YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Greenfield

lines on the record
76
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2016-06-03
most recent
2016-06-03
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1
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  1. “That's where these memories are so indelible. So, you know, I've never been on a campaign. I've watched them on television. And I'm wet behind the years. And suddenly it's like whatever the date is. Two or three days later and we're on a American Airlines jet bound for California and we land in California and there's thousands of people because his entry did unleash this enormous energy. All the frustration people said, we got to get this guy Johnson out. McCar Significant as he was did not have quite that”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Or yes, Mayor Daly of Chicago, who, as Bobby Kennedy said when he entered, that's the ballgame. If I can't get daily, I can't. This won't work. And so I've got to prove by going to the primaries that I'm the strongest candidate. We can talk later about what that would have portended had Los Angeles and Sir Hannah had happened.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “The so-called well oiled Canadian machine wasn't quite that well oiled. Can you imagine you run for president March 16th and you're quite right, it's very late. Half the deadlines are passed. You can only run now in about five primaries. And in those days, unlike what you went through and your forebears and successors, the point about winning the primaries was not delegates. It was to show the people who actually made the decision, I'm the more popular candidate. It was to show the power brokers in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So, in that sense, he knew he blew it. But even at the very end, you know, Ted Kennedy, Ted Sorensen, most of the old hands were saying to him, you can't do this. It's not going to work. And if it works, what are you going to be left with? You're going to run with a party half of whose people don't want you. You've got a sitting president of the United States still who's going to try to undermine you. Don't do it. But I think at the end... The combination of McCarthy had shown an ambition And the feeling that the country was falling apart dragged him into the race. It was a clumsy, awkward entrance.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Been Dick's day, Robert Kennedy said, I'm reassessing, which understandably produced a great amount of resentment on the part of the people who said, look, McCarthy came when nobody else would. Now that he's proven that Johnson's vulnerable, now you're coming in. This is where the ruthless tag that always stuck on Bobby Kennedy got reinforced. And it was always a source of regret for him to the point where somewhere during the campaign, he actually found a bunch of McCarthy kids having around and he took them out to dinner and he just was talking with them. And he said, you know, I really, these should have been my kids.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I did. By the time The end of 67 is coming in, and Robert Kennedy has said at some point around then. There are no foreseeable circumstances under which I would run. And I think, so it must have been the fall of 67, because that's when Allard Lowenstein, an activist of the time, very important figure in the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement with students was banging on Bobby Kennedy's door figuratively and sometimes literally saying, you got to run. And he asked George McGovern, and McGovern said, no, I'm up for the Senate in 68, I can't do that. So they found McCarthy, a kind of strange vessel for this, a very strange guy. But you're quite right. When he won in New Hampshire,”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Not just him. Bobby Kennedy announced March 16th, and Nelson Rockefeller, who'd taken himself out of the race, announced about a month and a half later.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Jumping into piranha-infested waters in Brazil, Richard Goodwin writes a lot about this Book, I think it's called Remembering America, a wonderful account of the time. And Evan Thomas' very even-handed biography of Bobby makes the point of this almost reckless need. You know, he was the runt of the litter. Jack was six feet plus, Teddy was six feet plus. Bobby on a good day may have been like five, eight, five, nine, kind of scrawny. Evan Thomas thinks that's one of the reasons why he had this kind of visceral identification with the underdog. Even though he came from a wealthy and powerful family, in the context of that family, he was a little guy.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “almost to a fault. I mean, when he on many foreign trips to Japan, to Latin America, to name two, would go out of his way to confront the most radical student protesters in those universities to argue with them about, you don't understand my country and he put himself in real physical danger sometimes.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “One of Kennedy's many problems with Lyndon Johnson was he felt he was not strong enough to pull the country back, that there was a, beneath this six foot, four-inch, very powerful man was a weakness and an unwillingness to engage. I can remember him after one of the riots. Saying, I'll tell you why Lyndon Johnson isn't going into those neighborhoods because he's a coward. So, yeah, there were”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Funny you used that phrase because I knew a bunch of other young aides on Capitol Hill. And the one quote that all of us were using to distraction was things fall apart, the center cannot hold, near anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood dim tide is everywhere, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence was around. The second coming, Yates. So things were coming apart. The generation gap was exploding, the civil regiment was turning in many ways much more militant, wrapped brown instead of Martin Luther King or whatever. And a general feeling that, yeah, that the wheels were coming off. And one of the reasons why I think the impulse of some people was to urge Robert Kennedy to get into the race was not just political, but Let me put it this”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “In the Senate. They hated each other on site I mean, they just did. Somebody said, Have you ever seen two cats in a room? And they immediately fur goes up. It was something visceral. Each of them despised the other. So one of the things on Kennedy's mind was that if I go, if I take on Johnson, it's going to be seen as this personal battle. And all the Democrats were telling him you'll divide the party, we'll lose the Senate, except for a guy like Adam Walinsky, who was Robert Kennedy's young speechwriter, brilliant guy, and a couple of other people who were saying, you know, you've got to do this. He was being advised by everybody from his Jack's senior advisors to the whole Democratic Party, this can't be done. You cannot unseat a sitting president.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That was the tension that was there from, I mean, obviously preceding me, but that was the constant thrum for months. Is he going to go in again? And it was really interesting. I learned a part about the political world that I think really is somebody like a Shakespeare would have been much better at. So here's the tension. The mutual contempt, to quote the title of a very good.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, it was one of those really accidental things. I was up for Supreme Court clerkship, which I would have been idiotic enough to take because of the prestige, even though it would have turned my life into a very different place. But I was also... I learned about this post in Kennedy's office and by some quirk, the law professor I was taking a course in was best friends with one of Bobby Kennedy's top aides and he gave me a nice shout out and I wound up on the guy Senate staff.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, about that, or playing rock guitar with a great band because talent really matters. They can tell. I just knew it was going to be writing of some kind. And then somehow public policy and politics was part of it, you know.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Also, I knew I wanted to write from the time I was conscious. It was never anything else I really. I mean, once Centerfield for the New York Yankees sort of went by the wayside.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Vital time, yeah. I remember gathering for the first Nixon Kennedy debate, you know, which was something like the Martians have landed. Remember we'd never seen that before and how exciting that was. And it was also, you know, I was on the march on Washington, and I went to participate, but I also wrote about it for the hometown Madison, Wisconsin newspaper. And so the whole idea of being engaged in events like that Just always appeal to me. It's funny. My mother once said to me, and she was the more politically, I think, engaged one, she gave me the making of the president in 1960 as a book. And she said, you know, you're never going to be able to get to be president because you're Jewish or whatever. But you could be somebody who could work for a president.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Look, I should go back and fill in the blanks. I remember my mother watching the Army McCarthy hearings while she was ironing in 1954 And I watch Joseph Welch and McCarthy's career. I remember that. I was fascinated by how journalists covered politics. I would watch that stuff. I'd watch conventions.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And I felt arrogant enough to write about bigger stuff than the food and the cafeteria. What really happened was in law school I managed to wind up in the Senate office of Robert Kennedy as kind of a one-year legislative aide.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Now, this was the upper west side, so they just yelled a lot. It had been little itty, if it had been other neighborhoods, maybe, but it wasn't physical, but it was like, Kauai, kid, you're making a fool out of yourself. And I said, fool out of myself, where's the Stevenson name? Look at that billboard. That was the highlight of my political career. Really, I didn't get that involved in terms of participating, in terms of, except that, you know, in college I was, I don't know my college paper, and I felt the”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “They were downplaying Stevenson. They put a billboards that diminished him. And I remember hearing a street corner Democrat talking. We had street corner events that still do in that neighborhood. And I'm 13. I went up and said, why aren't you featuring Adelaide Stevenson? Yelling at him from the sidewalk. What's the matter? Well, you've got the Congressman here. What about the penalty for pressure?”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “political campaigns I remember stuffing on stuffing envelopes for Stevenson in 1956 but here's only in New York okay the local democratic machine in Manhattan the reformers hadn't yet right Tammany Hall yeah”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “No, I will tell you I remember listening to the 56 Republican Convention when some delegate wanted to nominate Joe Smith as the symbol of the open convention. And the chairman said, you take your Joe Smith and get out of here. That's the only memorable event in the entire 1956 campaign. But somehow it is stuck in this garbage pail of a mind I have.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Whatever it is, I By the time the next presidential year rolled around, I had to follow this thing on television. I just thought the whole thing was so fascinating.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “And that was that. I just was hooked from the beginning, which parallels a lot of people I know who kind of had a simultaneous interest in baseball and politics. I have no idea what the connection is, but I just know so many people, Joe Klein is one of them, and they go on and on and on.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “It really was because I couldn't listen to baseball. It's the summer of 1952. I'm in my grandfather's house with my mom. No TV, but radio. And the Yankees were always on in the daytime. And one day my mom said, we're not listening to the Yankees. You can't. I'm listening to the convention, a 1952 convention. I said, what? I'm nine years old. It turned out to be this amazing knockdown drag out fight, the kind that people hoped they would see this year between the Taft and Eisenhower forces about credentials and people yelling at each other. And I had no idea the substance of it, but this seemed cool to me. And so by the time the Democratic Convention happened, I was put to sleep early and I said, you got to wake me up and tell me who won.”

    2016-06-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 55 - Jeff Greenfield · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source