YouSaid · the spoken record

Steven Pearlstein

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85

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2018-10-08

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2018-10-08

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1

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1. “Well, I started out as just a reporter. Some people felt by the time, you know, after being a reporter for a while, they wondered whether, because I was given a lot of license. The thing about business and economics writing is it has to be explanatory, and you have to be given some latitude in order to analyze things and explain things that don't follow the sort of very standard rules of straight journalism. And I was pretty good at that. And that's why I eventually became a columnist because”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yeah, but that's true too. And if you write about it in an interesting way, people will read it, I found. And you couldn't write it about it exactly the way that a straight news article were. You have to explain a lot.”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Oh, now I know what you mean and that you could write about economics in a way that didn't use all that complicated language and there wasn't all that theoretical and wasn't just about the Fed and the IMF, but that you could write about it in a way where it was very real and it related to what people were observing in their own lives as employees or as consumers or as investors, and that there was a lot of drama in it. Competition is like sports. Businesses like sports is competition going on all the time. And there are winners and there are losers and there are characters and”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “In 1988, when I went to the post, the business section was a dumping ground and people for reporters they didn't know what else to do with. And it was a politically oriented newspaper. We did have a business section, but Ben Bradley, who I love dearly and who hired me, I doubt if he even read it. It just wasn't important. And everyone on the national staff and the foreign staff would look down on us. And so that sort of became a challenge to me was to demonstrate to them that business and economics, which Had been written about in the most boring ways. That's why they weren't interested in it. You could write about it in exciting ways and interesting ways. And you could marry the economics and the business and the same story. That was my...”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Well, it was fine until I actually then, my wife gave birth to our first daughter, Laura, and then my wife said, Well, I'm not working anymore. So how about you bringing home a paycheck? And that's when I went to work for a magazine called Inc., which was in those days a very successful business magazine. And in its heyday, because it was, it was so thick, if you dropped it on your foot, you could break your toe. And what was in there were all these ads for this new thing called personal computers. And it was a pretty heady time and I had a good time there for a couple of years as a senior editor.”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Well, four years later, I fired myself because it was very successful as an editorial product and very well respected. I think we had about 15,000 paid subscribers and most of them in the reasonably wealthy and democratic precincts around Boston where I grew up. Hard to support.”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “And we had used it so often that we actually caused there to be a hole in the videotape. That's how often we used. Anyway, GBH got into a little financial trouble, and they had layoffs, and I was laid off. And I didn't have anything else to do, so I decided to start my own magazine. It was called The Boston Observer. And it was a political magazine mostly. I was the editor and the publisher, but I have to tell you, I was also the ad salesman and the circulation director and the typesetter and the copy editor. I was pretty much a one-man show, but it was a different show. See, Durkin would have approved.”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Do. I don't remember much other than I wasn't a very good TV reporter, and that business in economics is very hard to do on TV. Yeah, I would think so. And one thing is there's no visuals. And we had this tape of a teller at a bank counting out money.”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “And I just love that show. So I called up Chris Leiden, who I didn't know, and I said, you know, I love your show. Would you be interested in my coming to work for you? I'm sort of a journalist, but I'm sort of a political guy. And he said, yeah, I'm looking for a writer. So I became his writer. And then I became a TV reporter. This is a long answer to your question. So what did I cover as a TV reporter? Well, this guy named Paul Solman had been there, been there business and economics reporter, and he got a Neeman Fellowship. He never came back. He went to work for PBS, still does. So I got to be the business and economics reporter, so that's how I got into, I knew nothing about it other than my dad had been in business, but that was the extent of my business knowledge. And that's how I got started writing about business and politics.”

   2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “I did. I did. I got back into journalism. There was a TV show in Boston in those days on public television, WGBH, and it was a nightly news show hosted by a guy named Chris Leiden.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “I did. That were never delivered. Right. So I did write the one where he announced that he wasn't going to run. So I wrote four speeches. That one was given.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Conservative, but it was really a vote against Dukakis because he had screwed up in his first term. Anyway, my point was that Mike had very good political instincts. And then he said, well, okay, I'm going to run for re-election. And anyway, then he didn't run for re-election either. He got cold feet because you're right that.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Right, that's true. Chuck Percy, I thought he was an arrogant SOB when I was there, I might say. But anyway, so then Mike said, well, you know, His friend Mike Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts, and he felt that Mike had really been screwing up in his first term and that he was vulnerable. And so he actually then began to think that he was going to challenge Dukakis in the primary. And in fact, I wrote that speech too. He never gave it. He got cold feet. And you may remember that Mike Dukakis was defeated in that prime period by a guy named Ed King, who was an incompo.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “And song is won rather easily, as a matter of fact. But then here's the thing that you'll find. Let me just make one other point about.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “He did. You'll be interested in this. He was a very insightful guy. He's not as great a legislator as perhaps he could have been, but he was very insightful. And he perceived that Ed Brooke, then the black Republican senator from Massachusetts, was vulnerable, and he was determined that he was going to run against him. And that's one of the reasons that I was interested in. But in the end of the day, he basically got cold feet and he decided not to do it. And his friend and colleague Paul Songus, another congressman from Massachusetts, said, well, Mike, if you're not going to do it, would you mind if I did it? He won. And then he said,”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “He remembered me, I remembered him. And he said, What are you doing? And I said, Well, I just got fired, as Dirk administrative assistant. And he said, well, I'm looking for administrative assistant. Why don't you come see me in January? And anyway, long story short, I became his administrative assistant for two years.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “No, I don't do that much either. But anyway, I had a box and I was walking across the capital and I ran into this congressman named Michael Harrington from Massachusetts with whom I had had an internship in college.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Defy your principle. I had hired the whole staff. He didn't really pay that much attention to it. I mean, he did interview everybody, but he sort of interviewed the people and I said, I think you should hire these people. We had two, we started, and I think when we finished, we had, I don't know, 25, 30 people. And basically, that's what I did for the year as I hired a staff. And I didn't want them to, you know, they came in part because they had some respect for me and how I was running the office and organizing it. And I felt it was my job to protect them. So, you know, that was it. As it happened, the day I was fired, which was just before Christmas, which is not a big deal in my household, the Protein household, but just before the Christmas recess. About hundreds.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “As a matter of fact, yes, I'm not sure how you knew that, but that's true. He wanted me to fire people or make them do things that were ridiculous. And I said, look, I'm not going to do that.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “The increase in money in politics. And with that, and consistent with it, the money comes from the top, it comes through the top. And so the leadership actually has a lot more power. In those days, Mike Mansfield never would even dare tell Russell Long, here's what's going to be in the bill and here's what not's going to be in bill, the committees decided. And the chairman of the committee, although very powerful, had to work with the members of his committee. And a lot of authority and responsibility was down at the committee level. And if it were true today, you would get a lot more done. The committees know how to work with each other.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “First of all, the members knew their stuff. Secondly, they were willing to make compromises every once in a while, Long would say, well, if you give me this, I'll give you that. And they sort of just did it right out in the open, and it worked well. And, you know, the bill passed. I don't remember anything about the bill, but to me, it's the kind of thing that you don't see happen today. There was the assumption that we're going to do a bill. You know, we're going to get this done.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “The Republicans didn't really oppose Long on this huge tax bill. They were with him. And the opposition was led by Senator Kennedy. And in fact, so in that rare instance, the minority was represented by another member of the Democratic Party, which was Senator Kennedy, and they went at it for two weeks, 10 hours a day on the floor with these big books, you know, tax law is pretty complicated. And, you know, Teddy Kennedy wasn't known as the guy who did all that much homework on these things. And he wasn't even on the committee. But he was basically representing the opposition. And I sat there for two weeks watching them talk about policy in an intelligent way. Keddy Kennedy lost most of the votes because the Republicans were with Russell Long and the Conservative Democrats. But it's the sort of...”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “This would never happen today. There was a big tax bill came up that year, and the chairman of the finance committee was Senator Long from Louisiana Russell Long, who was a character. If you were sort of liberal Democrat like I was, and my boss was, you weren't, you were suspicious of him because he was in with a lot of oil and gas interests and that sort of thing, Louisiana, not surprisingly. And in fact,”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Well, one of my favorite was a guy named Jim Allen, who sat next to my senator, and I used to sit on the floor oftentimes and talk to Jim Allen, and he was such a gentleman. He was a master of parliamentary procedure, and he would often give me, I'd ask him questions, and he would give me advice on how to handle something so that on behalf of my senator who was in a different party, Phil Hart, probably my favorite of Michigan, probably my Democratic senator might probably just a real hero for mine, just a principled, thoughtful person. The one thing I remember”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “It's really sad. It was people really wanted to get things done. They were cooperative with each other. They were respectful. Obviously And when the next election, it just wasn't done. And people worked well with each other well across the aisles. In fact, the bigger differences were within each party than really between parties. We had a majority leader, Mike Mansfield and a minority leader, Hugh Scott. If Mike Mansfield had to go to the bathroom, he would have said, Hugh, why don't you just take over while I'm out? I mean, they would have trusted, they just trusted each other not to screw each other.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “But I had a great time for that year, and the Senate in 1976 was a wonderful place, and it was a very important year. It was the last year of the Ford administration. There was a primary going on and Democratic primary. It was a very exciting year, and I had a ball, and I learned a lot.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “I had been, but I mostly thought that actually it was a way up in journalism. No one gave me that speech at that time. And I thought it was a way to get out of New Hampshire and get into a bigger arena. As it turns out, I never was his press secretary because by the time I got down there, he fired everybody. Yeah, he was in a difficult guy. And so there was this receptionist who he had known for a long time and me, and that was all that was there because he'd fired everybody else. And I became the head of the office. We called them administrative assistant at that time.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Market was glutted. So I took the senator up on his offer. But by the time I got down to Washington, let me just ask you.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “That means they were stood out. Yeah, they were opposed to the party of Lincoln. And anyway, I work for a couple of papers in New Hampshire. And then one day I got a call from someone nobody remembers. Maybe you do a senator named John Durkin. Sure do. Democrat, and he was looking for a press secretary, and I was despairing of the fact that I was ever going to get a job at a big city paper. This was 1974. Everyone wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein suddenly. And it was... The market was glowing.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “In Camden, Maine, actually. He was a great sailor. And I never quite did that, but I started out in a very small paper. Maybe you know about it, David, in New Hampshire called The Foster's Daily Democrat in Dover in New Hampshire. Dover, yes. The last newspaper in America to still bear the name of its owner. And the Fosters were Democrats in New Hampshire after the Civil War. So now think about that.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “It was because I love Maine and I love to be in the ocean. Turns out I didn't know this at the time, but Walter Cronkite owned that paper.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Not always. Actually, I sort of got to be a good writer doing that I was a good writer of thank you notes. Maybe that may tell you something. But I sort of took to it and I actually became the editor of the paper in my sophomore year, which was a little ahead of my time, but newspaper politics being what it was. And then I sort of never looked back. When I graduated from college, I actually wanted to be the editor and publisher of a small town New England newspaper, ideally in Camden, Maine. That was my pretty.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “I didn't, partly because my mother drilled into me from almost birth that it wouldn't be a good idea. He and his father didn't get along very well, even though they're in the business and she didn't want that to happen to me. And she desperately wanted me to be a lawyer. I went to college, a Trinity College, and one day freshman year, that's right, Trinity College in Connecticut. And freshman year, I don't know, the newspaper, which was called The Trinity Tripod, you know, invited freshmen to come and see if they wanted to participate. So I went and I don't know what I was thinking, but I wrote a few stories and I sort of liked it, and I guess I was reasonably good at it.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “One of the premier men's clothing stores in the country, and it was one of the first stores to bring a lot of Italian designers to the United States, very high-end store, very successful.”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Okay, so my grandfather started a clothing store in 1929, not a very propitious year for starting a business in Boston, and it grew during his lifetime and my father's to be”

    2018-10-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 275 — Steven Pearlstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source