Center for Strategic and International Studies

Bob Schieffer’s “About the News” with H. Andrew Schwartz Podcast

Subject: “Maureen Dowd on The Year of Voting Dangerously”

Speaker: Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times

Hosts: H. Andrew Schwartz, Senior Vice President for External Relations, CSIS

Bob Schieffer, CBS Political News Contributor; Former Host, “Face the Nation,” CBS News

Date: Monday, September 12, 2016

Transcript By Superior Transcriptions LLC www.superiortranscriptions.com

BOB SCHIEFFER: I’m Bob Schieffer.

H. ANDREW SCHWARTZ: And I’m Andrew Schwartz.

MR. SCHIEFFER: And these are conversations about the news. We are in the midst of a communications revolution. We have access to more information than any people in history. But are we more informed, or just overwhelmed by so much information we can’t process it?

MR. SCHWARTZ: These conversations are a year-long collaboration of the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Now, everyone knows Bob Schieffer’s a newsman, but not everyone knows how he became an anchorman. He wrote a song about it. Let’s have a listen.

(Music plays.)

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Sings.) Well, I left this job that I just took, started practicing my sincere look, they said I had the face of a man with heart.

They wrote me some lines, taught me a style, drew a happy face on the script where I should smile, and the key demographics went right off the charts.

I have to say, they pay me good, a whole lot better than Stuckey’s ever would, and a cute little stage manager gives me all my cues.

Selling tractor hats and pumping gas, that’s all part of my long-ago past; now I just sit there and read the news.

CHORUS: (Sings.) He became a TV anchorman.

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Sings.) A TV anchorman.

CHORUS: (Sings.) He joined the Eyewitness team.

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Sings.) Was that Channel 4 or Channel 9?

CHORUS: (From video.) (Sings.) With razor cut hair, and with bells up to there, it’s the new American dream.

(Music ends.)

MR. SCHWARTZ: So now you know. And here’s Bob Schieffer.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Today we have with our Maureen Dowd, the distinguished columnist for The New York Times, where she has earned the reputation of being one of the most dangerous commentators out there. Maureen began her career at The Washington Star in 1974, where she worked her way from editorial assistant to a feature writer. In 1983 she joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter. And in 1986, moved to the Times Washington Bureau to cover politics. In 1995, she became an op-ed columnist for the Times, and in 1999 won a Pulitzer for her commentary on Bill Clinton’s impeachment. She’s covered seven presidential campaigns, served as the Times White House correspondent, and in 2014 joined the Times magazine as a long form writer, debuting her first story on its cover featuring over a hundred interviews with women in Hollywood about the sexism they face. She’s published two books, the 2004 bestseller “Bushworld,” about George W. Bush, and another in 2005 titled, “Are Men Necessary?: Where Sexes Collide.”

And finally, we’re so honored to have you here, Maureen, because just this week your third book is coming out. It is “The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics.” Maureen, it’s great to have you. Being completely transparent, Maureen and I have known each other for a long, long time and we’ve covered campaigns together. And I must say, we’ve had a lot of fun together over the years. So tell us about the new book, Maureen.

MAUREEN DOWD: Thanks, Bob. Well, I didn’t think there could be a campaign that would be more amazing than 2008. I was on the road for two years because I could not take my eyes off that campaign, because it had gender, it had sex, it had a young prince trying to usurp a queen, as in “Game of Thrones.” And so I was astonished when suddenly this campaign got even more interesting than the last one. And as it turned out, I had covered all the major characters in this campaign for decades, really.

So I thought I had the great narrative arc for Trump, who I started – you know, I covered his initial – not bid for the presidency, but he went up to a presidential rope line and then scampered away, because he was very shy and scared of it, in ’99, when he was dating Melania. And then I covered – I started covering Hillary Clinton in ’92, when she was the spouse of Bill Clinton. And we had dinner at a revolving restaurant in Covington, Kentucky. And talked about how one summer she worked sliming fish in Alaska. And you know, she told the guy in charge of the plant that the fish were purple and yucky looking. And he, you know, told her keep quiet about it. And she said, I won’t keep quiet about it. I’m leaving. I’m quitting and telling everyone. So even then she had – (laughs) – that strong Hillary personal. And of course, I’ve covered the Bushes. I was the White House reporter for Bush one and covered that family all the way through, and President Obama and Vice President Biden.

So I know all of these characters. So I thought it was a good opportunity to try – even though Trump and Hillary are two of the most famous people on the planet, no one seems to really know who they are. Hillary has this Picasso-esque, cubist image, where no one feels that they know her and her campaign keeps trying to reintroduce her. She keeps trying to explain herself. And Trump has this kind of Janus two-face thing, where is he the liberal – (laughs) – you know, New York huckster? Or is he conservative alt-right, you know, nationalist? So anyway, I thought it would be a good way to sort through all of them from the start.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Maureen, I’m so glad to hear you talk about why you wanted to cover this campaign because, like you know, you know, I was thinking about this the other day. The campaigns we remember always had a slogan: All the way, with LBJ. I like Ike. Nixon’s the one. The slogan for this campaign is: Have you ever? That’s what people say most to me, have you ever? And my answer is always no. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never thought there could be anything like this. And every day is a new chapter in a story that even now I have no idea how this is – how this is going to end. And it is – these two characters – and I mean character in the sense of two people who are just so very, very different. It’s almost Shakespearian. You have this one force that is Hillary Clinton and on the other side you have Donald Trump.

How’s it been dealing with Trump?

MS. DOWD: Well, you know, usually I like to think of covering campaigns as Shakespearian, or White Houses, because I studied Shakespeare in college. But this time, I think of it more like, you know, the old movie, “Who Killed Jessica Rabbit?”, which was toons and humans. So, Trump is a toon. And then he’s running against a human. And the collision of those two cultures makes it very hard for the press to know how to deal with him. You know, it’s just a whole new thing. And it’s the fusion of reality TV and social media with politics. So Trump is the Kim Kardashian of American politics. So he’s dominating every news cycle and stepping on his own message, and tweeting something that ruins his message. And it’s happening – you know, it’s funny that a 70-year-old candidate is the one to introduce Twitter into campaigns. So it’s a whole new kettle of fish.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Isn’t it interesting that in every political era, it is the – it is the politician who masters the dominant medium of the time. The founders were great writers. Roosevelt was the first one to understand radio. Jack Kennedy the first one to understand television, especially live television. Is Trump the first one to understand social media?

MS. DOWD: Yes, which is funny. But he – you know, I asked him – I was interviewing him once and I said, so, you know, you’re tweeting at all hours. Are you actually in your pajamas in Trump Tower tweeting at night? And he goes, yes. (Laughs.) He’s in his jammies. You know.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, he must watch television all the time.

MS. DOWD: Yes. Well, there was an interesting profile of his press spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, where it said the first thing he does in the morning is order that the top 30 stories about him be printed out and brought to him. (Laughs.) So he likes to read about himself. And then he continues, you know, by watching TV about himself. So you know, we’ve always had this situation with the press, where we thought we would get to customized journalism, where the danger would be that you only read the things that interested you. But again, Donald Trump has jumped ahead and is already there, because he reads what is written about him.

MR. SCHIEFFER: And you know, isn’t that kind of interesting that he admits that? I mean, how many candidates – and especially how many presidents – have we covered that they say – they never admit that they’ve read anything that has been written about them. Somebody told them about it. Or, well, I mean, he was unaware of that, you know?

MS. DOWD: Well, I’m interested in your opinion because we cover narcissists routinely. I mean, it’s hard to even be in politics unless you’re a bit of a narcissist. But Trump, you know, has exponentially ratcheted that up. So I’d be interested, you know, like compared to other narcissists you’ve covered, you know, what you think.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean, I think both of them are in kind of a class of their own. And I covered him – I covered him for the first time – the first time interviewed him was, what, it must have been 30 years ago when he repaired that ice rink and got the ice to freeze in that ice rink in Central Park. And the city had spent something like $11 million. And they just couldn’t get the thing to work. And he came along and said, let me do it. And he did. And in three months, he had people skating in Central Park. And it was a great story.

MS. DOWD: Yeah. That was a great moment for him.

MR. SCHIEFFER: And I can’t remember where his office was, but it wasn’t in Trump Tower because there was no Trump Tower in those days. But it was up somewhere where you could look out and see that ice rink. And I found him one of the most interesting people, at that point, that I’d ever interviewed. I still think he’s very interesting. I’ve, you know, interviewed him many times over the years. Sometimes he likes me. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he surprises me. Sometimes he doesn’t. But he’s different. There’s just no question about it.

MS. DOWD: Yeah. I mean, I think it remains to be seen whether it was a good move to trade in a reputation as a fun huckster in New York for a scary Hitler. That does not seem like a good progression. (Laughs.) But we’ll see.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Do you think he really wanted to be president? I guess we can’t drill into his mind and know for sure, but I mean somebody told me the other day he’s like the dog that chases cars. And he caught the – he’s the dog that caught the car. Do you think he really thought he was going to catch the car?

MS. DOWD: No. And I think – and I think sometimes he’s probably scared. And I think other times, when he sees secret service in front of Trump Tower, he’s thrilled. But he – I’ve know, you know, a lot of alphas who got the top job and then immediately they start self- destructing. And he’s kind of, to a certain extent, self-destructing in real time. (Laughs.) You know, it’s funny, because Arthur Schlesinger in his memoirs made the case that a lot of modern presidents have been mentally unbalanced. You know, LBJ’s aides argued whether he was paranoid or a manic-depressive. And JFK and Nixon had psychotropic drugs in the medicine cabinet. And so, you know, in a way Donald Trump, you know, has saved time because people are, you know, arguing about whether he’s insane during the campaign, rather than when he gets in the White House.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Andrew?

MR. SCHWARTZ: Thank you, Bob. And Maureen, this is great having you here. I mean, this is big time, having Maureen Dowd on the podcast. So welcome and thank you for being here.

This book is fantastic. In the book, you get into who Trump is to the extent where you’re talking about how Trump would brag that all the rap stars like him, that Puff Daddy calls him when they want to have a party. And maybe he learned Twitter from how those guys do PR. But then you also have people who say – you know, you talked about “Game of Thrones” before – compare him to Hodor. He’s the Hodor character. Who is this guy?

MS. DOWD: Oh, wow, that’s a good question. I think – you know, I’ve been interviewing a lot of his – he doesn’t have a lot of friends. But what friends he does have, I’ve been interviewing for a magazine piece. And I asked them what Bob asked: Is he – did he not really want it? You know, is he self-destructing? And they tell me I’m overcomplicating things. That basically he is a classic narcissist who just is going for this sale in the moment. Now, my opinion is that the roar of the crowd has so seduced him that it’s led him into dark places that probably will prevent him from being president. But he is making that deal in the moment. And that’s who he is.

MR. SCHWARTZ: Is that where the Hitler stuff comes from?

MS. DOWD: I just think – you know, I’ve asked him about being a clinical narcissist and how that would play in the White House. And you know, I think he was offended that I called him a clinical narcissist. And he said he can be as presidential as anyone. And when he’s in Palm Beach the society women love him. And you know, I also asked him why you had – you know, in New York some people thought he was a clown or buffoonish. But other people thought he was kind of a fun, you know, larger-than-life Batman, New York character. I said, why can’t you just run as that guy? Why do you have to run, you know, with all this hate and bigotry? And you know, he paused, and he listened, and I think, you know, his attitude is that he’s flexible and that he’s doing this now because he has to do this, but then later he would be someone else. But then again, how do you know who you’re voting for?

MR. SCHIEFFER: Where does this affection, for want of a better word, that he has for Vladimir Putin come from?

MS. DOWD: Well, this is so hilarious, because if a Democrat were, you know, cozying up to the Russians, while they were trying to hack our election, you know, the Republicans would be charging treason. And you know, obviously Paul Ryan and all the Republicans are twisting and turning and not fathoming what’s happening, and how can they get out of this alive, with their party even somewhat intact? But this is a pure narcissistic moment, where what’s important to Trump is that Putin has flattered him. And that makes him like Putin. But it has nothing to do with policy. You know, it doesn’t have to do with his policy, with the Republican Party policy. It’s like, he likes me so I like him. It’s – (laugh) – you know, it’s the playground at grade school.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean, but he almost comes off as an apologist for Putin.

MS. DOWD: Well, he comes off – you know, yeah, he comes off –

MR. SCHIEFFER: And I don’t understand how that plays well with Republicans.

MS. DOWD: Right, right. He comes off as the Siberian candidate, where Putin is so easily able to control him by just a simple word of flattery. I know. It’s absurd. But it’s the subjugation of policy to pure id. You know, he is the pure id running around the campaign.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk a little bit about his opponent.

MS. DOWD: OK.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Hillary Clinton, who certainly has differed from the others, as is he. I can’t imagine – can you – two candidates who’d be more different?

MS. DOWD: No, it’s –

MR. SCHIEFFER: And yet they probably have some things in common.

MS. DOWD: Well, they are – what they have in common is a fluid relationship with the truth. But they are completely different. She is the queen of homework and he is the king of winging it. And – (laughter) – yeah. So, you know, it’s an epic battle of the sexes like, you know, we were talking – I started covering tennis as a sportswriter. And you know, it’s very much like Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. It’s going to be – Trump is Rat Pack. You know, rates women’s racks and calls them sweetheart. And Hillary is the first woman to be in a major party ticket – you know, a classic feminist. So it is going to be epic.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Why did she have such a hard time?

MS. DOWD: You mean –

MR. SCHIEFFER: Getting going. Getting this campaign going. I mean, let’s think about this. I mean, the Democratic Party, the oldest party – what, the third oldest party in the world, I think, manages to come up with only one legitimate candidate who is a Democrat, I mean, who has a following of any kind? I mean, Martin O’Malley, I mean, he got no traction whatsoever, a small state governor. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, and proudly claimed that he was not a capitalist. I have never heard in all my lifetime any candidate running for anything, whether it was the Fort Worth City Council or president of the United States who proudly announced: I am not a capitalist. I guess, Norman Thomas and some of those folks way back. They’re dead. But – and he gave her a heck of a fight. I mean, it came right down to the wire.

MS. DOWD: Well, I think the subtext of Hillary’s campaigns is never attractive because the subtext is, you know, what am I owed? What am I owed for going to Arkansas with Bill Clinton? What am I owed for being first lady – a title I hated? What am I owed for being, you know, usurped by Barack Obama? So she was dumbfounded when people weren’t excited. And the most – one of the most amazing things that happened in this amazing campaign is that young women turned to Bernie.

And that dumbfounded Hillary. And then, you know, young woman got in this fight with the older feminists, because Gloria Steinem suggested that young women like Bernie because they could meet guys at Bernie rallies, which was so offensive. And also, the older feminists couldn’t acknowledge that it’s a progression for young women to not vote identity politics, to decide on the candidate not because it’s a woman but because they want that candidate. That is a good thing in feminism, not a bad thing.

So I think Hillary was just shocked at the rejection. I mean, in way you have to feel sorry for her, because first she was rejected in 2008. But Obama was a once in a lifetime, magical candidate and, you know, this amazing African-American young senator. I mean, Bernie Sanders was sort of a crank and loner, you know, who shouted into the microphone. So to be rejected by young people and young women for him was a shock to the system.

MR. SCHIEFFER: But, you know, it’s not the first time that young people have gone for an older person. A lot of young –

MS. DOWD: Reagan.

MR. SCHIEFFER: That’s exactly what I was going to say. We called them yuppies in those days, and –

MS. DOWD: Right. But even college kids, because I went out and interviewed a lot of college kids about why they liked Reagan. And they liked that paternalistic thing Reagan had.

MR. SCHIEFFER: I don’t know why, but I sort of like that. (Laughter.)

MS. DOWD: And I love your – I love your –

MR. SCHWARTZ: Bob Schieffer for president, yeah.

MS. DOWD: Yeah. And I love your purple socks, for those who can’t see them.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, I always wear purple socks because that’s TCU, which is –

MS. DOWD: Very cool.

MR. SCHIEFFER: TCU Horned Frogs.

MS. DOWD: Yeah.

MR. SCHIEFFER: And so I’m – you know, people say, did you lose a bet? Is that – and the fact is, it wasn’t a bet. But when TCU went to the Rose Bowl I got up at a pep rally and I wanted to say something different that nobody else had said. And I said: You know, if you guys win, I will wear purple socks for the rest of my life. I had no idea they were going to win. And they won, I’m proud to say. But I am a man of my word, and so –

MS. DOWD: Well, they’re very fetching.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, thank you. (Laughter.)

MR. SCHWARTZ: And 200 pairs of socks later.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, people often ask, do you just have one pair? And I always explain, no, my wife rinses them out every night. (Laughs.)

MS. DOWD: That’s so funny.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, let’s get back to – let’s get back to Hillary and to Donald Trump.

MR. SCHWARTZ: Yeah, has Hillary – I think it’s interesting, the point you made about Bernie and young women, who you would think would flock to Hillary, going to Bernie. But it’s not just young women. There’s women who are middle age who you would think would love Hillary. All of a sudden, they’re not so sure. And they’re thinking about Bernie or they’re thinking, oh, I guess I’ll just vote for Hillary. There’s no enthusiasm. Why is there no enthusiasm for this?

MS. DOWD: Well, you know, usually I have my brother write a column every Christmas to give the, you know, red state, deep conservative point of view. But this time I had my brother write an essay for the book about Trump and the struggle to support Trump. But I also had my sister write one, because she’s had this amazing journey where she was at JFK’s inaugural, and fell in love with JFK, and that was her first vote. And then, you know, she lived in California and fell in love with Ronald Reagan. And so she became a Republican. Then she went to Cuba and fell in love with Che, so she was a communist for a couple days. (Laughter.) But then she came back and voted in the primary for Sanders. So she was a socialist.

But now she’s back in the Republican. She voted for Obama, so she was a Democrat for a while. But now she’s back in the Republican fold because she does not want to vote for Hillary. She doesn’t trust her. And she explains in this essay that she really resents it when other women get upset with her and try to mau-mau her into voting for Hillary. She doesn’t like that.

MR. SCHIEFFER: You know, you really have an advantage over the rest of us, because your family is kind of a focus group. You carry your own focus group with you, because you have this big Irish family. You dad, a lot of people don’t know this, was a capital cop.

MS. DOWD: No, he was a D.C. police detective who was in charge of all the –

MR. SCHIEFFER: And then he became sergeant at arms, right?

MS. DOWD: No, no. He was in charge of all the Capitol Hill policemen.

MR. SCHIEFFER: I got you.

MS. DOWD: Yeah. So you’re right. You know, it’s funny, because all the other – not all – but a lot of columnists are saying – you know, going on road trips to try and track down the illusive Trump voter. And trying – you know, they’re acting like Margaret Mead. You know, we’ll find these Trump voters and we’ll examine them in their native habitats. And there was another columnist who did an open letter – like we should all try and meet a Trump voter and understand how they’re thinking and make friends with them. (Laughs.) It’s like they’re talking about, like, some bear in the jungle. But all I have to do is go home.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Yeah, have Thanksgiving. (Laughs.)

MS. DOWD: Right, Thanksgiving, yeah.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Sort it all out.

MS. DOWD: Right.

MR. SCHIEFFER: You know, I want to talk about – because you devote a lot of – a lot of this book to the Bush family, because you have a very unusual relationship, and have had, with the Bushes over –

MS. DOWD: Yeah, very.

MR. SCHIEFFER: – what, 30 years?

MS. DOWD: Right.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Tell us about that a little.

MS. DOWD: Well, I was the White House – I covered Bush Sr.’s first campaign, and then I was the White House reporter for The New York Times. And I think Bush Sr. expected to get a New York Times reporter with a name like Clive Farnsworth III, who would talk about the Atlantic alliance with him over a martini. And then he got me kind of calling him goofy and covering his golf swing. And you know, it took him really years to adjust to that, and it was a struggle. But he always referred to it as our love/hate relationship. And in the book, you know, I have a lot of the notes he used to write me over 20 years, and –

MR. SCHIEFFER: He was a note-writer, wasn’t he? He just –

MS. DOWD: Yes. And I – yes, because he did not do a memoir. He did a book of letters.

MR. SCHIEFFER: He was to notes what Donald Trump is to Twitter.

MS. DOWD: Exactly. And you know, it was part of that polite, WASP-y, you know, thank you notes for things. So I have this collection of letters, which is really amazing.

And the most amazing thing that happened with President – the first President Bush is that we were able to stay in contact, despite the fact that I was writing strongly critical columns about the run-up to the Iraq War and the Iraq War. And you know, he would write me about how hard it was to stay in contact with me, because he liked me, he respected me, but I was being too hard on his son, he thought. And the funniest thing that happened was one time I went to Kennebunkport when W. was president. And he rarely went there, but he went home for a family thing, and I went to cover him there. And it was a weekend, and I was in my room, and I got a message to call Karl Rove. And I hadn’t talked to Karl Rove in years. So I call, and Karl Rove is playing Cyrano de Bergerac, and he goes, the first President Bush would like to have coffee with you if he can do it without his son finding out. So it was like – (laughter) – this 90- year-old president who is acting like a teenage boy, sneaking out of the house to meet someone.

So we’re dealing with two sets of presidential Secret Service that they would have to get beyond to make this meeting happen and for W. not to find out that his father, in this tiny Maine hamlet, is sneaking out to meet me. So we never actually accomplished it. But I loved the spirt behind the request. It was – it was what made me really fond of the first President Bush.

MR. SCHIEFFER: How did you get along with the rest of the family?

MS. DOWD: I got –

MR. SCHIEFFER: George W.

MS. DOWD: Yeah, I get along great with Barbara. I think she’s got a hilarious, dry, you know, stiletto sense of humor. And W., of course, you know, we did not have any relationship because, to me, the Iraq War is the original sin. You know, I think it’s the worst thing that has happened in American history, the biggest foreign policy mistake. And I wrote about that in the run-up and during and after, and it’s sad to see President Obama’s presidency somewhat swallowed by that mistake. And so I didn’t have a relationship with him. But you know, I wanted to re-report the father-son relationship and make sure I had gotten it right, so I called all the Bush officials and re-reported that amazing oedipal loop-de-loop because I wanted to do the ultimate essay on that. So I’m really proud of that.

MR. SCHIEFFER: I thought that George W. Bush’s book about his father, I thought it was very sweet.

MS. DOWD: It was sweet, but you know, to me, it didn’t – you know, I would have preferred that he actually asked his father’s advice when they went to war against the same dictator. I would prefer if he had respected his father in that way. You know, when Fox News asked him why he didn’t ask his father’s advice, he said – or maybe this was to Bob Woodward, not on Fox News – but he said, you know, I get advice from a higher father, meaning God. But you know, and then another time he said my father doesn’t have the right security clearance to discuss this with him. But it was ridiculous, you know.

And Bush Sr. went to war to establish the principle that you can’t – with Saddam to establish the principle that you can’t unilaterally invade another country. W. went to war with Saddam to establish the principle that you can. So you know, there was a lot of father-son friction. Yes, the book was sweet, but you know, we ended up with the most horrible foreign policy blunder in American history because W. was at some level competing with his father. So I would rather he had asked his father’s advice than write a sweet book about him.

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Laughs.)

MR. SCHWARTZ: And you refer in your book to 41 as the last bastion of civility, bipartisanship. Where has that gone?

MS. DOWD: Well, I don’t – you know, I’m not letting the Bushes off the hook. One interesting thing about Donald Trump is he does his own wet work. You know, the Bushes had Lee Atwater. They would outsource it. And Willie Horton was a horrible moment in campaign history.

MR. SCHWARTZ: Trump’s his own thug?

MS. DOWD: Yeah, exactly. And you know, he’s ripped the mask off the idea that the candidate is above that. And so, but that being said, you know, I did think the father, you know, as Jon Meacham called him, was the last gentleman. You know, I think he did have as president, you know, an amazing civility and bipartisanship, which is completely gone now.

MR. SCHIEFFER: What happened to Jeb Bush’s campaign? Why did he do so poorly?

MS. DOWD: He did not seem to want to run for president. You know, it’s almost like he wanted to do it for his dad. His dad had always thought he would be the one who would be president, and his dad really wanted to see Jeb run before he died. And you know, I – Jeb just radiated the idea that it was expected of him. And interestingly enough, he showed that W. had the superior political instincts, you know. Everyone always thought Jeb would be the amazing candidate, but W. was a great candidate. He just wasn’t a great president.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Do you think Barbara Bush was right that maybe people just thought we’d had enough Bushes and enough Clintons?

MS. DOWD: Yeah, she was –

MR. SCHIEFFER: Because I wonder if somehow that had something to do with the hard time that Hillary Clinton is having.

MS. DOWD: Yes, I think Barbara Bush was exactly right. And here is an amazing thing: the Bushes and the Clintons have been in the White House for 28 years. And if Hillary had two terms, they would be passing the crown back and forth for 36 years. And you know, we had a revolution to get away from that kind of thing, so.

MR. SCHIEFFER: How do you think the press in general has done in covering this campaign?

MS. DOWD: Well, I think it’s a crazy campaign because it is a merger of reality TV and social media and politics, and we’ve never seen that before. And also, you know, as one of the VICE founders said, a lot of mainstream media have platform anxiety, where we’re trying to do a lot of things at once, we’re snapchatting. I mean, even I’m snapchatting. (Laughs.) You know, we’re doing Twitter, we’re doing all these social media things, plus we’re trying to cover the narrative arc. And I would say, you know, it’s very fragmented, it’s a jumble, people – you know, there’s a lot of great journalism, and you know, there’s some not-so-great journalism. You can see from the criticism Matt Lauer got this week about the Commander in Chief Forum that this requires, you know, a different kind of fact-checking because Donald Trump, you know, has this completely loosey-goosey relationship with the truth. I mean, really, they should have given that to Chuck Todd. You need someone who can do it in his head in real time. It’s not – you can’t, you know, present it as an entertainment show. It has to – you have to be on it with veteran journalists in politics.

MR. SCHIEFFER: If you had any advice to those who are moderating the coming debates, what would it be?

MS. DOWD: Oh, gosh, they are going to have to do the fact-checking in real time, so they’re going to have to be really prepared. And you know, it’s tough. We’ve interviewed Donald Trump, so I think we know it’s just very – it’s like having a bar of soap in the shower, you know? He’s very slippery, and he filibusters, and he mostly just wants to talk about the arithmetic of ego. He wants to talk about his poll numbers and his rally crowds, and that’s what he keeps getting back to.

And when I look back, the first interview I did with him about politics, he was telling me what his ratings were on “Larry King.” I said, why would people vote for you? And he goes, I get big ratings on “Larry King.” So he hasn’t changed at all in that regard.

MR. SCHIEFFER: I guess he didn’t know that Larry King’s program that he did the interview with was on Russia Today.

MS. DOWD: Yes, this week. Yes, this week on Russian state television. Well, I mean, yeah, Donald Trump and the whole Russia and Putin thing is absurd.

MR. SCHWARTZ: Maureen, on this podcast we talk a lot about journalism and the development of journalism and where the American media landscape is right now. You know, it’s apparent from your book that there is a derangement in our politics. Is there a derangement in journalism, too?

MS. DOWD: Well, I think there are just so many different platforms now and so many different – you know, there’s a whole class – they used to call columnists the “(sit and press ?),” because we sat on our chairs and, you know, didn’t get out and report. But now there’s a whole new (sit and press ?) where people are just watching journalists who are out there and, you know, tweeting snarky comments about them. (Laughs.) So the whole structure of journalism is different.

You know, this was interesting. Our Trump reporter told me – I went to Mississippi to Trump rally recently, and our reporter there told me that because Trump didn’t have a traditional plane at that point, and so you couldn’t defray the costs of all the journalists on the journalist plane, the Times had spent $15,000 for three days of coverage. You know, so at a time when journalistic institutions are losing resources and cutting back, you know, it’s more expensive than ever to cover Trump, and you have to be there every moment because the whole race can change with one comment at a rally or one tweet after the one comment. So you know, it’s very hard.

MR. SCHWARTZ: And of course, the Times isn’t just a newspaper anymore. It’s a media company –

MS. DOWD: Right. Right.

MR. SCHWARTZ: – you know, doing video, audio, quizzes, you know, lifestyle, trying to add value to people’s lives through things like cooking. It’s expensive.

MS. DOWD: Well, I think that that is the key thing, that with all this fragmentation and platform anxiety we have to keep our eye on the narrative arc, because the story is still the story whether it’s by carrier pigeon or Snapchat. I mean, we can’t be taking resources away from the narrative arc to do geegaws.

MR. SCHIEFFER: I guess this is kind of the wind-up question here. If you could live your life over, would you have done – would you have chosen any other profession than doing what you’re doing?

MS. DOWD: Oh, gosh, well, this is – this is going to be a kind of a –

MR. SCHIEFFER: I’ll just preface this by saying I asked Holly Williams, our foreign correspondent, that, and she said, yeah, I’d rather be an airport manager.

MS. DOWD: Oh.

MR. SCHIEFFER: So do you have any – (laughs) – any wild dreams, or?

MS. DOWD: No, well, I would like to be like a Julie London style torch singer in a nightclub, but I guess it’s too late for that.

MR. SCHWARTZ: It’s not too late.

MS. DOWD: It’s not?

MR. SCHWARTZ: No. I think you can still do it.

MS. DOWD: I always – I always think I’m going to end up as a cocktail waitress in a Wyoming militia bar. (Laughter.) I said that to David Letterman once and he goes, I know one; I can get you that job. (Laughter.)

But, OK, I’m going to say something that sounds a little nihilistic, but I am feeling a little sad because I feel like everything I’ve done may not matter, because I’ve now decided that even if you’re with these candidates for years before they become president, that you can’t really know what they’re going to do. I mean, W. promised a humble foreign policy and we got Iraq. And you know, it’s just very hard. I think when someone becomes president, because of what we were talking about, all of their insecurities come out at the very moment they’re ratified. So they get – all of the gremlins come out, and then they get a historic event that can’t be predicted. So W. got 9/11 and he just got very scared, and then he was malleable, you know. So you never really know who you’re getting.

MR. SCHWARTZ: Well, what happened to President Obama? You talk about that in your book.

MS. DOWD: President Obama, well, you know, his personality really affected his policy because, you know, James Carville said it’s as though Peyton Manning didn’t like football. Neera Tanden, a Democratic activist, said it’s as though Bill Gates didn’t like computers. Barack Obama did one of the most amazing things we’ve ever seen: he became president. And then it turned out he didn’t like politics. And so, you know, he tries to stay above the fray, but politics is the fray. So he didn’t put in any elbow grease with Congress, and he lectured them, and he couldn’t relate to them, and he didn’t want to persuade or flatter or bribe them. So a lot of his policies on gun control and immigration and taxes and spending were curtailed because he didn’t like politics.

MR. SCHWARTZ: You say he was too cool for school.

MS. DOWD: Yeah, he was. I mean, you know, he – I think the most important thing to him is to be seen as cool. And one time, when he was a candidate, he traveled to Europe to try and get a foreign policy gloss of experience. And some of us – Dan Balz and I and some other reporters got separate interviews. And when I got mine, he called me up to the front of the plane, and then he told his press aides to leave. And I thought, wow, this is great; he’s going to give me a scoop, I’m going to be Scotty Reston, I’m going to have this great relationship with him. And he looked at me and he goes, you are really irritating. (Laughter.) And it was this horrible moment. He wasn’t even president yet. And then he repeated it.

And it turned out what he didn’t like was I was tweaking him a little because in the Pennsylvania primary and other ethnic, blue-collar primaries he did not drink beer or eat. He didn’t like to eat anything. He was very finicky about that. He didn’t want to eat the cheesesteaks. So I was just teasing him about his – you know, that he was like a Hollywood starlet where an Altoid is a three-course meal. And he did not like that. He goes, you set the zeitgeist, and I don’t like the zeitgeist you’re setting. I’m not someone who goes to Whole Food(s) for arugula. But I think he is, or somebody else does it for him. (Laughs.)

MR. SCHWARTZ: Well, and he wasn’t – even though he smoked, he wasn’t someone who would pull out a Winston at a stock car race.

MS. DOWD: Well, he got mad recently because the Times did a feature where they said that after dinner with the family at 6:30 he goes down and watches ESPN by himself and does – reads all his briefing papers, and that the White House chef brings him seven lightly-salted almonds, and that’s his snack every night. And he pushed back, not I think because it wasn’t true, but because, again, he doesn’t want to be seen as this finicky sort of person. He wants to be seen as a cool person.

MR. SCHWARTZ: You have to eat man-food in the man-cave.

MS. DOWD: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Well, Maureen Dowd, we could –

MS. DOWD: Like Trump does. (Laughs.)

MR. SCHIEFFER: (Laughs.) We could talk to you forever. The book is funny. It’s incisive. It has information that I didn’t know about. And I would just add this: We think you’re cool.

MS. DOWD: Aww, thank you, Bob. You’re cool, with your purple socks.

MR. SCHIEFFER: All right. (Laughs.) For Andrew Schwartz, I’m Bob Schieffer.

MR. SCHWARTZ: If you like this podcast, leave us a review on iTunes, visit us at CSIS.org, and check out the Schieffer College of Communication at SchiefferCollege.TCU.edu.

Thanks to Moby for this great song, “Regenerator (sp).” Bob and I will see you next time.

(Music.)

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