(00:00:00) So you want to hear an off-the-record story? I will tell you microphone story. It's true way back before I was hired at CBS everybody. They hired came from a newspaper and I'll tell you a story about someone who was hired from The New York Times very distinguished correspondent. What used to happen in those days was the CBS would train the newspaper correspondent always a man how to use the equipment for a week or so, they teach him how to look into the camera how to use the microphone and and just sort of the old eye contact game that we all know so much about but this particular correspondent for the New York Times came on a day when there was so much news. There was no time to train him and he was sent immediately up to the Senate where the sound man handed him a mic and he asked the absolute perfect question of the senator and as a senator began to answer he took the mic put it under his arm whipped out his notebook and began. (00:01:04) Take notes. I'll just talk straight into the mic tonight. Before we talk (00:01:14) about George Bush's first year and a half an office word or two about the White House and what it's like for television correspondent to work there and cover the president. I don't know if you know this but the three networks have our offices right inside the White House itself. I never go to CBS I go to the White House every day. I have to go through a magnetometer and be go through a screening process every morning when I go into the White House I of course cannot roam around the corridors the way reporters at some of the other beats can it's pretty confining to be honest with you and sometimes I feel a little bit like I'm in prison because there are guards everywhere and the Press is confined in a pretty small cluster of claustrophobic little area which looks something like a garage. I used to be the swimming pool and Nixon covered it over and made it into a Press Room. I think he wanted us to fall in but that's another (00:02:13) story. Anyway, there are three things. (00:02:16) Mainly that we television correspondence. Do the first is basically decode you cannot imagine the language more asked that we have to penetrate every day as spokesman work very hard to confuse us with language so that we won't always find out what's going on on the inside. My all-time favorite was one day Larry speaks. He would he got so convoluted with his language to keep us confused that we used to call it speak speak and he was he some story broke in the paper and he couldn't deny it because that would be an outright lie, but he didn't want to confirm it either because it made President Reagan didn't make President Reagan look very good. So he told us that it was counterfactual. (00:03:11) You know Revenue enhancement. We know that one now. I'm (00:03:15) going to tell you two more that you are going to start hearing increasingly one. I hear a lot already because I've discovered it, you know, the t word is out. Nobody says tax anymore, but the s word is almost as bad that's pending so they no one wants to propose a spending proposal and when your congressmen and Senators come home, they're not going to talk to you about spending. They're going to talk to you about investing. (00:03:41) It's the same thing. It's the I word but it's get sort of rolls off the tongue the other one of that (00:03:48) so that that's a euphemism for spending. Here's a new one for taxing. ready fee I've heard John sununu use it in its verb form to fee. (00:04:01) Watch out guys. Now that the summit's underway. It's going to be the big fee. Are there cameras rolling? No cameras rolling. Oh good. Okay. Here we go. We off the Record. So I don't know if I can tell this joke I prepared for you. Oh, what the heck the second here we go on the record. The second thing we do is travel (00:04:28) and President Bush travels a lot. Now we travel at least once a week. He goes out and does a campaign stop once a week at least to raise money for the Republican party and to promote the candidates and different congressional districts just in the last month or so alone. We've gone to Toronto where he went to a baseball game. We went to Bermuda where he went kite flying with Margaret Thatcher. (00:04:57) We went to Key (00:04:57) Largo where he went speedboating. We went to Islamorada where he went bone fishing. Maybe Dan Quayle is qualified for (00:05:07) this job. A third thing we do is (00:05:18) Stakeout at the White House. There are several different schedules of the president that are prepared every day. Only one is shown to the public by that I mean shown to the Press Corps and it has a couple of his meetings listed then there's a second schedule of the president's that is prepared for the staff and it has many more meetings and activities and then there's the real schedule which very few people get to see in the White House. And one of the things we do is try to see who's coming in that side door and the back door and we just sort of hang around the grounds with our camera crew trying to take pictures and throw questions at people who are not on the public schedule. So we try to keep track of the president that way we're somewhat like Cagney and Lacey in their squad cars. So doing a Stakeout Steve mentioned. I started at CBS in 1972 and Watergate broke only have two months after I got there. Because I was new and young and because of CBS really didn't think it was a major story. No one did at the beginning for those of you who can remember it. We considered it a local break-in break-in and breaking in and entering case and nothing more. So I got assigned to the story luckily and as it wore on and on and on and on we got into the habit of staking everybody out all the characters in the case Haldeman ehrlichman Dean Mitchell would didn't want to take questions from the press. And so one of the few ways we got to ask them questions was to be at their front door at six o'clock in the morning and staking out became such a habit of ours that we forgot. You could actually call someone on the phone and make an appointment for an interview. Really. I'm not even joking. I remember one night. I was got my assignments the night before and it was really it was rotational Haldeman ehrlichman Dean. Mitchell Haldeman Irving went after the another on their front lawn day after day, but that particular night. They said you should go to Justice Douglas has house. And get pictures of him jogging and I said what has he done and they said nothing. We just want pictures of him jogging now. Do you get out there in the early in the morning? So I woke up about five o'clock and it was hailing out and I could hear it like that on my window and so I called in and there was a desk man on duty and I said, look, it's hailing out and Justice Douglas is 70 years old. He's not going to obviously not going to jog and I remember the fellow put me down pretty badly. You know, if you if you knew your way around this town you'd know that Douglass is an Outdoorsman and while he may not actually jog, he will be out there. He'll walk his dog. He'll go just go get the pictures so out. I went and of course there were no lights on in the Douglas household no activity at all, 9:30 a limousine arrived with Justice blackmun in the backseat. See the justice is carpool and limousines. I found that out and Car went right up to the front door. There was a little driveway. Mrs. Douglas carried Justice Douglas across the icy tarmac into the car there. I am at the foot of the driveway. I've got a frenzy light turned on because it was so dark. It was really a bad storm an umbrella a microphone camera. He pushed the electric window down. I said Justice Douglas. I'm Lesley Stahl. We've been here since six o'clock this morning to get pictures of you jogging and the Justice said Miss Dahl. Are you crazy? I'm 70 years old and it's hailing out. (00:09:01) He went to work. (00:09:06) Well 1972 was the year of Watergate, but it was also the year that affirmative action past and of course it's has that that has no connection with me being hired at your at all. But it may have had something to do with the fact that when the Senate hearings started on Watergate CBS put me on the live Primetime specials. We did every night along with all the veteran males even though I'd only been at CBS for a year, but there is at every night part of the Round Table analysis discussion at the end of the broadcast these veterans were very aggressive and whatever question was asked one would answer it the others would disagree whatever the answer was and they'd fight for 10 minutes in the show would end and they'd never let me talk ever I would stand up by we did was we actually sat it was around table. And I you might hear but I or You might hear that's a but that's all but and I would be introduced apparently it looked terrible night after night of just having this woman introduced but never heard from so finally, oh, you know this so finally the boss is said look if you don't let her talk tonight, we're not going to do this anymore. It looks terrible. So I knew I was going to talk everybody knew I was going to talk and yet for some impish reason our moderator who was John Hart started the segment with the following well folks. What's the gossip about the FBI director? So I said to myself well, I'll take the next question. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to answer gossip but the men all physically turn in, (00:11:03) you know, take it away (00:11:04) kiddo, but I decided I was not going to answer the question. So I just sat there and there was horrible deadly pause that went on and on until finally Dan schorr said live Primetime television. Oh, well John if it's gossip you want that's why we have a woman here. So I remember very desperately wanting to hit him. I do remember that. I don't remember what I said. It made no sense. I rambled I'd had no connection to the topic of the question. I was a disaster ran upstairs after the show called home. Daddy, how do you write a letter of resignation? I can never ever show my face again went on and on and my father said look you were great. You were brilliant. I have never heard such Crystal Clear thoughts in my whole (00:12:00) life. You are so much (00:12:02) smarter than those men. I am overwhelmed with how impressed I am with you and you looked good. He (00:12:08) said and then I said look daddy. (00:12:13) If you are not going to be honest with me because I was awful you put mother on the phone and my father said Mother's too upset. She (00:12:22) can't talk right now. (00:12:35) I used to think there could be no greater contrast between two presidents than we had between Carter and Reagan. I had covered the Carter White House. And when Reagan came in I was stunned. I'm not just talking about the ideologies. I'm talking about the whole Rhythm of the place. The Carter really was a workaholic. We all know that and focused on details and then we had Reagan. I mean they like to say he was nine two five nine thirty two five. I used to see him come to work in the morning. It was everything it was style. It was approached to an issue a problem. It was sense of humor and yet here we are. With George Bush and I find I'm saying exactly the same thing all over again. How can we have such a contrast between presidents Bush and Reagan are as opposite in their own ways as Carter and Reagan were and once again at stylistic, it's idiot. George Bush has very little ideology. He really is a pragmatist and I can see it there every time a big issue comes up and yet both Reagan and Bush are were wildly popular and what I'm intrigued with is, how can that be? How can we have two such completely different men one who had that strong sense of direction and just let us and and impelled us to follow him and George Bush who seems basically to take every issue as a comes on his desk and deal with it and we've been as a nation in love with both of these men with approval ratings that go off the charts. So what I've tried to do is explore that With you if I can tonight as you know, President Bush's ratings, I think our last poll showed him almost 80% extraordinary. What about quails numbers? I just threw this in our last poll want to guess 14 That relates to bushes. I think it was 76. What's up with Reagan? Some analysts said that his popularity was because of his strong sense of direction and even when people didn't agree with him just because he seemed so sure and was so strong about it that was appealing to people other analysts say he was popular because he was so conservative and that the country had shifted to the right so that people wanted to go in the direction. He wanted to take us and still other analysts talk about a solid hard core constituency. That was his that supported him. No matter what he did. And so whenever anything went wrong, he never fell below a certain percentage and that that accounted for his high approval ratings, but I would like to argue that Reagan strength was based far less on his ideology and his sense of direction then on his television image. His popularity I think grew less from his right wing leanings then from his likability on the tube. And when I say likability, I really mean it in the sense that you all meant it when you were here at the University of Minnesota popularity in the high school or college sense a good guy kind of like ability. I started covering POTUS in 1979. You know what POTUS is it's the secret service code name for the president of the United States when you walk around the White House, if you ever get to go into a really senior officials office and look at his phone the big red little button says POTUS on it. So it is sort of a code. It's not the official secret service code name. They have cute things like Rawhide and stuff like that. But this is what is on the phones and the on the writings. Anyway, Jimmy Carter was POTUS when I started and he was not popular at all. Of course one reason was the economy High inflation gas lines. We all remember that but I thought that that a layer of unpopularity can a layer be underneath grew as much from our sense that he was pessimistic and sanctimonious that there were certain personality qualities that we had grown to dislike and what that did was make him susceptible to be blamed for everything that went wrong negative stuck to him like flypaper, you know about Reagan's Teflon while Jimmy Carter was was Teflon. I remember his brother Billy made a deal with the libyans everybody blamed Jimmy Carter. Remember the the killer rabbit. Well, the cartoonist didn't let go of that killer rabbit for years. And then we had Rambo Reagan, right he comes along and not one negative ever stuck to him. And what was what did he have? Well, he just had popularity. It was baked on and we gave him the benefit of the doubt because we liked him and when you give a guy the benefit of the doubt you find excuses not to blame him blame someone else forgive him quickly forget it and that's what happened and it grew out of the image that we saw of him on television that was nurtured manicured planned orchestrated. Just like a Hollywood movie every word every step every scene every camera angle planned out ahead of time and he followed the script in it was not an accident that he summed up his 1984 campaign with an 18-minute music video. This is true. Do you remember the convention 18 minutes of pictures and music and all these images that they work so hard to present to us conveyed a sense of strength compassion Grace. What a great walkie had manliness and with each time the affection grew it also Grew From his special use of language. He was able and Bush we all know doesn't have this quality. He was able to convey a sense of sadness when there were tragedies for all of us or even a sense of happiness at joyful moments for all of us he knew how to look for and make sure his speech writers gave him the best language which is so important to leadership to bind us together in the big moments that counted and all of that was done on television it in an extraordinary interview done. By Bill Moyers on PBS of Michael Deaver who was President Reagan's media advisor Deaver told Moyers that they presented a picture of Reagan that wasn't true that they gave the public qualities of his that weren't his true qualities for some reason Moyers didn't say. Well, what do you mean for instance? So after I saw the documentary I called someone who had worked in the Reagan White House and I said, this is what Deaver just said. What is he talking about? And the fellow said, well, one of the things he's talking about is the fact that Reagan was very passive and we made him very active. I said like what explain it to me, and he told me the following story, which I subsequently found out was in Devers book. And it is to demonstrate how passive he really was and the story takes place near the end of the 1984 campaign. When apparently the Reagan campaign got nervous that the that the Reagan's hadn't been going to church. So they decided to put on a church stop and Deaver picked the Reagan's up Sunday morning at the White House in a limousine was in Washington. And Nancy said well, what kind of church are we going to Mike? And he said we're going to an Episcopalian Church Nancy and she said well, I'm not going to have to take communion. Am I and Mike said well, yes you are. And she said well, I can't take communion Mike. I've never done that before. I don't know how to do it. Oh my God. I'm so nervous. I can't I can't I can't and Mike said look, it's simple. I'm going to walk you through it. I'm going to tell you what to do. It's so easy. Don't worry about it'll be fine. At which point the president said. What was that Mike (00:21:14) and Nancy said (00:21:15) Ronnie be quiet when we get there just do whatever I do. So my tells her what to do, they get to the church and Nancy said Mike. They're all drinking out of the same cup. I can't do this Mike and he said it's okay Nancy. Every third person is taking the wafer from the priest and dunking it and then taking it and it's fine. She said I'll be criticized. It's fine. You won't be criticized. Look every third person is doing it. What was that? Mike Ronnie just do whatever I do. Right? So the priest comes to her first and she takes the wafer and she is so nervous and agitated that of course it plops in the class and she looks down and it's floating around. She's devastated. She gives off that expression to the priest. He reads her face. He understands he realizes that she's upset and quickly moves it over to the president who (00:22:24) Very proudly very flamboyantly Plus. (00:22:42) All the image making made Reagan so appealing to us that as his presidency wore on we began to see something very interesting in our polling. And that is that when we asked the public, you know, I will how's he handling the economy? For instance? It was a sort of tepid number. How is it how about the drug situation tepid number has about foreign policy. Sometimes very negative. You'd get this sort of string of negatives. Then you draw the line and you'd expect them all to add up to a negative. But no you draw the line and you'd say give us your overall approval of the president and it would Skyrocket. So there was this disconnection that occurred between issues and overall approval and that's why I am so convinced that the feelings toward the president and it is also true. We see the same thing in bushes polling that there's been a disconnect between how we think about them emotionally and how we think about them on the issues and it is the emotional connection to them that really counts in our decision-making in our processes in our land in when we go to vote that we are voting more bait. We are forming our judgments based more on the reaction that we are getting off the tube that is quite emotional then from what we actually sit down when we put our minds to it to think it through in 1984 at the while probably right around the time that the rig is we're going to church. I had never thought about it this way. I did a long campaign. Peace for CBS it ran about four and a half minutes on the evening news. Now, you know, that's a documentary on the Evening News because the evening news if you take out all the commercials is only about 25 minutes long. So it's it was about a quarter of the show and it was quite critical of the Reagan campaign. The theme of the piece was that they had tried to create Amnesia over his policies that had become unpopular and it mainly focused around all his budget cutting for instance. You you would see him cutting the ribbon inaugurating a new nursing home and you would see him it with red flags and Bunting and little children waving flags and balloons were going up and there was a band and you heard me say over this picture little would you know from this picture that the president tried to cut the budget for nursing home construction and then you saw him at the handicapped Olympics put Metals around the little kids as they crossed the finish line and I would say little would you know that he tried to cut the budget for the handicapped and and all of these scenes. I did one on the environment to there was there were flags and and bands and balloons and the piece just came at it like that for four and a half minutes and when it ended I thought well, how will I ever go back to work at the White House? I'll never return my phone calls. This is really a tough piece. But the phone rang in my office which was unusual in and of itself and it was a senior White House official and he said great piece way to go and I said, wait a minute, didn't you hear what I said? He said that was you know, he said it was four and a half minutes of free media and we couldn't pay for so much publicity and it was all terrific and I said, but it did do you know what I was saying? He said look you guys haven't figured this out yet. But the public didn't hear a word you said. And I was really shaken because he was being serious. I could tell he said you haven't figured it out that the picture if it's strong and emotional will always drown out the word on television. That was 1984 and the minute he said it I knew it was true and had a never known it before and think about it yourself think about watching something complicated on a new show think about things you've seen where the picture May conflict a little bit with what you're hearing and use you turn around you say what what what did they say and it's gone and it was it was an astonishing lesson for me. So, of course, I talked about it all over Washington and finally a reporter from The Washington Post. Took my piece to a focus group at the Smithsonian. I was in the room and he turned my sound off and I watched the piece along with about a hundred and fifty people in the room go by and darn if it didn't look exactly like a Reagan dad it did of course, it was filled with morning in America. That's what it looked like. And so the the reporter asked everybody in the room. What was that and everybody said an ad for the Reagan campaign, then he put my sound on it and some people still thought it was an ad. And most of them thought it was a very positive news story. So it was proved then that reporter wrote a book about it went out and went back and did a whole lot of investigating and he found out which I didn't know through that whole campaign that they that the campaign did such things as go in send an advance team in wherever Reagan was going to speak figure out what time of day he was going to do his speech figure out where the sun was set the platform up just so the sun hit it just right put the band in the right place and then set up a camera platform. And Mark where the cameras would be CBS ABC NBC and then their own campaign camera, so that not only were we always shooting the same scenes as their campaign cameras were but from the same place and getting the same angles so that all our pictures did look the same and it was calculated and and I at least didn't know about it. Anyway, there's a book out on a video presidency that goes explains all of this. So it wasn't an accident at all. And you know, one of the things that's very telling about what's important in a presidency is the structure of the White House staff because every president will end up emphasizing what's important to him by the way, he organizes the people around him. And if you remember the first Reagan term had a Troika running the White House it had Jim Baker was chief of staff. Ed Meese was issues counselor and Mike Deaver. His media adviser was at the top of the White House pyramid. That's astonishing and I'm sure I'm not as an historian, but I'm sure if you look back in history, you won't ever see anything like that. And I know President Bush it's hard to find out who is Media advisor is in the white house today because he's not that interested in it. I clipped an article out of the wash the New York Times the other day. It was a piece by Tony Lewis and he asks why have Reagan's ratings been sleeping lately. Have you all seen these new ratings with President Carter has higher approval ratings and Ronald Reagan. And he asks it's an interesting piece because he says everything that we know today. We've always known about Reagan that you know, the appearance at the trial and the going for the 2 million dollars in that speech in Japan and he can't figure out why if we always knew what suddenly his popularity would decrease so much. Well, I know the reason it's because he's not on television the President Bush has an advisor who is a pollster bob Teeter and he told me this not not too he didn't tell it to me about Reagan, but he told it to me about presidents in general that they have to be on television all the time to keep their ratings up I once asked him I present why he thought President Bush's ratings on his handling of the drug issue had fallen in which it has has been a huge steep Decline and he says because he hasn't done a drug speech on television. He said if he does a drug speech on television is ratings will turn around and go skyrocketing in the other direction. Isn't that scary? I find that very chilling. Okay, so we have Reagan and it's television now you're going to say okay. Well bush is popular and he doesn't have a media advisor that manicures every little scene and or manipulates these photo sessions and he doesn't bush bush can't stand that he shuns it I once went into a news conference setting in the Oval Office. He has all kinds of different pools pool arrangements to do these news conferences and they call they call on the loudspeaker and they say the president will have a news conference in his office and it's the Oval Office pool. Well, none of us know what that is. So we can't organize ourselves because we don't know he's sort of invented three or four different kinds of pools. So every time we have a news conference, we ought to start from the beginning. Figure out who's in the pool, but we go in and I remember one particular time. We were outside he wanted to do it outside the Oval Office and the 19 reporters, which was wonderful one camera so that there were not a lot there was not a lot of confusion and he wanted it very simple and I said, excuse me. Mr. President. Would you please wear a microphone so we can hear you and he wouldn't wear the microphone. We can't stand all those trappings. So if it's television Leslie, how come he's so popular. So now let me tell you about some focus groups that I've heard about Lee Atwater told me this before he got sick. He said that they were doing focus groups. They were trying to find out what issues were on people's minds but at the same time they tacked on this question. What what about what's been bothering you or what what what you have to say about television and they said they kept getting back the same answers. Oh, Run over and over wherever the focus group was done. And that is a people are sick and tired of the bologna Factor. Well, what's that? Well, that's where everybody's a phony or no one's telling the truth or no one's being themselves and it applies to Paula Abdul. It applies to politicians. It applies to commercials ads. Nobody believes the ads anymore. And of course Lee said it also applies to people newscasters, but I didn't believe a word of that. But anyway the lesson that they all got from that is that that sincerity naturalness being yourself is a quality that the public will really appreciate and so I think they basically said, okay George Bush just go out and be yourself and he is he really is himself the few times I've gotten to talk to him without cameras and off to the side. It's the same person. You see when he comes out to do the little news conferences he does and I even think they've said to him. Okay, even if you look goofy, that's okay. As long as the public knows that it's you then they will like it and so we have this naturalness. There is some manipulation. I'm not going to say there isn't obviously those pictures with the grandchildren. That was a clear message to tell everybody. I'm a solid family man and the president himself even jokes about how the puppies gave him 10 points up in the polls. So there's still a lot of it that goes on but basically George Bush is is being appreciated because he is natural and sincere and honest and people like it and they like him. So we're right back to where we started which is that the like factor is essential to leadership in our country. Now that we are in to the television age to the huge extent we are and what happens with this like business is That as with people in our daily lives people we know at some point. We just decided we liked them and all we really need to do is see them to have that reinforced. So if once we've decided we liked him the president comes on the tube, we don't have to go through any kind of mental calculation. It's visceral we like him. So you're giving him the benefit of the doubt. You're not rethinking it every time the way you don't with a friend the same. There's the the converse to that is that once you've decided you don't like a president. He can't do anything. Right? What happened with Lyndon Johnson. It happened with Nixon and it happened with Jimmy Carter and it just with Jimmy Carter all we did was hear his voice and we clicked off we knew that we knew that that was all nothing. He could say was going to please us now Bush. Have we gotten to that point where? It's golden. Well, some people think we have I know that that his team is beginning to say this is not the shallow kind of popularity that so many of his critics were saying it was that we're beginning to get into solid liking here from the American people and what that means is if we do trip into a recession or have some problems overseas that the public will continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure his ratings would fall some but he'll be cushioned as long as he appears before us on television and we just continually have that reinforcement, you know in the good old days. We listened to radio or we read the newspaper to form our opinions about politics and about our leaders. I don't know if any of you any time lately have had the opportunity to hear a complicated news event on radio, but very recently I guess it was during the Iran Contra. I was stuck in a cab and I asked him to turn the hearing on we were we were broadcasting the hearing on radio and whatever I heard in that cab. I understood better and retained it better. And so I think that that I had ever from watching these earrings intelligent. So I think when we watch television, there's some kind of dulling as both senses have to come into play and I'm very worried about the fact that we are two such an enormous extent making our political judgments based on the viscera. Impressionistic reaction we get from television. Not only are we forming opinions about the president, but I'm sure it's true of your governor and all the other candidates that you go to the polls to vote for. I have a 12 year old in the 7th grade. She learns from television. This child doesn't read nearly not even close to the way we read when we were in the in the seventh grade what's disturbing to me in both cases politics and education is the television isn't going away. It's not going anywhere. It's going to become more of a factor in our lives. So I guess we shouldn't be asking is it good bad how we going to turn it off? I think we have to ask. How do we how do we change it or how do we change ourselves most particularly in education? There's no question in my mind that we have to bring television into the classroom. We can't turn it off. It's not going to happen. We have to bring it into the classroom and use it to teach our children because from from here on it's going to be the way they learn and educate our educational system hasn't begun to catch up with that now, I don't know what we're going to do about the political. Situation, but I think we have to start understanding all of us as Citizens that we do learn differently and that that what we're seeing requires a little more brain power and energy on our parts when we went if we decide to turn ourselves over to television to be our educator for our political system, you know usually around this point when I speak I take questions because I hope I provoked something interesting for you all too. To ask me about because I don't have the answers and I don't think any of us do if we'd say one day. We're not going to put the president's pictures on television. Then we're censoring him. That's number one. Number two, the more I hang around Washington and cover the president. The more confused I get about on what basis should we make our decisions about who will lead us if you go by the issues alone and then you come to realize that some staff person worked up the white paper on the issues in the first place and all the president does is put out these pieces of paper that has staff has put together or they've read some polls and they find out that the public is cares most about drugs and then so they work up some paper to feed out on drugs and then the fellow gets into office and all the issues. He ran on are irrelevant. Look what's happening in Eastern Europe this last campaign the Bush campaign beat up on the Dukakis campaign because Dukakis wasn't anti-communist enough. It didn't care enough about building up defenses and now Eastern Europe is no longer behind the Iron Curtain the Soviet economy is totally crumbling and that issue is moot. And yet they ran a whole campaign on it. So maybe character and personality are fine to make judgments on maybe it's all okay. Maybe we shouldn't be worried at all. The truth is I don't know I live with it. I live in it and I just don't know. I really wish I could take questions from you. I can hardly see you. Is it possible? That is an excellent one, but you know it did everybody hear that the question it was not really a question. It was a statement by saying look at Barbara Bush and how much we all like her because she is who she is and she comes through exactly without any apologies. But Bush does Bush does to actually I think he doesn't put on any any airs. We're seeing pretty much the way he is I'd love to go off on a tangent and talk about Barbara and Wellesley College. It's really filled up my head. I'd love to do a show on it (00:42:05) next Sunday like to hear that. Anyway, I (00:42:09) can someone else shot a question. I'd love to hear what you think about this are Aunt what else do you want to talk about? I never end this thing. I just go on and agonize. John sununu what kind of power does he have? Well, you know, it's interesting about Bush. He's a much stronger president than anybody thought he was going to be and to an enormous degree. He's his own Chief of Staff as he is his own Secretary of State and I think sununu has power for a couple of issues that he cares about and I think he brings the point of view of the conservatives into the White House and to the president because he is a conservative but he I'm not sure he's that powerful. I think the bush resists being told what to do he seems to dislike. Maybe it's a reaction to what he saw in the Reagan White House one. Maybe it's just who he is, but he seems to resist the idea of being run by a staff. And so sununu has his ear but he doesn't I don't think he comes in and tells the president he was what you should do in the president goes along with him. What'd Mondale and Dukakis do on television? I'll tell you a great anecdote at the end of The Campaign on Face the Nation. We have a tape editor who was absolutely brilliant and every now and then he says comes to us and says I'd like to do a video essay and he's done several for fascination. We give them about four minutes and there he went back in that particular case and got just gathered pictures from the campaign of both sides and he did a sequence on eating, you know, all the different funny Foods. They both ate needed of there was a segment on Transportation all the funny things they rode and got on clothes and it just was quite amusing and he put some music to it and what he does what he does is he'll do it by himself and then I and the producers go in and look at it and we check it out for editorial content. So I watched it and I laughed a lot. I said that's the most unfair editorial comment. We can't put that on television. That's that's really unfair. He said why I said every single shot bushes smiling and having a good time and you didn't put one picture of Dukakis in smiling and he said Leslie, there aren't any there is not one picture of that man smiling the whole campaign his body language in every scene and I actually went to the raw tape because I didn't believe him but it was true. Every picture. We saw was of a man saying why am I here? I'm going to kill the staff man who got me into this get (00:45:02) me out of here. (00:45:04) And I think what happened was people it was what I was saying, you just form kind of a visceral Judgment of a guy was miserable and people began to think. Well, I'm not sure I want him to be president and I do think that these very personal little personality popularity qualities play a big factor in the back of Our minds we don't articulate it. We don't turn to our neighbor and say hey, did you see that Dukakis didn't smile last night, but it begins to form somewhere within us where we make our judgments and we walk away from it and Mondale have it was also disliked television a lot and I think to some extent looked uncomfortable as well. So I don't know television everybody's everybody who runs for office is going to have to be an actor so that that's a given and then we're going to expect them to be brilliant and clever on top of that because someday that's just going to be So accepted you're not going to be able to even get off the ground without it. I was our issue politics dead. Well, I think that that if there were a recession or when there is a recession when there's High inflation when and if interest rates get to the point where it begins to affect most of us. We'll begin to listen harder. I think we're a little anesthetized with having so many years of steady growth and low inflation. And I also think we're a little anesthetized by what's happening around the world because we're not threatened and when people aren't threatened particularly Americans because was so insular, we always have been big countries like these always are we where we never really look outside that much and I think it's somewhat understandable that are hearing levels away down, but I think if we're if we feel that the crises are real and not just on paper the way I think most people feel about the deficit for instance, but they're real in the way that will affect them and their families I think people will be much more concerned about issues. But I'm guessing it's just what I feel and I don't know what you think your guess is as good as mine, but I do think people are pretty deaf to the issues and have been for the last two elections. Here's one. How do I if affirmative action was primarily invented for minorities? How do I see myself benefiting from it? Well, because in those days women were considered a minority hard to believe but we were we certainly a man already in the workplace and we were included in the affirmative action goals. So when I was hired in 1972 by CBS, a lot of other women were hired to it was just a year where suddenly miraculously a lot of companies not just my company a lot of companies in America hired a lot of women and minorities. and I've benefited because I was given an opportunity and Sandra Day O'Connor says the same thing by the way woman in the white house. Let me let me ask you something. That intrigues me. Here we have. The most open wonderful Society on the planet and we have equal rights and England has Margaret Thatcher. I mean we don't want how does that Society? That's such a sexist society. How did they raise a Margaret Thatcher? They have a couple of other women who've risen right to the top of their political system parties. They have another woman who was number two in what they have a third party over there Liberal Party Shirley Williams, exactly and our women don't bubble up to the top and I'm intrigued by this maybe it starts with the governor's there are several women who are now Governor's but it's it's a it intrigues me why our society you would think we would have we would have women right up there running for president by now. I mean, I hope there's a woman who runs for president in the 90s, but it's strange to me that we haven't already. I think we're there. I think the country would vote for a woman if she were qualified. I really believe that I also believe the country would vote for a black if he were really qualified just feel that but I don't know who would be to answer your question directly. I mean, I don't know who would be the person to run and you know and really get ahead and you know, no one's running right now. I was just telling Nancy Selleck who picked me up at the airport that if you if you consider this, they've moved California up so that that comes as the primary right after New Hampshire and if someone isn't out there raising money right now Richard Gephardt told me this two weeks ago. If you're not out there raising money right now, you can't conceivably get enough money to buy television time to run in California. You have to buy the ads ahead of time. You can't wait to win the New Hampshire primary and hope to get enough money to put it into California fast enough. So the point is that if you're not running for president now, you almost can't run and nobody's running. It's kind of frightening. All right, what is the standing of the Minnesota delegation in Washington boschwitz? You're not going to ask me this question. Are you (00:51:03) I thought you got to be nice to (00:51:04) me. I'd love to hear what you think about Barbara Bush being invited to speak at Wellesley. Okay. (00:51:12) Yes. Does anybody agree with the (00:51:15) women at with a girls at Wellesley who are opposed to it? (00:51:20) Well, I don't know I don't get (00:51:22) it. I don't get it. I think that that if you look at a woman who or anybody man or a woman they have a right to a certain extent and maybe to a large extent to be judged for what they're doing now and you know the message that she is sending out to the country is so important. It's the one that was mentioned over here before which is be yourself. I think it's a wonderful message. I also and I'm a mother. I'm a working mother but I'm a I guess I'm a mother first and I think the pendulum Word being good parents has to swing in that direction. We have to have the pendulum swing toward caring more about children in this country. (00:52:11) And well, right we do and she does that but let me tell you a little inside inside (00:52:18) story and it is an inside story. She invited six or seven reporters to lunch one day. Gosh, it was months ago. We were sitting around and she was it was an aside. It was an aside. She said, you know, I worry about working mothers because you say that you give equal amount of energy to your job and your children. She said but I've watched and I know that you working mothers go and give all the energy to work your job in the daytime and when you get home you're tired and sometimes you're just too tired. Well, you can't be too tired and she sort of got on a little roll and she said you had you you must not let the energy flag the minute you walk in the door as if the days over you have to find a way to start the day all over again for your kids when you get home at night. It had an enormous impact on me so much so that I went and I got a whole lot of stills of her and I had my notes from I wrote down everything. She said she was she was talking about children. I just writing writing writing and I took her Stills and I wrote down what she said and I put it on Face the Nation it had not I think I was doing a story on arms control it at the end of the show up up these pictures of Barbara Bush. She's right, and she should I think she should be out there talking more about child rearing and the importance of giving your children energy. I just think she's a great model and I she's a great role model for any person man or woman. I don't get it. I really don't get it. (00:53:55) So (00:54:03) What is all this a great question? What is the impact or importance of the president's personality and character and our country's relationship with other countries and their leaders. Well, this is an interesting thing about personality because it is a far greater. We talked I talked tonight about how we vote for someone because we like them but the but the leaders personality has a much larger impact on our policy than we ever imagined its domestic but but with bush it's an overwhelming factor in foreign policy because he wants to deal in such a personal level with the other leaders and he sets up these one-on-one relationships so that they know each other very well and he can pick up the phone and have a personal conversation and they get to like or dislike each other and I Elliott Abrams who had a lot to do with our Latin American policy in the Reagan Administration wrote a piece in the Washington Post last week. It was a very critical piece because he he said that bush likes Gorbachev and so he wants to help him Bush likes Helmut Kohl and so he's helping with the unifying of Germany bush like dung qiuping and he found it very difficult to clamp down on China Bush does not like it sucks chimere. Of Israel and it is one of the few cases where we have publicly slammed another country by public, you know in the state department Nelly today Abrams went down this list of how much bush is taking our policy in a personal way. It's very interesting Reagan was completely the opposite totally the opposite and he didn't have personal relationships in that sense at all with anybody but bush is now doing that in domestic policy. He's having this budget Summit and it will be with a very small group of people most of whom he likes and gets along with personally and I'll get into the closed room and it'll be very secretive because we reporters will go nuts. We'll just go insane will be banging our heads on walls all over town trying to figure out what's going on in there, but he will reduce it to a very visceral personal one-on-one 10921093 situation and try and solve it that way. So I think that even in that sense personality Is a huge factor in our policy and how and how issues and how the how the course of our history is going to go? When will Dan quit where will Dan Quayle be in 1992? (00:56:48) Well, you know that if you (00:56:49) came to Washington and you were invited to a Washington dinner party, you would search absolutely I guarantee it get to talk about that because that's the hottest Topic in the town. Can Dan Quayle make it to the presidency and everybody has a theory and everybody talks about it. So who knows? I think that you know, anybody can learn to be good on television. (00:57:18) I have I want to leave you with one (00:57:21) piece of advice that I was given that I liked so much. I want to pass it on to you and it now that we've talked about Barbara Bush. It's particularly appropriate. It was an old friend of mine who said you know, there are a lot of people now in our society who are juggling a lot of balls in the air all the time not just their jobs, but their children and their husbands and wives and older parents and friends whom we don't want to give up and the advice was always remember which one's of the balls that you have in the air the glass ones and make sure those never drop. Thank (00:57:57) you.