YouSaid · the spoken record

Bob Shrum

lines on the record: 75
first: 2018-09-20
most recent: 2018-09-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Now, on the other side of that equation, I would say that among students on this campus, among people that I talk to all the time, I've never seen such a level of energy and commitment to get involved, to vote, to do something. And the system may be self-corrective. In Watergate, it was self-corrective. And what you have to hope here is it's self-corrective. But I mean, the very idea, and you were in the White House for all those years, that a senior administration official would write an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times basically saying that the president is.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the reasons we're starting, you have a fabulous Institute of Politics at Chicago. One of the reasons we're starting the Center for the Political Future here is because we have such a corrosive atmosphere in our politics now. And what we want to do is model and hopefully advance a dialogue that respects where people respect each other and they respect the truth. We have a fact-free politics today. You can believe whatever they want to believe and they can find a media outlet that will tell them to believe it.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think, first of all, you have to recognize the you shouldn't be in politics if you don't realize that every two years or four years it could break your heart. Secondly, if you really care about the things and the issues that you say you care about and that you go to work for a candidate for, that in itself is some reward. And third, I always jokingly say, at least in the case of 2000, that Gore's one candidate in modern history who got elected non-inaugurated, I think you could argue that that's true of the 1876 election too, but that's a different story.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Democrats ever And Carter Askew was my partner in the Gore campaign, had this great description of Gore as a futurist populist. Which I think is what he is. In fact, he wrote a piece in the Washington Post a couple years afterwards saying he wished he had emphasized more the people, not the powerful.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That line was actually a line originally in a Kennedy spot in the 94 campaign against Mitt Romney, and we adapted it for Al Gore. And it actually was who Al Gore was.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But so I don't think it works to impose. In fact, I'm not going to mention what I'm thinking of because it did happen once. I don't think it works to impose a message on a candidate. I think it has to be what the candidate's about. It has to be authentic. People figure it out.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tough race right now. He does have a tough race right now. And a lot of the outcome, I think, depends on whether or not the blue wave is a tsunami or a splash pool.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not a purist. By no stretch of the imagination would you say that Bill Nelson is a populist candidate. He's a moderately progressive Democrat. And he's a good friend, and I was proud to work for him.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's just a different kind of place. But Kennedy was always willing to give credit to someone else. You want to be the lead sponsor of the bill. You're the lead sponsor of the bill. B, to come up with a find a way in the middle so that if you want to ensure the health of all poor children through the Chips program, you've got to get a Republican co-sponsor, go to Orin Hatch. Hatch says, I don't think this should be just a federal program. Kennedy says, well, why don't we have the state's administrative guidelines? So you find ways to... To move forward, even though you disagree. The other thing, and I know we're pressed for time, the other thing was he was great company. He was... He was a fabulous friend, and he was a lot of fun to be around.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was a different kind of place than it is now. And maybe Trump is obviously a huge breaking point, but you could see it beginning to come apart. I mean, in 2006 and 2007 when Kennedy and McCain tried to do immigration reform together. I mean, there was this huge rebellion in the Republican Party. And as you know, McCain had to back off of it in 2008 to get the Republican nomination. Yes.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was a Senate where people had very sharp disagreements on issues, but at the end of the day, they could be friends and they could look for ways to work together. I remember when Ronald Reagan first came to town after he was elected, Kennedy barely knew him. And he asked to see Kennedy. And Kennedy went down and he came back and he said, I'm going to tell you three things. One, he's not dumb. Anybody who thinks he's dumb is just wrong. Number two, we're going to have some sharp disagreements. Number three, we're going to find some places to work together. And they did on something like immigration reform.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it did for a long time. I think now if I have to do something on an iPad, or even I did edit a speech at one point a few years ago and rewrite it extensively on an iPhone, I think it did then. Now I think I can probably do it either way. But still, if I'm going to write a speech or write something like a speech or write something about the Center for the Political Future here at USC, I'll sit down with a yellow pat and write it out.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I went to a Jesuit high school where they didn't think it was worthy to teach us typing. Instead, they taught us Latin and ancient Greek.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I went in and I knew we were going to have a little party, and he was having a party about 25, 30 people there. And I said, can I see you for a minute? And so we went in the corner. And I said, listen, I was coming back. And this is what I heard in the radio. And I said, I haven't told anybody anything. He said, oh, I told. I said, what do you mean you told? He said, well, so and so would have said he wrote the speech. So and so would have said he wrote the speech. So and so would have said he wrote the speech. So I said Sherman Parker wrote the speech. But he was, that was one of his great strengths. He always gave people credit, whether it was another senator.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was talking about the speech and said this marvelous speech, and we loved it, and he was pretty effusive. And he said, was written by Bob Shrum and Carrie Parker, who was Senator Kennedy's legislative assistant. We were sidekicks throughout the campaign. And we had so little money That Carrie and I were sharing a suite with Joan and Ted Kennedy. And he couldn't use his own money under federal law.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Calling Franklin the New Deal fascism. And Ronald Reagan has no right to invoke Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt, and people were going crazy in the And so after the speech, and you're right, he did give credit. I stayed behind because we had a deal on Carter people had to give a deal where we got two of the three platform planks we wanted. And in fact, we won on the third on the voice vote. It was clear, and Tip O'Neill banged the gavel and said the third one's defeated, and people started booing. But that was our deal. And I was in the cab on the way back to the hotel, and Robert Trout, who had been a famous CBS reporter, but was now was on the radio.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's a mythology about that too, which I'll get to in a minute. The power of that speech, I think, was, and I think this is true of all really good speeches, it wasn't linear. It rose and fell like a symphony. One part of it was a masterclass in how to take Reagan on, you know. The Republican candidate who said 80% of pollution comes from plants and trees, and that candidate is no friend of the environment. Down to, you know.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's why the Carter people were intent on not letting him speak until after that rules fight was settled on Monday night.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It and it wasn't until after he lost Iowa that he found his voice in a speech he gave at Georgetown University where he came out for some pretty tough economic measures and came out against the boycott of the Olympics that President Carter imposed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the wheat embargo.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that when on what was then Super Tuesday, when Kennedy won five of the eight states, including the big states of California and New Jersey, it just didn't matter. I mean, you just couldn't get a sufficient number of delegates. So the hostage crisis had a lot to do with this. And then there was one other thing that was our fault and entirely our fault Kennedy was so far ahead, and as you know, the temptation in politics when you got like 60% or 65% of people for you is don't alienate anybody. Well, Edward Kennedy was the single worst politician I ever met in my life at saying nothing. If he believed in something, he could be so powerful and he could be so persuasive. But if he was sent out and persuaded that the best political course was to talk in Paul speak and say Pablo, he wasn't very good at it.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the irony for Carter was that I think the hostages saved him in Iowa, a vote for Jimmy Carter became a vote for the hostages, a vote for standing up for America, and got him a sufficient lead in the delegates that, as you know, under the proportional representation system, if you start to fall behind, it's very hard to catch up. It is, yeah.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are pauses and halts in the answer, as there were, by the way, quite frequently with Robert Kennedy when he was being interviewed. But it became a big deal. But he survived that. I mean, we still had a big lead starting off in that campaign. And I think what got us in terrible trouble was the hostage crisis. Because President Carter basically said I won't debate, I won't campaign, I'm going to spend every waking moment of my day working on the hostages in between having people come from Iowa and New Hampshire to the White House.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd say two things about that. First of all, he believed that the interview had originally been set up just before he took all of the next generation Kennedys on their annual camping trip. He was up in Hyannasport with basically little or no staffing and had I already been in the campaign, had I been there and had I had the authority, I would have listened to the first question, I would have walked back into the house. I would have come back out and I would have said there's a phone call for you. And that would have ended the interview. But so that's part of what happened. I think the other part of it is that he wasn't about to announce on television. And if you listen to the answer to that question, it's not nearly as bad. It's not great, but it's not nearly as bad as Lore made it. Almost immediately.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which was going to support. And you wrote a Well, I have some real admiration for the way Jimmy Carter has conducted himself since his presidential days. And he's ill right now. I left because I did not believe that he had any defining purpose in running for president other than becoming president. And yes, he had religious values, but he didn't have, in my view, the kind of public purpose that was going to inform a presidency. He saw it as in some ways as a zero-sum game, I think, which is you could take a yellow legal pad in for every policy. You could draw a line down the middle, and you could say, here are the arguments for it, and here are the arguments against it. I don't think the presidency operates that way. I don't think you can operate it that way. So I left, and the line that got quoted from the letter was, I'm not sure what you believe in other than yourself.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The dumbest person in Washington And guaranteeing that a magazine that had a circulation of about 125,000 suddenly the news reached the entire country.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't think it exists anymore. No, it didn't exist. We got close down right after we won the National Magazine Award. And Frank Rich was there. Janet Maslin was there. Some great show. Bob Anson was there. There were some very interesting people.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, because they thought he was too old, they thought he was going to lose for sure. And I don't know that Bill Clinton could have been nominated under the old system. I'm sure Barack Obama could not have been nominated. So those are all on the plus side. On the other side, I would say I don't think Donald Trump ever could have been nominated under the old system. Because what happened was...”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was so much anger that one of the promises was that there'd be a party reform commission. And the party reform commission basically to this day most of its decisions stand. It's been modified, but it basically said that you could no longer have a system which at its most extreme, for example, had the governor of Georgia just picking the Georgia delegates. You know, he just picked whoever he wanted and they voted for whoever he told them to. But you were going to have a system where the voters were going to decide. In terms of reservations, I think the new system has done, it's not almost 50 years old now, but I think it's done pretty well in terms of who's won over the years. I wasn't for Ronald Reagan, but I'm not at all sure that the party grandees would have picked him.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Bill told me a story once about coming home, and he was like 17 years old and finding all these Kennedy signs in the basement saying, I thought we were for Humphrey. But Ted Kennedy decided he didn't want to do it for understandable reasons and probably not some other reasons that I think in retrospect he probably would have put aside.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Humphrey was imposed as the nominee by the big city bosses in 1968, and by the way, Mayor Daly actually made a run at getting Ted Kennedy, who was then only 36 years old to take the nomination.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you really will lose the Catholic vote, which had been drifting away from the Democratic Party in the Eisenhower years. Now, he never said that explicitly, but you didn't have to say. And in your mentioned, you ment”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the way you clean it up. It's the way it gets published, but that's not what he said. Right. But I think, and JFK in 60 went out and won all the primaries, that didn't win you in the nomination. But basically he could then turn around to Mayor Daly and to David Lawrence, who was then the mayor of Pittsburgh, later the governor in Pennsylvania, to the big city bosses, most of them Catholic who were old enough that they lived throughout the Al Smith loss in 1928. You pointed to West Virginia. But he could turn around and say, look, I've won the primaries on the choice of Democrats in every poll. If you don't nominate me, they're going to say you didn't nominate me because I was a Catholic.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the first thing I'd say to you is I don't think Barack Obama ever would have been the Democratic nominee president under the old system. He would not have. And if you look at Franklin Roosevelt took, I think it was five ballots, it might have been four to get nominated in 1932. Democratic Party had a two-thirds rule because it gave the South a virtual veto over who the nominee was. And in the end he got nominated as part of a deal that was brokered by Joseph P. Kennedy and William Randolph Hearst to give California and Texas delegations to him in return for choosing John Nance Garner, then the Speaker of the House as vice president of the United States. Once he became vice president Roosevelt, never gave him anything to do, and he famously said the vice presidency is not worth a pitcher of warm.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that cratered the campaign. Right. And he would have lost. There was no way we were going to win that election, in my view. He would have lost, but he might have carried 10 stakes might have won 45% of the vote or 46% of the vote. You know, one of the things that happened in my political future.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was very painful, and people tried to figure out if there was anything we could do. Could we interrupt the vice presidential nominating process, which had become chaotic, where everybody had been nominated, everybody and his brother had been nominated, and have him give the speech, could we do it the next night, but we didn't have the auditorium and people had plane tickets. So he gave it was prime time in Guam when he gave it. But that was part of what happened, the fact that Senator Eagleton had.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And George McGovern heard the speech and apparently said to Frank Mankiewitz, find out who that guy is, I would like to hire him. So that's how I ended up working for From McGovern, who became one of my closest friends”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did write most of it, yeah. There was a line in it that said, which of us, if his son asked him for bread, would give him a stone? That's a line from Scripture. And then it played off of that. You know, our sons have asked for life, and we have sent them to an Asian jungle.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the eve of the election in 1970, which I think contributed to the Republicans' poor showing in that election, but he was not an ideal presidential candidate. He could not bring himself to a settled position, for example, in the Vietnam War. I mean, he was against it, but I think he was sheepish about it because he'd been for it. It was a very tough thing. So it wasn't until late in the primaries when he really didn't have much of a chance in Pennsylvania that he gave a really tough anti-war speech, which actually had a lot to do with my going to work for McGovern because there was a line.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's already done. So I did work for Muskie. And he was, in my reckoning, the ideal vice presidential candidate, which he had been 68, and he had done a terrific job in that campaign. He had been a huge asset to Humphrey. When protesters, anti-war protesters interrupted him, he would invite them up to the stage to say their piece. And he gave a brilliant speech that Dick Goodwin wrote.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting because I had made this decision that I was going to leave. Work in Washington for presidential candidate, and it was going to be Musky. And I went to Jack Newfield's wedding. Jack Newfield was this extraordinary writer. In the village voice, but wrote amazing books as well, and in fact wrote one of them with Greenfield called The Populist Manifesto. And it was his wedding day and somehow or other I told him. And so he interrupted his wedding reception and took me into the living room and said, no, you have to work for George McGovern. And I said.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a big money when he went down to the dressing room and they poured beer all over his head. That was good. And it was. But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. I mean, he'd grown up in a tradition where he saw Democrats as corrupt people engaged in patronage, all of that. He wasn't there yet. I was gone by the time that he switched to the Democratic Party and I think he switched too late. You can't announce that you've become a Democrat and then a few days later announce that you're running for the Democratic nomination for president. You can't lead the choir right after you join the church. Right.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David was very much in favor of it. Other people were not. He was Lindsay's media. Yeah, he was Lindsay's media consultant and he made the classic ad in 1969 because one of Lindsay's problems would have been this horrible snowstorm in Queens and they persuaded him to sit on the steps of Gracie Mansion and say we didn't clean up the snow in Queens as quickly as we should have and that was a mistake. We didn't do this and that was a mistake. But it was no mistake to hire 600 new police, whatever it was.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, race baiting and student hating. And The end of that speech, the way the draft was written, was because I dared to do it, was to announce that he was becoming a Democrat, which David Garth, the pioneer media guru, along with people like Bob Squire and David Sawyer.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What he did was he got very, he was very much against the war, but he was at least as much against the tone of the Nixon presidency, especially what Spiro Agnew was doing. And he gave a speech just before the midterm election in 1970 at the Family of Man Dinner, which I assume was probably not called the Family of Man Dinner anymore, which denounced the Nixon tactics, the Agnew tactics, and the, which were race-paid.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of admiration for John Lindsay. I think his political career, at least in terms of the presidency, was timed in a completely ineffective way.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and so I went down to New York to do an interview and we talked for a while and then they said, well, write a speech and get it back to us. And I thought they meant go back to your hotel room and write a speech and bring it back, which is what I did. And I got hired that day.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I told him I'd love to write speeches, be involved in politics. And he wrote a letter to someone he knew in John Lindsey's office and someone he knew in Ted Kennedy's office and the person in Ted Kennedy's office who became later a very close friend of mine wrote back saying we just don't have any vacancies. And Jeff Greenfield happened to be leaving Lindsay at that point, leaving the staff. He'd worked for Bobby and then he'd come to work for people.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what happened was that Larry Tribe, who was legendary Harvard law professor, a very close friend of mine, who had been National Debate Champion by”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's true. But I did learn a lot about the use of language, about the nature of argument, and about how to try to advance an idea. I would say, by the way, that it's properly judged college debate back when I was doing it was not just about scoring points. It was about who in the end won the big idea. So that's the one similarity that I would cite between them. The biggest danger in these debates is...”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're the one who made the comparison with JFK, not me. I mean, and so he got a twofer out of it. So that's critical. But the other way about that, you know.”
2018-09-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 270 — Bob Shrum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source