 Good morning everybody. I guess we'll get started. Thank you so much for coming out on a rainy morning. I really appreciate it My name is Chris Leonard. I'm a fellow here at New America, and I'm a journalist and as a journalist I'm really really excited about this morning's event and about this new book and to have Matt by here Matt in my opinion is easily one of the best political writers working out there today Over the last ten years. I'm gonna talk about you in the third person by the way while I introduce you It's a little awkward, but I often I often speak in the third person. Okay We'll get that what is the Matt by take on that by but um, here's a mad thing. Yeah, but really over the last ten years Matt has produced a body of work that I think stands apart for a couple key reasons One being that that he really captures the personalities behind politics and and sort of the thinking of the important people but also really brings in the the larger forces that shape our institutions and our policies the historical context the economic background and Also, what makes it rare strangely enough is that you talk a lot about policy in your political journalism So go figure you can actually have a niche writing about policy and political journalism and it's great work So Matt's first book is called the argument It's about the battle to reshape the Democratic Party in the 1990s and I was just looking at it And it's actually almost more relevant today than when it came out if that can be possible And we're here to talk about Matt's new book all the truth is out the weak politics went tabloid So Matt is the former political correspondent for the New York Times magazine Now your political correspondent for Yahoo news National political columnist national political columnist Means I travel less and ask fewer questions. That's a good gig right. Yeah, I know it's not bad And I think your most important credential is you're the only journalist I know of to play himself on House of Cards Yeah, so I think we'll spend about half of our discussion. I really want to know what Kevin Spacey's like So to start Matt your new book Is really important. It's a really great book. Thank you, but as a journalist who really cares about this profession I really have to say I did not enjoy large tracts of this book. It was hard to read It's kind of like watching a car wreck unfold in slow motion and and I think what you really reveal in this book is That the Gary Hart Campaign or scandal or whatever you want to call it Was really this hinge moment It really shows us that we went from one order of things to a new order of things It really revealed these deep changes in our society and and especially in political journalism And so today I you know to start I'd really like to unpack What's in the book and I thought we could start by talking about the old order, right? What political journalism used to be like just a few decades ago or a couple decades ago? It was really different than it is today Yeah, you you point out in the book that LBJ FDR JFK were all adulterers It's been proven historically, but that didn't really make it into into the press There was sort of this unspoken agreement that some stuff was off the off out of bounds, right? Well, first of all, thank you Chris. Thank you for doing this for spearheading it and wanting to do it And it's I'm really happy to do it. It's actually a lot of fun. I've had a ruling week this has been our first full week out and It's been like events every day and then we did our first bookstore last night when I'm doing the daily show on Monday We start seven cities on Wednesday. We do an event here Tuesday and Wednesday to Denver Which is ironically enough for the first of like seven cities So it's been very exhausting and it's nice to just sit actually in a chair and talk to people I mean to be back here where people always are really engaged of what's going on I did my first talk about this book here Right after I signed the contract in 2009 to do it because I then sat on it for a couple years I came here to sort of test that I was talking to Andres and he said come on in and we and sort of bounced the theory around and I did and It was it was rough. I hadn't really worked it out yet and Nobody thought it was all that great idea and then the fire alarms went off and We ended up standing on the street and the time was up and it wasn't the best event ever So I'm glad to have a redo shot now that the book is actually complete So to get to the hard of your question Obviously it was different because and and and not just about sex I mean obviously that comes up a lot with this book, but I don't consider it narrowly focused on on the sex issue at all Private morality and behavior simply was not deemed as relevant to public integrity There were times when it burst out into the open and became a political issue that needed to be covered You know Nelson Rockefeller divorces his wife and marries a junior aid You know and and that's a scandal that affects his electability in Republican politics and the press covers it Chappaquiddick is an example of a case where you couldn't ignore what somebody was doing in their private time But for the for the most part what reporters don't do is they don't go searching for it They don't go looking into your private life and when it does get out into public view and Illustrated by the cases. I just mentioned it. It's not all encompassing. It does not define you or Restrict you permanently right because Ted Kennedy goes on to do just fine and actually runs for president 1980 and is not despite the fact Chappaquiddick comes up, but it's not the reason he ends up ultimately losing Nelson Rockefeller's vice president in the United States, which is a pretty good gig for a guy who's Scandalized in his private affairs. So so it was not you know, we had a broader context for people Then you flash forward to 1987 Where there's all kinds of things churning in the culture right since we're here, you know There's a long answer, but since we're kind of kicking this off I'll get it you know just a little bit more detail than I would normally but you have The echoes of Watergate are still very strong in the culture So the idea you know the idea now that they're not only have we a noble journalist through Watergate, right? We always talk about the heroism. We have Woodward Bernstein everybody wants to be but there's also a huge embarrassment to Watergate How did the press who knew Richard Nixon since the 1950s? Allow this man who was clearly a little unstable and paranoid and dishonest to run the country as long as they did and how much damage had it done and So they're there's a determination in journalism about honesty and private morality suddenly there's a focus on character characters They've been around as a term in politics since the late 60s early 70s But it really becomes central after Watergate and then of course you do have the effects of Woodward and Bernstein and this whole new generation of journalists who are coming in now and and they really want a movie too and and They want to be lauded by their industry and the best way to do that is to find a scandal The best way to do that is to expose a politician. That's the highest calling now of the industry in a way You have changing attitudes about adultery on the left You have changing attitudes about morality on the right with the moral majority that fuels Reagan's rise and then you have the birth of the satellite TV dish Which is a really big deal because suddenly, you know Neil postman writes this book in 1985 I'm using ourselves to death and talks about the merging of entertainment with news and politics Extremely prescient book. Why it's not taught in every school in America. I don't know and You know what you have with the satellite dish is the ability to make everything entertaining because it can all be a soap opera You can go live from anywhere all of a sudden minute by minute and you know the same year before the heart thing happens in 87 You have two things going on simultaneously. You have Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, which a lot of you were too young to remember But this was like this gripped the nation This was Ted Koppels highest viewed interview ever a nightline at that point forget the Iran hostages. That was that was a party This was like Tammy Faye Baker with her Mascara streaking down her pace and her preacher husband who'd been accused of essentially statutory rape And then you have the fawn hole thing which some of you will be old enough to remember I mean Iran Contra hearings by the way are opening the week of the heart scandal while heart is defending himself the Iran Contra hearings are Opening but all anybody cares about is the fact that Oliver North secretary It's stuffed a bunch of papers in the back of her skirt and this was like this characters You know its characters and story arcs and entertainment This is what the satellite age is going to bring you So flash forward to this moment in 1997 where Gary Hart is The presumed Democratic nominee You know there's a I have found all of a sudden that you can have a robust argument about whether he would have won Which seems to me completely irrelevant, but let's just tell it like it is He's 20 points ahead of the nearest challenger two challengers in the Democratic Party And by the way neither of them are gonna run Mario Cuomo and we I Coco might not have even been a Democrat for all anybody knew And then he's double digits ahead of the vice president George HW Bush He's one of the most admired men in America on Gallup's list. He's a he's a He's probably the most important Democratic politician in America He's come from nowhere in 1984 to very nearly snatch the nomination from Walter Mondale I mean within a breath of doing that. He won every state west of the Mississippi and he's a rock star He is pinned up against the wall next to his townhouse Literally wearing a white hoodie While four reporters from the Miami Herald Surround him and say who is that woman in your house? When did you meet her and did you have sex with her? No presidential candidate. I mean, you know, I gotta tell you I gave the galley to some friends and politics who knew this story a friend of mine called me up And he said I knew this story. I can't I'm reading it and I'm going I can't believe this happened right it's it's an the scenes in the story are just amazing as you go back to it and In that ground in that oil stain alley in here on Capitol Hill, I think the the rules really begin to shift dramatically I think it would have happened inevitably. I think somebody was going to walk into it I think the forces were all in play But in that moment, I think the tipping point hits and it's not you know again just because it's important It's not just about sex what it means from that moment on is That the point of political journalism is to find the lie if the lie makes you dishonest the lie makes you a hypocrite and The the the prime directive the objective switches from this illumination of worldviews and ideas and agendas Where private morality can bear some influence but not be definitive To a world where it doesn't matter what the lie is about. We need to find it. You're a fraud somehow we're gonna figure out how it is and That has tremendous consequences over really the entire period I've been writing about politics and And something I really a story. I felt I needed to tell and connect Yeah, and and we'll talk about I can't wait to get to the part your interview with John Kerry that you talk about It's so illustrative of where we are today But so to pack up a little bit to just sort of cement what you're saying is that it's not that Gary Hart himself Ruined the the journalistic landscape and this sort of changed everything What you're saying is there were these tectonic shifts in our culture and in our media and in technology And he was sort of the first person to walk into the bear trap. Yeah, and that's so important Chris because you know Politico I appreciate them Offering a forum to carry on a little bit of the debate around this Tom Fiedler wrote a piece in Politico the day The book came out and and to back up a little bit and I want to talk about Tom fielder is either yeah I'm sorry Fiedler. Yeah is the Woodward and birdstein of the Donna Rice Gary Hart scan He is he's a Miami Herald's lead reporter. He gets the tip. He leads the Stakeout and goes on to an extremely illustrious career and well-deserved. You want to pull it surprise a couple years later Runs the Herald's Tutorial page then runs the Herald now runs Boston University School of Communications Tom Fiedler's a giant in the business and Tom wrote a piece in Politico the day the book came out Which was really? You know going Going after this this particular issue and and that's a different debate, but Politico headlined it Headlines, you know all writers. We have to deal with the headlines all the time. You got to answer for them You can't write them. You know yeah Politico put the headline on No, Gary Hart didn't ruin politics or the Gary Hart affair didn't ruin politics and then when I wrestled and wrestled and wrestled about do I really want to get into this and do I want to have a recirculated air of debate in Washington Talk to people I finally did a response which ran I think yesterday morning and They called it. Yes, Gary Hart affair actually did run American politics And I had that moment that I've had about a thousand times in my career I was like fight the headline don't fight that line Yeah, it's a headline, you know, but if that's but you get to the point which is it's not This is not this is first of all and focuses to narrowly on sex very often and privacy Privacy is a part of the book, but it's not but the ethos of political journalism built around privacy it's built around the sort of seek and destroy imperative and and It's not about Gary Hart coming along this particular incident and absent Gary Hart absent Donna Rice We all just sail forward, you know, and everything's great and John Edwards is president. No, it's you know, it's That the forces at work in the society are going to collide What makes the story to me so compelling and interesting because it wouldn't be if it were somebody else As a narrative writer And those of you who read fiction, you know, I think there's a the book is not fiction but I think there's an element of drama that you'll appreciate in the book which is Heart right is the irony is he's the great visionary of his time. He really is I mean if you go back and read the speeches and no one would give speeches like this today They're bound up when he runs in 87. They're tremendously detailed and tremendously visionary You know, he talks about Stateless terrorism. He talks in 1985 and 86. He's talking about the transformation of the industrial economy To something around information and the new computers, right? They call him the leader of this Atari Democrats group He talks about oil dependence. He says it will lead us into war after war if we don't figure out how to wean ourselves This is this is light years ahead politically speaking Well ahead of where Clinton was a few years later, and I think Clinton adopted a lot of it from heart He's a visionary and they don't come along very often. He sees around corners. This is his gift Richard Richard Crane My friend Richard Kramer wrote what it takes And was such an influence on me, you know, he called them heart facts He said because when heart said them it was as if you knew them all along, but you didn't But he can't see around this one corner in American society he can't get his head around this thing because He comes from post-depression Kansas. He believes privacy is privacy. He believes it's nobody's business. He never you don't ask questions He's very reticent He's grows up politically in the 60s and 70s. He serves on the church commission So he knows all about what Kennedy was up to and he knows it never came out He's got friends. He's been he was a campaign manager for George McGovern at 30 So he's got friends deep friendships in the press corps when he goes to New York He stays on Sydney grues and Sydney gruesons guest rooms in the gruesome is one of the top executives and editors of the New York Times They all know what he's doing. He's twice separated from his wife So he's dating in full view of Washington and the people and the press corps here Everybody knows because he's separated. He's actually it's fine. I mean, this is one of the things that gets lost All the women he was known as you know a quote womanizer of the time He was separated a lot of that time and one time when he separated he stays on Bob Woodward's couch for weeks And nobody nobody writes about and he's and he's gone half the time according to Bob You know with other women that's my favorite part I mean, I'm assuming if you're trying to hide behavior you don't crash on Bob Woodward's couch Right. No, you do not you do not so so hard, you know Heart believes his aides keep telling him they're young. He's a very young staff and they keep saying to him You know, this is different these guys. They're coming for you They they care about your private life and he's almost gotten to the point You know my interpretation of it is he's gotten around to the point where he believes it can be a story But he's nowhere near believing that somebody's gonna look for it, right? So hearts minds up forever after and we should talk about the things that are misremembered because everything you think you know about This is wrong. I almost guarantee it and one of the things misremembered is you know this idea He's so stupid, right because he set himself up and everybody knew no No, heart knew by that point that he could not be seen with other women But it was beyond his imagining It was like you know an alien might as well beam down and take over his campaign for him to believe That somebody was gonna go rooting through his life staking him out Surveiling him going through garbage whatever because that's not a world he imagined and by the way I should have had he had run in 84 for weeks in 1984 He'd been the most famous politician in the country the sieged by media. Nobody wrote about it. It came up There were rumors. Oh, you know what heart does but so he's he's really confident that this is not something somebody's gonna go searching for Yeah, and it Let's on this really bears talking about let's unpack what really happened. So he's running in 1987 it's The old world in the sense that there's a story circulating from newsroom to newsroom that hard as a quote-unquote womanizer There's a woman thing. There's a zipper, right? It's not making it in the paper and And Quickly to talk about that old order We need to talk about the technology and sort of the stranglehold the newspapers used to have on information Right you point out in this book that if I live in Cleveland if if something's not in the Cleveland plane dealer or on my local network I don't really know about it. So the media kind of had this ability to keep stuff off the table, right? and that's the case with heart until Tom well news week kind of first mentions. This is a rumor. There's a woman problem And then this really great investigative reporter in Miami gets a call Saying you need to know that Gary Hart is seeing this woman in Miami who turns out to be Donna Rice and You need to follow up on this tips and she's going to Washington And she's going to watch and she's gonna meet him this weekend the caller says maybe you should get the seat on the plane next door Mm-hmm So what I mean? So I guess we got to say this is the Watergate of the sex scandal. What happens next? I mean well the caller by the way just happened since we never no one ever knew who the caller was the caller I Found her she's The upshot I mean you can read about in the book, but the upshot is she just didn't like Donna Rice very much She was very jealous. That's what it comes down to. She's no great patriot. She just is like everything else in history It turns on one jealous friend Which is kind of cool everybody's conspiracies on CIA and they're trying to get them out of the way because they want push to be president And there's the mob and there's you know those Theories know just some woman. There's kind of sick of hearing her friend go on about this powerful guy. She meant so So it's just so perfect. So so they go to Miami They go and I rather they go to Washington. I mean they're literally You know you have Jim McGee Investigative reporters literally walking up and down the aisle of the plane going, you know Who looks like she'd be sleeping with a senator and writes it that way like it's a perfectly legitimate thing for reporter to do like like don't we all and They go to Washington and they stake out the place, you know, and it's kind of a crazy thing I mean they don't like the way I portray it, but really like McGee's in a park It's May and Fielder's in jogging clothes and he's like pretending to jog around the house and you know hearts not a moron. So at some point He sees that these people he comes out with Donna Rice There's some debate as to whether she stays the night or not because these The geniuses forget that there's a backdoor in the townhouse not being skilled Surveillance agents so it's they can't really prove who came in around but in any event. She's there with him and Heart makes them he sees the guy in the parka in May and realizes something isn't quite right and Ultimately he has this crazy notion that he's going to flush them out and He goes out and he leads them on this chase around the neighborhood first by car and then by foot and then it's obvious I know it's just ridiculous because they're like trailing them around a park, you know Ultimately they have this confrontation in the alley and that's and they write a story the next day and And from that if I can lead your question a bit From that we get the mythology of follow me around well right because it's we all know It's a historically proven fact that Gary Hart brought this on himself by saying I didn't cheat on my wife Follow me around if you want to right right Except not oh well So there's a couple things that are almost entirely That put it this way there are things so misremembered about this for whatever reason maybe because It was the beginning of the satellite age and you still had Johnny Carson and Ted couple and a handful of big institutions And whatever became solidified just became so solidified in the public mind. There were just no there were no competing sources but The couple things first of all if I asked you in the room about the photo because everybody who remembers remembers the photo of Donna Rice on his lap most people would tell me in fact I spoke to audiences including here where people said to me know you're just wrong about this People will tell you the photo drove him out of the race In fact and the photo photos on a yacht called monkey business and the photo drove him out of the race Well, the photo was not taken on a yacht the photo is actually taken on a dock where the yacht is is is Impir in bimini the significance of that being that there's like hundreds of people milling around This is not like some illicit private moment I'm sure those may have existed But they didn't in the photo and the photo doesn't come out till three or four weeks after this whole scandal So it has nothing to do with him leaving the race. It's just it's the National Enquirer making money basically after the fact But the follow-me-round thing is much more significant because what happens is this How many people let me ask I mean I don't know people now I know I've read some of the magazine excerpt I did or whatever But how many people thought or think that hard challenge the media to follow him and they did I mean before you read it, right? so what what happens is hard gives an interview to EJ Dion my friend EJ who was at that time the New York Times magazine doing the job I would later have and EJ presses him on the personal life and hard gets exasperated and he says EJ Oh, yeah, he says he finally gets exasperated. He says look you want to know put put a tail on me You'd be bored follow me around which is it's basically Hart's way of saying You know, I get what you're after and I'm not doing there's nothing there I'm not doing it. Leave me alone. It's not EJ doesn't take it as a literal challenge what it means to EJ and actually to Hart's press secretary who's there at the time is Hart gets that it's a problem and he's not gonna let himself get caught And so the quote goes into EJ's notebook for the next two weeks EJ is writing and editing his story And he's also having a little bit of a push and pull with his editors who don't see the significance in the quote Don't really even want to include it which tells you something about the time and EJ's saying You know somebody's gonna see this as a challenge and if Hart does get caught It's gonna be important and I don't want somebody else to have it and not me and So this is all going on Concurrently, right the Miami Herald is following up on this tip The advanced issue of the magazine gets into the Herald's hands after they've started the stakeout about a day after Fiedler takes it on the plane with him Friday reporters are already got the stake out he takes it on the plane with him and reads it while he's on the plane and Sees the quote and So when they do their story on Sunday when they're in the alley with Hart Fiedler says you challenge the media to follow you around It's not even clear that Hart knew what he was talking about because now it's been weeks since he gave the quote And he didn't really think that much about it. He doesn't remember but in any event Both stories come out the same day EJ's story comes out the same day as the Herald The Herald takes EJ's quote paraphrases it lifts it puts it in their story at the end of the story to say Because and you know, so this is an argument that Tom and I have And I think that the other reporters too from what I can gather Which is you know Tom will say well the quote didn't matter We never used the quote as justification people got it confused in their minds But we didn't we didn't use the quote well then that kind of it's pretty extraordinary to take a competitors quote And put it in your story. I think you know that that quote is shielding you and that's why you use it Tom also says well He had said similar things like that a lot in recent weeks So it wasn't significant because I'd heard him say that a million times. Well, that's just We had that just my reporting just does not bear that out because the people in the room including EJ and Kevin Sweeney Who was Hart's very young press secretary were stunned by that quote and remembered it very clearly Remembered being stunned by it and they would not have been stunned by it if he'd been saying similar things He had all kinds of ways of dismissing the questions, but that wasn't one of them And the significance of this this is not just a little bit of gotcha on the gotcha the significance of this is There is never a conversation about the change in rules because What everyone knows is that Hart changed the rules Hart said come into my bedroom and we did and he invited us into everybody's bedroom as a result and into everybody's private life and Therefore he rewrote the boundary he changed the boundaries him. He changed the boundaries not us and Therefore, we don't have any explaining to do we were carried by the current of history this is not true choices were made and choices that were never really revisited or reevaluated because We knew who to blame and we blamed him and and it also, you know, by the way I think stigmatized him very unfairly because for all those years after we sort of blamed him as a society You're the guy you said follow me around you brought everybody into your bedroom and look where it let us and You know, he really has a part of the book and for me my favorite part of the book is part of the seventh chapter Which is called exile because it's the story that I you know, it's the very human story of this man This is kind of guy of extraordinary ability Wasting away in Colorado Wounded and trying to find his way back into public life with people like Bill Clinton who he hired in their youth Right and the sort of indignity after indignity and the things he's not willing to do that he knows he could do to get back into the public arena and you know that to me is just a You know, it's it's just I opened that chapter with the story of him meeting a mountain lion, you know, and it's just this it's just a it's a very human Compelling story, but but part of that grows from this whole perception this framework we put around the incident that I think was very unfair And I'd like to talk a little bit about what happened when the Miami Herald story came out because that also illustrates where we are today in terms of covering politicians, so the Miami Herald story is printed They write it like all the president's men describing themselves in the third person like I he ran to the paper and called the office 933 the blonde appears in the window. Yeah that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah Now, you know ten years before The landscape was different. Okay, you would have had the editors in these elite media institutions like the Washington Post in the New York Times Evaluating whether this story was worth putting forth. Okay. Yeah, it was like a gatekeeper role that they served at the time But things are different in 1987 There's this new technology that we're all familiar with that binds people together and it's called the fax machine Right, that's what it was back then right and so there what is it? It's not talking points memo. It was hotline starts that year hotline because of the fax machine remember I mean you some of you are old enough to remember I'm old enough to remember when I started at Newsweek You pay thousands of dollars for the hotline and it was like it came in the morning You think you you like seeing playbook when the hotline came That was the thing everybody got dropped on your desk. It's like a round-of-the-head line paper and whatnot Yeah, yeah, so it's going around the country and what struck me was Once the story comes out the ability of gatekeepers to operate it is effectively gone well in the competitive environment is so intense at that point because I Mean the story is ricocheting around the country at least in the old days You would have the wire services would have taken their time to vet it and decide if they thought it was news They were the first line of gatekeeping. So the story between satellite TV and the fax The story just kind of takes on this life of its own you also and you have another thing you have a third thing going on It's you have satellite and you have the fax But you also have this tabloid, you know that the tabloid Culture that postman writes about the tabloid media is sort of inching closer and closer to news and politics It's you know Warren Beatty keeps saying that to heart there is no more privacy and heart says, you know, that's Hollywood That's not politics, but the worlds are merging Because there's so much more focus on personality in the culture particularly after you know after Watergate So the the tabloid media is ready to sort of make an incursion into politics and this is the excuse This is where it happens So when Hart gets to New York to give a speech a few days after the scandal They're literally the photographers are hurling themselves onto the windshield of the car. No politician has ever seen this And he's scared. He's actually quite scared. They don't know what to do. They've never they have no crowd control protocol He's got a couple of aides, you know, who are all Very gentle people, you know, some of you might know Billy shore is like one of the most gentle people You'll ever meet trying to keep you know a tabloid photographers in New York away from the candidate. It's a zoo And there's a fascinating interview with Bill with Ben Bradley. There are no fascinating it was a bill Bradley There's a fascinating interview with Ben Bradley right right It's in the book But it's a couple years right after he retires on the Washington Post But so we're now flashing forward in 1991 about four years later It's a very hard interview to get and I had to track you down. I didn't eventually go to library at Congress I'm giving away a lot of the book but David Frost interviews Bradley and says to him In all your years of covering of editing the paper and whatever it was 20 20 odd years Is there anybody you ruined unfairly is anybody you treated very poorly and Bradley says right away? Well, Gary Hart thinks we did but I don't think so Which is really right. I don't think so But he's the first guy who comes to mind and frost kind of zeros in on this There's a what do you mean and they start on this conversation about privacy Bradley says well He did it to himself and Frost says well didn't you know, you knew John Kennedy. You were close to him You didn't I mean why is that different and Bradley essentially says well He kind of goes down this rabbit hole a little bit like the one we will talk about but little bit like the one Heart goes down at his news conference with Paul Taylor, you know, it's like one question leading to the wrong place and Bradley says well You know, yeah, but he got you know We he was dumb enough basically to let people find out and and and frost is so the crime is getting caught It's not the adultery and Bradley says yeah And there's this like pause where it just sounds absurd on the face of it and Bradley can't kind of stop him So finally he says Look, we don't control this anymore Says, you know some little paper picks it up and then another paper writes about it And then it's all over the TV and then suddenly the AP writes you get on your high horse and your sanctimonious And then some the AP says the Washington Post refuses to cover the story and that becomes a story So we we don't we don't control this anymore And I think that was as close as anybody at the highest level of the American media at that time ever came to basically the truth of the matter which was You know, we were the media was moving inexorably toward this entertainment culture and you know toward tabloidism and and eroding the boundaries between politics and privacy and between policy and personality and Nobody felt powerful and nobody felt they had a choice. Everybody felt carried downstream and And and I think on some level, you know, Ben Bradley really embodies that better than anyone because he was there in the 1960s He was close to Kennedy. He probably knew things that should have been disclosed by any objective standard But he play and he's the hero of Watergate and ends up playing a very pivotal role actually in undoing harm I I really want to zero in on this because I think it describes So much of the destructive dynamic that we see today in journalism, which is the sort of helplessness to discern Anymore right and to focus on what might be more publicly beneficial than just The offensive tweet or gaff or scandal which is driving Almost all of our coverage today, right and and it's it's it's been Bradley's feeling of we don't have control at this point In your book after the my Amy Harold story comes out. It's like a terrifying zombie movie They're just these packs of reporters and cameras everywhere. They're Gary Hart's house They're around his daughter at college and it's this swarm and you just feel like things can't be controlled and you talk about this dynamic that you Would know very well, which is as a reporter once something is quote out there, right? You're obligated not to ignore it. You can't ignore it You have to talk if I'm on the campaign trail with with a candidate like mr. Kane back in 2012 I have to write about these Allegations of infidelity and if I'm not I'm not doing my job This is a positive feedback loop or another way of putting is like a self-perpetuating death spiral that has just let everything to The superficial scandal mongering and I'm wondering, you know, you are in this business What could be done to stop the feedback loop? I mean, is there anything a single reporter or editor could do to start putting up those walls again and Dissern what's worth talking about what's not. Yeah, sure. I mean I think so Yeah, any reporter who tells you they have not used this argument with with a source or a campaign is just lying I've done it, you know a hundred times, you know, it's out there. I gotta do it. I don't want to I gotta do it like it's out there and But and so it is you know, it does and you this I spend a lot of time in the book on those two words and you know on that concept because That's that was the cascade of events was really everybody saying well I gotta do it because we all know he's Womanizing and then well now we know he lied about it We got to cover that because that's a story and now we got out confront him and you know He goes to he goes to New Hampshire. It's worth talking about this He goes, you know, they are one of the other big scenes in the book is in New Hampshire with this Unprecedented kind of news conference where he's just you know, it's a hundred degrees and it's packed and he can't and you know He's being asked about all this private stuff and And and hard scene actually handling the questions pretty masterfully and then Paul Taylor from the Washington Post a star reporter for the post says to him Leads him down this path. You know, are you Are you a moral you said you'd be a moral leader? Yes, was adultery immoral? I suppose so hard says Policies will send or have you ever committed adultery and everyone in the room people in the room I met someone last night. It was in the room people in the room Remember it all of them to this day because there's nothing like that had ever been asked Hard can't hard staring out as I'm staring at you He's staring at at this packed assemblage of reporters some of whom he knows from his plane and bus We're having adulterous affairs. I know who they are. I mean he knows who they are, you know four years earlier and They're staring at him with this, you know intense Suspicion and it you know, he doesn't he's frozen. He basically says I don't think it's a fair question So the whole press is moving in this, you know is is is moving in extra by this way to get to the heart of your question I I'm not a media theorist So let me I mean let me just say like I don't this book has no it does not end with like the ten things We should all do to be better journalists I tell stories and I sometimes frustrates people that I can illuminate problems and not have prescriptions, but that's Not what I do. You should try living with me, you know, but but You know, I think the varied environment we live in now Right the multitude of platforms actually makes that easier not hard, right? If you were one of three networks and the other two networks are doing a story, that's pretty tough But we're pretty specialized now. We talk about niche markets and and fragmentation. There are stories that Vox is going to do or there there are pieces that you know, the upshot is going to do because they're data driven I don't do them. I don't need to do them, right? and so You know, I think media can in a lot of ways reporters and media can afford to make Their own decisions now more than they could before because somebody some large group of people are going to cover a story It doesn't mean people are going to have access to it all over. They're not just reading you, right? If you're the Boston Globe Don't tell the globe this because they have a hard time getting their head around it, but Most people in Boston are not only getting their news from the Boston Globe Like you don't have that responsibility anymore, right? You're not people aren't going to be banging on your door Same. Why aren't you doing that story? So, you know, there's obviously this price competitive pressure. There's always competitive pressure, but I think My my my hope would be my thought would be that the Fragmentation of audience creates an opportunity to decide which audience you want to reach and what they care about and and and the Expectation that a consumer is actually going to consult a lot of different sources This is this is this is what you're getting at Chris This choice issue is a big thing for me and I talk about the end of the book You know, it's the journey that I go on because I'm very clear in the book You know, I've written about heart in a way. I don't like I've written stories I'm not proud of I've written stories that I'm very proud of that turn out to be less relevant than I'd like them to be Because it turns out the character does matter. I'm thinking specifically if John Edwards Yeah, I'm the only idiot it's been like 8,000 words on his anti-poverty platform and it you know turns out he was Lying about us, you know, basically a rank hypocrite on a central part of it. So, you know, it's like, you know responsible fatherhood So was my 8,000 words really more useful than the National Enquirer? Probably not so so, you know We all have To reckon with what we've what we've done in the business and what we can do and part of we'll work my journey in the book Is to come to this place of about choices that we have more choices than we thought we did we have choices we can exercise and My frustration with the journalists who were there by the way because it's gotten a little, you know There's been some back-and-forth is not that they made bad decisions in the moment. I Probably would have made the same decisions. They're excellent journalists They all went on to fantastic if you look at the people who were on that stake out a couple of them became executive editors of major American Newspapers Jim McGee became a top investigative reporter at the Washington Post. They're great journalists and I might have made the same decisions, but what they what they did I think after after the fact They got caught up in a very competitive environment They wanted to win and they wanted the story and they had a lot of adrenaline We all do and then they created a whole bunch of rationales after the fact. It's not the sex It's the lie and there's no every lie is equal to every other lie And he said follow me around and all this stuff that is just not does not hold up very well to reason that for 27 years they basically told every audience or every person they talked to about it and All I'm saying is you had choices to and we all have to revisit our choices in the context of what we know later Where we know it led right and it's the defensiveness. I have a problem with because I feel like I Feel like we all make We all have choices and we all don't make the right ones or we make the right ones in the moment and later and later They don't turn out to be good and by the way, they're very consequential These choices had real consequences. They had consequences to the political culture They had consequences to the events of that time if Gary Hart says and people mock him for it because I quoted him But you know Hart says hey if I win the presidency George HW Bush doesn't become president George W. Bush doesn't become president. We don't go into Iraq and a lot of people are alive who are dead and You can argue with him and quibble you can say you know He's being narcissistic, but there's no question that he's right if he wins and that has consequences And we ought to reckon with it and absolutely I mean and also this is really important you point out the consequences of not just the Gary Hart scandal But this kind of political journalism you point out in the in the last chapter of your book The environment we're living in today, which is a direct result of this and I think the consequences they were surprising to me It's not just that Reporters are so focused in on sex and scandal and personal life you talk about the real destruction This has on the political process And I think the great anecdote of that is your interview with John Kerry for that New York Times Magazine article Which is funny and sad at the same time You know where you're talking about bottled water So you talk a little bit about that and what it illustrates about what the environment is like today Yeah, and poor John Kerry. I beat him up for this at the time and people were really mad at me And now I beat him up ten years later, but but but in a different context. I mean so so Kerry Gives me three interviews in 2004 on foreign policy probably spent about three and a half hours talking about foreign policy No, that can't be right like I had to be like four and a half hours. I forget But it's three interviews The first one he throws me out of about ten minutes in And I cabin on a plane because I'm grilling him on a rock and casualties And he's in a bad mood and he didn't he'd woken up from a nap and he didn't want to do it And the plane was landing and he's get out then we do two more And I the moment I it's it's this the whole interaction and it's an interaction I've had with many politicians most presidential candidates in recent years including John McCain including Barack Obama and and And for Kerry, you know, it's I happen to write about it But it the interaction is he's sitting there looking at you like I Know why you're I know you've come to kill me. I know you're looking for me to say something stupid Why am I here? Like who's making me sit with you? Why am I painting a big target on my chest? you know and You know as much as I tried to give a talk about sort of the deeper policy stuff and he did but the thing with the water of It was a little controversial, but he I asked him just to chit chat I'm trying to calm him down a little bit because he's so defensive. I said, you know He said to Stephanie Carter his aid, you know, go get some of my water. He's very imperious that way and And he had water so I said, what what kind of water do you drink? Let's have a conversation. What kind of water you know, you know I ask you something you asked me something before you know it or human beings and he said Well, there's lots of kinds of water And I said, okay, and he says Saratoga Springs Sometimes I drink tap water. He's just kind of like ran out of things to say You know, even said American water. Yeah, it's American water. So we have lots of water American water Saratoga Springs, and then he couldn't think of any more American waters because aren't it's like It just was so you know, he just you could see him the wheels turning like what are you trying to do to me here? What is this is about Evian because it's French It's about you know and I wrote about it that way because it was such an instrument and people were really angry He's you know, he's close to a presidential campaign. You're getting in his head You're kind of making fun of him, but the thing the more important piece I come to in the book it goes to the heart of your question is John Kerry gave me four hours on foreign policy. Nobody's gonna do that again I went through two more presidential cycles. Nobody came close to doing that again So as much as I make fun of him over the water bottles he still had a fundamental belief that he a should explain himself and be might actually explain himself in a way that was going to make people vote for him and and That's almost gone from the process and what happens is when people don't feel they can express anything with complexity or nuance And by the way if John Kerry had felt he could explain anything complexity of nuance I'm quite sure he would have advanced the argument 2004 at the courage to perhaps that There was not a global war on terror and that in fact We had the entire construct and the entire way of dealing with it wrong That would have been a really useful debate to have in the context of where we are right now But when you can't express something in nuance and complexity Then you you stop expressing ideas all together when ideas are just weapons that can be used against you You stop talking about them and and that has a couple of ramifications. First of all We drum good people out of politics because we catch them in the stupid day We keep good people in politics from talking from offering anything like an actual idea, although they're pretty good at that themselves We keep people out of politics good people because who wants to be in that process who what kind of person? Wants to subject their family themselves to that kind of invasiveness to that kind of scrutiny To know boundaries where you can't express your ideas where you can't ever change your mind on an issue or evolve or misspeak and Then I think very consequentially and the one we all we forget We actually let a lot of people into the process who have no business being there because when the standard is not to express ideas when Nobody's really explaining what they believe when the focus is more on personality than it is on policy Or or agendas Then it's pretty easy for Sarah Palin to glide through the process And I don't use that example lightly. It's not a partisan example. I don't care if she's a Republican a Democrat I don't care who she is did know anything. She was you know this close to the vice presidency of the United States and and and That's because There's no expectation that you're going to be able to express a Worldview or a plan with any complexity and so we get a lot of people holding offices that they probably aren't qualified to hold and That's a real consequence of this Absolutely, you just it's almost like the candidates have been cauterized You describe them as holograms and you know reading back in the political journalism from the 70s There are these instances of reporters walking down to a tennis court to talk to a candidate Which to you just seems unimaginable that you would be able to talk to a candidate as a person without an army of Handlers and PR people and it was very interesting to me that your large story about John Kerry in foreign policy in 2004 when we're in the midst of a war and it That even got reduced to a sound bite that went on a couple television cycles that distracted the campaign It's almost like big ideas cannot fit through this this narrow siphon of media coverage No, and they blame you that's a thing like you write, you know You write 8,000 words which nobody gets to do anymore and the quotes like Two-thirds of the way through the story and it's surrounded by context and in the context of a much larger quote Matthew Dowd was at that time polling for George W. Bush that he doesn't want you to remember You know called me that morning. It was a Sunday called me the day the magazine came out. I Remember where I was walking. I was walking right by the old WAM. You know, I used to live in you know Cleveland North Cleveland Park, nobody cares, but I'm just saying I remember where I was Matthew Dowd called me and said, you know Holy crap. We're making an ad out of that and I was floored. You're making an ad out of what I didn't even the quote. I'm terrible at this I'm the worst reporter you will ever meet up figuring out what's making news and what isn't and to me that quote was You know like it was this piece of a much larger piece that was halfway down the story And by that night or the next morning, that's what they had they had the ad Kerry thinks terrorism is a nuisance He thinks it's like prostitution and gambling. Can you believe this guy and it was You know and it dominated it was on cable news for 48 hours straight. I didn't do any appearance I just hunkered down. I don't like this stuff anyway And I just buried myself in my office, but I could you know, I could hear them talking about it on the TV And and they blame you, you know, they said it will you you know Joe Lockhart after the campaign I write about the book said to me, you know, we should ever should have talked to you But how's that my fault? You know, it's it's just it is this environment that you can't You almost can't Express yourself in in anything other than the talking point and then when we get the talking point, we're angry Because it's a waste of our time, you know, I get angry when all I get is the talking point So it really is a Very circular environment. Yeah Well, Matt, I know people here probably have a lot of questions and before we do that I just want to say that we talked a little bit before this and I said I was going to ask you about the end of the book But I'm not going to it's got hard becomes president. It's crazy. Yeah, right The sequel's coming out soon, but the Edmund Morris version. This is It's probably got one of the highest emotional impact and and interesting endings of a non-fiction book I've read in years. So thank you Luckily, we have copies for sale right outside of this room and I really recommend reading this book You won't be able to put it down. I will say I think it's the best thing I've ever done I like the first book well enough. I know but I this is you know, this is one I kind of went through walls to do and I think it's you know, it's It's probably the last thing it was the last thing I wrote about politics I'd be fine because I think it's I'm still like writing about politics, but I I do think it's It's sort of the thing I've been driving toward for a long time Oh, great questions Sir right here in the front row Oh, you can you probably don't need well It's for we're live streaming this. Oh, I should have said that earlier. I'm sorry We are live streaming this this is on the internet across the country Governor Perlin, I just want to yeah address I we all know I pushed you to say that I'll take the I'm too old to care. All right, so Sorry about that. Gotcha, Matt. Gotcha Yeah, go ahead. Please don't be an ad by tomorrow Hi, my name is Dave price and um I'm one of my careers I retired from was reporting. I actually began the week that uh watergate Richard nixon resigned So I predate Some of what you're writing about just three very quick questions One is I always struggled other struggled. I'm sure you struggled to the idea of a public morality private morality So your opinion do the two coincide or can they actually be different? Um, secondly, you mentioned the hypocrisy of edwards, you know in his speech What about the hypocrisy of reporters who are writing about these things and are going on in their own lives? What was sex but with other things too in terms of Third we do and finally as a good friend of kevin spacey Would frank underwood make a better president than anyone we have out there today. So they're the three No, I I do I don't know kevin spacey. I do know I do know bo willman and his you know, and and and I know that's his vision of politics That's not my vision of politics The answers your questions are actually all you know those first two questions are I think the same And it's a little unsatisfying But it's how I feel about a lot of things in politics and life and journalism Which is it's it really depends. It's kind of case by case. It's about judgment and You know, there are times when we all we have to exercise that judgment because there There are times when private morality does have a have bearing on on public morality And there and there are times when hypocrisy is impossible to ignore And then you have times where it's just well, you lie and if you lie to your wife, you lie to anyone Well, that's not true because truthful people lie all the time and In and moral people the most moral people do immoral things and then feel badly about them bob carry Who you know was dragged through the mud and and and fairly scrutinized and came forward For you know, his his actions in vietnam after a very distinguished career in public service said to me We are not the worst things we've ever done in our lives and there's a tendency to think that we are I think that's a brilliant quote and I use it all the time because we in the media have Created a system where you are the worst thing you've done in your life. You're the worst thing you've done this week You're the worst thing you did today and there's no context And so I guess the answer to your question is context, right as heart will tell you and I think it's very compelling For most of american history character was a pretty complex thing. It came in the context Cheating on your wife is not something any of us in this room are going to call a value of high character but Have you taken bribes? Have you ducked tough votes? Have you lied to your constituents? Have you done what your corporate contributors want you to do instead of what you believe? Those are all integral parts of character You don't separate them you you view them in context and rick herdsburg during that week in 1987 when things were going crazy rick herdsburg then writing for the new republic said In a very prescient piece and one of the only pieces to buck conventional wisdom and should be remembered he said If gary heart the liar and his character is deficient then surely there are examples of his pattern of lying in the public record Let someone come forward and produce them I'm not aware of anyone who has ever Produced a public lie by gary heart. Certainly. No one thought he was telling people what they wanted to hear because he was not so You know, I think these are complex notions and it comes down to judgment and you know, I know there are other questions It was a little long, but I want to get to this point because what tom fielder says is It's our job to compile dossiers as complete as possible about people Because we're the vetting force and it's your job as voters to decide what matters We and this is a very post-watergate mentality. It's a very honest mentality. Which is we let nixon get through We didn't tell people we didn't we didn't tell people what we knew about kennedy We're going to tell you everything we know You decide if sex matters or if it doesn't you decide if private morality matters or if it doesn't well The only problem with that is we do exercise judgment We exercise judgment we make those choices every day all the time We make them in how we write stories We make them in what goes at the top of the front page or the bottom of the front page or page a 17 We make them on every website. We make them when we cut things from the paper or the website Only in the realm of sensations and only in the realm of character scrutiny Do we somehow to abdicate that responsibility suddenly and say no no no no no We we don't want we we're not going to decide what matters and what doesn't you decide what you want in a person's character No You know what that's our judgment. We get paid for it Make the call take the hit if people disagree with you, but You don't get to just abdicate that responsibility and turn over to the public which Can't see it in context anyway and and and you know won't be able to make informed decisions that way anyway um If we could have ma'am in the back and then mark will get to you I'm going to be shorter. So I'm going to I'm going to keep my answers shorter Internals get paid for this Is it still today? Oh for journalism. You mean? Hi, I'm Celia Wexler. I'm a recovering journalist and I I know paul taylor. I profiled him in my book out of the news and I know he Had very mixed feelings about that. I didn't hear the beginning of your talk And you as you know, he wrote the book see how they run very good campaign And eventually left journalism in part because he wasn't sure he wanted to be a pundit But you know, hasn't the culture really changed? Infidelity is kind of common now I don't know if the voters would have and isn't that something that Do we have to worry as much about? Really talking about the personal lives of candidates and to tell you the truth Kerry Hart had a role in what happened He could have not been unfaithful and as a woman I do care if a man is faithful to his wife or not It may not affect my vote in the end I think the bigger problem and I wonder what you think Is the fact that all reporting is filtered through the lens of analysis Why can't reporters more generally report? Okay, the president has this initiative or you know, this republican candidate wants to do X And actually tell you what he wants to do as opposed to tell you what the political implications are Um, well, there's a there's a bunch there I'd like to respond to so I'll just respond to the Last piece of it. I guess And by the way, I interview Paul in the book and he's you know, I do talk to him. I think he's probably more conflicted We're you know, people like you tell me he's more conflicted than he tells me he is but But I get to it a bit in the book and he's a Was and is a very good journalist Um We can't I I I'm going to get off the train with you. I'm going to disagree with you about analysis I think there's a lot of bad analysis out there So I'll agree with you that if we're going to give people the power to analyze They ought to know what they're doing with it but We can't tell you what they're just report to you what they're going to do because they're not going to tell you What they're going to do and we've had a role in creating that but the fact of the matter is the politics is about 90 percent artifice now and We can't we're stuck in the analysis mode because if we simply reported what they told us You'd get no information, right? You'd get vague stuff about I believe in children and healthy people and prosperity. So You deserve a need I think Analytical voices the problem that I think you're getting at and then I agree with you on is that if you turn on say cable tv all day Or Or just you know read a lot of newspaper coverage frankly. You're not getting very good analysis. It's not Very informed by history It's not very informed by research or data, you know, which the data people are always yelling about and they're right And it's often partisan. It's often carrying water for one side or another It's often too glib the emphasis is on you know saying the glib thing And there's just a lot of commentary out there to sift through And you know part of that in my view is that You know, there's a lot of reasons for that but part of it is in industry. We just take politics very lightly You know, we think that like it's a beat you did the science beat you did the You know, you did the metro beat now you're going to be a national political reporter We don't you know, you've not studied it. We don't know what you know We don't know if it's a lifelong interest if it's a passion for you We got plenty of people covering politics who don't like politics or politicians And then you know the analysis on tv is all about Entertainment and everybody gets a strategist label popped onto them whether they've like once worked in some junior Press role in a campaign and suddenly but they're glib and they're good-looking and suddenly they can go on and on and on with analysis So we get a very uninformed and unused not so useful analysis often and it's frustrating but The the option of having no analysis at all would would leave you very frustrated, I think Tell us what this executive order says and if you want a sidebar on analysis, that's fine But too much of what I agree with you on that. I think people do that. I mean people do that, right? So so there is that journalism. There's probably more of that journalism. There's ever been but it can be hard to find You know, we there's there's excellent journalism on all those issues But I do get frustrated. I agree with you on this point and you kind of touch something in me You know, I I do get frustrated when I open the when I go to my ipad and why don't open the paper I open my ipad and I go to the times and there's a story about legislation that died yesterday on immigration or on something else And I go great. I haven't been able to do this. I've been working. I've been buried in a column or a story What's the legislation? And I'm going paragraph to paragraph to paragraph I've learned all about which faction is up which faction is down who's fighting what it means for the party What it means for 2016 you can go to the whole story and get like a sentence on what's actually in the bill And that's the new york times and that's better than most just about any other source So I do share your frustration with that and that that part of it really bugs me Mark, did you have a question in front row? If we could Hi mark. Hi matt. Mark Schmidt here with new america. I'm really glad you wrote this book. I think it's fantastic. Thank you I want to note for the record by the way that one of the things that heart did in his exile was he did for a while Have an affiliation with new america with steve cleman's american strategy program. He's also written almost 20 books He's not wasted his his time at all But I spent the only time I have ever spent much time with him was was here at our old offices I want to talk, you know, you've written more and more smartly about the relationship of ideas and policy to politics than Anybody really and I want to get your take on what's really the policy legacy of heart and to some extent heart's peers I mean, he's the class of 74 the last of that class of 74 Folks like george miller tom harkin are retiring this year So it's you know, and it gets it's gotten they've gotten a little bit of a bad wraparise Maybe like rick perlstein's book about reagan is really harsh on heart Really treats the treats him and his peers as not really sensitive to the issues of economic inequality Broke with the new deal tradition, right? There's another critique of their kind of reformism and What do you think that you know spending a lot of time with him other than that we wouldn't have had george w bush What actually did they amount to as uh as as policy thinkers? Yeah, I really that's a great question mark Thank you and and and thanks for the kind words and I I really Disagree with that assessment because I mean I come at it from my own point of view, right? We're all a little biased, but I heart was part of that early generation of reformers even before he gets to the senate, right? He's part, you know, he he gets into politics really by being He's a denver lawyer who gets involved in the reform of the primary process He was a reformer of a divinity student that I lost him, but he comes to politics as a reformer And you know when he gets to the senate in the late 19 in 1974 You know the the rap on him is he's a mcgovernance campaign manager He's going to be a leftist and he made that quote about we're all not little hubert humphries and everybody's mad at him not least hubert humphry and You know they all think he's going to be this left-wing bomb thrower and hard in his you know because he has this lifelong Intellectual rigor You know really goes at the issues and military reform and economic transformation and you know The silicon chip he meets very early with the founders of apple Um, you know he becomes he starts the caucus for military reform Uh becomes a very respected member of the senate on policy if not the most liked member of the senate But that that reform impulse, you know ends up as you say it breaks with the new deal It ends up angering the unions. He tells them they're going to have to change. They can't have everything they want Uh, you know, he's he has this great saying he says, uh Not at all this but i'm one of my favorite heart sayings from that time is you think education is expensive Wait, do you find that would ignorance cost? um, and you know he he really Sees beyond you know his uh on both on a foreign policy role He doesn't think we can just you know disarm and get rid of all the troops And he has he he wants to have a vision for sort of keeping mutual security Including american troops mcgovern gets very upset at him and I have a series of memos I have a memo with him in mcgovern because mcgovern reads one of his speeches in 1986 pretty sort of Screens it for him and sends him a note and says I don't understand why we need these troops at all He says whatever happened to disarm them. It's you know, what why can't we just end the cold war and go home? You know, um, but what happens is and I think this is what directs the line what you're talking about rick pearlstein and others When heart is disgraced The successor to that reformist role is clinton And if you talk to heart about this he has some very strong feelings about it because clinton adopts a lot of that platform And I think believes a lot of that platform But it's much more politically expedient and flexible and the dlc which grows out of a very Strong ideological idea You know takes on a reputation as being much more about political expediency And so the whole concept that heart sort of pioneers the otari democrat or the neo democratic idea that becomes sort of the dlc Gets twisted a little bit into a political faint because clinton. I mean to clinton's credit. I think he believed it I think you I think clinton is intellectually every bit Every bit as strong as heart I think clinton's thing was he needed to get past his party and the way he did it in 1992 was to sell it as an electoral strategy Listen, you can't win any other way But you know what it felt like to the left because that's what he was saying to them was We don't have to believe this stuff. We just have to say it And so the whole movement becomes takes on a sheen of kind of insincerity and and manipulation But I don't think that's what heart meant by it. I think he was very intellectually honest about it And and I think he had the right idea to understand very early that transformation was going to be hard and inevitable And that a party couldn't do what it had done in the 1930s and continued to grow and adapt and meet the challenges of our time and I think the proof of that is With us. I mean, I think we've done a pretty poor job meeting most of those challenges And partly because we've been Mired in old political debates, which is you know, something I'm you know, right written about more times than I need to so You know, I I think he deserves a better a better legacy than that Ma'am, you had a question I'm an Norwegian journalist. My name is sir tova It's very interesting to hear what you're saying. We see similar patterns in europe, of course But you mentioned just briefly that ben bradley probably realized that they should have written about JFK's and lynnby johnson's infidelity in the sixties and they didn't That reminds me about a editorial in le monde in 1998 during the impeachment scandal in the clinton years and Even le monde said that well, it's exaggerated in the u.s. But We should have had more of that here in france So apparently there seems to be a need For a balance. I guess that's your opinion as well. You're talking about this context But what principles are we supposed to to work accordingly to in order to to find that balance between private and public model And I and you know just to be clear I don't I don't think bradley felt that he'd been wrong and kennedy's thing I think he was I think that's part of the weird conflict for bradley And this is what frost really catches him on in that interview that he He thinks he thinks kennedy was a terrific president and shouldn't have been touched But he thinks heart's suspect and really the only difference is the media climate change He can't he could never you know, they I interviewed a bunch of people there They just tie themselves into knots, you know jack jermon and I before he died Spent a bunch of time talking and he's quoted in the book. He was very gracious But the the contradictions are all because nobody ever really figured out this answer to this question you're asking Which is what's the rule? When does it matter? When does it not? And I don't I think it would be a mistake to try and put a Clear framework on it and say well it matters if it does this or it matters I think I think it's case by case and I think it has to do with judgment I mean you mentioned the clinton thing a lot of disagreement over this You know, do I think clinton's offenses in 1998 were impeachable? No Do I think they were Reportable? Yes. Yes. There was a criminal investigation. There was active perjury I don't think you'd find many american voters in a vacuum for getting the partisan piece of it But if you ask them that question a vacuum, I don't think too many american voters would not want to know if the president had perjured himself on anything That's a different thing than somebody Sitting with you and telling you They never cheated on their wife when maybe they have in an interview like, you know, so I don't think I think you would I think in general in journalism Speaking now just journalism We do too much blanket rules We do too many regulations every time there's a new journalism scandal plagiarism or sourcing probably whatever it is You know the times or somebody's hands down a new You know amendment 512 c to the you know point b to the code of conduct You may now check you have to check every anonymous quote three times and then Jump through this hoop and jump through that hoop. I don't think that's the answer to To judgment and journalism. I think the answer to judgment and journalism is actually judgment And if somebody doesn't exercise it, they shouldn't be doing their job But I think you know, I think it comes down to sort of integrity and judgment and And and that can be unfulfilling as a theoretical discussion, but I think it's kind of the only way to Approach issues of privacy and and character Great. Lee and then right. Yeah, lead rep man on the fellow here Sorry for for for the live stream lead rep man on the fellow here at new america And I was intrigued by by your your story about matthew dowd calling you Because it seems like like maybe that quote wouldn't have blown up if if not for republicans on the other side wanting to Oh, no, no question. Yeah, make something out of it. So I I guess my question for you then is what what is the interaction between Polarized noxious environment here in washington and the the culture of adversarial journalism and do they do they Feed each other in this in this yeah, they're mutually dependent I mean I get into this in the in the book quite a bit about you know, what happens soon after the heart thing is that Smart politicians realize That there's an opportunity here, right? Yes, they're wanting to destroy you But that also means they'll destroy the other guy if you can help them do it and you know to me the the You know the best example of this is is is new gingrich Who comes to power in the years just after and gingrich is smart, you know Brilliant guy I've talked, you know, I've known him over the years I have a lot of respect for him and he he was part of heart sort of military reform caucus But gingrich realizes very quickly from a minority a backbencher point of view in the house that You're going to wait a long time before you beat jim right at the polls But this new environment can help you take down a speaker a different way and he and he does and I mean John tower happens just after this the ginsburg nomination happens just after this You know, joe biden is drummed out of the presidential race a few months after this often exactly what you're talking about a rival campaign The jacoccus campaign which leaks to mooring doubt an example of him Giving at a speech in iowa where he doesn't credit A story that he tells that he's credited a hundred times before but he's tired and he misspeaks and he forgets to credit And he ends up very nearly drummed out of national politics It's pretty much a testament to him that he's been able to come back. So There's a there is a hand in glove, you know, uh relationship Here between the new kind of character driven journalism and the partisan uses for it And one has given rise to the other and and and on and on Well You know, again, I think it's I think it's case by case and I think it's generational I mean, I'm people ask me am I like hopeful. Yeah, I'm always hopeful because I I see all these people coming into the business who are younger and You know have different ideas and have grown up in a different media world I mean generations always change they can change for the better change for the worse, but you know, I think You know, I think coverage today is better than it was at the height of the broadcast here I think it's better than it was 10 years ago Well, I was also really encouraged by your statement that the sort of fracturing of the media today can give reporters more freedom than they used to have I I was Kind of depressed when I finished this book. I'm not gonna lie. I'm sorry and at least that notion Opens up some daylight for reporters to do different kinds of writing and maybe feel a freedom to act a different way That that wasn't there a few years ago. I hope so, but you know, it's always for someone like me to sit there and say that is always You know not as useful because You know, I have my I carved out my place in the business. I've I've had my jobs. I'm you know I'm I can make those choices and And it's not gonna necessarily impede my career. And if I can't make them one place, I can make them another You know, when you're young and you're trying to make a name and there's a gazillion people out there with blogs and You know, it's a competitive world. I mean, I understand that it's harder for people. It's it's like it's a reason I've never I don't do a lot of cable TV is you know Probably but I it's the reason I've never gone out and you know chastised journalists for doing it because You know for a lot of people that's that's their way of getting seen they don't work at the New York Times yet And you know, it can be very hard to break out. So You know my pronouncements on what's possible for journalists now are a little ring a little hollow because It's possible for me or some of my colleagues my age It doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of people covering beats day to day In competitive environments. Okay. Well, I'm depressed again. I think we have I think we have time for maybe two more quick questions Sir, you have a question We'll bring the mic right to I'm just a citizen who's trying to get more policy into Into politics say I've communicated briefly with matt by about requiring politicians to give Speeches, but I'll sidestep that for the moment I've often thought that gee, wouldn't it be wonderful if the debates the formal debates that we have all the time actually Hinged on policy, but they seem to don't get me started on the debates, Bob. I'd like to get you started Well, yeah, I mean so so so quickly matt I mean debates seem like the perfect forum for what you're talking about vigorous policy Creating an argument that's going to win an election. They're terrible. Yeah, that's my thing about the debates Right, but I I'm in a very minority view about this I've said it for years and years. I think this presidential debate commission is about as close to outright corruption as you're going to find in american politics Corporate sponsored party populated They set the rules and we have to show up. Why is that? How about we hold the party and they have to show up? I mean, I don't understand where we got as a media in this position Where somebody else sets the ground rules the dates the venues and somehow we've got to bring our cameras and keyboards and And we're just prisoners and we get to we get to have a moderator. Yay You know, we get to send one of our own up to the stage Now they want debates. We should set the debates. We should say when they are We should say what they are if you don't want to do them Don't do debates and then you can explain to the american public why you're not doing debates But why the two parties get to control the debate system? And we're like, you know, we have to wait for our tickets to get sent. I don't understand that at all They should be within our control and we should refuse to cover them until we can make them illuminating because they're not Are they effective at hashing up policy Arguments today. No, no, and they're exactly what we're talking about. No, they're all about like The thing you can discern under the thing was he well Coached was he ready? Did he have a zinger? The zinger thing drives me crazy. You know watch these debates I guess you didn't even go down this road. You watch these debates and then, you know First thing they do is cut to our political analyst chris. What do you think and chris is like? I thought that line he had was pretty good about, you know, well, if it's good enough for your mother It's good enough for me, you know, like it's just not um that It's it's like when heart Bring it back to the point when when heart gets out of the race in 1987 Uh in this terrible frenzy moment, they give him the staff writes him a speech the speech is very contrite So exactly what you'd expect of this kind of speech. I'm sorry, you know, whatever He talks to warren Beatty on the phone, which is always a bad idea when you have to make a decision He gets all riled up. He talks to me. He can't sleep and he literally just tears it up He actually said to me it made me want to vomit and I couldn't give that speech And he he does his own speech and he goes out and he gives this incredibly defiant speech You can find it on c-span. It's just lost to the ages as far as I'm concerned I say this in the book this should go down with like eisenhower's military industrial complex speech But it he gives this amazing speech Like a bulwark moment, you know, and he and he says mark my words. He says we are making politics He says we're but we're we're turning this into the hunters and the hunted We're going to make politics in this country a spectator sport And he says and I I he said we're all going to paraphrase thomas jefferson to say I tremble for my country when I think we'll get the leaders we deserve And he's roundly mocked Immediately everywhere because he's not being contrite and he's not taking responsibility and everybody laughs at him Is that can you be so angry at the system you did this to yourself? But you know, we're sitting here 27 years later I don't think there's much funny about the idea that we get the leaders we deserve I don't think there's much funny about the idea that we're turning politics into a spectator sport and the debates are you know exhibit a In what has become the espioning of politics And I find it both frustrating and harmful and not interesting not interesting to me I think that's a perfect place to wrap up on that happy note, but also read the book. It's a great story They're funny moments in it Matt, thank you so much for writing this and thanks for being here today to talk about it. I really appreciate it