YouSaid · the spoken record

E.J. Dionne

lines on the record: 63
first: 2016-09-15
most recent: 2016-09-15
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

“This is just to go all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, I was attracted in my youth to some of these progressive Republicans who are trying to figure out how could you be pro-market but also compassionate, how could you say government can't do everything, but it's got to do some important things. I'd love to see conservatism a return to that kind of vision of itself rather than either a far right almost European version that Trump is offering us, or a radical market version that I think history has shown us doesn't work. That's my hope. I wish I were more confident that we could bring it about.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's bad for economic growth and it creates all kinds of opposition that conservatives should want to the market system. They have a real interest in trying to solve some of these problems. And in my book, one of my heroes with apologies to a good Illinois Democrat, I'm thinking of Adelaide Stevenson, is Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was a Republican who was willing to say the changes that the New Deal brought about were largely necessary as a political matter if we tried to repeal them we'd be shellacked. But as a practical matter, capitalism needed these corrections. We are in another period where we need to reform capitalism in order to save it. And that is something that conservatives ought to be more open to than they have been. I would love to see a world in which”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's what I am hoping for but don't expect. I mean, I wish I could confident that this would happen. If you look at non-extreme conservatives and progressives, both sides have to care about the future of a competitive economy and that it is simply bad for capitalism to have these inequalities grow. Yeah, 20% are progressing.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that the left is often moving, a lot of the votes that move to the populist right aren't just from conservatives who radicalize. They're from working class voters who once voted with a left, who are now fed up and voting.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And so I think there is a real need for some real progressive rethinking. So I think there are real issues for the left, and you're seeing it again, all across the West, not simply in the United States.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just to finish the point real quick, so there was, and you dealt with it, there was progressive discontent with President at various moments along the way. But even if you sort of take the president out of it, this long-term rise of inequality throughout the wealthy countries, but particularly here and in a few other places, is a problem that progressives, if you will, have it as their job to fix, and we haven't figured out yet all the things that can be done. Now, I think there are a lot of specific programmatic things Clinton has been, I think, good at listing very specific things that you can do to...”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disappointed a lot of Democrats because a lot of Democrats hope for more than they were able to get after the first two years out of the president. The president frustrated Democrats early on, I think, by having more hope that he could move Republicans than was possible given the current Republican Party.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things on opposite sides, if you will, of that question. One is that I don't think the situation of the Republicans and the Democrats left and the right are equivalent because I think that the Republican Party has radicalized all the way down to the grassroots in a way that the Democrats haven't. And you see that in the behavior in Congress, you see that in the proportion of Republicans who call themselves conservative or very conservative versus the proportion of Democrats who call themselves liberal or very liberal. So I'm very much with Tom Mann and Orm Ornstein in arguing that this is something in particular that has happened to the Republican Party. That doesn't mean that progressives don't have problems of our own. I think that the obstruction of the president's program in Congress nonetheless”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, the question is, will she get enough turnout from the old Obama coalition? One thinks particularly from African Americans who turned out in record numbers for President Obama. To some degree from Latinos, and then also from Bernie Kratz and young people. And I think Trump's radicalism or extremism, the sense of threat people feel from the possibility of a Trump presidency, can inspire a lot of turnout. We forget that sometimes fear inspires at least as much turnout as hope. And I think Trump sort of strikes fear in the hearts of a lot of not only traditional Democrats, but middle of the road. Well, and we see that with his...”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. And to her benefit and to her benefit. So I think that forum, in the very, very short run may have seemed to benefit Trump because he slid by a lot of things. The things he said have a much longer license.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, but judging from the backlash of how much of the commander-in-chief forum was devoted to the server, I think it's going to be very interesting to see what impact that has going forward because, as you know better than anybody, there is a dynamic to these campaigns where some event in an unexpected way can change the course of how things are discussed. And one of the things I am thinking about a lot this week is whether the reaction obviously was primarily among Clinton people, but it had some impact on the broader conversation about, you know, did all of that time have to be devoted to her emails. I think that's a live question now in a way.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should have some sympathy with him. Actually, the Aleppo comment probably helped Clinton a little bit because it reminded people that, hey, he's not going to be commander-in-chief. But I think Trump has a ceiling that's lower than her ceiling. And so he needs the anti-Trump vote to be cut up. And that's why what I think will be her strategy over the next couple of weeks, which is to try to build herself up to tell people, wait a minute, the reason to vote for me, not just against Trump, are very important because she's got to hold on to the vast majority of the anti-Trump constituency.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way I've been putting it is that unless you repeal both women's suffrage and the Voting Rights Act, it's very hard to see Trump being elected president because he is so weak on the whole with women running way behind even in traditionally Republican groups of women. He's not running where he needs to be. And then obviously Latinos and African Americans are rejecting him. Now, the one opportunity I think he has is to try to push votes off Clinton onto the third-party candidates. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. That's all right.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, and that these people out there who are angry did not make up their reasons for being angry. There are legitimate protest. But we will also have to look back and say what part of the Trump movement was not primarily about this economic protest, but really was a culturally people who were uneasy with the changes in the country, with the changes in the culture. And then in the case of a pizza racism, I mean, what was birtharism, if not something that played at racial feeling in the country?”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And trade as well. And so, you know, oddly, you had a kind of populist movement led by this billionaire, or at least a guy who claims to be a billionaire. And so that's part of it. I think when this is all over, we're going to have a big job in front of us analytically to try to figure out how much of Trumpism was this economic discontent, which is legitimate and which progressives really need to speak to. It's a challenge to us.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that when you look at the rise of Trump, his supporters were rebelling against many things. One of them was a Republican Party that took white working class votes for granted and continued to put forward basically tax cuts for the rich proposals that didn't do much for these communities.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cultural change that they could never possibly keep, which then led to this rebellion later on. But a lot of those promises were rooted in Goldwaterism.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Goldwater, I think, actually set the frame for the current right. Go water is a very complicated figure because on the one hand, it was personally very appealing. He was a warm guy. Most everybody liked him personally. Later, he became more libertarian and very critical of the religious right. But if you look at the campaign he ran in 64 or his book, The Conscience of a Conservative, it really could be a Tea Party manifesto. And so while I respect Goldwater as a figure, I think he set the right on a certain road that the Tea Party has really picked up on. And I think he set up the Republican Party to constantly disappoint its own supporters. The first line of my book is the history of contemporary American conservatism is a story of disappointment and betrayal. And I argue that Republican politicians had to make a series of promises on shrinking government and rolling back.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably not very good at the moment. The splits, the divisions between us are far deeper than when I wrote that earlier book. And I don't think any of us, I don't think I anticipated how deeply divided we would become. And in a way, some of the new book, Why the Right Went Wrong, covers some of the same ground, not all of it, but there's an overlap in the history because I go back to Goldwater. And my view of the right is different now than it was then because I think the right is not the same as it was then. I think there was more openness on the right back then.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My favorite Chicago Catholic experience was with the late Father Andrew Greeley, yet And he had been a hero of mine and had been very kind to me. I do. And he had been very kind to me from afar when I was covering the Vatican. He'd actually written a nice note to the Times. But I never met him. And I burned him since I was in college. And so I found myself sitting next to him. And we had a wonderful conversation. And I was on crutches at the time. I had wrecked my knee skiing. And Father Greeley carried my bags for me at O'Hare Airport and I looked at him and I said, I will tell everyone that it can never be said that Father Andrew Greeley did not observe the corporal works of mercy because he helped me across O'Hare at a difficult moment.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who needed help. And he talked about something called the seamless garment, which is he linked Catholic teaching on abortion with teaching opposition to the death penalty, support for the poor, and opposition to war except as a last resort. And so in many ways, I think Francis is a reappearance, if you will, of the approach to Catholicism that Cardinal Bernardin represented. And interestingly, I think Archbishop Supic now in Chicago is very much in the Bernadin tradition.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“or John Paul, it is much more a matter of emphasis where Francis' emphasis is so much more on the social justice aspect of Catholicism, so much more on our obligations to the poor. And he hasn't really changed the church's formal view on abortion or gay marriage or any of those issues. But the emphasis is so different. And since we are both Chicago files, in many ways he's like Cardinal Bernadin, Joseph Bernadin.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I mean, you know, it's funny because in his early part of his life, he was actually critical of some of the forces on the left in the Latin American church as well, although he is very publicly made his peace with a number of, he's visited with a number of them visit with him a number of the liberation theologians correction, if you will, or move in this direction was inevitable. I just wasn't sure it was going to happen in my lifetime. And you even saw that in the two conclaves where you had a collection of votes in those conclaves that wanted to move in a somewhat different direction from Benedict and John Paul. And it is not as if Francis has radically broken with Benedict.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“complicated thing for me, but it was just so fascinating to have the opportunity to sort of cover the church and to have, you know, I was grateful for the religious education I got. I always tell students that the most useful course I took in college was a course called eschatology in politics. Imagine that on your transcript. And it was a very liberal, wonderful theological Harvey Cox, who's still a dear friend, who had us read all these liberation theologians in mimeograph, a former printing no one listening to this podcast except people who are aged will remember. And so when it came time for me 15 years later to cover the condemnations of the liberation of theologians, Harvey had already had us read him. And so it was just an extremely gratifying, exciting time, which forced me to think about a whole lot of things.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Synagogue in Rome, which is really extraordinary, and he was a resolute foe of anti-Semitism. So he shifted, he ratified what Pope John XXIII had done on human rights, religious rights, and democracy. Internally, he supported the most conservative forces in the Catholic Church. And I used to sort of say, you know, people ask, well, you're a Catholic and you're covering the Catholic Church. How does that affect you? And I said, sometimes the more I identified with my brand of Catholicism, which is a kind of liberal, more liberal Catholicism, the more I could be critical of him. The more I looked at him from the outside as examining a powerful political figure who on some important issues, and by the way, that includes social justice. We forget he was a very pro-labor pope, for example. I had a lot of sympathy for him, but it was so I've written about this elsewhere.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“who had personal tragedies whom he engaged with. And that was, she was a real deal in that sense of being, you know, I always say the most amazing thing to run into in the world is a Christian who actually behaves like a Christian. And I say that as somebody who is a Christian. I also respected his analysis of the church, which is as a sort of practical political matter. He felt that if the church gave in too much to what he saw as secularizing trends, it would actually weaken himself in the long run. And as an abstract proposition, I could understand that. And my belief to this day is his biggest achievements were actually progressive achievements because he ratified the turn of Catholicism after Vatican II toward an embrace of democracy and human rights, one of the most moving things I will ever cover as a journalist is his visit to the...”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, it was, I mean, it was a great time to be covering the Vatican. He had come in in 78. I was in Rome from 84 to 86. He was at the height of his influence. One lucky thing I did is I persuaded the New York Times that it was very important to cover every papal trip. So thanks to John Paul, I got to go to some amazing places all across Africa, India, South America twice. So that all by itself was a fascinating education. And when I was covering the Vatican, what was going on were what I like to refer to as the North American heresy, which was about sex and the South American heresy, which was about Marxism and liberation theology. As a human being, I deeply admired him. And I saw a kind of personal compassion in him with, for example, members of the press.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and for a variety of reasons I ended up working for Coch in that race. And I always love one of the things I liked about Garth is he was willing to use very long political slogans because they actually conveyed something. And I'll never forget his slogan for Koch was after eight years of charisma, Lindsay, and four years of the clubhouse. A beam, yeah. Why not try competence? And it worked.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where you even had In political consulting, and there was a kind of David Garth primary because Cuomo and Garth could easily have worked for Cuomo and for a variety of reasons.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Karma and DiSapio, exactly. And then, you know, there was a deep ethnic split. Cuomo got the Italians and the white Catholics generally Koch got Jews, African Americans split. Koch did make some inroads into the more conservative Catholic vote because he was pro-death penalty and Cuomo was resolutely, which is also remarkable because”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And he was a wonderful man who had a sense of humor about himself and life. And one day he was giving a news conference, Cuomo and Kotcher dominating the news. I show up on a street corner in Manhattan. I am the only reporter there. So Roy Goodman gets up, holds up a piece of paper on his plan for housing or transportation, whatever it was. He reads one sentence in a very stentorian voice and says, all right, that's enough. Let's go for a cup of coffee. And he knew that he was dead. But it was actually as a candidate. But it was actually fascinating to watch that. But also that race, you know, it divided sort of, you know, there was an element of machine politics where Ed Koch managed to get the old organizations on his side.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just want to say one of my favorite experiences in politics, a great liberal republican in that race called Roy Goodman. He was the state center.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To Cuomo and Kotch. And that's where I first got to know Mario Cuomo, although I was a very junior reporter. So in the general election, I spent a lot of time with the other two candidates who turned out Cuomo stayed on the ballot because, as you know, New York had a liberal party. So even though he lost the primary, he got to be on the ballot so that primary just continued. And Cuomo and Koch were so dominant that the Republican and Conservative Party candidate were reduced to sideshows. And I think in the end, they each got about 3% of the vote. They were yours.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly a politician. Puerto Rican figure, he was a congressman from the South Bronx. You had Percy Sutton, a very important African-American politician. You had everything represented on that ballot. Every kind in New Yorker had somebody to identify with. And in the end, in the runoff, it came down to...”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was an amazing race. I think you had, if I remember right, 11 candidates at the start, and you had really significant people like Bella Abzug, the legendary feminist Herman Badillo, who later became a Republican, but was.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said at the beginning politics was something prior to a lot of things for me and something that's always grabbed me so I had for better or worse I very much identified with your story as well.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, although, I mean, there is some of it. We haven't killed it all off, and I still, I love visiting local papers when I'm traveling around the country, partly because it is still the case that local reporters know a heck of a lot about their communities and editors as well. So it's not completely wiped out. changing economics of it have made it much more difficult it's funny you said by the way what you said when i read your book your memoir i had exactly the same uh reaction in reverse that we had remarkably you know obviously our politics are somewhat similar to say the least but it was the life experience was remarkably the same and i you know i always i sat there reading how you switched from journalism into political consulting and i thought you know i was in a way in a similar hinge point because as i”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I gave it. When I became a national political reporter years later, I gave that book to my mother. She read it and she said, really, this is what you're going to be doing. And just kind of with a little bit of horror. But Walter Meers famously said, if you can't cover a five-car fatal on 128, you don't belong as a political reporter. 128 being the highway around Boston. There is something about learning those kind of ropes that we probably do a lot less of now. And we can be somewhat nostalgic about that, but there were still some utility and learning. Listen, I”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, no, that's absolutely right. Walter Mears, this is in the Great Reporter, great AP reporter. I'll never forget, this was quoted in Boys on the bus, that great book on journalism. By the way,”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I worked on, given, interestingly given the news, on the 1975 Common Market Referendum. And the firm I worked for was working for Harold Wilson, the Labor Party prime minister, who was in the pro-Europe wing of the Labour Party. And so that's how I got into journalism. And I did this polling and other stuff through 76. A night police and all that. And then I got drawn into, you know.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, totally. I think the world is divided between people who claim they did it all by themselves and people who understand how much luck is involved if you get anywhere in life. And I had a lot of luck. And it was funny, a lot of editors in New York didn't know who I am, and it shows how much the world has changed. This was 1974. Some of them thought I was a woman hiding behind my initials. I guess they figured that Flora, a pioneer for women in journalism, had hired a woman. But anyway, so I was hired by the Times in 75 to help set up, one of my jobs was to help set up what became the New York Times CBS poll. And while I was in England, I worked for a polling firm also while I was in grad school.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He said, What are you going to be doing in your years between Oxford? And I said, you know, I'd probably try to get a job with Time or Newsweek to kick around Europe. And French is actually my first language being a Canuck from Fall River. And he looked at me and said, why not work for the best? And I said, well, sure, I didn't ask him what he meant. The late Flora Lewis, so when I was at Oxford, I took a night boat train to Paris one night for, I think, $25 and showed up. And Flora Lewis hired me for the summer of 1974. Yeah, she was a bureau chief later, a legendary columnist. And so I worked the summer of 1974 for the New York Times before I went back to Oxford. And I got to write a lot of news. I always said I was a war profiteer because the Cyprus war happened that summer. The bureau emptied out. And a lot of time I was the only person sitting in Paris for the New York Times and most people in New York.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that was one of those. All right, fine. And during the 72 campaign, a couple of professors, a guy called Bill Schneider, who later was on CNN for many years, and Gary Oren, and another student, I reanalyzed the polls that Times had done in the 1972 election, and that sort of created this fascination I've had with polling all my life. We were reanalyzing it for academic purposes, but that's how I got connected to the New York Times. Wonderful man called Jack Rosenthal, who had written the polling stories later, became editorial page editor. I was visiting with him trying to sell him my thesis, undergraduate thesis, which was on Italians in East Harlem. I was interested in racial change, and I had worked on a campaign, political campaign in East Harlem, beat the bosses campaign where the bosses beat the hell out of us. Doug Schoen actually, the pollster got me involved. He was a friend in college. I got fascinated by this neighborhood. Jack didn't want to buy my thesis, but...”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, I mean, I think that's true of anybody. I think just to jump ahead in my personal story, one of the most educational things I got to do was the four years I spent covering the state government in New York from 78 to 80, I got released for year to cover the presidential campaign in 81 and 82. You skipped.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, it was a mess. Although we had one of the more regular McGovern slates anybody put together, but that's another story. But I also kept writing, and I worked on the college paper. I made some extra money writing for the paper New Bedford, the nearby town, covering Selectman's meetings, the town council and Westport, stuff like that. So journalism always just drew me.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Copy coming in at six in the morning and cutting all the copy for the guys who came in and women who came in later. And so it never left me. And it was, you know, when I was in college, even though I worked a lot of political campaigns in those days, I always say I did win one election. I was elected as an alternate delegate for George McGovern in 1972. I proudly say that I beat the mayor's wife in our town. So my one political achievement.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“job was working in the summer to help pull papers off the press and do paper routes in town that weren't covered. And I even learned about how informal labor relations work because every paper route was assigned a certain amount of time, which happened to be somewhat larger than the actual amount of time it took to do the paper route because every one of us wanted to get that extra buck 60 an hour. And there was actually, it was a lot of fun because in order to live by our informal rules, there was a local party boss who ran a dime store in the neighborhood that, not a dime store, but a kind of variety store in the neighborhood I did papers in. So I would always at the end of my route sit down and chat with him about what was going on in politics. So I always love newspapers and I worked the next summer cutting.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, see, all my life there were kind of three things that fascinated me and drew me. One was politics. One was, I got interested as time went on in academics, but journalism was the other. My late dad used to get four Sunday newspapers and bring them home after church. And we always had newspapers around the house. My dad loved to read political columnists, funnily enough. I've always wondered how much would he disagree with my column. My dad died when I was 16. And he was in a kind of, he himself was in a political journey because he hated that he was against the Vietnam War before I was, interestingly. But I went to work at the Herald News, so I love journalism, and I thought it was interesting. And, you know, I got that job partly because I could get that job.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The political circumstance that LBJ had beginning with the fact that there were those liberal Republicans that you talked about.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The memory of Kennedy was powerful. And then the fact that the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. And it's interesting when you look back through that history, Kennedy was really looking forward to running against Goldwater, A, because he thought he could beat him. Yes. But B, because they were kind of friendly. And they'd actually had these conversations about a campaign where they debate all over the country. Now, who knows, political realists in the Kennedy camp would have said, forget that. But still, it would have, you know, so the 64 election also helped a great deal in getting the rest of the great society through Congress. Democratic majority. It's one of the things that I think where when people unfairly compare Obama to LBJ, you know, I am one of those who wishes the president had schmoozed a little more and brought up members of Congress more. But the political circumstances were very different. And I couldn't replicate...”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source