington. The columnist for the New York Times and longtime bureau chief in washington for the New York Times. And scottie was pa wonderful mentor and a really kind adviser, and so steve made sure that after the year was up, New York Times hired steve on the city staff, and so he moved to new york and then he we went to california with the times and then went to athens, greece, and came back here, and he was in the washington bureau. Host i think your motherinlaw crooked you as the belles jew in the family. Guest that was not havey competition. It was but stat is true. Host youre catholic. Guest very serious catholic but we are about to enter this impact tonight is the first night of hanukkah, and we are about to enter the very busy season. Host why did your major describe you as the best jew in the family. Guest as steve and i were dating as catholicjewish couple, that was very unusual in that day and age, not at all anymore but at that time it was. I think it was very difficult for steves parents. They had not really had the experience of having nonjewish friends, and they were very concerned about what it would mean for him to marry outside of the tribe, and so it was a difficult courtship, and finally we convinced them that we really would not only honor them and love them, but also their religion and for me the only way to really embrace judaism was to know about the religion. So for then it was much more of a cultural phenomenon than religious one. So i started being serious about learning about judaism and about celebrating certainly the holidays, and in fact at one point, steves mother joked no,