YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Dodd

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2018-11-26

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2018-11-26

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1. “So those campaigns take a longer time. They're inefficient in many ways. But you're a much better representative of people if you've listened and been forced to listen to their concerns. And today I worry that we're becoming so efficient in the process that people don't have to listen enough.”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Well, yeah, maybe people see that, they see the desk, they see the room they could serve in, and they don't know that campaigning and governing are synergistic. They're not separate events. How people campaign and how they govern, there's a correlation. I think we're making a mistake today. The efficiencies of campaigning, when you go door to door on Elm Street today, technicians will people tell you, you only have to knock on three doors. Because the other doors we know they're going to vote for you against you. But you miss is having that screen door slammed in your face by someone who's furious with how things are running in the country. You remember that. And when you're governing, you need to remember there are people who don't agree with you, have very different ideas. And if you don't have to ever listen to those folks, then you never really understand the pain, the frustration, the anxiety they're feeling.”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Well, I'm a believer in it, and I love doing it. I love the work. I love the substantive work. And I've always stunned, if you don't have an appetite or an aptitude for this, why do you do it? It's exhausting in many ways, but it's so rewarding. To be involved.”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “But I hear the efforts being made today by people, Democrats and Republicans to get back on track again. Each generation has had to sort out and figure out how it functions with new technology. I'm sure the telegraph, the telephone, the television, the radio, all of these things caused the institution to go through periods of anxiety and wonder whether or not they would be able to handle these new technologies. Today we're starting to begin to sort out these new technologies and how we function in them. But I have a lot of confidence in this country. I have tremendous confidence in people in the country. Unlike many nations, our people are strong. They have strong values and we're given proper leadership. They end up doing the right thing. And so I'm very optimistic about the future, even though we're going through, but in my view, is a very sad point right now in our history, I think we'll come out of it.”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “That's what's unique about the place. If you eliminate that, why have a bicameral system? Why not just have the House of Representatives? Simple majority rules, in a sense. The founders wanted a combination. The House would be where people were popularly elected as they should be. The Senate was going to be someplace where, again, you thought twice about what you were doing to make sure that you were making mistakes that would have an adverse effect on the country. And this is not the first time. The Senate and the Congress isn't a clear trajectory one way or the other, up or down. It's more like a roller coaster ride historically. And we're at a low point right now.”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Yeah, to the district courts, the pellet courts, and now the Supreme Court. He's a life of 30, 40 year people. I don't have any objection to lifting a filibuster on ambassadors. Cabinet members and so forth, that shouldn't tie up the place forever. But a lifetime appointments, it should. And on substantive legislation, it should to force some...”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Yeah. Well, there are aspects of it I miss, obviously. Just I should preface it by saying I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed my 36 years representing the state of Connecticut in the Congress of the United States. Without exception, I love the puzzle of it putting pieces of legislation together, working with colleagues, regardless of party and ideology. When I left the Senate, two people spoke at my going away party. Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell. Again, and I don't agree with Mitch on much, but we managed to have a great friendship. I took my vacations with John Warner, a Republican senator from Virginia. I mean, it was a different place. So I miss that notion, wondering why it doesn't work as well along the way. And so that'll always be the case. But I do worry about the institution. I think they made a dreadful mistake to eliminate the filibuster on lifetime appointments in the Senate. What's unique about the Senate?”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “No, I'm a law firm Arnold and Porter and I'm a senior counselor and a great firm, great reputation. In fact. Abe Fortas, who started the firm and my father were classmates in 1933 from Yale Law School. And Arnold and Porter came down, as my father did, part of the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt built a great practice. And they asked me to join them when I left the Senate. And the offer came along as well simultaneously to head up the motion picture association. It seemed like a fun thing to do. People have often asked, what were the corollaries that I learned between the motion picture industry and politics? And I said, I left one group of bad actors for another group of bad actors. And then after seven years, a lot of traveling. Arnold Porter came back and a great group of people. They respect public service members there. Have great pro bono practice and good lawyers. So I'm honored to be a part of it.”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “So, ideas that will make this work better, and it's working very well. The banks today are enjoying a profitability, historic levels of profitability. Lending is at record levels as well. All the fears that were mentioned, profitability would be gone, lending would dry up. It turned out to be absolutely false. In fact, our banks today are stronger, more highly regarded and respected. I was speaking with the head of the IMF recently at a function. And she said U.S. banks are the envy of the world today. And she wasn't making a political statement.”

   2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, exactly. So we've got to be careful, again, if we were dealing with responsible folks who wanted to fix some things that need fixing, it would be a very different debate and conversation. I'd never suggested, not once, nor has Bonnie Frank, that what we wrote in that bill ought to remain in granite as if it were the Ten Amendments of the Constitution. Ten commandments, yeah. The Ten Commandments are taken. Oh, the Ten Amendments.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “But that ought to heightened his respect for him. He has maintained at the Federal Reserve level the heightened supervision from banks at 100 to 150 up to 250. So there's still oversight, the heightened supervision exists through the Federal Reserve System. We lost it from what we provided in the bill, but the Federal Reserve maintains that jurisdiction. So it isn't quite as...”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “That could have a real impact on the system. But the Federal Reserve, I don't want to ruin his career, but Jay Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, is a terrific leader. This may scare presidents”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “50 million or more would be now they've gone it up to 250. Now that you know only a handful of banks that have assets in excess of $250 billion they went way beyond which they should have done my view could have gone up to $100 billion and that would have been something so there are”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Because people don't understand with almost 6,000 banks, of 6,000, there are 111 banks that have combined assets of more than $10 billion. The overwhelming majority of banks have assets fewer than that. Community banks supported our bill. Never could have passed it without the community banks supporting what we were doing. So the threshold, we had 50 billion in the bill and moved it, it should have been moved. Thanks, Ed.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “But they didn't destroy it. They didn't destroy it because I wrote it in such a way they couldn't. Had we written it a different way where it depended upon the appropriation process for funding other than the Federal Reserve funds to keep it alive, it would be gone, de facto gone today, in my view. But along with the funeral plans, the orderly resolution of failed institutions, the transparency on highly sophisticated arcane instruments in the derivatives area and so forth, all are existing today. What changed was the threshold for heightened supervision. We set it at $50 billion. There are 6,000 banks in the country, David. There are 111 of them.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Well Less so than I was initially with this new administration, the Trump administration. They were actually talking about repealing the legislation and the like. They never went that far. In fact, all of the basic principles that you just described, and there are more of them, are still very much intact. Mike Crapo, the Republican chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, I would have voted against the bill that he put together on a bipartisan basis, by the way. But I respect the fact that he did not take a wholesale swing at the legislation. The Consumer Protection Bureau is alive and well, although the president is terrible.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Yeah. And so a lot of people should have paid an awful price for it, but you can't pay a price for a law that doesn't exist.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Well, I think so. I mean, again, our job in the banking committee, we don't have any jurisdiction over criminality in a sense. That was up to other committees. And you can't arrest someone for a crime that didn't exist. Part of the problem was the laws were so opaque and non-existent. I mean, there were a lot of reasons why the crisis occurred. One of them was, obviously, the economic model that once people have a mortgage, they'll drop everything else and pay that before anything else. That didn't hold up to be true. And we deregulated an awful lot under the previous administration, under the Bush administration as well. And there was no, almost so supervision of banks whatsoever.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “I mean, Oh, huge. And it was actually because the first, like anything else, the first news about it was about a one and a half page, two-page bill giving me $700 billion taxpayer. And by the way, no court, no regulator can intervene. And that's people's first impression of what you call the bailout. I partnered with Judge Gregg, a Republican colleague from New Hampshire, and we wrote, along with people like Bob Bennett, there were a lot of people involved in it, but Judd Gregg was, and I were the principals, along with Barney Frank in the house, obviously. We drafted about 100-page bill that did a lot more than just give me a check. We broke up how many times you had to vote on the money. Tranches gave assistance to victims of foreclosure, provided warrants in the idea that we get this money back, and taxpayers ought to benefit from it. We allowed for money to be used for things other than banks, so $85 billion, the autumn chrysalis.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Stuff involved. The first childcare program since World War II. I mean, things that I really cared deeply about. Foreign relations was interesting. I served in the Peace Corps, had a lot about Latin America. The chair of the committee would have been a great honor. But I saw the biggest problem emerging in 2006 was the financial crisis. The committee that I had the least personal interest in, although had served on it for 27 years, Connecticut had a lot of interest in the financial services area. So I chose the committee that had the least personal appeal for me in many ways, but one that I felt was probably the most important in that window. opted for the banking committee.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Well, I became chair. You know, it was interesting. I teasingly said when I was put in the Senate, I was given three committee assignments. I was given the banking committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, a year or so later the Labor Committee. No one bothered to tell me in the process that Senator Kennedy, Senator Biden, and Senator Sarbanes were the Democrats I'd be sitting next to or close to, and that I would have to wait until one or all of them either lost or passed away to move up the food chain in terms of becoming a chairman. And all of a sudden, within a very space of time, Senator Kennedy died, Senator Sarbaines retired, and Senator Biden became vice president. Now I had a choice. I could chair for the first time in 28 years in any one of those three committees. Now, just candidly with you, David, the committee I enjoyed the most was the Labor Committee. The work I did on children's issues, family,”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Just his personal growth, his knowledge of the institution, his deep caring about it. For a kid to come out of Connecticut who grew up in very different circumstances, having the privilege of sitting next to Robert C. Byrd was one of the great opportunities of a lifetime.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “He would quote a poetry. He would drive back to West Virginia on weekends and he would quote poetry to himself beginning in Washington without ever reciting the same poem twice until he got to West Virginia. I remember once I had a poem by Whittier that I was about an old schoolhouse. I've lived in a schoolhouse in Connecticut and I had that as a note and he said that's a great poem but you're missing the last six stanzas in which he proceeded to quote the last six stanzas. It's amazing when he was Paul. Well he gave the history of the Roman Senate without a note in front of him. He would read up wrote the history of the United States Senate in two volumes up until that time. Got a law degree from American University the day that Jack Kennedy gave his great speech on arms control, a college degree when he was in the house.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “And just a remarkable individual, most interesting person, I think, that I served with. His journey, both personally, politically, educationally, was phenomenal to me. He was a guy who grew up living in a hollow, a West Virginia, got a college degree when he was a congressman at George Washington University.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Talking about Tad Kennedy, who was, again, a great pen, but also a great senator, in my view. You can choose where you want to sit. As you move up in seniority, when I was first elected, I was in the last row and the last seat. I was 100th in the seniority. But over the years, I could move up and make selections. When I had the chance, there was an open seat next to Senator Bob Byrd. And I made that decision to sit next to him. I did for over 20 years. And that in itself was a PhD.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Oh, he was over the top. He loved the fact not only we got the bill done, but we beat the other three committees. Everything was a competition.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “In 2009, and announced that we had just marked up the Affordable Care Act on the committee that I was responsible for. I went through cancer at that time, and he died about three or four weeks later. But the last piece of news I could really give him was that the bill he cared the most about, the health care bill.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Well, sort of challenging, first of all, you know, one of those things I'm sure families go through. You miss one a lot. We had a great French. You have a lot of fun together. And he loved history. He loved being around and just enjoyable. It was a fun person to be around. He was. And he was great stories and a great sense of humor about things. We all have friendships like that. Everyone probably listened to this has them, and I don't have to say much more. You know the special ones that come along and why they're special, and this was special. But also, you know, he was suffering a lot. And despite the Herculean efforts to save him, I was happy to be able to call him on July 15th.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Passion going back to the days when he watched his own son with his own cancer, young Teddy, realized that those programs he was in were no longer available because they were working. And all of a sudden the people he was in that control group with would not be able to afford the medications that he could. And it sort of radicalized him in a way on the subject matter.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Got to spend a little bit of time with them during that year. I became the acting chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, and so I managed through the committee hearings and markups, the Affordable Care Act, while simultaneously leaving chairman, which was his lifelong...”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “But you got to go home. You got to pay attention. I mean, there's obviously you can exaggerate it to a point. And today, most people I know with families here go back every weekend. You want to spend time with your family, have them be in Washington. On weekends, you get home on a Friday and a Saturday. There are parades and picnics and speeches to give and churches to visit or synagogues on Saturday or Sunday. And you're not going to see your family much of the time. Come down here, you can see your family a lot, much more so than you would on a weekend if you go back and work.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Well, one, we allow, you can go home for a quote, public purpose six times a day, and the federal government will pay for it. And so you have also private...”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “All of a sudden, social events, that right-wing conservative David Axerod and that liberal Democrat Dodd discovered they both like to play golf or their kids went to the same school together. And you begin to learn that David's a lot more than what ideology or political party he's associated with. He also is a good guy. He's easy to be around. He's got a great sense of humor. He's got a wonderful family. And all of a sudden, that relationship deepens, whether it's in politics or business or any setting I can think of. The more you know about human beings. That's really gone.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “In Washington, but you had to because it wasn't that long ago, David, that the federal government paid for one round trip ticket. He got elected to Congress. Your train or plane ticket to get here and the plane or train ticket to get home at the end of the session. The assumption being, and obviously the practicality is mandated. If you came from the far west, you weren't going home every weekend. So you moved your family. You had to be here.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “It's possible, but the political environment doesn't help, and the role of the Senate and how it functions today doesn't help. I mean, people have always said, well, the Senate things worked well. They worked well in a sense because the rules mandated we work together. When you have to get 60 votes to get a major thing done, you're not going to get it done if you don't have a working relationship with others. And so the time people spent together, certainly growing up and watching in an age when I was the child of a person in public life, people knew each other. Kids went to school together.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “When there was not another human being within miles. And he would speak as if there was about it with such passion and voice about healthcare, about what was going on in terms of education. You get on that long list, things he dedicated his public life to. He wasn't without his flaws and faults, but at the center of it all was a great, compassionate, passionate person believing in the rights of individuals and people. And again, he was highly beloved by his colleagues, Democrats and Republicans during his service, even with people.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Well, he was remarkable, and you've heard this from others. It wouldn't just be from me. He was a great friend. People ask me with some frequency what he was like as a person, and a lot of people knew him very, very well. I'll never forget when I had a high school friend of mine, a very close friend who died, and I was giving the eulogy at his funeral service outside the city here. And I remember right in the middle of the eulogy, I looked in the back of the room the very last pew sitting back there was Ted Kennedy. And after the service, I went up to him and I said, what are you doing here? And I don't forget, he said, well, he was a friend of yours. Now, we've all had great friendships in our lives, but how many people do we know that would attend the funeral of a friend or someone they hardly knew in a way? And that's what he was. He was remarkable in that sense. He cared deeply and passionately about the things he was involved in. Comparison to a lot of people we see today, you wonder what their motivations are. His were deeply felt. I was with him in many cases.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Spain is the one exception in the European Union and seems to be willing to accept people coming in under certain circumstances, not wholesale acceptance. So we're not an uncommon place here today. So clearly part of it is great politics to do it. And the president since the days he started his campaign talking about Mexicans and who they were and what they wanted and building walls and so forth. So it resonates with people. There's no question about that. But that's all it does. It doesn't do anything in a constructive way to give us more security, protect our borders, minimize the kind of problems that these people are facing and causing them to pack up their lifelong belongings and walk 2,000 miles to our border.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Well, probably both. I mean, certainly we talked earlier about the power of immigration. We've seen it in the Brexit vote. Watching it in Germany with Chancellor Merkel probably suffered more as a result of her willingness to allow some refugees to come into Germany at a time a few years ago paying that price. You see it in Italy.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “And they're going to get only larger with the changing climate change issues and access to food and water are going to be overwhelming. So again, I think cooperation here in these Central American countries have got to do a far better job of maintaining and managing their own opportunities than they have been. Certainly Mexico needs to assume and share some of this responsibility as these people pour through their country on the way to our border. So I don't minimize the importance of the issue. But the motivations that are causing people to pack up and carry their children 2,000 miles walking the distance certainly motivates me to think differently about this than someone who wants to overthrow a government someplace. And so talking about a military response to a human tragedy, I think is so far off base what it ought to be, so harmful to us as a country and our relationships, not just within this region, but globally.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “But you have to say, and there's no debate about this, obviously we can't accept everyone that would like to come here. You've got to maintain your borders and keep them secure. But the motivations, what are these people, the overwhelming majority are trying to do? They're leaving terror in their own countries, no economic future whatsoever for them. I suspect that most Americans in a similar position would try to do something to protect their families. And that seems to be what the overwhelming numbers are. Now, we can't take them all in, obviously. No country could do that day in and day out, although many countries around the world are. What the Jordanians are doing, for instance, in the Middle East, there are a million refugees from Syria in a small country. The King Hussein and others have been able to take care of.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “And everyone else said, Don't, Mr. President, don't listen to that guy. Great phone call. Howard Baker was very generous. Put it in the”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “And there was a meeting at the White House, in fact, with President Reagan and Colin Powell was in the room, Vice President Bush was, and a whole group of people. And we were asked, any one of us had to make any comments. I was a very junior member of the Senate. I didn't think it was my place to be making comments. And everyone else had some thoughts. And finally, the meeting's about to break up. And President Reagan turned to me and he said, do you have any thoughts you'd like to share? I thought, well, do I speak up at this moment or not? But I did. And I said, Mr. President, don't disagreement on the goals here. The question is, how do we achieve those goals? And I happen to believe if we handle this differently, Marxism and communism will fade. We can defeat it. It isn't going to be through military force, so we can make those gains. And that's why I have a different point of view. Later that day, I was back in the office and I got a call from Howard Baker. Howard said, I got to tell you what happened in the meeting. He said, after the meeting was over and all you Democrats had left, they're discussing what happened in the conversation. And the president turned, he said, you know, that guy Dodd seemed to make a lot of sense.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Well, it wasn't any difference in my, certainly opposition to dictatorships and denial of basic freedoms to people. I didn't retreat at all from that. I just thought the approach that my father's generation took after World War II and Korea and so forth, that military force was going to be the best way to deal with this threat. I felt there were much better ways to deal with it. The Peace Corps service, for instance, did an awful lot for countries and people to learn who Americans were in ways that they would not have learned had we sent in the Marines in every single case. So my approach was not different at all. I remember having a conversation with the Reagan administration.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Not really. I mean, in a sense, I remember how Ed Metzenbaum came to me one day years later now, moving very much further beyond 1980. He came to me on the floor of the Senate one day. And he said, I just read the committee hearings on your father's case. He said, I'd like to offer a resolution to exonerate him. It was an outrage what happened to him. The hypocrisy and so forth was stunning. And I said, you know, Howard, you're wonderful, and I appreciate you mentioning that. But my father's son, I'm not him. I'm here. I don't want to, there's no reason to go back over that history, in my view. And so there was a sense, obviously being aware of all of it, David. But my success was going to be determined by what I did, what my issues, much as his were in many ways, in his time.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Tried to get elected. No, couldn't as well. George Smathers in Florida can think of any number of cases. And it's very healthy. People have a very, very strong sense of opposition to any notion of primogenitor, that you have a right somehow to the seat because you're one of your parents or grandparents or elected to office. You really need to understand once they think you're your own person and you're not trying to cash in on that relationship and no one could actually accuse me of that in 1974 or 1980. Given the history you pointed out of my father in the past in the state of Connecticut and elsewhere. So I”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Well, it's a great observation. In fact, I've looked at, you might not expect I'm curious about historically, a rather significant number of children of members, but also significant number of people who haven't been elected. Hubert Humphrey was this popular political figure in Minnesota as you could think of. Skip Humphrey, who was a wonderful friend and a good person.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Along the way. And I'll never forget that Dan Inaway, Senator Noy from Hawaii, and Russell Long, came down and greeted me. They were great pals of my father's, great friends. So I was serving with people that my father had served with in many cases. And to that extent, there was an emotional connection. But I understood pretty quickly that my success in that institution was going to depend on what I did and didn't bring a lot of emotional luggage to the conversations and debates and so forth.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Well, I always said during the campaigns, you know, I love my father, but I'm not my father's son, but not my father. I had a very different view of the Vietnam conflict. I mean, there were a number of issues which would have been very different than my father's on choice questions and the like, for instance. Although he wasn't unique in his generation or growing up of those views. And so there was certainly the emotional moment. My older siblings gave me my father's Senate chair, which I used for the next 30 years. I sat at my father's desk. He last sat in in the Senate. So there were those ties. I didn't tell him many people about that. It was just something I did.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Very different in the house. I'll never forget David one occasion there was going to be a hearing involving the director of the CIA, the head of the FBI, if you got who from the State Department and others coming to testify about dealing with Iran and reapportionment of some of resources in some way. Well, I thought that would be interesting. I'll go over to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which I was put on, by the way, because I had no choice of committee assignments. But I brought along a bunch of mail to kind of read and listen to the conversation. I walked into the Senate Foreign Relations Committee room, and the clerk turned to me and said, Senator, would you take over the hearing? No one else has shown up. Now in the House, I would have waited three days before I got a chance to say anything. But in the Senate, now they quickly showed up, other people did, but I had to begin the hearing with this very distinguished group of witnesses before the Senate Foreign Relations Club.”

    2018-11-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 289 — Chris Dodd · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source