The Axe Files - Ep. 71: John Dickerson Released August 1, 2016 [00:00:06] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the "Axe Files", with your host David Axelrod. DAVID AXELROD, "THE AXE FILES" HOST: I've been around political journalism all my life. I've seen a lot of great reporters print and broadcast over those years. John Dickerson really belongs in that class of great, thoughtful, insightful reporters. That was true when he was at Time Magazine for 12 years. It's been true in his work for Slate and now as host of Face the Nation. He's also the host of Slate's political Gab Fest, a very popular podcast. And one of his own calls, Whistle Stop, that goes into the history of some of America's most interesting presidential campaigns. And now he's turn that into a book by the same name which comes out in August. I had a chance to sit down with John at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to talk about this current campaign, his career, and his upcoming book. John Dickerson, welcome. You know, in -- in reading your story, I had -- I saw echoes of my own life because we both had, in different realms, mothers who were successful, pursued careers single-mindedly and maybe sometimes to the detriment of kids. And you know, my mother named me she says because she thought it would look good in a byline, which was embarrassing me to later when I actually became a reporter because I didn't want to feel like it was -- I was fulfilling her destiny. Your mom, Nancy Dickerson, was a ubiquitous presence on television when I was growing up. Did you -- did she inculcate you with this mission to be a journalist? JOHN DICKERSON, CBS HOST, "FACE THE NATIN": She must have, although as you say -- and she -- Iver (ph) says I'm -- you know, it's strongly resisted to it and her for a period of time. I mean, I -- when my parents divorced, I moved out and lived with my dad basically from age 13 and that was it. You know, then I went to college and that was the end of it. So, if you had told me at age 13 and 14 that I would end up being a journalist, I would have laughed in your face. I would have gone on at length about how that there was no way that was going to happen. If you told me I was then going to work on the show that she started on at... AXELROD: Right, she was assistant producer or something... DICKERSON: Right. AXELROD: ...on Face the Nation. DICKERSON: Yes. She was I guess they called it associate in product in the kind of antique title on the very first program. And she helped book Senator Joe McCarthy. She was from Wisconsin and had -- so, she -- you know, like Bobby Kennedy, who had worked for McCarthy. She had complicated feelings about Joe McCarthy. Obviously it was not a -- at that point, McCarthy was a mess. On the show, he actually went and insulted his fellow senators in a way that you know you thought he'd already insulted enough. He took it to a new level. But anyway, she got the booking. So because of this relationship she had with him because she was from Wisconsin, so she... AXELROD: Did you go back and look at that show? DICKERSON: Yeah, I did. And he calls it the Senate Inquiry into him a lynch be (ph), which is an expression we don't use any more. But you know basically he had a thread of a relationship with his

1 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

fellow senators and that just cut it. I mean, that was it when he said it was a lynching. AXELROD: One of the senators he had a relationship with was Jack Kennedy. DICKERSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Bobby had worked for him. I mean, so yeah. It was complicated. That first show is a great antique of television by the way, just the kind of low-quality -- and yet, it's basically the same show, just questioning politicians. AXELROD: I just -- I should know this, but who was the host of the first show? DICKERSON: Hold on. Jep Cadou is the Saint Louis editor who's on the -- oh no, what's his name? Hold on. AXELROD: Already hard questions I've... DICKERSON: Yes, I know. Hold and I can remember. Oh man. We'll have to -- it escapes me at the moment. But... [00:05:07] AXELROD: This is my hope for you. This is my hope for you that 50 years from now people will remember who the host was when Barack Obama appeared on Face the Nation in July of 2016. DICKERSON: There's only one host really, and that's Bob Shieffer. So, you know, I -- it'll come to be. But we'll be in the middle of another conversation -- AXELROD: OK. DICKERSON: -- and I will blurt it out. AXELROD: All right. But anyway, so how -- so when did you realize that this is what you wanted to do? DICKERSON: So, I -- when I went up to college, I was -- I went to the University of Virginia. I wanted to study government, politics. I loved it. And then I had a... AXELROD: Why did you love it? Did you... DICKERSON: Oh, because I think -- that's a good question. So, I like the idea of legislation and the you know -- the romance of when things used to get done in Washington. AXELROD: Yeah. DICKERSON: Of presidents proposing something and then Congress fighting back. And I must have gotten that from my mom, and just growing up and hearing her tell stories, and learning about also -- you know, reading the Federalist papers was -- and to just the foundational ideas of the countries for me was something I just loved. AXELROD: Did you think at any point of actually being involved in politics?

2 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

DICKERSON: No. I'm not sure what the end game was for me. I had no -- I had no conception of how it would end really. And the other horse I was riding at the time was a love of English literature. So, that was part of what I liked about politics too was the narrative arch of things. You know, the rise and fall of complicated men in that -- you know, in most of our history. And so then I went, swerved way off into English, and spent all my time studying English literature and really invested a lot of energy in that. And then suddenly I was graduated and had to get a job. AXELROD: I hate when that happens. DICKERSON: Yeah, and I didn't know whether I wanted to go to law school or be an English professor. But I needed a job, so my girlfriend, now wife, was moving to New York. I thought well I need a job. And so my -- I became a secretary at Time Inc. just because there was an election; I thought I might be able to do something having to do with the election. Once I saw the way they wrote stories at Time, which is a little bit more literary than in other kinds of news, I just kind of fell in love with it and... AXELROD: This was in '92 or... DICKERSON: Yeah, this was the '92 race. I went in '91, but it was in preparation for the '92 race. And through a quirk, I got involved in a little video they used to give away with subscriptions to Time Magazine. It was on the election of '92. And as a part of that, there was an interview series with Hugh Sidey. And... AXELROD: Legendary -- DICKERSON: Yeah. AXELROD: --Washington correspondent. DICKERSON: Exactly. Wrote the presidency for Life Magazine -- the presidency column for Life Magazine and also for Time. And so I spent all -- this was of course in the pre-digital age when you had time to spend with people. You weren't constantly filing, or tweeting, or responding to the same. And so I spent all this time with Hugh Sidey and listening to his stories about the characters but also leadership about -- I remember something he said in 1991 about presidential decision making that comes back to me all the time. He was quoting Kissinger who said as a president, "You can never get enough information. You'll always be taking in information, but at the end you just have to leap." And encapsulating in that -- AXELROD: That's so true. DICKERSON: -- of decision making, what President Obama talks about when he says you know one decision may have a 60 percent chance of going wrong and the other will have a 50 percent chance of going wrong. And you have to pick between the two. It's always a -- it's never a dead certainty with a president. AXELROD: Yeah, well first of all, everything that comes there is monstrously complicated. Obama always says if it were not complicated, somebody else would have taken care of it. So they bring you know everything, you have to be the solomonic figure who has to deal with the complicated stuff. And you know one of his qualities that I think had been -- served him well is the ability to make a decision and live with that decision because you're making consequential decisions all the time, and some of them are going to go wrong. And if -- but if you're standing on that 40 foot diving board having to make the

3 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

decision -- if you look down and worry about how it's going to work out too much, you can't make decisions. And so... DICKERSON: Secretary Gates talks about that with respect to President Obama. He wasn't sure a guy who had not come from an executive background was going to be able to make decisions. And in talking to him several different times about the president's decision making, he said he doesn't -- you know, he was surprised and affirmed that he has no problem making decisions. We obviously know the alternative case where you had presidents who you know kept holding rolling conversations about decisions and they never got made because they were always seeking for that next piece of information that would finally make the decision easier. None of the decisions are easy. [00:10:14] AXELROD: Yeah, no, no. No, no. So, you -- so, there you were at Time Magazine. You did this -- you did this video. And then you went and covered the Hill as... DICKERSON: Yeah, so I -- just to fill in the gap in between, because it was such a great period of my life, is there was a bank called the Bank of Credit and Commerce International which was -- AXELROD: Yes. DICKERSON: --an outstanding bank which was a part of drug running, funding mujahideen in Afghanistan which you could argue was funding the beginning of al Qaeda. There was weapons dealing. And the two investigative reporters at Time wrote about it and then went to write a book and I became their researcher. So, I got the keys to the file cabinet, which was great. And then Time needed somebody to cover the story. And nobody could understand the story because it was so complicated and colluded. Clark Clifford, the -- AXELROD: Yes. DICKERSON: --counselor to presidents -- AXELROD: Brought him down. DICKERSON: --brought him down, exactly. And so that's how I snuck my way into the magazine was basically I was the only one who could do all this stuff. And included, we had a -- there was a terrorist who had been a source for the book who came to New York. It was also being investigated by the New York District Attorney, so I got to hang out with them. So, I was hanging out with a lot of great and interesting people, terrorists, cops, people in the DA's office in that early period. And that's how I got to get into Time... AXELROD: Great preparation for covering Congress. DICKERSON: Exactly, exactly. And then they sent me down actually to Washington in '95 to cover economics which I had covered Wall Street for Time in New York just because I was the youngest person, they would put me on anything that was happening. And the market was jumping up and down. And so one day I'd -- one week, I'd cover the baseball strike, the next week the World Trade Center bombing, the first one. And then I did a lot of Wall Street stuff. So, they thought OK well, we'll send you to cover economics. The class that I got the lowest grade in, in college, was economics. But I had to

4 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

cover that for two years which meant basically the Hill and covering the budget. You know, ways and means and the budget committee, and then also the Clinton White House, which is where I got to know Gene Sperling, which is the -- so, that was a great but brutal period. AXELROD: Yeah. I -- you arrived there just in the midst of a momentous transition in Congress. That was at the time of the Gingrich revolution in 1994. What was -- what was that upheaval like? DICKERSON: It was -- well, it was great because so much was going on. I mean we think about it covering Congress now, yeah there's just not -- there's not much happening. This was both -- there was pushing legislation with 100 days, this was about transformation. This was Gingrich at his most rhetorically expansive, but also stuff was happening. He just won this big election, so you had to take him seriously. AXELROD: He won it and Bill Clinton had to reassess his approach because he had a reelection coming. DICKERSON: Exactly. AXELROD: So he an impetus to get some things done. DICKERSON: Exactly. And had to reassert his primacy in the constitutional system. AXELROD: Right. DICKERSON: Remember when he said you know the president is still relevant. AXELROD: Right. DICKERSON: So, right. And then you have the deal on welfare that's taking place. Meanwhile while you have -- Gingrich just send (ph) in, you have Bob Dole trying to run. AXELROD: Right. DICKERSON: Dole being arguably the kind of Republican Gingrich is running against. AXELROD: Yeah. DICKERSON: But then by the time Dole is -- by the time Dole is a Senate... AXELROD: Dole is a majority leader. DICKERSON: A majority of the Senate, wanting to run for president in 1996, worried about Phil Graham running from within the Senate as a more conservative Republican. And then by the time Dole is on his rise, Gingrich has become such a problem that Clinton is running ads with the two of them in the same frame together. AXELROD: Yeah. Well, and they had the big showdown on the government shutdown over cuts and Medicare and environmental protection and so on. DICKERSON: Exactly.

5 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: Do you -- when you -- you're a student of history. I know you arrived in Washington after Gingrich really took over the Republican caucus from Bob Michel. Do you -- I mean I kind of trace back the sort of -- the beginning of the kind of acrimony that we see today to that, that sort of hard-edged insurgency that Gingrich led there. Do you have that sense? DICKERSON: Yeah, I mean... AXELROD: And I'll tell you, I like Newt. I mean, he's an interesting guy and... DICKERSON: Well, it's funny because Newt ultimately gets run out by what he created. I mean, he called the conservatives who were running him out cannibals -- [00:15:04] AXELROD: Yeah. DICKERSON: -- which is really not that different from what John Boehner said when he said that the false prophets of the Right had created this sense in the grass roots that they were capitulating all the time on their core principles, and therefore he should be thrown out. AXELROD: Well, that's the way it is. One day you sit for dinner, the next day you are dinner. DICKERSON: Yeah, that's right. Or as -- who was it? It was -- well, the other line is you know one day you're on the cover of Time, the next day you're doing time in Washington. AXELROD: Sounds like a Chicago guy may have said that. But... DICKERSON: So, I think that's -- I think that's right. I mean, what Gingrich was able to do was take a back-bench complaint and turn it into a political movement. He wasn't just a bomb thrower, he actually made it -- he made it something that could transform. So, I think that's -- I think that's essentially right. And then you have the rise of -- I guess the other thing I'm thinking about in terms of what's made it difficult is you have -- and the rise of Ted Cruz, the rise of somebody who can come in and not have to worry about seniority, can create their own base of support outside of the power structure in the Senate, and basically do as they please until the Republican convention where he -- AXELROD: Yeah. DICKERSON: -- may have gone one step too far. But I think that's another contributing factor, which is you can now -- you now no longer need a committee chairmanship the way you used to. You no longer need to have actually produced legislation. And you no longer need the good graces of the majority leader. In fact, it's not too bad to be in a fight with the majority leader. And that, to me, feels like -- because Gingrich was saying we're going to have a revolution and then we're going to do a bunch of stuff. Ted Cruz is not saying I'm going to go X, Y, and Z. AXELROD: Right. DICKERSON: It's mostly let me stop now. Of course he's got a -- he had a president against whom he was pushing (inaudible)...

6 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: Right. I mean I think what's held the Republican Party together -- although you point out, there's all this intramural scuffling -- has been antipathy toward Obama. And what held that convention together last week in Cleveland, as we sit here today in Philadelphia, was antipathy toward Obama and Hillary Clinton. DICKERSON: Yeah. AXELROD: But when you strip that away, there's an awful lot of division within that party. It's a very incoherent party right now. DICKERSON: Well, when you're majority leader of the Senate who delivered the Senate to the Republicans gets booed when he comes on stage, when the previous vice presidential nominee who's now the Speaker of the House mentions that he was the vice presidential nominee in 2012 and almost no one claps, yeah, there's a (inaudible)... AXELROD: Well, that was interesting. Paul Ryan spoke and he really outlined his vision of where the Republican Party should go. And he did it to almost complete silence. DICKERSON: That's right. And his vision included Donald Trump, not as a whole human being, but merely as a hand that would be there to sign legislation that Paul Ryan brought him. And Trump returned the favor, mentioning Congress not once. This is -- AXELROD: Right. DICKERSON: -- supposed to be a unity event, and he doesn't mention working with the Republicans in Congress, which would just be a rhetorical cliché normally. I mean, you have to almost work in politics to not talk about at a convention how you're going to work with all the Republicans everywhere. I mean it's just what you're supposed to do. He didn't mention them one. AXELROD: Yeah, well, in fairness to him, you look at the numbers that Congress is running right now. And you know plague I think is several points higher than the institution, so -- DICKERSON: Yeah. AXELROD: -- associating yourself with Congress isn't necessarily the thing to do. DICKERSON: Exactly. And especially in the Republican Party, too, where they think that Ryan and McConnell sold them out, which is why they were getting such tepid responses from the audience. AXELROD: But we get ahead of ourselves because we're still on the Dickerson story. So, talk about where you went from there because you made -- eventually, you ended up making this very big transition. DICKERSON: Oh, yeah. Well, so we have -- the other great thing about covering just the Congress during the Gingrich years is that there was always something going on. You grab a member, you ask them what's going on, you know, and you talk to them. And that's best beat in Washington. And then you had... AXELROD: Gingrich himself wasn't exactly a guy to hide his --

7 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

DICKERSON: No -- AXELROD: -- thoughts. DICKERSON: -- exactly. And -- but so you had -- then you had impeachment, then you ahd the collapse of the Republican leadership. So, it was a great time to be covering Congress. AXELROD: What were your impressions of -- did you -- both Clintons back in that era? DICKERSON: I didn't know them very well because I didn't have that much interaction. The way Time worked, you were siloed. So, going into the White House except to have meetings with Gene Sperling or Laura Tyson, chairman of the Economic -- or, I guess she was Council -- AXELROD: (Inaudible). DICKERSON: -- she was, yeah, the... AXELROD: She was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. DICKERSON: Council of Economic Advisors and also she had one other -- she had -- anyway... [00:20:02] AXELROD: Yeah, she was the economic maker (ph) in there. DICKERSON: Economic -- right. So, I didn't really get a sense of the Clintons. I did go to one small briefing with Hillary Clinton during the Monika Lewinsky -- early days of the revelations about Monika Lewinsky. And Hillary Clinton had a group of reporters in to talk about it. A historian they were bringing to the White House, Richard Hofstadter who's fantastic. AXELROD: Yeah, absolutely. DICKERSON: And so of course nobody wanted to talk about history, they wanted to talk about what was going on at the moment. And I remember asking in like my most earnest kind of -- I remember saying you know you've said that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth gets its booth on. So, on the question of Monika Lewinsky, why not just be you know fully transparent about everything that's going on about you know what the relationship was -- because there were still a lot of questions. Any way... AXELROD: How'd that go over? DICKERSON: That didn't go very well. That didn't go very well. But I remember her at least not having me dismissed from the room. But yeah, so then covering campaigns, and then the Bush White House, now this exciting new adventure for the last year at Face the Nation. AXELROD: Well, because you are embarked on this exciting new adventure, you'll forgive me if we take a small break for a word from our sponsor. (BREAK)

8 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

Back with John Dickerson. I want to testify to the fact that he did not consult Google or any other mechanical device, and has come up with the answer as to who the first host of Face the Nation was. DICKERSON: It was Ted Coup. And the reason I had such a blockage is because in the show, they have remotes. And one of them is this guy Jep Cadou, who was in Missouri, and he calls to him in the remote location -- this is big stuff in television, like he's on the moon. So, he says, "Come in Jep Cadou. Come in Jep Cadou." And so, that first show for me is all associated with "Come in Jep Cadou." So... AXELROD: That Ted Coup and Jep Cadou. I mean, I will say you know Face the Nation is a great show, but you don't get that anymore. You don't get... DICKERSON: No, you don't. They were also -- that sounds like a short stop and second-base team you know over in the 1940's. AXELROD: Yes, yes. Yes, Cadou the Coup. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, let's talk a little bit about this, about the transition from being a print reporter to television, and how weird it is that you should end up -- we started there about your mom -- that you should end up in the medium that made her famous. DICKERSON: Yeah, it's a -- just from -- we'll start with the personal emotional part of it. So, I had this really rocky relationship with my mother, which was quite bad, for a very long time. Then once I became a journalist -- AXELROD: Bad because she was absorbed in what she was doing. DICKERSON: She was absorbed in what she was doing. I was an adolescent absorbed in myself -- AXELROD: As adolescents often are. DICKERSON: -- as they often are. And once I shed that and started to have encounters with the real world, and the occasional complexities of life. And it wasn't all so black and white, the way it is when you're 14. We started to become friends. And then though -- you know, when you've got to write a lead to a story -- you know, when she would say, "Well, here's the way Edward Murrow used to say write a lead. So, your first line should be "Jesus Christ listen to this.", then write your second line. So, that's pretty cool when you can have that kind of a conversation... AXELROD: Yeah. Did you -- by the way, when you were a kid, did you -- were there personalities around Washington personalities of the day? DICKERSON: Yeah. Well, my parents had a very social life, which is part of what I resisted. So, I was -- I met all kinds of interesting people. Some of the favorites were ones that -- there was a guy named Charlie Bartlett who's a -- AXELROD: Yeah. DICKERSON: -- Pulitzer Prize winning columnist who was also in Jack Kennedy's wedding, who was just this -- I don't know. He just was such a earthy, and rich, and interesting character. And Jack Valenti I knew, aid to Lyndon Johnson, as a kid also was a kind of character with a lot going on. And these were just my parents' friends. So, they're name in the history books, but they were also just friends as well.

9 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

And then lots of people paraded... AXELROD: Good story tellers. DICKERSON: Oh, great story tellers. Yeah. And there were stories to tell. I mean, it's -- I don't -- well, I mean, I'm sure there are those stories now, but they feel a little more locked up or maybe I was just in the right place at the right time. But there were all kinds of people who came through the house. As a kid, we were put at the front door and we used to open the door and greet guests to my parents' parties. So, I've met probably -- I mean I've met all kinds of people that I don't really remember meeting because I was so young. So, that was a -- so, it's emotionally to have became closer to my mother, then she died. And so -- and that was 20 years ago. So... [00:25:29] AXELROD: And you wrote a very, I think, honest and poignant memoire about your relationship with your mom. DICKERSON: yeah, because I basically discovered who she was after she died because her career was essentially over, which was also part of the complexity of our relationship. When you were one of the most famous people in American basically, as being one of the only women, and she was quite attractive, to then have your career disappear so quickly is you know -- plus there was all kinds of other -- you know, people will have to buy the book. There were other challenges going on. But she had kept everything. So, after she died, I discovered her life which also added lots of complexity to... AXELROD: By going through her papers and... DICKERSON: Yeah, she had kept her journals from when she was a little girl. And so her journals when she was a little girl, the hand-written poll that Lyndon Johnson had shown her in 1964 about why he was going to beat Goldwater -- he turned of course to be right about that -- letters to and from various different people, things about my parents' relationship. There was -- everything was in there. And... AXELROD: I -- when my mom died a few years ago, I had to get stuff together for her obit. And much like you, you know I found notes that people had written to her you know about her work from like the 50's. And all kinds of things that I never knew. So, there was this discovery after the fact. And it was moving. DICKERSON: Yeah, and you end up interviewing yourself, which is -- you know, it's sort of what do I feel about this thing that's just now happening while you're also trying to write the story of just tell people who your mother and who your parents were. AXELROD: So, now you're a broadcaster. DICKERSON: Now, I am. AXELROD: Just like her. DICKERSON: I know, I know. It's funny. Yeah, I mean it is. And one of her best friends was a guy named Paul Niven who was another host of Face the Nation briefly and then he went to NBC. She always used to talk about him. He was -- he had passed away by the time I was old enough to remember

10 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

these names. But -- so now, it's very weird. I not only think about what she would think about all of this, but I remember how she used to talk about people in this job. I mean, Niven and then you know obviously Sevareid, and Cronkite and Murrow and (inaudible)... AXELROD: Yeah, that's a pretty high-class group of people to hang around with from a journalistic standpoint. DICKERSON: Yeah. And she talked about them and what they believed and what they did in these really reverent tones -- AXELROD: Yeah. DICKERSON: -- old fashion CBS, you know 50's and 60's kind of tones about these were -- you know, it was the golden age of that kind of journalism. And she talked about it that way. And so that was... AXELROD: What do you -- when you think back to that and where we are today in our media, what have we gained and what have we lost? DICKERSON: What we've lost is a little bit of -- I mean, well, we've lost perspective, we move too fast, we don't -- what we've gained I think is more voices. If you go back and listen to some of the stuff that those great journalists said, it was incredibly opinionated. It was not as -- there's a bit of a myth that's grown up about the kind of dispassionate, just-the-facts-ma'am journalism. Eric Sevareid, wonderful voice, incredible broadcaster, he wrote some pretty peppery things that were not simply the basis of cool-headed reason. And so... AXELROD: Well, and Murrow you know was a mover of history with his commentary. I mean he was very instrumental in taking McCarthy down. The Harvest of Shame, his documentary, was a very impactful documentary about the migrant workers... DICKERSON: Right. That's right. And that was a different -- I mean, so you know, he built up currency as a radio reporter, and a just the facts, you know from the bombings in London -- AXELROD: Right, war reporter, yeah. DICKERSON: -- that allowed him to then become a commentator. I mean that's when he switched a little in terms of his voice. But I think we have more voices, which means there's no longer the Olympian truth being handed down to you, you know which allows -- if there's an alternate view, it's good to have that alternate view, kind of challenging the perceived wisdom of the people who've been elevated through their whatever reason, to a high level in the traditional media. So, I like lots of those different voices. [00:30:04] But I think we have more voices which means there's no longer the Olympian truth being handed down to you, which allows if there's an alternate view, it's good to have that alternate view kind of challenging the perceived wisdom of the of the people who been elevated through their whatever reason to a high level in the in the traditional media. So I like that -- those lots of those different voices. AXELROD: This thing of speed is -- you know I mean I was a young reporter, I covered presidential politics. There were new cycles. I mean you actually had you know, 12 or 24 hours to consider a story. Political reporters would go and get the car and drive around states and talk to people for a week at a time, and you don't -- there's no time for that now. People are -- you know, in the age of social media,

11 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

people are filing constantly, there are no deadlines. DICKERSON: It's absolutely true, and I went from Time Magazine which is a weekly -- in the first campaign I really covered in 1996, there were new cycles in the day, even though there was CNN, you still had kind of new cycles. You had time in between them to talk to voters, talk to campaign people, consider ideas bounce things around in a less frantic environment. You grew -- you developed a set of views about things that you then constantly tested, as opposed to just "I'm just, you know" -- I mean you let the -- what you were producing marinate a little bit, as opposed to just constantly being a short order cook. And that's -- so when -- then I moved from that to Slate, which was super fast. Like they wanted you to work all the time, and the editor there did this great thing which was recognizing the downside of that, he forced us all, at least once a year to go off and do a long project, which where you had to just leave your beat and go do something at length. And I did two of those projects. One was on risk-taking and you got to go do the old-fashioned journalism you never even could do a Time Magazine, but you know spend weeks with a Silicon Valley startup, a band that was making its own way, a general who actually ended up being the CENTCOM commander and some mountain climbers. And you know being able to really go into a story and why people do things, and why they’re motivated and why they take risks and when restraint is important and when lack of restraint is crucial. And then I did the same thing the presidency with -- which ended up being a set of the ideas that I talked about with President Obama four years after the series ran, but the -- if you can find spaces in the current media environment as a journalist to go work it -- work ideas at length, then you go back to the twitchy writing and you’ve still at that body of knowledge you're working off of, and that’s -- I thank God for David Plotz who was the editor, who forced us to do that. AXELROD: Who is your partner now on your podcast. DICKERSON: Yes, exactly. He’s wrong about everything else, but about that, he was totally right. AXELROD: The -- you know the -- this issue of immediacy also goes to the needs of news organizations and I work for CNN. It’s a cable news 24 hour operation. To get people to watch, there is an impetus to -- and I'll mean there -- I don't want to -- I'm not condemning my own -- I'm very happy there but -- and I think they’ve great job on this election but you know, events tend to get hyped beyond their actual importance. And you know every day is Election Day, every -- and I don't mean just -- I mean in the whole environment. So you know this week, we saw the chairman of the DNC resigned. Not a small story, but probably not one that’s going to have any impact on the election, but for 12 hours because nobody had anything else to cover, it became the most important thing ever. DICKERSON: Yes, everything you say is true. It's another reason why I was so happy to have gone off and done that kind of you know -- that long series on presidential attributes and what it takes to be president, because I felt like that question never gets asked. We’re in the middle of the campaign. People say campaigns are a job interview, but they never rarely sit down and say "okay well let's treat like a job interview for minute." what do you -- what skills would be required, and also if its a job interview that means we get to ask all kinds of questions that this -- that the system never lets us ask. I mean gets -- probe things that are you know, how people think, how they adapt, how they take risks, how they’ve worked with other people. If you actually asked those questions in a lot of interview settings, viewers and others would be like "that’s a weird question, whys he asking that?" But it’s central to the job.

12 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: Yes. DICKERSON: And that was -- we -- it was really great to be able to talk about some of that with the president because it's crucial to when you -- you know as you know better than anybody, the -- what you face when you get in the job is different than the way that job is covered. [00:35:02] And it's covered by the shiny thing that’s easily understood, that has a narrative flash to it. I mean, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, secret e-mails, Bernie Sanders getting screwed, even the convention where they're trying to show unity. I mean it has all of the narrative fun of it, but the what its missing is whether this is -- you know... AXELROD: If it means anything. Yes -- no, I know. Look I -- having spent a couple years in the White House, I thoroughly appreciate you know what's -- and part of you -- the White House itself is subject to these things you know, you spend a lot of your day trying to figure out whether you're chasing a rabbit down a hole in the media and -- or not. It's really difficult. So when you're doing your job, I mean you’re such a thoughtful guy and I think that comes through in your -- on your show. But how frustrating is it sometimes you have to feed the beast in terms of this -- in terms of this sort of media environment? DICKERSON: Well it's frustrating. I must say that, I mean CBS is wonderful about -- in all the shows I work on it, there's a shiny object moment and I feel like "look let's move past that pretty quickly, it's not a matter tomorrow." Nobody says" no we must." No, I'm not saying we’re, you know... AXELROD: No one is immune. No one is immune. DICKERSON: No one is immune, but I -- it's one -- something I really appreciate the challenge though is when you, coming from print, where sometimes I take two days to interview somebody, now I interview them in six minutes. and also I think it's true -- I think it's true that basically all politicians have become so much more guarded and so much more habituated to answering things in ways that aren't -- that really don't get you anywhere, and that it means you really -- you’re -- its sometimes just banging your head against the wall to kind of -- to get something that's a useful piece of information that will help people understand their world. AXELROD: You know, I used to prepare -- I used to do these things as a government official or as a political operative. And you know, we would spend time thinking like "if I were John Dickerson what questions would I ask," and you know, because you're under obligation to ask certain questions because on breaking news. It was pretty predictable, I mean not you, because you weren't there at the time, but others. And so you have your questions and I come in with my answers, and I'm not going budge off of my answers and you have six minutes, so you can’t asked me the same question in six different ways. And it kind of becomes a kabuki dance. DICKERSON: It does. My wife does media training, and she does -- she does all of that too, although God love her... AXELROD: She teaches people how to afford people like you. DICKERSON: They do -- she does, although actually, the bulk of her work is actually teaching people who do -- write about complicated stuff, how to make it. She's on the side of angels which is to say, complicated things and make it so that people understand what you're talking about.

13 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: Yes, that’s good. DICKERSON: She’s towards the conveyance of information as opposed to when she's helping people not convey information. But yes -- no, it is a kabuki, and the kabuki has elements in it that viewers add a part to it too, which is you know you put on 18 minutes about infrastructure spending in America, nobody’s going to watch. And I think there's a role I would love to... AXELROD: Which is a shame because... DICKERSON: Yes. AXELROD: ...because when bridge collapses, it becomes more interesting to people. DICKERSON: Yes, and I think that we all -- there's a mean you could easily write up the list. You and I know where our business needs to improve. You can definitely figure out where politicians need to improve, but I think you know there is a role for voters to be -- there's some changes voters and viewers need to make in terms of the way they process news. I mean, the number of people who complain about the superficiality of politicians and press coverage and then form a lot of their opinions based merely on the headlines of things that read, rather than reading through the whole thing and developing -- I mean it's big. And the twitter culture and snap judgment culture of our politics right now only encourages that more and more and more, is people not sitting with an idea and try to figure out what they really think about it, and that's a big thing we got a fix. AXELROD: I’d love to talk more about superficiality but I’ve got to take another ad break. [00:40:02] Back with John Dickerson. I want talk about this election, and then I want to talk about a project that I love that you are a unfurling in August, another book. You mentioned earlier Richard Hofstadter, the historian. He wrote a great little book in the 60’s called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" and I haven’t gone back and looked at, but I think I will. I'm glad you reminded me because he described a lot of what you would see in a Trump campaign. I mean, Trump speaking to -- you -- this book you've written that is based on the podcast that you been doing "Whistle Stop" about campaigns in American history, do you see parallels in the Trump campaign in any other campaigns that you've studied over the years? DICKERSON: Yes. I mean there are -- there are three. The biggest one is, well here, I’ll starts with the smallest one which is when 1840 William Henry Harrison is the first one to really campaign as a candidate, and the campaigns were totally frivolous. I mean, people were drinking hard cider all day, there were big parades, nobody was having a debate of the issues. So when you see Trump flying his plane over the stadium, in which he’s going to give a big rousing speech, it feels very much in touch with that. AXELROD: You mean when Ted Cruz was standing there and trying to... DICKERSON: Well that was -- that was one, but when -- in Alabama he had another speech where he buzzed and when he’s giving helicopter rides. That sense of the total circus, feels like its new, but it's old, ‘64 when it -- when Republicans try to stop Goldwater. I mean Mitt Romney's dad, governor of Michigan. AXELROD: Yes, George Romney. DICKERSON: George Romney is in the center of that effort, in much the same way his son was.

14 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: Yes. DICKERSON: And they can't do it because there is no real -- there’s a great line from there, Governor Rockefeller... AXELROD: Who was booed off the stage in San Francisco... DICKERSON: Exactly, as he tried to insert a plank against extremism and the party, which everybody in the audience knew was really a shot at the people who were -- the John Birchers and the KKK, which had supported Goldwater. But they can't get their act together and Governor Rockefeller, while they're -- the governors are trying -- Governor Rockefeller who’s lost to Goldwater in the California primary is trying to get -- work with these governors to find some alternative to Goldwater. And he tells the story of -- I think its Stu Spencer he’s talking to, where Spencer says "it's time to call in the establishment" and Governor Rockefeller says "I am the establishment." In other words, the establishment was losing it was just down to a single guy in the momentum of the party, and Nixon says to Pat Buchanan "if there's ever a stop X movement, you always want to be with X," because what he learned in ‘64 Nixon was trying to undo Goldwater a little bit himself; he finally jumped in from the parade. But he was basically saying if somebody is doing well enough that the people rise up to try to stop them that means they're doing well enough to go and when in an election, in this case at least just be nominated. But the -- but the ‘68 Wallace campaign comes back again and again as a couple of things. The element of surprise, people though he’s never going to get on the ballot. He got on the ballot in all 50 states. People thought it's just a regional thing, but in the north he was appealing to -- in ‘64 he had done well in some Democratic primaries, and so that was a little signal that. But he started to do well in the north, so well that both Humphrey and Nixon were worried about Wallace, because there were a lot of working-class whites who were resented riots, peace marches and also the African-American rising labor costs. AXELROD: And much as we see today, and I include myself in this, elites were slow to recognize the challenge because George Wallace was speaking to people who the elites weren’t associating with. DICKERSON: Absolutely, and there are wonderful -- one the great things about going back and reading all the press coverage of the times, is there are always great piece of analysis about how Wallace was really just a cat’s paw for Johnson. Basically, he convinced Wallace to run just to steal votes him on the law and order message from Nixon. And this was just like, it was to total fraud, total set up, not real. Same thing, they were just basically like this isn’t -- this can't possibly be a real effort. And people misunderstood that the sense of anger and then also when you see him and when you hear somebody talking about law and order, we’ve been talking a lot at Nixon, as -- I'm trying to use this as an illustration -- but it was really -- it was really Wallace who did it and appealed to, and used that language to appeal to fears that whites had about the raging inner cities. And also one thing that's crucial then that isn't happening now is you had busing and housing but -- so kids are being bussed to and from neighborhoods to go to schools where that -- you know they didn't grow up. I mean, in and that busing in the South in particular, obviously was a huge issue, but then housing too -- the idea that the federal government could mess with your housing. Those are -- we don't have...

15 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: There’s a tremendous reaction to the civil rights legislation of ’64, ’65. [00:45:03] ’66 was a banner year for the Republican Party. You know, in Cook County (ph) which is -- was very democratic at the time, Republicans took three offices in 1966 and race was very much a driver of that -- of that vote. So you see echoes of Wallace's message and Trumps message, but the country is a different country now in terms of the demographic makeup. Are there enough votes out there for this kind of message to prevail? DICKERSON: Yes. So there are a couple of things, that's exactly right. There aren't -- there aren't so of course Wallace didn’t prevail in the end either. AXELROD: It’d take five states as a third-party candidate. No third party candidate has done that since. DICKERSON: Exactly, and the gamble was -- or the thought was that he would take enough states to throw the -- throw the vote into the house, and then he’d have bargaining power. And Nixon tried to get Humphrey to agree to whoever won the plurality in the general election would just win, because he thought that if he got thrown in the house -- the Democrat house, Humphrey would win, even if Nixon won the plurality. But Humphrey didn't agree to that. So a couple of -- a couple of things, one you have Republicans speaking out against Trump in a way nobody spoke out against Wallace, and a nobody with anything really at risk spoke out. So when Paul Ryan has repeatedly called out Donald Trump, you didn't see that in the Republican Party. You know, Nixon didn't call out Wallace for making racial appeals. So you have -- so that's one change and that represents either a change in moral focus or recognition that you know, your offending more voters now then you would've had in Wallace's time. So I think that's a big deal. I think the other thing that there's an echo, and I don't know how this will wash out in the end, but Wallace made big appeals to the unions and in the Northwest -- I'm sorry, in the Midwest. Humphrey was able, and the unions were able after spending a great deal of money to basically say he's not really on your side. It was great, the argument is just like today where people -- analyst said you know Wallace is making a gut level appeal, it doesn't matter whether he’s going to help these people economically. He’s appealing to them by the gut, and we hear a lot of that now, how Republicans have appealed to white working-class voters... AXELROD: I had Mary Kay Henry from the SEIU with quite -- viewed as a quite progressive union on this podcast in the fall. And she said "I'm concerned that a lot of my members are responding to Trump," and I think you're going to see a lot of labor voters at least flirting with Trump around this issue of trade and his general appeal. DICKERSON: And somehow the unions were able to beat that back in Wallace's case, where... AXELROD: There was much stronger than... DICKERSON: Exactly, exactly a lot more -- they had a lot more -- they had more money and strength and organizing power, and that's another thing that's changed. But I think back to your first point, which is that the votes just -- I mean, the votes just don't look like they were there for Trump to get as many votes as he would need out of that portion the electorate while writing off the larger portion of the electorate, unless Hillary Clinton somehow helps him.

16 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: I know you did a show on -- yes, we’ll talk about Hillary in a second. You did a -- you did a podcast I think on the Willkie race in 1940, the last sort of businessman candidate, great race with Franklin Roosevelt going for his third term, and weak --weaker than he had been in previous elections. Do you see -- but Willkie was a progressive candidate. He was not a Trump figure in that way. DICKERSON: Exactly when he -- his announcement -- when Willkie announced, he boasted about how he was liberal because he wasn't going to let FDR and the Democrats say he wasn't liberal. He just thought the government should be more efficient when it was helping people do all these things. And that was not -- you know that was more progressive than the conservatives. AXELROD: But Roosevelt wasn't going to let him get to that square. He called him -- Willkie really lived in New York but he filed from Indiana workers from Roosevelt called "The Barefoot Boy from Wall Street." DICKERSON: Exactly. AXELROD: So -- and ultimately won that election but ended up making an alliance with Willkie around the war. DICKERSON: And Charlie Peters as this great book "Five Days in Philadelphia" I think it’s called. AXELROD: Yes. DICKERSON: Fitting, but his argument is basically that who Willkie comes out -- basic comes out of nowhere to beat Dewey and Taft and Vandenberg, ends up helping FDR -- creates the conditions for FDR to have a coalition that allows him to go to war. AXELROD: To get into the war. [00:50:00] DICKERSON: If he hadn’t done that, the Republican Party would've -- you know, if Taft hadn’t been nominated, he would been less -- much less likely to build bridges with FDR, and also wouldn’t of -- wouldn’t of shown that inside the Republican party there really was this interventionist -- or I should say non-isolationist wing. That once FDR saw that illuminated by Willkie -- because Willkie wasn't all for the war, he was doing a hell of a lot more than... AXELROD: He was an internationalist. DICKERSON: Yes, precisely. And that’s really -- that's one of the fun things about going back and looking at these races, is that -- is to -- is to take those turning point moments and really see how far you can run them. Even if it's not perfectly true, it's a -- it's a great way to can understand the story. AXELROD: And you’ve turned -- now you’ve turned this into a book, so we should plug the book. DICKERSON: Relentlessly, yes. Yes. I took the -- I took -- there are 19 chapters, 17 of them are Whistle Stops that I had already done, but what I learned is that a podcast is not a chapter make. So when you're writing about a lot of the forces in these races, you have to go back and basically rewrite the whole thing which was great, but also a heck of a lot of work in the middle of this campaign here. And then I added two brand-new chapters as well. And it jumps all over the place, I mean, so for ‘68 I do just the Wallace campaign, I don’t do the Democratic convention, which is of course a great chapter job yet to come.

17 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: Yes, right. DICKERSON: I don't do Nixon, you know... (CROSSTALK) DICKERSON: ...his whole renaissance. I mean, 1960, I just did Kennedy and West Virginia as opposed to the Kennedy- Nixon debate or any of -- so there's a lot of material still left with the... AXELROD: It sounds like a -- it sounds like a great read for political junkies. DICKERSON: You know, I think it -- I think it is. It’s -- there's a so much to be -- now because you could never have written this book 10 years ago, because I had a -- basically I had this fantastic researcher who was a PhD history candidate at the time who would send me all the -- I mean, so if I'm doing election of 1800, he would send me the broadsheets which are in PDF form, so I'm on a plane going somewhere and I can read the article and newspapers of the time, and that's true basically all the races. AXELROD: Yes, let's talk just in the remaining minutes we have further about this race. We’ve talked about Donald Trump. What about Hillary Clinton? We’re sitting here in Philly, she’s about to accept the nomination. Why has it been so hard for her to grab the advantage in this race? DICKERSON: We talked a little bit about the way in which campaigns and governing are two separate things and how campaigns maybe encourage us to pay attention to attributes that maybe aren't that important. In the presidency, there are some that are of course, crucial. I think it her case, I think she’s does not a good campaigner. I think she's -- her instincts are much more towards -- I mean, going back to when she was first lady -- even first lady of Arkansas, when you read what her friends wrote about her, what she said, her interest in life seems always to have been more policy, more the back room work. AXELROD: Mario Cuomo said you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. She's had a hard time making the transition from prose to poetry. What's it like to interview Hillary Clinton versus interviewing Donald Trump? DICKERSON: Hillary Clinton is a lot more cautious. She's vicious and very risk-averse in terms of saying anything. I mean if you look at her response for example to the DNC leaked emails about the DNC trying to undermine Bernie Sanders, her first reaction was "I'm very proud of my campaign." You can imagine another politician saying "this is an outrage The DNC is supposed to be neutral and I really hope they didn't do anything to help tilt the playing field because I won it fair and square on my own." I mean, you can imagine anything to show that kind of immediate... AXELROD: It seemed like you (ph) hostage drama though, trying to get Debbie Wasserman Schultz out of the out -- of the job. I mean you -- were you speaking about the 60 Minutes interview? DICKERSON: Yes. AXELROD: So this was before she... DICKERSON: This is -- right, before we knew -- you know before Debbie Wasserman. That was another challenge, which they have managed, we’ll see how it turns out. But they kind of managed it pretty well given that...

18 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

AXELROD: They move quickly. They move quickly. Do you find yourself frustrated interviewing her and what about Trump? DICKERSON: Yes, Trump is frustrating in a different way. I mean, I think Hillary Clinton -- there -- so she just more risk-averse which mean you need to have a longer interview to kind of get where you.. AXELROD: Do you ever feel like you've gotten to the sort of core there? DICKERSON: Sometimes... (CROSSTALK) DICKERSON: Well, I -- in a little way -- a little ways. I once said you know... AXELROD: I haven’t asked such a tough question since I asked who then host of... [00:55:00] (CROSSTALK) DICKERSON: No, but when I asked her, "give us three words that give people a sense of who you really are because there's this question people constantly have that they're not being real Hillary," and she just like... AXELROD: Which is one of the challenges this convention by... DICKERSON: Right, exactly. And a challenge of her campaign because as you -- I feel like an idiot saying this in front of you, but you know people make those kind of connections, I mean because you know it so well -- they make connections on levels that are personal. Anyway she just kind of threw her arms and said "I am a real person." I think that was a genuine expression of frustration with the process. It was a genuine response. It's not unimportant because people do make connections to politicians, not always based on their seven-point plan for rising wages but for whether they think they're an authentic human being. AXELROD: Yes, it's interesting because she does have all the skills to be -- I mean and the experience to be president, but running is part of the deal, and she seems frustrated with us at times. I don't know if you -- you must have watched the whole 60 Minutes interview with Tim Kaine, but she at one point said "you know, I get treated by a different standard than everyone else," which is sort of flipping on its head what we heard all last weekend in Cleveland, where people say "yes, she gets treated by different standards, she gets treated as a privileged class." She was in the opposite which is "I'm always the target I get treated by different standard." I'd struck me as unwise of her to say it, but I think it was a true expression of what she feels. DICKERSON: I think that's -- I think that's right. I mean I think she -- it's a -- it's a maybe its a corollary or it's the second -- its part -- I mean, the vast right-wing conspiracy argues basically there is a special effort to undo me by the right wing, and this is in a similar category which is we -- I have a special standard to me. And I think those are you know -- whether voters buy that are not, because voter -- you know, on this email thing the FBI is not -- again do you -- back to your point, the FBI is not creating some false

19 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

standard. I mean, the FBI did their investigation, Comey said what he was going to say. The Inspector General of the State Department said you know, "it was not some kind of crazy standard," and against those standards, that's where she has difficulty. In talking to the president I was reminded by after the Reverend Wright videos came out and he gave his speech, which is a -- worth... AXELROD: Right here in Philadelphia. DICKERSON: Yes, and really worth rereading as we talk about race in America. AXELROD: Yes, I think its one -- I think that was one of his great speeches, and he wrote it on the fly, you know he wrote -- half wrote it literally 12 hours before he gave it. DICKERSON: And what’s testing (ph) about, not to go on too many different roads, but two -- one, it ends with a story. We don't hear stories in politics anymore which just baffles me. The other thing is that you had obviously shown -- it was obviously in front of the mind of a person who spent a lot of time thinking about race and identity in America. AXELROD: He so wanted to give that speech, he had wanted to give that speech for a long time. And he just -- he said "I have to do now." DICKERSON: And one of the reasons that in a campaign we do see a little bit of what a president has to do, is that -- is that when there is a crisis moment are turning point moment, we get a vision of how a candidate has thought about a set of ideas over time. You can't cook up that speech and drive minutes just coming up with new ideas, you need to a marinated and pawed (ph) through those ideas over the course of time. And if you’re talking about national ideas, that matters. But -- I lost my train of thought -- on the interviewing Hillary Clinton. AXELROD: Yes, well just let's finish up on Trump and interviewing Trump. DICKERSON: So... AXELROD: You’ve ridden that bronco 18, 19 times. DICKERSON: You know, I mean the challenge with Donald Trump is that he'll deny things that he said in the early -- the day before or even in the same interview. Or he'll deny that... AXELROD: He does not find tape persuasive. DICKERSON: Right, and so on the other hand -- and then sometimes when you try to talk about a fact that he's misstated or something that he set out loud, that he disagrees with himself now on, it can be very frustrating. On the other hand he will say things about -- I mean, when I first interviewed him or like one of the first interviews or so he said you know I pay -- I asked about his effective tax rate and he said "I pay as little taxes as possible." No politician would really say that. AXELROD: But you know, supporters give him credit for that, they say "well he's smart, he’s a smart businessman, that's what we need." DICKERSON: And so on some things he'll really -- he's quite candid. I mean, I -- his answers he’s given me about on whether he thinks a Muslim judge could treat him fairly, he said no. whether there should be

20 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson

Muslim profiling, he said yes. AXELROD: Yes, that got a little attention. DICKERSON: Yes, so he is quite candid on some things in a way that I can't think of any other politician being that candidate. AXELROD: Well, it’s going to be an interesting four months. [01:00:00] But Whistle Stop coming out in August. All of you folks who love campaigns in American political history should pick it up. And John, thank you for being here, thanks for classing up the -- classing up the political scene with really thoughtful programming. DICKERSON: Well, thank you for having me. And I'm not sure how many do this, because I usually listen to you while I'm running. So now, I’ll have to skip an episode, because I don’t think that I can listen to myself while I go running. AXELROD: Well, we’ll try and provide other programming for you. I don't want to see you -- you seem hale and hearty, I want to keep that going... (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: Yes, thank you. DICKERSON: Thanks, David. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you for listening to the Axe Files, part of the CNN podcast network. For more episodes of the Axe Files, visit CNN.com/podcast and subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite app. And for more programming from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, visit politics.uchicago.edu.

21 Ep. 71 – John Dickerson