YouSaid · the spoken record

John Weaver

lines on the record: 66
first: 2016-11-07
most recent: 2016-11-07
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

“So they finally granted me like 10 minutes in the hallway in'97. And I said, Look, I said, here's a plan for how you can run in the primary. Here it is, a written version of it. I'll volunteer for free. Let's travel the country and go do this. And he took it, called me two months later, agreed to it, and that's how I became close to John. And that was a great, fun campaign.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they didn't know who I was, some Yahoo from Texas who knew him from the Graham campaign, which was a disaster. They didn't want him to run because he had great committee assignments. They had a nice life. And finally, he called me on the blue and said, how come I never hear from you? And I said, well, I've been trying to see you all these months. And they finally granted me.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I liked his honor. I liked his frankness. I thought, quite frankly, following President Clinton that somebody like John McCain would be a breath of fresh air, and that if we could win a primary, that he would win a general election going away. And so I tried to get in to see him several times to get him to run for president, and his staff rebuffed me. They wouldn't allow me in to see him.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“General consulting They range from people like Trent Law to Jeff Sessions. Which is funny today, actually. But I got involved with Phil Graham's presidential campaign. And Phil was not my first choice, but being a Texan and having gotten my career Phil, I felt obligated to work for him. And John McCain was our national campaign chairman. And there was so much fear in our campaign staff and dealing with Senator McCain that it ended up being assigned to me as the only person to be the John McCain whisperer in the campaign. So I traveled with him. He and I were often on the losing arguments with Phil Graham on strategy and tactics because while Phil was a very good Texas politician and a very good Senate strategist, he was a terrible strategist for himself. But I became close to John, and after we lost and after the 96”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In between I opened my own company and I had a number of U.S. Senate races. Senators. One time I had ten senators as clients scattered around the country.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I've heard from him periodically through the years. He's a tough character, smart guy. I think the world of him. But discipline, message discipline, campaign discipline. What you began the day implementing you finish, make sure you've implemented it by the end of the day.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, like you, David, I mean, there's not a job in politics that I haven't done. And so, you know, you learn tactics and... And all of that. But at the end of the day, it is a communication business. Even the tactics are related to communicating, how you group people together, how you organize, how you fundraise. It all gets back to communication. And I think people who come at it from that approach have a leg up.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“President Bush had lost to Lloyd Benson in a Senate race in nineteen seventy. They were paranoid about that, and so as a young man of twenty seven years old, I was reporting to Secretary Baker and had a conference call once a week with Bob Mosbacker, Secretary Baker, etc. And so I didn't have to report through the normal channels. I got the extra attention. And because of that, and we won, My career got pushed faster”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Texas as his political director, we narrowly won Then they asked me to run the state party which for, and I was twenty five years old. Which I did, and then ran the Bush campaign against Mike Dukakis. In Texas, which was really the start of my career, if I could put my finger on any place, because the Bush family, they were so paranoid about Lloyd Vinson. Remember Dukakis Pick Benson? Dukakis Menson ticket went up sixteen points ahead of us in Texas. It was Fool's gold. We all knew it. But because”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I've lived through Texas seeing it go from the bluest of blue states to purple to red, and now we're about to see it purple again.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, now he was the bow weevil, I guess is the term that they used back then. Yes, that's exactly right, and helped. Get President Reagan's economic agenda passed through the Congress. Center Tower, surprise everyone by announcing that he would not run again.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was his first election to Congress. I worked on his second one out of college. I went straight into the Air Force for three years. And then he called me and asked me if I could find a way out, which I did, to serve in the reserves for six years and was his political director when he ran for the U.S. Senate for John Towers seat. I think you may remember that he.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He offered me two hundred dollars a month and I place to live over his garage apartment and fast forward to today no sports riding of course. Yeah, that's too bad. That would be fun. Exactly. I could be here for the World Series. Exactly. And so I worked for Phil. We had a very narrow Democratic primary for Congress where we got into the runoff by nine votes. We finished second.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He worked in the oil fields as well, but he was very. Curious intellectually and I would race home from school and we would watch the news underneath an apricot tree in a backyard about the Vietnam War and all the issues that were raging in our country back then. And so I wanted to be involved in politics, but I also loved sports. I ended up going to Texas A&M to be a sports writer. And I had no money, so I took a job after writing a very favorable story about a college professor running for Congress, Phil Graham.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blue collar working folks, my father's family pick cotton. Arkansas they travel the cotton picking circuit in Arkansas and the Panhandle of Texas. My grandfather actually was from the Midwest, Ohio and Indiana and was very well read and growing up he received every magazine you could get Newsweek time, Mother Jones, Human Events, very curious Mother Jones Everything. I mean he was left, right, middle left.”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Thanks, David. I'm honored to be here and big fan of. Way you approach politics. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate that. Likewise. I grew up in a small town in West Texas. My parents were”
2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source