YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Smerconish

lines on the record
69
first
2019-02-21
most recent
2019-02-21
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. “I held it on a pedestal because it was a reach and it represented total achievement for me. I was accepted at Lehigh as a legacy. My father had obtained a master's there. My brother had attended Lehigh, was president of his class. I was very fortunate that they had blazed that trail for me because my SAT scores were below the Mendoza line. And I really applied myself when I got to school because I had a mentor who was a one-man director of the Urban Studies Department and he just threw us David Amadon.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Absolutely. That letter said a great deal about both men. And by the way, they were each very complex. I get how they would have been drawn to one another.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And I guess I will never know, did Nixon write two letters? Did Nixon write this to Rizzo in 83? And did he write it again in 87? At the auction, no 1987 letter ever surfaced typed or handwritten. And I know that Nixon would have reached out, so that only makes me more dubious.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Better than serious as him. Good. Fuck you and your Nixon dinner were the last words that he said to me as we were within 48 hours of going to a black tie where the two of us were supposed to be seated with Richard Nixon. And those were the final words that he spoke to me for I think a two-year time period. Pretty memorable. Yeah, I would say so.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Pennsylvania, I was asked if I would chair the Bush campaign Rizzo having lost the 87 race but still believing he had a future as a Republican desperately wanted the title for himself. By the way, I can hear Frank Rizzo right now saying this is Smirkanish's version and that's true and I'm sticking to it. But my version was that the Bush campaign wanted nothing to do with him. They thought he was too toxic. And I negotiated a deal where he would be given the role honorary chair of the 88 Bush campaign and I would be the chairman and I would run all the nuts and bolts of it. And he believed that I'd sold him out, was disbelieving of the fact that the Bush campaign didn't want to be close to him and that was a falling out that we had. And we went for a year or two without speaking at all.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Oh, yeah. And when they wheeled him out, I knew it was over. I was in disbelief and I walked 10 blocks to the Jefferson ER where he would be taken looking at people and thinking to myself, they have no idea. This city is about to be turned upside down with the news. And I'll never forget that send-off, the funeral from Wizo.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “The paramedics, David, did not believe me when I told them you're about to work on Frank Rizzo. And I knew he was gone at that moment. And I remember then walking 10 or so blocks.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “True and told them as I rode the I was sent to the, I wasn't working for Frank Rizzo, I had just been appointed by the Bush administration to be a regional administrator for HUD. I don't think I'd yet been sworn in, but I was in my HUD office and got a telephone call that said the mayor wants to see you. He still, of course, was given the title. He was not in office. And when I arrived, he had just dropped over. I didn't see him. And someone said to me, go down to the street level and bring up the paramedics, which I did. Rizzo was so much larger than life. I know we use that expression about so many, but believe me, in Philadelphia, he was.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Looks differently at it. Yeah, I mean, I admire the relationship that we had because in some respects it became a father-son type of a bond. But yes, me at age 56 looks differently on the Rizzo record than would have the ninth grader who was eager to get that phone call from the mayor.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “For a solid year of my life, 365 straight days of being in the back of the car, he had an enormous frame. It would always be pushed all the way to the back, and I was the low man on the totem pole, and I was in that back seat. To traverse the city streets and hear the stories that he could tell about every single intersection because he rose from being a beat cop to police commissioner and then to mayor was an experience I would go back and relive tomorrow just for the stories.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “To become there again, only one person ever beat him in any election, and that was Wilson Good, the city's first African-American mayor, who defeated Rizzo in 83. You'll appreciate this. And that was in a Democratic primary without the benefit of the 225,000 Republicans having the opportunity to vote. Rizzo's idea was that if he became a Republican, those 225,000 would have the opportunity to vote in a good rematch and could be his margin.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “If you hadn't begun by talking about my roots, it might seem awfully odd that he would have been revered in the house where I grew up, but he was. I mean, he was the prototypical ethnic hero and coming from the coal regions and then closer to the city of Philadelphia. Yeah, he was a guy who was admired in our house, no doubt about it. And that was at a time when he was, you know, the Democratic mayor of Philadelphia from 71 to 75 and 75 to 79.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “To a very prominent Democrat. Okay, who did the staff work? Can I meet this person? We will take care of this after the show. Frank Rizzo. True. And he wrote back, and by the time that I got to junior high in high school, he would call me from time to time we'd never met. And soon after I graduated from high school, I had the opportunity to go to his house at 8919 Crefeld Street in Chestnut Hill. There was controversy about the house and be introduced to him. And it was the beginning of a very close relationship. one that flamed out at a certain point and then was repaired before his passing.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “A good question. I think because my parents probably thought that they aspired to be the type of people that Republicans were prosperous with a white picket fence and living the American dream. And ultimately they did live the American dream. My mother, very successful. She'd be offended if I told you her age, but works every day and is a very successful realtor with her own office. But when I turned 18 in the spring of 1980, there was not a question as to which party I would join. I was going to become a Republican, and I became at an early age a very active Republican. I was in for the program.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Forgotten. Forgotten. Yeah. Bradley Jr.'s book, which I think sums it up well and drills down on Luzerne County. And that's where my family is from”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “True and a bit embarrassed about the fact that I still have so many relatives in that part of the state. My mother's one of 11, eight sisters and three brothers. They're from the former Yugoslavia. And they are, the relatives are still ingrained in that community. I like to say, David, I'm a butter knife away from many Trump supporters and I'm embarrassed that in the last cycle, despite what I was hearing from those relatives, I didn't see it coming.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, thank you for saying that. But I was sort of traipsing through the graveyard and seeing where all these relatives are buried at a time when I have to make a decision about my father's tombstone. What a grisly note on which to begin your podcast. But I decided I would emulate the tombstone of both of his parents because they were exactly the same. And, you know, I'm no authority on picking tombstones. Yes. But that whole Eastern European coal mining heritage runs through my veins.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I am really impressed. Well, tell me about him. I did, but only very briefly as a young person, but I returned to that church within the last three weeks. It's the Holy Trinity. It's an Eastern Orthodox church in McAdoo, Pennsylvania, because I lost my father a few months ago.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “My parents are cold crackers from Northeast Pennsylvania, a turf you know well, very politically significant, especially in the last cycle. And then my father, who was a school teacher and then guidance counselor in the public schools, moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia. And that's where he and my mother raised my brother and me.”

    2019-02-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 310 - Michael Smerconish · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source