 Ms. Magazine wants to know what you are thinking about these days Barbara. Well it's, there are a lot of things to think about and sometimes you can't really figure out how to get a handle on so many of the complexities that are surrounding us, surrounding us. We hear a lot about limits, about budgetary limits in the main and so I spent some time thinking about how can we as a people afford to do the things which would make us comfortable as a people and I think about the American spirit which is so expansive and which takes in the realities of everybody. We don't want people to suffer, we don't want them to hurt, we don't want them to be sick, we don't want them to be ignorant and yet if we try to be universal in our gifts we then run against limited resources and so I've been just wondering how could we remain true to the spirit we have for people in the face of what we are talking about in terms of budgetary limits and then I think about survival, that survival of the universe, survival of the civilizations, survival of the continent. That comes into focus because we hear about the euphoria over the anticipated nuclear arms control talks in Geneva and then you wonder how are those mortal men going to come to grips with this issue which has pushed us to the precipice of annihilation and you think well because people infinitely have good judgment, I believe that, I'm the optimist in terms of the judgment of people, we'll pull back, our common sense will pull us back is what I say and that probably is too simplistic a response but that's what I say. Well I like what you said about limits because the American spirit is that there are no limits that if you work hard and if we are generous of heart that you can invest in human beings and lift them out of their poverty and it's a much less cynical thing to do than to just pay them off with welfare, to believe in a war on poverty program for instance as President Johnson did. How you reconcile them is at this time when you have a political party that was re-elected by a large margin with kind of a hair shirt about social issues, well how would you vote if you were in Congress today on cuts on social issues? I would hope that I could vote on a plane higher than politics. Now that is asking almost the impossible for a politician to vote on a plane above politics. My problem is that it's politics which keeps us reluctant to do the things we could boldly do. It is politics which keeps us from making recommendations which we feel will not be marketable in the public. If no one was going to be re-elected to Congress I think we could have one will of a program that would be in the interest of people in the public interest. So if I were in Congress today I would probably engage in the kinds of marginal adjustment which is so often the case and I would look at the President's program and I would know that that did not comport with my idea of what we ought to be doing but I also know that we can't reach economic productivity by slashing defense programs and that sort of thing so I would fall into the mode of marginal incremental adjustment and that's probably what I would do. Well is that one of the reasons that you made a surprising exit from Congress which was so disappointing to a lot of us when it seemed you had the world out there the speakership, the vice president, said the presidency perhaps that you did have to make those adjustments in order to second guess the electorate. I can't say that that was the primary reason I left the Congress. I did know that in Congress one chips away, one does not make chops, one does not make bold strokes and I was really after six years I had worried of the little chips that I could put on a wood pile. If you had all your brothers where would you choose to make the bold strokes from the presidency? Well, how can we bring that out? That is the office, that is the place, that is the, you can have the moral leadership of the country and if you are good, if your instincts are good, if you are a good person it is from that office that you make dramatic moves and change things. We have seen that historically as you well know. Yes, the difference in the leadership is a long way from the people who were uninspired and those who did inspire and rally and of course one of your strengths is rallying. Do you think that appointive or elective office are in your future? I no longer have any interest in appointive or elective office. I served twelve years in elective office, six years in the Texas State Senate and six years in the Congress and I did what I could do from those positions and now that I am teaching students I think my future is in seeing to it that the next generation is ready to take over. And that is your podium now, the ethics in government, teaching ethics in government here at the University of Texas and you expect to be doing that the rest of your life? I expect to be doing that. Now I can't say for the rest of my life because there may be other careers. This is my third career and so there may be others but for the time being this is what I am enjoying doing. Was ethics in government your choice of a course? Ethics in government was not my choice. I didn't have a choice of any particular subject matter but when asked by Elspeth Rostow who at the time I came to the school was Dean of the LBJ school when I was asked to join the faculty of the LBJ school I was asked to teach two courses into governmental relations and an ethics course. I've been structured this course called Political Values and Ethics which I have taught each semester that I've been at the school and it is very popular with the students and there has been a waiting list for the course ever since I've been teaching it. I know and your popularity rating on the campus of this university is fantastic. Did you bring lessons from the Congress to this course? Experiences are there incidents in your congressional service when you saw the unethical that made you wish even more to be a teacher of what you consider true values in ethics in government? Liz you must remember I was there during Watergate I was there during the effort to impeach Richard Nixon and if there was any single experience I had in the Congress which made me know that public servants needed a very high and keen ethical sensitivity. My experiences in Watergate certainly underscored that for me. You must have had to do an awful lot of homework and study in order to ask the kind of questions that you did. I not only did a lot of homework and study I lived the impeachment matter while I was engaged in it. It was a 24 hour a day engagement where I was concerned because I had to get the facts straight for me so that I could act properly on behalf of the people I represent. Well do you think you or any members of the committee you must have had the experience of trying to be influenced one way or another to be soft on the situation or hard on the situation? Were overtures made in that direction? Overtures were made by Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee and Republican members of the Congress. There was a constant effort on their part to present President Nixon in the best possible light and it was necessary to cut through their politics and resist their personal overtures no matter how close you may have become to one of the colleagues on the other side of the aisle as we said. You knew that you could not be overwhelmed by a sense of personal affection or affinity but that you had a job to do and you had to look beyond personality and get to the public interest because that's what we had to serve. Were you shocked at sometimes the lengths that a lobby and whether it's other members of the Congress or other factors go to influence your vote and did they reach into your district with threats? Not into my district Liz because my district was sort of an island. I created that district when I was in the Texas Senate a district that I knew very well. The people in that district were people I grew up with. They knew me when I was going to Sunday school and not representing anybody doing anything so I did not have to resist overtures within my district. On the other hand Liz, people who make overtures and threats politically rarely engage in that kind of activity in a blatant way. It is usually very, very subtle and surreptitious and therefore you would not see blatant displays of unethical and illegal behavior on the part of lobbyists or others. But they get as close to home and as close to the bone as possible and while it might not have been your district I would suspect that if they were after your vote on anything they would call on some people in Texas to make phone calls. That is correct. I do not consider that per se unethical behavior. If you're trying to get Barbara Jordan's vote on a given issue and you know a person within her district, a friend of yours who might have influence with her and ask this person to call and ask if she would give consideration to a given matter that happened to me often, many times and I would listen because if people who you respect call and suggest things to you or talk to you about a given issue because of the respect you have for the caller you're going to pay attention. So that's I think a legitimate way to get the attention of a representative or a legislator. But it is likely to make one a cynic. And how do you, did you leave a cynic and do you fight cynicism within yourself? Because you are a purist. Well I am in a real sense Liz but you've got to remember that I'm also a born optimist. I will see optimism where few people can see it. Now I don't mean the silly kind of optimism that I think was demonstrated by some of the patriotic fervor we heard during the 84 campaign but I believe that if you can attend to the humanity the inner reality of individuals that each human being has a value as a person and I try to address that valuable person who is there within the skin of the individual and I find that if you can just cut off the layers the rhetoric, the superficiality and get to the inner core, the heart valuable core of an individual that you will find a responsive and responsible human being and that is destructive of cynicism. It absolutely is. Well it also takes the patience of Job. It does. You must be very, very patient. Do you have a lot of concerns about our education today as we try to hang on to the humanities and still we know the robots are coming, the computer age is here and how do you marry poetry and computers? Well I do have that concern. I have that concern for the University of Texas. I, as you know, our president has announced Peter Flan that he will resign his office next year or at the end of the year. We had the opportunity as faculty members to vote for faculty representatives to a search committee for the president. When I got my ballot the first thing I looked for were names of people who were not in the hard sciences people who were in liberal arts people who were in music and history and classics and literature and I voted that way because I think we are indeed in danger of losing our love of beauty aesthetic sensibilities which ought to be a part of every individual I think we are in danger of losing that as we rush headlong into technological innovation and the scientific state and because of that I was just hoping that the search committee would look beyond the people with big names physics and science and computers and technology and get to people from the arts and sciences and fortunately I don't know whether others thought the way I thought as they voted that search committee does read very well people in English and those other good subjects that people ought to be concerned about yes I'm concerned about the state of education we can go overboard with the robotics and I don't want that to happen because too much is lost when that occurs Do you feel from being in politics and watching politics that women are more expendable when the going gets rough and I know that through your mind go lots of people that you have known who have had to raise money and it's tough and then pay off a debt after they had been willing to take the risk and that's tough and maybe be over battered for something that the media makes a headline when you don't really know the truth behind it or maybe a spouse is more trouble for a woman than for a man candidate Do you have any views on that? Politics is not easy for a woman and that is period no semicolon it is very difficult as a matter of fact Why is that the case? In your question when you talked about raising the money I think about how much money it now takes to win elective office and in many instances it borders on obscenity the amount of money which are necessary when I ran my first race in nineteen sixty two, three, four, six when I was running state legislature we just had to raise twelve, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars that was hard to come by for me I was a person without independent resources and then when I ran for congress my first race we spent seventy five thousand dollars well I thought that was just a monumental sum of money but I could not for the life of me get out there and say to the men who had the money and they mostly men controlled the money I couldn't get out there and say look would you please give some money to help me run in this office what I did was to get men who were friends of mine to go to the men with money and say will you give some money for this candidate it is that I don't know when that will change I don't know when we can as women we will have enough independent resources that we can move out there and really fund our own causes without being reluctant to approach a man about his resources it is tough on the money side for one it is also tough because there remains no matter whether one is willing to admit it or not there remains a feeling that women are not quite up to the job now I know that that sounds like well you must be talking about another age you're not talking about 1985 no I'm talking about 1985 there is a sense still that a woman is not quite up to the job and I can't cite the pose with exactness but there have been pose which would reflect that when it comes to deciding on difficult issues it is a general feeling that men will bring a toughness to an issue which a woman will not bring that is perception that is not reality and we'll get over that it will take a while but it is coming but that is still the case meanwhile the whole effort of trying to get women to take those risks and to run the uphill battle it takes is difficult and as a Texas woman I really want to thank you for talking to groups like the Texas women's leadership to many women's groups where they are trying to encourage women to run and I think we have quite a strong breed of women down here and some good success stories that you don't see in other states and perhaps being close to our pioneer spirit has done some of that and learning to be savvy let's talk a minute about women women and as a woman and as a black what do you think about the status of equality and justice in the United States today? I wish I could say that equality and justice are twin realities of life in the United States but I cannot say that at this time all I can say is that equality and justice remain in our ethical and idealistic view of what the United States of America ought to be and I believe that on both those issues equality and justice things are happening quickly and I do think that I will live long enough to say in reality equality is real and not illusory and that justice is fact and not fiction Do you think things like the Rainbow Coalition the candidacy of Jesse Jackson served a good purpose? Yes and no Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition provided a focus for black people to rally toward which would not have been possible without that Now I believe that there will be a black person one day who will run for president of the United States and be elected president of the United States I don't know that I will see it in my lifetime but I believe it will happen Well you want to be president so maybe it will The problem with Jesse Jackson's candidacy is that Jesse had a very aggressive candidacy as he should have had but it was couched in terms which frightened people and people don't like to be frightened and I think Jesse unfortunately had the result of frightening people away from the Democratic Party and that is one of the things frightening white people away from the Democratic Party that is one of the things which happened I think in 1984 Do you feel that human rights which got a big spurt in the 60s is less of a national priority today on the national scene? Given the present occupant of the White House and the administration which surrounds that occupant it would appear that human rights is less of a high priority or less of a priority than it was during say the presidency of Jimmy Carter and that's regrettable When you think about applying ethics in a democracy in our government to human rights and particularly to women's rights what do you feel about the Equal Rights Amendment and what do you think about abortion? The Equal Rights Amendment is right and it ought to be a part of the Constitution and it is not a part of the Constitution because so many untruths were said about the effect of the ERA that many people believed those things which were not true and consequently it is not a part of the Constitution but it should be And do you think it will be? Ultimately, yes, I think it will be Abortion is another matter, Liz Abortion has developed into an issue which is surrounded by conflict and difficulty and it should not be I think that we will get pulled out of the conflictual nature of the abortion issue once we get a rational and reasonable discussion underway between those who say we are pro-choice and those who say we are pro-life they are both pro-life as far as I am concerned and until we can really get through it and become serious and listen to the arguments which are being developed on both sides will we reach some compromise? We have compromised just about every other issue in this country that you can think of and there will be some resolution and compromise on abortion Do you feel that well of course abortion and the ERA have nothing to do with each other except one more abrasive than the other spills over sometimes to get into it and those are the untruths you were talking about but on the subject of abortion are there some basic human rights of a woman to the privacy of her own body the determination of her own body? Well Liz I think you can anticipate my response to that question of course each woman has the right to her own body and decisions making decisions which would affect what her body undergoes that's a matter which should not even be a subject of dispute it should be understood for each individual I control my body it is my body and I make the decisions about what's done with it and what I do with it and I think that that is just basic and fundamental and is unarguable Looking to the present on the congressional agenda what do you expect the long range effect will be on the drastic cuts from the social services that have been proposed by the Reagan administration if they go through what effect does that have on civilized society or the progress of the United States Well I am very grateful for checks and balances and separation of powers whenever I hear things like the Reagan budget and I can only say that I feel that the Congress of the United States House and Senate will bring the Reagan budget back to a realistic posture so that we do not have to have things limited which ought not be limited and I believe that there remains a firm sense in this country of people who want to do some of the things which the Reagan budget would cut the small business administration that is up for being killed there are people who are just not going to stand for that to happen the job core is up to be killed and there are people in the Congress who are not going to stand for that to happen there will be some adjustment I feel in firm subsidies and there will not be the drastic changes which are proposed by this administration so I am as I look ahead I say that when the battle is over the Congress will have made sense out of will have changed the Reagan program in such a way that it will make sense Is there a major difference between the two parties for instance do Republicans fear the word government so much that they want as little as possible and do the Democrats enjoy the art of government so much that they use it to better advantage or perhaps overdo it following up on that line of thought is in a democracy what is the right balance between over governing and under governing in a democracy is the government is there to perform certain purposes there are things we have government do which government should not be doing but there are things which are done by government which only government can do as Democrats we have trusted government to do those things which by law and by the Constitution only it can do and those things certainly are in the area of national defense and personal security peace and security for the nation those things are there where the Democrats perhaps went a little overboard is in thinking that government could do everything and what we have to do now as Democrats is not fall into the mode that government can do nothing we don't want that kind of a posture but that has been the ring of the Republican party is that the government we have government involved in too many things and you don't want the government to do this kind of thing we are the government we talk about government as if it is some alien other government is us and we know that there are things which this government must do and Democrats are more willing to trust government to do the things which government traditionally historically legally constitutionally ought to be doing than the Republican party and that is a fundamental difference between the two parties you and I both grew up in the Bible Belt and we both have spent a lot of time in Sunday school and in church the heavy emphasis on missiles heavy defense spending and even the while changing weather patterns that we have been through this winter give rise to fears that our planet may not survive that it might be doomed is there a future for it can human kind survive what do we really is there a role for humanity in the infinite scheme of things the interesting thing that we may note is that the public appears to be changing its mind about spending everything that it can for more bigger better missiles and weapons of destruction there will always be a role for humanity because there is nothing which has been invented which can replace the human mind now I know artificial intelligences is on the board and we're into that wave of computers but there is still the uniqueness of vision which no artificial artifice can change I think the role for humankind is here and it is fixed and it is certain and there will always be sensible people to bring us around to the proper vision that we ought to have about the future planet earth is here to stay I believe that in your own personal code of religion what do you believe about a hereafter well I believe lives that I have a spirit that is not going to disappear that my body will die and disintegrate