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

“By the way, just to add that for the sake of us, just to point out, I've been thinking about a lot over the last decade, which is people like us who had these sympathies for McCarthy or Kennedy at the time people were very down on LBJ, and I think it is one of the turns in history that a lot of us look back and say, wait a minute, LBJ made a big mistake on the Vietnam War, but a lot of this would not have happened. A lot of the things we now look back on as major progressive achievements would not have happened without...”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He didn't have that support in the White South. They were talking about the Northeast, the Midwest, because large parts of the White South really hated Bobby Kennedy at the time.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've thought about that all my life as I know you have what would have happened. The other thing is he was on the one hand he took and you put it in quotes seemingly conservative positions like that but in other ways he was a far more radical critic of the American system and he did something in that campaign that progressives have struggled to do ever since and is quite relevant to what we're looking at now, which is he managed to win very loyal support from African Americans who knew deep in their gut that he was on their side. But he also won very loyal support from working class whites who also knew in their gut that he was very much on their side and given what's happened to politics since Nixon really and given the flight of white working class voters from the Democratic Party you wonder what the future would have looked like if he had pulled that off. Now it should be said”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And the two things that really sort of affected me, one was just watching LBJ and the Great Society. And it bothered me that conservatives were not trying to solve problems that I saw LBJ and the New Deal Democrats. And it should be said the liberal Republicans were trying to solve. And the other was civil rights where when I was in”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and it's so, but also let it not be said that journalists are always cruel and heartless. Everyone, whoever got those letters, sent this kid in Fall River to the World Telegram, the journal American, the mirror, all these papers that no longer exist.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes Yes, exactly. We're both crazy. I will continue with your narrative. I was fascinated by the fights in New York. I actually, just to really sort of deeply prove my geekdom when I was 13, I wrote all of the newspapers in New York to ask them to send me their editions the day after the 1965 election when Lindsay won every newspaper in New York, God Love them all, sent me a copy of the election day edition.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But my dad told me what I was a kid. I'll never forget it that, you know, if he had been poor or working class during the New Deal, he would have voted for Roosevelt too. He actually started a free dental program for poor kids in town that lasted all his life and some years beyond. So I joke sometimes he was the original compassionate conservative, or at least that was sort of the ethic that my parents had. They were very religious, they were very involved in the church. So it wasn't long by the time I was 13 years old, I started thinking conservatism really didn't work as an idea. There are two big influences on my changing my politics were the great society where I looked at what LBJ was.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right Right, mom was a teacher and a librarian. I always say that I disagree with George W. Bush on a lot of things, but I admired him for marrying a teacher and a librarian.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Our town, Fall River, is also probably, the Portuguese are now the largest group in town. You could say for a long time that the Portuguese, the Irish, and the French Canadians were the three biggest groups in Fall River, that we French Canadians have scattered more, although we fairly recently had a French Canadian mayor who was a good guy, I should add. So there was that part of it, but there was also growing up in a working class town. And even though, as I've written elsewhere, I grew up in a Republican family, the sort of consciousness of what the New Deal meant, what trade unions meant was just sort of embedded in you. I remember my background.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he and I just had a very recently had a great conversation that included a good deal on his political career in Taunton. I noted that he was a real politician because he was the register of deeds in that part of Bristol County and only true politicos run for jobs like register. And he like went.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Kennedy is running for president. No, and so in two ways. One is just a sheer love of politics. I actually had a, I guess he's a great cousin who ran on the Republican ticket in Massachusetts in 1934 for state treasurer when the Republican Yankees were running out of allies. They needed new ethnic groups in. They put in a balanced ticket and Oscar Dion was on that ticket. So politics am I. And you guys wrote a French Canadian saying that the French Canadians and the Irish tangled until the New Deal when they kind of came together in the Democratic Party, most of them. And my grandfather whom I never met got elected to the city council in Taunton, Massachusetts nearby to win a bet. So politics was always there. Did you know, by the way”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Race and your loyalties ran deep. Sometimes I joke that grudges and loyalties are often the only honorable motives in the politics of my dear home state, although I'm happy to look sometimes to Illinois or Louisiana for comfort about Massachusetts.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, thank you. It's great to be with you, and sometimes I think the only difference between an academic and a journalist is that journalists have to write a lot faster. And so that was a useful thing that I was forced to learn. But no, Fall River is really important to me in a lot of ways. Mary McGory, the late columnist, Mary McGrory, once said that every baby born in Massachusetts is born with a campaign manager's gene. And if you grew up at a place like mine, it's a factory town used to be big into textiles. We were once upon a time long ago the largest cotton town in the country. Then we went into shirts and dresses. And we were always on the wrong end of the economy. But a place like ours and towns like that all over Massachusetts, politics was part of everyday life. You remembered state rep races the way you remembered a Red Sox Pennant.”
2016-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 79 - EJ Dionne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source