YouSaid · the spoken record

Ron Fournier

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69
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2016-04-14
most recent
2016-04-14
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1
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  1. “Yeah, there's a good story about your old boss, I like to tell, too, if we have time. But Tyler was only five years old when I'm leaving the White House being a tradition presidents have had for years is bringing the family in to say goodbye to the correspondent. It's a wonderful tradition. So Tyler walks in and all he can talk about is Barney the Dog, is Bush's dog. Tyler was five. I didn't know he was autistic then, but looking back on it, his fixation on things like animals is a sign. So he's talking with his deep voice, really talking really fast, and he's obsessed with not only Barney, but also Falla, which was Roosevelt's dog. So he's telling poor Bush all these stories about, and Bush is, you know, he wasn't looking at his watch. He should have been. He only had a few minutes. And as parents will be, I'm kind of, I'm worried that on one level, I'm worried that he's embarrassed himself and putting out the president, but really I'm worried that he's embarrassing me, to be honest with you. And on the way out, Bush who could not have been more gracious. And by the way, Obama and Clinton in his book also were very gracious.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “We have three children, the two oldest are girls and the youngest, our only son, Tyler. And he was always a precocious, beautiful, quirky little boy that just lit up our lives. We knew he was special. But we didn't know.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Turned upside down. We went from Friday when I was working 40 hours a week and scheduled hours in a small town with a group of friends and it was the only life my wife and I had established because that's where we started our marriage and our family to suddenly I'm in the presidential motorcade and I'm in the White House and I'm traveling all over the world with the president and my ego is getting stroked like crazy And I always try to be someone who put his family first. I never forgot what was going to be important to me in my life. I love my wife more than anything on God's earth and I know being a father is the most important job I'll have. Second most important to being a husband. But boy, you can know that intellectually, but you can lose sight of what it really takes to put that first when now you're working 80 hours a week and the president of the United States knows you buy your first name. And every day you're making choices and looking back on it.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, and looking back, it's a lot clearer now when you see where you came from and raised by a single mother in a pretty hard scrabbled town and making his way in a pretty tough political state. I think getting beat young made him a better man and a better, certainly a better candidate. But yeah, I had no clue. I can remember him having doubts. I remember one time we're standing on the tarmac me and a few other state reporters and we're looking at Clinton talking to the National Press Corps that was in town. And we're kind of making fun of the national folks. You know, all these parachute is coming in town. We're being smug local guys. And he comes over and he's talking not to me, but one of my colleagues in the press corps who he really trusted and she'd been in the business quite a while. And he said something like they keep asking about the women. Is that really going to be a problem? That can't be an issue, is it? And I'm not going to say who she was because she passed away, but God rested herself. She said, the hell, it's not going to be an issue.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Looking at them, and I didn't understand, I was too new to the game to realize just how great of a racehorse he was. Because again, I didn't have anything to compare it to.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “No, I hate to admit it, but I didn't think he'd get started. I could not imagine him being president of the United States. And if you'd ask me in 1991, 92, I would have said there's no way he could be president, which that's why that's the last time I've made a prediction. And it wasn't that I didn't think he was ready or, you know, I thought there were too many scandals or anything. For example, Whitewater was something we've been looking at for 10 years down there and saw that land deal was totally clean. And to this day, I think that was a disgrace that was held over his head. But it was just that he was too familiar. I mean, Litter Ruck's a small town and covering a statehouse like that. You get to know the person you're covering very intimately, and that can be both good and bad. But one thing, it's hard to, can you imagine your uncle being President of the United States, or you can imagine the banker down the street being president of the United States? So I knew he was smart and I was really impressed with him as a political figure, and he seemed like a very honest, decent man. But it's just the idea of him being president just seemed too much of a reach just because of my parochial.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And as a reporter, I'm sure you've covered guys like this where you thought you had something on them and you walk up and hey, hey, you tuck this in the bill and you say, oh no, no. And he explained another way around it. And you think he's explained it and you go back and you listen to Tape and realize, oh, that son of a gun. He's got me again. I go chase him down again and figuring out another way to ask the question another way. And again, he would corner me and always was a step ahead of the press corps”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah When I came to Washington, I thought every politician I would cover would be brilliant and incredibly accessible. And on top of every issue, I thought they all would be like Bill Clinton. And so far, I've come across hardly anybody even in his league. You work for a man, I certainly put in his league. But Clinton was amazing as governor. He would walk in at the beginning of the day, walk right by the press room, and we would start following him around the capital all day like ducklings. And it'd be an eight-hour, nine-hour news conference to the point by some of these weeks, at the end of the week, he'd walk in and say, is there anything else you need from us? And we would literally, would you just go home, shut the hell up?”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, a couple years after I went to Arkansas, I moved up to the Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock, and that's where I started covering the state house in 87. And then in 89, I was hired by the AP in Little Rock, and I covered him right through. My wife and wife and kids, and I literally moved here in 93 during his inauguration.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Young, good looking guy given a speech about something called the global economy with no notes, and I assumed every politician had notes in a teleprompter. And then afterwards, I walk up and very shakily voice, introduce myself to Bill Clinton. And he says, where are you from? And I said, Detroit. And he says, well, where? And I says, Michigan. He says, no, I know Detroit's for Michigan. What part of Detroit? I said, well, the east side, seven mile road in Grash. He says, isn't that over there by Harper Woods? Freeway and there's a clock and he tells me all about Macombe County in my neighborhood. And from then I realize this guy is awfully darn smart”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “The days Yeah, he had been governor by 85. He'd been governor more than a decade, no almost a decade. My first couple years, I worked in Hot Springs, and so I didn't cover him, but I was there two weeks when they sent me down to the local hotel in Hot Springs to cover the governor. And I knew so little about Arkansas and so little about politics that I honestly thought as I'm walking down Bath House Road that I was going to meet Overval Fabas, who was the desegregationist governor, couldn't be more different than Bill Clinton, instead I walk in and there's this.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, and the way it happened was I'll never forget there's a guy, a columnist in Detroit named Neil Shine, who wrote about the East Side, and I admired him growing up, and he ended up teaching journalism ethics at University of Detroit. And I took that course, met my wife in that course, my future wife, and really sucked up to Mr. Shine figuring this is going to be my ticket to the Detroit Free Press. So I get this offer from Hot Springs and I call it Mr. Shine. I said, look at You just tell me there's a chance I could work for the free press in the next couple of years. Not a promise. Just tell me there's a chance I could work for a free press and I'll stay in Detroit without skipping a beat, he says, I think you better move to Arkansas.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yes, but they all said no. The way I got into this one was a buddy had graduated here before me from U of D, and he had gotten the job down there where on the weekends you put together the paper in three days a week. He covered cops and courts. And when he was promoted a year later, I came down and took his job. So it was luck. I've been very lucky.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, basically since sixth, seventh grade, there was a time I wanted to be a cop. I assumed you had to because my dad was, but then the city and the job kind of got bad for my dad. I could see how it was no longer what it was for him. And I've always liked finding crap out and sharing it with people, whether it's covering a city council or school board meeting. Since I was a pretty young man, that's what I wanted to do.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “He's wonderful. Yeah, no, I was born in 63 and I graduated from the University of Detroit in 85, which was the beginning of the end of the industrial era and the beginning of the end of the old newspaper industry. And I literally could not find a job.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “And now he does a book on these three. Sui Generis. Right. Now this Detroit book is based in 1963, which is my birth year. So it's like Mariness is just writing every book I should have written much better than I could have”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Bill Clinton and how much he was shaped by Hot Springs, Arkansas. Well, I covered Bill Clinton in Hot Springs, Arkansas. When I read that book years ago, every page I was jealous, like, oh my God, what a great book.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Actually, matter of fact, a lot of the cops he talked in there were my dad's friends. I kind of helped him out a little bit with that. But what really gets me about that is, you know, Mariness wrote a great book, The Best Book about Bill Clinton.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, I grew up in the same block on the east side of Detroit that my mom and dad were raised on. They grew up together, and my dad became a Detroit compan in the early 60s. He was a Kennedy Democrat. And like a lot of people on my side of Detroit slowly became a Reagan Democrat with the Detroit riots. He was a riot cop, kind of in between.”

    2016-04-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 41 - Ron Fournier · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source