She was a middle-aged housewife from Alton, Illinois. But in the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly launched an anti-feminist crusade that would make her a household name — lauded by many, revered by some, but hated and smeared by many others.
Schlafly positioned herself as the defender of traditional motherhood, becoming virulently anti-feminist, and the leading opponent of the then still-pending Equal Rights Amendment.
As the founder of the group Eagle Forum, Schlafly also had huge influence on the direction of the conservative movement in America.
She even had a syndicated column, and in 2003 she published a collection of those columns, a book she called Feminist Fantasies.
So this is one of the several times that I interviewed her over the years. So here now, from 2003, Phyllis Schlafly.
In 1972, Colorado was a very conservative state that today we would call a “red” state. But in ’72, voters elected their first ever female member of Congress, the young Democrat Pat Schroeder.
She won re-election in each of the next 11 elections, eventually serving 24 years in the US House of Representatives, becoming one of its most influential members.
She even considered joining the 1988 race for president, but ultimately decided against it. And the way she exited the race became a point of controversy in and of itself.
I met her in 1998 when she wrote a memoir which she called 24 Years of Housework and the Place is Still a Mess.
Today’s Republican party has a problem attracting young voters. But it’s not a new problem.
More than a decade ago, conservative commentator and author Margaret Hoover — great granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover — recognize the problem.
I met her in 2011 when we talked about her book American Individualism.
And as you listen in the next few minutes, you may recognize some familiar themes that permeate politics to this day, including the Republican identity crisis Margaret Hoover talks about.
So here now, from 2011, Margaret Hoover.
Margaret Hoover is 45 now. She is host of “Firing Line” on PBS.
In 1993, the term “woke” had not been invented yet. But a prominent law professor nominated for a high position in the US government Saw her nomination done in by what we would now know as “anti-woke” sentiment.
Her name was Lani Guinier. President Bill Clinton nominated her to be assistant attorney general for civil rights.
That’s, of course, when closer scrutiny of her past writings began. And, she says, that’s when the misrepresentations of her writings began.
Guinier was a strong advocate of voting rights, and a strong believer that all minority voices should be heard in a democracy.
Ultimately, her voice was drowned out by her critics’ voices, and President Clinton withdrew her nomination.
I met her the following year, when she was on a book tour. So here now, from 1994, Lani Guinier.
In the summer of 1992, then US senator Al Gore from Tennessee was thrust into a much more visible public role, when Bill Clinton selected him as his running mate on the Democratic ticket.
That was also about the time Gore published his first book about the environment, a volume called Earth in the balance
And that’s how I met Al Gore, just a few weeks before he was nominated to be vice president.
The day I interviewed him if he had any indication that he was about to be nominated to be on the Clinton ticket, he did a really good job of hiding it.
So here now, from 1992, senator Al Gore.
Al Gore served as vice president under Bill Clinton for 8 years, before seeking the presidency on his own in 2000. He lost that election by a razor thin margin to George w. Bush. Since then, Gore has cemented his reputation as a leading advocate of environmental causes.
Fifty years ago this week, a botched burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC touched off a criminal conspiracy that eventually brought down the president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon.
It’s the scandal that to this day is simply known by the name of the office complex where the burglary occurred: Watergate.
All this week on Now I’ve Heard Everything we’re featuring interviews I’ve done with figures connected to Watergate. Our last episode featured former Washington Post editor Ben Bradley. On Friday, my conversation with the mastermind of the burglary, G. Gordon Liddy.
One of Nixon’s loyalists at the center of everything was his White House counsel, a young lawyer named John Dean.
As the investigation into the cover-up began to widen, Dean quietly began cooperating with prosecutors.
Later, famously, Dean was heard on a White House tape telling the president:
Dean recounted that episode in his congressional testimony:
After serving a brief prison sentence for his role in Watergate, Dean wrote several best-selling books, and his political views changed, as well.
And in the last 20 years, Dean has become a strong voice against what he sees as the authoritarian nature of the modern conservative movement – Republicans, in particular
In 2005, Dean wrote a book called Worse Than Watergate, which was followed in 2006 by one called Conservatives Without Conscience. And that’s when I met him.
And then we talked again a year later, when he wrote what was the third book in his trilogy.
So what you’ll hear now is first an excerpt from my 2006 interview, then after a short break, my 2007 conversation with John Dean:
John Dean is 83 now. His last book, Authoritarian Nightmare, was published in 2020.
Newt Gingrich was first elected to Congress from George’s sixth district in 1978. By the end of the 1980s, he had risen to a position of leadership in the House GOP.
In 19 for Gingrich was a leader in the Republican wave that took over the house, and Gingrich became the first Republican house speaker in 40 years.
But by 1997 infighting in the party put Gingrich on the defensive.
Gingrich himself help fan the flames of discontent when, in late 1997, he almost single-handedly shut down the federal government. It was a squabble over a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. And Gingrich was upset because he had apparently been snubbed on a flight on Air Force One.
In 1998 Gingrich wrote a book he called Lessons Learned The Hard Way.
So here now from 1998, Newt Gingrich.
Newt g resigned from the house in January 1999. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
Gingrich is 78 and remains active in Republican politics. His new book Defeating Big Government Socialism: Saving America’s Future will be published in July.
For 21 years, from the mid-1950s to the mid ’70s, mayor Richard j. Daly ran the city of Chicago. And I mean he ran the city.
One member of Daley’s cabinet was a woman named Jane Byrne, who was Chicago’s Commissioner of Consumer Sales.
Not long after Mayor Daley’s death in 1976 Byrne left her city job, and ran for mayor herself in 1979. And against the odds, Byrne won. She became not only Chicago’s first female mayor, but the first woman to be elected mayor of any major U.S. city.
But 4 years later, when she ran for reelection, the tide that had swept her into office swept her back out again.
In 1992, Jane Byrne wrote a political memoir, and that’s when I have the chance to meet her.
As many others of his generation were, former Colorado, senator Gary Hart was inspired to get into politics by John f. Kennedy, and Robert f. Kennedy, and their contemporaries in the 1960s.
By 1972, hard had established himself as a rising star in the Democratic party, and ran George McGovern’s unsuccessful campaign for president.
Two years later, heart ran for US Senate from Colorado and one. He was reelected in 1980. But he had his sights set on higher office.
He ran for president in 1984, narrowly losing the nomination to Walter Mondale. And he ran again in 1988, until his candidacy was done in by allegations of sexual misconduct.
I had the chance to interview Gary Hart several times during the 1980s and ’90s, including the interview you’re about to hear. Heart had just written another book reflecting on his years as someone who tried to be a political reformer .
For context, this interview was conducted less than 6 months after Bill Clinton was first elected president. And no one, including Gary Hart, knew exactly what the next few years would bring.
So here now, from 1993, Gary Hart:
Gary Hart is 85 now and remains active in public service.
For over half a century Robert Byrd served the people of West Virginia in Congress, first in the House of Representatives, then in the United States Senate. He was, in fact, the longest serving US senator ever, until Michigan’s John Dingell surpassed him.
And if you think West Virginia’s current Senator Joe manchin has outsize influence, he’s nothing compared to what Byrd had.
The one and only time I had a chance to meet Senator Byrd was in 2004. It was just a couple of months before the presidential election, in which George W Bush was running for re-election against Democrat John Kerry..
Byrd had written a book obviously intended to help carries effort, in which Byrd scathingly criticized President Bush for the Iraq War.
That’s the background on the context. So here now, the interview. My 2004 conversation with Senator Robert Byrd.
