YouSaid · the spoken record

George Stephanopoulos

lines on the record
100
first
2017-07-10
most recent
2017-07-10
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

  1. Yeah, I mean, again, everything has been sort of turbocharged in the modern era. But the things he survived then, no one had survived. Before. And it was partly just his will. It was, you know, in fairness, I mean,

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. Everybody was like the biggest thing in the world. Lunch money today. Yeah, nothing today. But then January was just as tough as it came. Jennifer Flower.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. Well, it actually had a great October, November, December, and part of him when we saw you. He was kind of on a roll and people were seeing how special he was. And Ram was raising at the time what seemed like

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. That was in late October. I had started in the beginning of the month. And boy, it was just such, again, a different time. I went down to Little Rock. The headquarters was a paint store, two rooms from a presidential campaign. It's when I first met your mayor, Ram Emmanuel. He started about. A month after I started, I have this. The image of him standing on top of a table ordering people around. And he made a huge difference as well because he... Was the fundraiser and he made sure Clinton had just enough of a mistake.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. Yeah, and I was I was more in the sort of traditional liberal wing of the party, but recognized that That was necessary. And also, you know, this is again part of Clinton's political genius. He knew, again, partly from how much he knew about the policy, but he knew how to speak to every side of the Democratic. Party and how to, you know, I think further progressive principles in a way that people who might generally be opposed to it could accept. And I think that was part of what he could do so well.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. How much he knew about Everything having to do with running for president. He knew why he was running. He knew the policies that would fuel his vision. And he knew the politics coal.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. Had thought through the whole campaigner knew how he was going to get from here to there. Completely different experience with Clinton. In Stan's office, he asked me what I did for Dukakis and I told him, you know, they tested the jokes off me in rapid response, and he laughed. But then really, and this is, the interview was mostly him telling me how the primaries were going to go and saying basically something that turned out to be very true. He said, we're going to know on the day of the Illinois primary. And I think that's the day I'm going to wrap it up, which turned out. To be true. And I was just dazzled by.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. Become a lifer. And I really did after the Dukakis experience want to work in at least one more presidential campaign. Gephardt said no, but through mutual friends, Mark Guerin and Stan Greenberg, I was introduced to Clinton. I actually met him in Greenberg's office in September of 1991. Interestingly, I actually interviewed with both Bill Clinton and Bob Carey on the same day. And I was attracted to both of them for very different reasons. I mean, Bob Carrey was, you know, this war hero, kind of an existential Bobby Kennedy type politician and taken the strong stand against flag burning, you know, the flag burning amendment. And I met with him in a great meeting with him and Billy Shore. didn't come away with the strong sense that he

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. Who just all said no to the race. I mean, everyone who was expected to run decided to take a pass, including Gephardt. But I really, you know, I was at that. I felt like I was at another point in my life where I sort of had to make a choice, even though I loved working in the house. I didn't think I wanted to do that my entire career. And if I didn't go and do something else, I felt I would kind of...

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. Yeah, that's forwarding to a couple years later, 91. Was hired by Dick Eppard. It was an amazing job, but I think I was hired because he was planning on running for president. And start building the beginnings of a campaign team. And you go back to that time, though, January of 1991, coming out of the first desert storm, George Bush was at 90-91%. Approval and you had this series of top Democrats from Dick Gephardt to Al Gore to Bill Bradley. Well, Cuomo held on a little the first he was out and then came back in

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. But then this was before people learned how to respond to it. You had the feeling that he was saying it to their face and they weren't responding. But it was really to an empty chamber. And what ended up happening was, I guess it was O'Neill, who then had to start the practice of turning the cameras around during these speeches so that you could see when it was an empty chamber and when it wasn't. But it goes back to the very beginning.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. You know, it goes back further than that, though. It goes back to my first job with Ed Fian. Ed feel when he first got elected was a part of a group of about 12 or 13 members of Congress who went to El Salvador in December, I guess, of 82, January of 83, but it was even before they were sworn in. And it was in talking about that trip and those members that Newt started the practice of speaking to an empty chamber. Yes. And he was basically attacking these members as being disloyal and un-American and socialists and all that. But acting as a...

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. Well, and that's what happened. Bob Michael and the White House reached an agreement and New Gingrich led a revolt, voted it down the first time.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. Right, exactly. But what happened was there was a budget summit at Andrews Air Force Base for something like 30 days. And you knew from, and I still have this image, I'm seeing it in my head right now of New Gingrich. You know, you had Sununu and Dharmin and for the White House. Newt was then, I guess, the number two or three. Yeah. In the House Republican leadership, and you could tell in all those meetings he would be reading these sort of pulp crime novels through the meetings and have a big stack of books and papers. And you just knew he was going to be against this thing.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. To date, right in that event Unu was his chief of staff at the time, was Bush's chief of staff, and he knew how much trouble it was going to be. And even though they had another guy, Dick Darmond, who was their own B director, pushing them to, yeah, you have to do the responsible thing and raise the taxes. Sununi didn't want to do it, but they finally agreed because the Democrats wouldn't talk unless they did. But the only way they would do it was to put up a press release, tack it up to the wall of the white. And as if that was going to what they had done, it exploded.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. In the Senate. We had Tom Foley, the speaker and Dick Gephardt were the leaders, and they came up with a strategy that the Democrats would not negotiate until Bush explicitly said that promises no longer viable. We're going to have to raise taxes. You saw the beginnings of so much of what's happened politically.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. Budget was so yeah. I mean, actually, again, it shows how much things have changed. Untenable because it just seemed like the responsible thing to do at the time. I mean, today I don't think the leaders would find it untenable. But at that time, they did. Or he did. George Mitchell was the Democratic leader.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. I remember what precipitated it all. I was in the middle of that as well. That was at the time when one of the things that elected George H.W. Bush, thanks to Roger Ailes, was the promise of you to read my lips, no new taxes. Right. 1990, that promise was untenable.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. You're right in the middle of the action, and it's politics on every single level. You have to know the personalities, the personalities of every member of the Democratic Aucus in some Republicans as well, and what moves them. You have to know the issues and you have to know the politics. And it was just great, great training. And you're there on the floor every single day talking to members of Congress and being in the strategy meetings with the speaker on how you're going to approach the new White House. And it was just an incredible education, an incredible thrill, and really fun.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. There was a wholesale replacement of the entire Democratic leadership. Jim Wright, Bill Gray both left in Dick Epphart became the Democratic leader. And through another... Great political operator fixer Kirk O'Donnell, who I'd worked with in the Dukakis campaign, he hooked me up with a get part. As he was majority leader for an interview on becoming his floor, his chief floor staff, which I've had, I'm so grateful. I've had a lot of great jobs in my life. In some ways, that was one of my favorite jobs

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. In 88. And yet I actually, that was one of the other points in my life where I thought I was leaving politics. I actually first, after the campaign, boy, I really did the circuit. I first interviewed with... Both Algore and Joe Biden coming out to join their Senate offices, neither one worked out, but I had at the same time I had known Father Timothy Healy was the president of Georgetown, who was becoming the president of New York Public Library. And he was moving up here and he asked me to be as chief of staff executive assistant. That sounded like a pretty interesting opportunity as well. I did that. Again, I wasn't done. That spring, I guess it was the spring of late spring of 1989.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. Of Famously, I think he's still talking now. It went on for quite a while. That's one of the things you think about Bill Clinton, though. How many times has he been introduced, dismissed, and then come back? Yeah.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. Fine governor, I to this day, I mean, I still regret that during the Clinton administration we didn't find a place for him in the cabinet, and I think he would have been excellent Secretary of Health and Human Services, Transportation, HUD, anything. He's dedicated his life to public policy and public service, and he's just been tremendous at that. He's been teaching ever since.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. A little bit. I didn't travel though. And so, I mean, I would see him a lot, and I admire him still. I mean, I was at actually at a

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. And he just gave this very dead panned answer why he's opposed to the death money. He's opposed to any emotion on what it would feel like if someone...

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. They strengthened a negative impression. Yeah, it's sort of reinforced. I think you could argue that Dukak's had a chance in the debates to come back. But once we should remind those who don't.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. Six weeks completely turned everything around. I mean, people still talk about the, now I know better. I mean, I think I felt like we were still ending in October when I looked back at it. We weren't.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. Ronald Reagan out to kind of kick off the idea that he was, quote, invalid and off rumors about his mental health problems, but then going on to the Boston Harbor and the Willie Horton and the defense stuff was just by the end of August, we were in so much trouble.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. The news was literally an old time AP ticker in the corner of the office. The first days of our research was sort of Lexus Nexus. Kind of making myself feel so old here. That August, we got decimated, and you could feel it happening, but coming off the high of the convention, but Dukakis had this thing where it was a little old-fashioned and To his credit and his detriment, he believed that he's a hyper rational man, hyper-principled person, Who believes that that's sort of the way everybody else is or should be to. And he couldn't believe that the attacks that they started to launch, starting with even sending...

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. At the convention. Boy, but Again, this is how much the world has changed. I was part of the rapid response unit for, you guys can see the Jamaican Bob Sled team. That's exactly right. We were so pathetic. And again, the old time, the way we would get...

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. Concord during the New Hampshire primary and then was full time as a communications director for the Ohio primary where Jesse Jackson was still a factor. And then I went to Boston in June when everybody was just measuring their office for their drapes for the office in the White House.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. I got a reply. It was one sentence basically saying we have no use for you. So I went back to Ed Fianne and was his chief.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. I'm going to tell the story, tell it quickly Yeah. And at that time, I actually then got hooked up with, at the time, a small, there was a small CBS documentary running on Sunday mornings then, and I had met another former student at Oxford when I came back and told him about my trip. And we ended up going back on my next break. And we filmed these two shows. And it turned out that we were there at that time while we were there filming these documentaries on the famine, there was a coup. And so I ended up doing more journalism for the Christian science monitor then. And so I thought came out of that thinking, point, maybe I want to do this. And I still ended up teasing both Rick Kaplan and Ted Koppel about this for many years afterwards. One of the places I applied when I came back from Oxford was Nightline and I got a very

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. And I took my first break and volunteered with the International Rescue Committee and saved the children and was doing some work there, but also did my first journalism. I was a stringer for the Christian Science Monitor. I wrote two articles on the famine. And it's such a mind-bogglingly different world. I would hand write the articles and I think I called them in To like some one eight hundred number from a phone booth in Khartoum. And, you know, then it got, but I remember that was that thrill which you lived with early in your career as well, the first time you see your byline. Oh, yeah.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. It was a haphazard thing. I had a great experience at Oxford where actually when I came back it was the first time I had Try to go full time into television journalism because when I was at Oxford, I had taken, you know, you go there and it's a great schedule. You go to school for eight weeks and then you're off for six three times a year. Yeah, that's nice. And my first two long breaks at the time there was a famine in Sudan.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. Well, what I did with, I worked for him. Let's see, that was 80. He started in 83. Yeah, and then in the fall of'83, I kept wanting to put it off again. So I told my parents, let me take one more shot because it would buy me another year. I'll apply for the Rhode Scholarship. I had applied in college and didn't get it. And this was a thing where so much of that hinges on your interviews. And working for two years and made a big difference. And right when that job was about to end, I got the road. So I went to England for a couple years. And that pretty much put law school. To bed, but I had a nice credential for your folks, too. Right, that's what happened. And then after that one thing led to another.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. Law school You know the truth. I mean, this is getting ourselves off on another tangent. One of the things I like best about the career I've been lucky enough to have, both working in Congress, working in campaigns, working in the White House, and then at ABC, I've gotten to deal with the best parts of the law and without all the drudgery. I mean, all the big constitutional, big public policy issues, we study them all the time. We talk about them all the time. And I've learned a lot about them without becoming a lawyer.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. No, I mean, that would have been 19, what, 77? I was 16 again. No, that was before I had a real political waking, but I remembered it. And yeah, he lost to Dennis Kucinich, but then ended up in Congress. And it was the same thing. My internship was running out in December. I could have gone on to law school, I guess, in that September, but I didn't wasn't quite ready yet, still hadn't scratched the itch completely. And I met it. Now, have you completely?

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. Kind of not dissembling, but not talking too much about what exactly I want to do. I took that first internship junior year, then it came to be senior year of college, and I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. It went two paths again then, I applied to the Peace Corps, but also applied for some internships again in Washington. And kind of at the last minute, got one at the Carting Endowment, and I ended up taking that. And I said to my parents, I had already taken the LSETs. Let me just do this for a year. And then that was an election year, 1982. Another member of Congress from Cleveland got elected, a guy named Ed Fian.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. Be a lawyer. You got it or a doctor. I was never going to be a doctor, so that wasn't going to happen. But you had to sort of have that professional credential. And that was the next period of my life where I spent a few years.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. I think they were of two minds at first. I think my parents have actually gotten more liberal, more democratic over time. But at first it wasn't about the partisanship. It was like, Like a lot of first generation families, the idea is that, again, if I wasn't going to be a priest.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. That led you the idea that you have responsibility for the world beyond yourself. And the basic idea We have to love one another as we love ourselves and that you carry that simple idea through, I think, to public policy and at some level putting other people even not. Fully before yourself, but certainly on an equal on an equal plane. And I think you can sort of derive principles of a lot of public policy. Now, you're always going to disagree on the details of how to achieve that, but the basic, I think the basic driving philosophy for me, political philosophy for me, comes from that.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. Standing on the front lines fighting Social Security cuts. And I think I wrote my first statement for the congressional record. Hooked for life.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. Was my junior year of college. I had been taking more political science classes. I had been caring about it a lot more. An internship with my local congresswoman. They called it the LBJ internship at that time. I think it was $500 a month for June in the summer. And that was the summer of 1981. The Reagan tax cuts were Going through the Congress, and she married Rose Ocar, was the member of Congress. Oh, yes. Local in Cleveland. Local in Cleveland. She was

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. I would say in college I had some great professors and I actually remember my first political job. I was a freshman at Columbia and I Out signs at the subway for Carter Burden, who I think was running for Congress at the time. He was on the city council, was running for Congress at the time. And I got much more involved over the course of college. And then for me, the real turning point

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. Well, that was something also I think we grew up with not so much partisan politics, but I grew up in a house where my parents read the newspapers and watched the news on television and talked about what was going on. That was something that was always part of our lives. I didn't get a full spark. I wasn't like the kind of kid Grade school or high school. Like, I have friends, let's say, I was The summer of the Watergate hearings. I had to connect. That wasn't a big part of my life at 12. I had a lot of friends my age who were really into it. Then for me at that stage of my life, I was caddying and hanging out with my friends and going to the pools in the summer pretty normal. But it sort of hit me much more

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, I thought that's what I assumed I would be, I guess up until around I was, I guess, 14, when it sort of hit me that I wasn't going to be a reason. I didn't say anything about it for a few years because I kind of felt betrayal is a slightly too strong a word, but it had been Expectation I had grown up with whether it was put on me or not. It's just what I assumed. And then when I realized that that wasn't the path I was going to follow, I felt, I guess, almost embarrassed or abashed about coming out and talking about it. Now it turned out my parents were great about it. It was something much more that I was feeling than something that was being imposed on me. But yeah, that's what I assumed I was going to do.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. But still living in that world where, you know, sort of the whole rhythms of my life were set to the church, our calendar was set to the church. That was our community. Yet I would also sort of go out into the world, public school, and you're exposed to something else. So I really felt like I had my foot in two very different worlds when I was growing up.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. It was what I knew. I mean, so I always felt like I was living in because I'm sort of a first and a half generation Greek. As I said, my dad was born in Greece. My mom was born here, but she was also the daughter of immigrants who had come here. Her father came here around 1918, worked on the railroads, worked his way out west all the way to Utah, made it back to east of Minnesota to settle in Rochester, Minnesota, and opened up a shoe repair shop on Main Street in Rochester. So my parents were really hardcore first generation Greeks where you really brought up, and that is you're You're Greek American. I was kind of American Greek.

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. That's for sure. Son, grandson, nephew, godson of Greek Orthodox priests. Yeah. I mean, it had been, I used to joke, my family business until I sort of broke the string when bad and went into politics. But yeah, my grandfather on my father's side came here, I guess, in 1936 and was basically the Greek Orthodox priest for the entire West. He went straight out to Great Falls, Montana, and covered that whole territory. That was a time when Greeks said there had been about two or three waves of immigration, but that was one of them, obviously, right before World War II. The family gradually made its way east, and my dad was born in Greece, but he grew up in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. My grandfather had parishes there. And in fact, my dad ended up serving for a 20 year, I mean,

    2017-07-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 161 - George Stephanopoulos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source