A Walk Through the 20th Century With Bill Moyers; Presidents & Politics with Richard Strout

<v Bill Moyers>Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, 12 presidents and this man has covered them all. Tonight, Richard Strout, known to many as TRB, looks back on 60 years of reporting on presidents and politics. I'm Bill Moyers. <v Announcer>In keeping with Chevron's tradition of service throughout the 20th century, the people of Chevron bring you this program in support of public television.

<v Bill Moyers>This is Washington, D.C., in the 1920s. And Richard Strout was 25 years old when he first arrived in the nation's capital to begin his long career in journalism. <v Richard Strout>1923, I drove down from Boston to Washington in a towering seven foot Model T, and it took three days. That was the car where you measured your gasoline by getting out of the front seat and the sound in the trunk tank with a yardstick. I had parked my Model T all day long in the Ellipse behind the White House with plenty of room and no parking ticket. It's hard to reconstruct 1923 today. There wasn't any Pentagon. The State War Navy building beside the White House still held all the State Department and parts of the two other agencies. Harry Truman hadn't put the porch on the back of the White House and there was sculptured groups in front of the Capitol that you will note an old prince, Columbus discovering America and a pioneer or some other figures staying the Tommyhawk of a ravishing Indian from a settler maiden, which Mark Twain called the delirium tremens style of sculpture. Harding was president and he had his he had his affairs going on. He was married to the duchess. He called her. She was five or six years older than he was. He also was having a little affair with his girlfriend, Nan Britton. I've often thought someday the true story of the White House should be taken the way they do Versailles, you know, the lights, they turn the lights on their side and they point them at this window and they say this happened there. And they'd point at this particular coat closet because Nan Britton said in her biography that there in the closet five by six I and the president exchanged embraces. <v Bill Moyers>No one puts the heartbeat into history like a good witness, and Richard Strout has been a witness to the transformation of Washington, D.C. from an unhurried, uncongested, Southern flavored little town into a world capital. It was only in my own childhood that the two revolutions occurred which brought that transformation about. The first was the New Deal. It made Washington the headquarters of a vast federal bureaucracy concerned with promoting the general welfare in every hamlet in the land. And the second was World War Two. The United States came out of that with strategic commitments from Tehran to Tokyo, and they had to be managed from Washington. By the time I got there, the nineteen fifties, a summer intern up from college in Texas, the town was a town no more. It was a metropolis at the crossroads of the globe. This growth is one of our century's big stories, and there's another one buried inside. It centered around sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, the street address of the White House. The job of its occupants has also grown like Alice in Wonderland after she nibbled the magic mushroom. I'm fascinated at how historians will get at this transformation and reduce it to order, how they'll winnow astronomical piles of film recordings and those documents that the copying machines multiply like locusts, how they'll travel the official road to preserving the past. But as a journalist, I'm also especially intrigued by other avenues to the remembrance of yesterday's a good talk, for example, of keen-eyed people who've been there and seen it firsthand. From their anecdotes come the footnotes to history, which illuminate the main passages. Richard Strout's recollections are like that. As correspondent and commentator in Washington for the Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic, from which he is now retired after 40 years of writing his TRB column, he's seen the lions of that city proud and fight and preen. Most interesting to me, he has recorded the other side of the public image, the human side, both base and Noble, which is like the backlight of a formal portrait and often reveals more than the face itself. A walk through the 20th century with Richard Strout is quite a stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue.

<v Richard Strout>Well, this was the capital of my country and I had been in the army and I had all the normal, naïve, patriotic, childish thoughts, I suppose, of a young man of twenty three. And then I was taken to my first presidential press conferences and there was the White House, which is a symbol of government, then taken into the Oval Office. And there were 60 or 70 men standing around the desk. And there behind the desk was the handsome man who was ever present since George Washington. He was Warren G. Harding, Emilio Harding, and he was wearing plus fours and plus fours means knickers. And they all my colleagues, I realized that these people must be colleagues. I was a newspaper man, too, and yet my heart bled for Harding and they were asking him shop me and impertinent questions. And I said, how can they treat the president of the United States in this abrupt manner? And he and his bland, rather noble way said, Gentlemen, gentlemen, be kind to me. I want to go out and and play some golf this afternoon. And so after a while, we let him go and he went away.

<v Bill Moyers>You remember the little green house on K Street?

<v Richard Strout>Well, there were these hideaway houses, several of them, the K Street house and other houses. And Harding would go in and play poker there. And he was a, well, good fellow and he would have a plug of tobacco and he'd take a chore. And then he'd regrettably pass it around among his friends if they wanted to use it. And they play for high stakes, the National Press Club. And those days was not in its building. It was in what is now the Albi building. And at one time the affright had waiter came one evening and rapped on the door. They were playing poker and said, Sorry sir, I hate to intrude, but the president of the United States is outside and he wants to come in now, see if he can play cards with your boys. They all got out. Yeah, they welcomed the men. They had been out traveling with him after the campaign and they welcomed them. He was lonely. He knew he was inadequate for the job was a pathetic thing. It was a tragic thing. It was what we do to our presidents. He was he was there in the White House and he. We was inadequate for the job and they asked him to make decisions he didn't know what to do. He broke down and wept on some of his shoulders. And ultimately, he was he died suddenly. <v Bill Moyers>What about the Teapot Dome scandal?

<v Richard Strout>Yes, that was, I suppose, the first great scandal and that I was aware of. <v Bill Moyers>And you covered the hearing. <v Richard Strout>Covered the hearings, yes. In the Teapot Dome. The Teapot Dome, yes. <v News Announcer>[Newsreel clip] Woodrow Wilson. While still president, had set aside several parcels of land as legal oil reserves. One such location was an area of some nine thousand eight hundred forty one acres in Wyoming, known as the Teapot Dome oil leases. During the early years of his administration, Harding had turned over the administrating of that land to his secretary of the interior, Albert Bacon Fall as early as 1922. The rumor had spread that Fall had secretly leased the government property to oil tycoon Harry Sinclair without putting it on the block for competitive bidding. Field inquiries by the Senate had gone unanswered. Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, head of the congressional subcommittee that unearthed the startling evidence that Fall had indeed awarded the lease to Sinclair's oil company on April 7th, 1922, and that later, upon retiring from the cabinet, the secretary of the interior had received an interest free loan of forty five thousand dollars from Sinclair. At the same time, Fall awarded another set of government leases in California to oil magnate Edward L. Doheny. This time, Albert Fall was the recipient of a personal loan of one hundred thousand dollars. The federal government brought charges of conspiracy to defraud against Fall and Doheny in 1926, legal technicality snarled the case hopelessly, and both men were acquitted of the charges. Still, the following year, the Supreme Court declared both oil leases invalid and the land returned to the government. <v Richard Strout>Fall came in at first came in. He was proud and faced down the crowd. And then after about four or five months, he came in. He was a broken man and he shambled in and everything had been exposed at that time.

<v Bill Moyers>In that same room where you cover the Teapot Dome scandal, you also covered the hearings on Watergate <v Richard Strout>50 years later and of course, the 50 years before Teapot Dome been the great scandal is in the administration of Grant. And if you go back and look through the calendar every 50 years has been a great scandal. It was a scandal of Grant and there was the, uh, Teapot Dome and then, uh, then Mr. Nixon, <v Bill Moyers>This led you to calculate what you call Strout's Law <v Richard Strout>I promulgated Strout's Law that every 50 years we have a scandal and watch out for 2023. <v Bill Moyers>What was the difference between this the Teapot Dome scandal, which magnetize the country's interest and the Watergate scandal 50 years later?

<v Richard Strout>Well, the stakes had changed. It was part of the growing sophistication of America. When I came to Washington, people were reaching for wealth. In Nixon's day, they weren't reaching for wealth. They may have had wealth on the side, but they were reaching for power. <v Bill Moyers>You've been around under 12 presidents, I believe, which was the best at handling the press? <v Richard Strout>Oh, without doubt. Franklin Roosevelt was oh, it was a delight to cover him. That was a spontaneous on both sides. We'd ask questions and we'd ask follow up questions. It's the follow up questions that really that get the answers. <v Bill Moyers>Describe one to me. Do you remember any particular press corps? <v Richard Strout>Well, I always think of the one that. One particular one we know, we were around that desk, the desk was covered with mascots and little toy elephants and toy donkeys and so forth, and there was this big, smiling, benevolent man leaning back in his chair and with his cigaret and throwing his head back at the big chin and. And somebody would come in and he'd say, what's the news today? And somebody would shout out, I think it would be Fred Stormwatch shout out. We came here to find out what the news is. And Roosevelt would say, I remember on one occasion, Fred, you are just too big. There are three people behind you trying to see me. Somebody bring a chair up. Somebody brought a chair up. Fred, you sit there and from now on, you sit in that chair and Fred Stone sat in that chair and you can hear the voices behind saying, that's fine, that's fine. The United Press is having to big man. I shouldn't have said <v Bill Moyers>that Roosevelt really enjoyed the press conference.

<v Richard Strout>Oh, yes. Yes, he enjoyed them. And the greatest scene that I have ever seen at a press conference was right after Pearl Harbor. And that ended the chapter in American history. Every reporter in town could always remember for years afterwards just exactly where he was when the news on Pearl Harbor came. So what does any journalist do in a thing like that? I went straight to the White House. And first, we had various press conferences in the White House, and then late that night I was on the. I stayed there and I had a group of 10 or 12 other. Reporters went over to the portico of the White House and the stage settings were all there. There was a. Not a moon moon that looked as though it was a piece of cheese and parts had been bitten out of it and it climbed up through the elm trees there, and it was cold and crisp and the crowd gathered behind the iron railing down below. As I say, we were on the portico and at one point. Somebody in the crowd tried to stop The Star-Spangled Banner. And he couldn't sing it, nobody can sing The Star-Spangled Banner and others and I wrote at the time, I think I know it made me cry <v Bill Moyers>Listening to that crowd?

<v Richard Strout>Listening to that crowd. What about. It was a very moving experience. A week later, who should appear at the press conference but Winston Churchill. And that was the that was the great moment when you had Franklin Roosevelt sitting sitting there and. Churchill, the other great leader of the English speaking world with him, and we had a we must have had about 200 people in the room just back to back. And we shouted out, we can't see you, we can't see you, I think with said Renee, I don't know what we said, we can't see you. So he got up on a chair and Churchill. Churchill did in front of the desk with Roosevelt waving applause, you know, not saying anything, but waving to him and encouraging him. And there was this man, not particularly formidable. Rather dumpy. With a cherubic face, and I'm sure a lot of others just instantly had that feeling, can this be the man? Can this be the man who is leading the world? And then he began to talk and he used this one word, Nazis, the Nazis, and he got more vituperation into that. One word than I have ever heard is jaw came out, went down onto his chest, and there was there was Winston Churchill. <v Winston Churchill on newsreel>What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget? Prodigious hammer strokes have been needed to bring us together today. It will allow me to use other language. I will say that he must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below. Of which we have the honor to be the faithful servant. It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. I vow my hope and faith sure and inviolate that in the days to come, the British and American people will, for their own safety and for the good of all, walk together in majesty, in justice and in the.

<v Richard Strout>He stayed at the White House, I think, for about eight days. He and Franklin Roosevelt got on a first name basis. They go to the map room together. Churchill would push Roosevelt to the map room in his wheelchair and so forth.

<v Bill Moyers>You've seen a lot of crowds in your years of covering Washington, there's a marvelous passage from your book where you say the crowd was out there, too, when they brought Jack Kennedy body back. That crowd haunts the place. It always appears it was out there when President Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox. It is an actor in the drama when it materialized, silent, steady, patient watching all night. You know, great moments of history are occurring. What are some of the crowds? <v Richard Strout>You recall the most spectacular was when Franklin Roosevelt died. And I remember still the picture of the cortege coming down Pennsylvania Avenue. And there was a somebody had been playing in the band. He was a Black. And he dropped his whatever he was playing and just wept. And we all had that feeling. <v Bill Moyers>What's the most significant change in press conferences over the years from the first one you attended under Harding to the most recent under Reagan?

<v Richard Strout>Well, you people have changed press conferences. You're you're responsible for it. It's the coming of television. You had in the old days. Let's see now, Michael, biotics takes quite a while, Harding had only he missed a miscued and he gave some answer he shouldn't, so he would accept only written questions, whoever came in, whoever was secretary of commerce. And this. Television began to come in, I went down with secretary. Hoover and put on a demonstration of this new thing, television, it was the size of a playing card. I asked him to sign the sign the program. For me, <v Bill Moyers>Herbert Hoover, April 7th, nineteen

<v Richard Strout>twenty seven, nineteen twenty seven, and there's The New York Times far off speaker scene as well as heard here and a test of television. And you notice half way down the bank, it says Commercial use in doubt is commercial use and doubt. <v Bill Moyers>Did he make any comment about this, the potential of this new fangled device? <v Richard Strout>Yes. He said he hoped it would never be used to commercial commercial use that would injure the public. He didn't want it to be commercialized. <v Bill Moyers>President Eisenhower was the first to open the press conference to to television, even though it couldn't be live. Do you remember in 1954 when that happened? <v Richard Strout>Yeah, sure. Jim Haggerty would decide which tapes could go out and he would pick assorted tapes that showed the president in a favorable light and he'd put those out. And then later on, of course, it got to be more and more. <v Eisenhower on newsreel>I'm very happy that Dick Nixon was my friend. I'm very happy to have him as an associate in government. I would be happy to be on any political ticket in which I was a candidate with it. Now, if those words aren't plain, then it's merely because people can't understand the plain, unvarnished truth. I have nothing further to add to it.

<v Reporter on newsreel>Congressman [Alger of Texas] today criticized Mr. Salinger as a, quote, young and inexperienced White House publicity man, unquote. I question the advisability of having you visit Soviet Union. I wonder if you have any comment. <v John F. Kennedy on newsreel>I know there are always some people who feel that the Americans always are young and inexperienced and foreigners are always able and tough and great negotiators. But I don't think that the United States required the present tradition of leadership in the free world. In fact, if you were correct now you also I as I saw the press said that Mr. Salinger's main job was to increase my standing in the Gallup poll. Having done that, he's now moving on. <v Lyndon Johnson on newsreel>Jack.

<v Reporter on newsreel>Could you tell us anything about the public reaction that reflect telegrams and letters to you, to your decision to bomb the Hanoi ?inaudible? <v Lyndon Johnson on newsreel>Yes, we have first of all, all the communist countries are, generally speaking, opposed it rather vehemently. Some of them were rather vicious. And their statements that we were and I think inaccurate, that we were bombing civilian targets and killing civilians, we were very careful to select military targets that were not in the center of the area and to spare all civilians. And we took every precaution available to us. I cannot understand the thinking of any country or any people or any person that say that we should sit by with our hands tied behind this while these men bring their mortars and their hand grenades and their bombs into our barracks and kill our Marines and attack our camps and murder the village chief. And we should not do anything about it. <v Reporter on newsreel>Sir, last week in your speech, you referred to those who would exploit Watergate to keep you from doing your job, could you specifically detail who those are?

<v Nixon on newsreel>I would suggest that where the shoe fits, people should wear it. I would think that some some political figures. Some members of the press, perhaps some members of the television, perhaps would exploit it. I don't impute, interestingly enough, the motives, however, that are improper interest, because here's what is involved. There are a great number of people in this country that would prefer that I do resign. There are a great number of people in this country that didn't accept the mandate of 1972. After all, I know that most of the members of the press corps were not enthusiastic, and I understand that about either my election in 68 or 72. That's not unusual. Frankly, if I had always followed what the press predicted or the polls predicted, I would have never been elected president. <v Reporter on newsreel>Mr. President, when you say that Senator Kennedy has that his statements have not been accurate, responsible, and that they've not helped our country, and when he and his aides say that your own campaign has been misleading and negative and taking cheap shots, how can that do anything but further and bitterly divide the Democrats and argue both helping the Republicans in the general election?

<v Jimmy Carter on newsreel>Well, I might point out to you that I'm an incumbent Democratic president. I didn't ask for a challenger, but I have no aversion to a campaign. I want the world to know that I am not going to resume business as usual as a partisan campaigner out on the campaign trail until our hostages are back here free and at home. <v Sarah McClendon on newsreel>You have a report before you that was given to you from the Justice Department. It shows the discrimination that actually existed on the books at federal agencies and departments against women. Now you're committed to take care of legal equity for women. And this report has not been made public. Would you please let us see it would you do something about it? <v Ronald Reagan on newsreel>Hasn't reached me yet.

<v Sarah McClendon on newsreel>Yes it did. it came to you in the cabinet meeting and you admitted that your last press conference that you had and I have checked this out thoroughly. Yes, sir. It came from a secretary. <v Ronald Reagan on newsreel>There is a task force that is working on this very question. <v Sarah McClendon on newsreel>You've got part of it, you've got the first part of it was given to you at the cabinet meeting by Brad Reynolds, and it says there's been a lot of sex harassment of women. [laughter erupts] And I suggest [crosstalk] He talked about it at the cabinet meeting. <v Ronald Reagan on newsreel>Now, Sarah, just a minute here, or the discussion here will be getting an R rating <v Richard Strout>You go to a press conference to get news. Yes, but you be you go also to see how the president is handling himself. You go to see whether he looks, whether he's pale or whether he looks sick, whether he looks well, whether he's on to his job. You're estimating the man so that you can have a press conference, which doesn't say an awful lot in one way. That's an invidious thing. And it's funny, but you go to a press conference for other reasons than just to get spot news. I have to say a word about Hoover, too. I thought Hoover was going to be our greatest president. So you can see that my judgment wasn't very good. I used to go to his press conferences and said at the end of a long table and he was a shy man. He had trouble in meeting your eye. He wouldn't look directly at you. And we'd ask these questions and he'd say another question and we'd have five or six questions. And then at the end, he raised his head. He would have had all those five or six questions codified and he'd answered them. He'd give a superb answer to it. And I thought, this is the man who's going to bring order to American government. <v Bill Moyers>What happened?

<v Richard Strout>Oh, he was the victim of a great tragedy. He was overcome by forces which he didn't understand at all. He was a good man who he he was slain by the monster of the- The economic cycle killed him. <v Bill Moyers>I read some of your columns in nineteen seventy seven that said 50 years ago a vacationing president rode down a mountain to a semiweekly press conference and created a political mystery that has lasted to this day. What mystery? <v Richard Strout>Well, that was Calvin Coolidge. And that's another story that's fascinating. And it's never been solved and never will be solved because the people are dead. The speculation on it. I always enjoy Coolidge. Everybody enjoyed him. There was a curious side to him. He had received, as every president does, a hamper with a turkey in the Thanksgiving Day. And he actually did this. He took the White House cat and he put it into the hamper with the turkey to see what would happen. I don't know what happened. And then one time there was an alarm from the White House and the guards came rushing from all over the White House. The alarm had sounded and little rovell mad and pressed all the alarm buttons and then got behind the curtain to see what it was. What happened was the president. Yeah, the Coolidge had done this. <v Bill Moyers>Coolidge told reporters that when many people are out of work, unemployment result. Was Calvin Coolidge a dummy?

<v Richard Strout>No, I don't think so. He was a sharp Yankee with unimaginative. He did more sleeping than anybody who's ever been in the White House before. He took a nap every afternoon. And that was just the kind of a president that the country wanted. They wanted the president who slept. The country was rolling along. They'd started on the great development, the great boom, Coolidge boom, the Hoover boom. And we did I think I thought he was pretty bright, but he had tragedy in the White House. His beloved son got a infection in his foot playing tennis and died. It was before they knew what to do and died of blood poisoning. <v Bill Moyers>Was he ever the same after that? The president? <v Richard Strout>No, he had gone up to his hideaway up in the mountains out west and Grace his wife, who is the nicest woman in the world had got lost, she was guarded by a handsome Secret Service man. And they waited lunch for her and waited lunch for her. And there was nothing evil in the thing at all, but there was talk about it and it got into some of the Boston papers, <v Bill Moyers>Her relationship with him?

<v Richard Strout>Just the mere fact that she had been late and there was this good looking Secret Service man who was guarding her and was lost to that was all there was to it. And the Secret Service man was dismissed, or not dismissed, he was assigned given another assignment. I have a private speculation about it, what happened about when he said I he went up to the mountain and he rode out. I think it was 12 copies of this statement that he was going to make, he came down the mountain. He passed them out to the press there. <v Bill Moyers>I do not choose- <v Richard Strout>I do not choose to run. He didn't say anything about it, he didn't submit himself to any questions, and he went back up the mountain again and he had been accompanied by a senator. The senator told Grace about it and she said how like Carol, that is. He just he didn't mention that. He just he he kept it hugged to his breast. <v Bill Moyers>He didn't even tell his wife.

<v Richard Strout>He didn't tell his wife. He didn't tell anybody. And I have always. Well, this is just I've always thought it was an act of contrition to his wife. <v Bill Moyers>You've watched a lot of presidents, but you've also watched a lot of other notable people in this city, including some towering figures in the Congress. If you had to pick one or two of the supreme congressional leaders of your century. Who would you pick? <v Richard Strout>Well, as a as a speaker, eloquence, I'd put Borah. <v Bill Moyers>of Idaho. <v Richard Strout>Borah of Idaho. Goodness, you have to say that to you now. Yes. Borah. William E. Borah. William Edgar Borah. Well, I can tell you that they in the press gallery in the Senate, we all sit outside the folding glass doors and wait for something to happen, and then we may go in and look and see what the boys are doing, the senators on the floor. But when Borah spoke, the secretary of the Senate would open the doors and he shout two words, Borah's up and the whole crowd, 50 or 100 reporters would all go for those doors and sit down, Borah's up. <v William E. Borah on newsreel>It is often said in recent years that the Constitution of the United States is not a sacred document. But I feel that an instrument of government. Purchased by years of sacrifice and bloodshed. Up in the field, five weeks and months of arduous effort in council. Which has held together people of all kinds races and faith in ordered liberty. Which gives freedom to all who come within his jurisdiction. Which makes the people sovereign. And officials, our agent is sacred by every rule which measures the worth of human progress, our human freedom.

<v Richard Strout>Borah's up, and there's never been a senator in my lifetime of whom it could be said, Borah's up applied to him who could really be eloquent. <v Bill Moyers>What about LBJ as a congressional leader? <v Richard Strout>Lyndon Johnson was one person who carried his personality with him very, very effectively. I was interviewing him one time when he was in in the Senate. That time, he was majority leader in this huge Sistine Chapel, sort of an office that they gave him with nymphs overhead, diaphanous nymphs. You know, he was sitting down on the raised thing. <v Bill Moyers>Room P38. Room P38 in the Senate.

<v Richard Strout>And I had never met him before, but I had no reason to be there. I was I had to ask some question and he invited me in and he kept the whole string of important people waiting because he was trying to convince me of something that I didn't care very much about one way or the other. And he has just happened to use the metaphor, I'm not a babe in arms. And he sprang out from behind that big desk as though he were ejected from the catapult and he went marching up and down, this with a babe in arms. I heard him deliver that magnificent speech on civil rights before a joint session of Congress, and I found in my notes when I was at the press gallery that I had interrupted myself to say, I shall always remember this speech. <v Lyndon Johnson on newsreel>What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it's not just Negroes. But really, it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. <v Richard Strout>And under this Washington that I came to was an almost a segregated city. In 1922, a Black couldn't get served in a restaurant. If he went to a national theater, he couldn't he couldn't buy a seat under the second balcony. And just in our lifetime, this whole change has occurred.

<v Bill Moyers>What about Nixon's Republican cloth coat speech? You remember that? That was a very effective speech. <v Richard Strout>Well, there are two political speeches in my lifetime I would put that is one of them. Yes, that was the cloth coat. That was the Checkers speech. They discovered that there was a fund to be used at his discretion for political purposes. And some people called it a slush fund, that was unfair to him. It wasn't a slush fund. Then he made a reply on television, which was corny and meretricious and but it was magnificent. And he told about how simple he was. And he brought his wife in and his child children in and his little dog in. And his wife didn't have a fur coat the way some people did. She had a Republican cloth coat, <v Nixon on newsreel>I should say this, Pat doesn't have a mink coat, but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything. One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't, they'll probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip, we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas, black and white spotted. And our little girl, Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers. And, you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog. And I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep him.

<v Bill Moyers>Remember what Eisenhower said to Nixon after that cloth coat speech?

<v Richard Strout>Yeah, my boy. <v Bill Moyers>It kept him on the ticket. <v Franklin Roosevelt on newsreel>That's right. And the other speech that I will never forget, I have almost total recall on was the speech Franklin Roosevelt gave. That was the little dog Fala speech. And he said that, uh, we just come back from Alaska. The dog was along and I'm used to having things said about myself. I take that for granted. My children and my wife. But now they've attacked my little dog Fala. Well, of course, I don't want them to attack on my family. I don't resent attacks. But Fala does resent them. [laughter] You know, Fala's a Scot. And being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out have concocted a story that I left behind on the loose in Iowa and attempted to destroy farmland to find him. At a cost to the taxpayers of two or three or eight or 20 million dollars. His Scots soul is furious. He has not been in the same dog since. <v Richard Strout>Just milked that joke and the audience was receptive and they were rolling in the aisles. The only time when I can really say they were rolling in the aisles.

<v Bill Moyers>Let's talk about some of what you referred to in the past as your happiest recollections. One was traveling with Harry Truman on his famous 1948 whistle stop campaign across America. And you call him Gallant Harry. Why was that? <v Richard Strout>That was in 1948 when he was obviously defeated. He couldn't win. He was just helpless there. There were I think there were 50 reporters on that special train. And Newsweek took a poll. And every one of us, including I, we said he is going to be defeated. We all knew he was going to be defeated. And what he didn't know it and we'd ask each other is anybody told him he can't win and he'd do these horrible things, do it. But he was so gay, who at one time they got him in the what was that name of that hall the ?inaudible? was the name of Arkansas, Kansas and Nebraska. And there was a Legion parade and the Legion were all out parading. And when he got into the hall, they had only about a thousand people right down the front seat. This was for the president, the president of the United States, they were out parading and out there on the town. And so there was an awful moment. We went in there and we gasped and we said the president had only been able to turn out about two thousand and the hall holds about 10,000. And then came that awful moment when you television people took your machines and you can see the light and they moved it slowly around the whole up and down these empty seats. And there was this game, little guy, he had to live through that. <v Bill Moyers>An empty hall.

<v Richard Strout>Empty hall. And he did it. He went out and dedicated a Charlie Ross, got his signals mixed and-. <v Bill Moyers>His press secretary. <v Richard Strout>His press secretary, and he dedicated a landing field to he thought he was going to dedicate it to a war hero. And it was some, it was a woman. It was a war hero. <v Bill Moyers>All kinds of mistakes are made. <v Richard Strout>Yeah. Just awful things like that happened to him all the time. <v Bill Moyers>And yet he never gave up, did he? Never quit. <v Richard Strout>Never give up. And he always insisted that he was going to win. <v Bill Moyers>And you said he got wonderfully corny the further west he got <v Richard Strout>He was just professionally corny. Yes, he was beyond belief corny. He said, I'm going down to Berkeley for to get me a degree. And his he brought in his grandfather, who had been a covered wagon rider, and he kept bringing the grandfather in. And then some little scandal was supposed to have been exposed during his absence. And it didn't amount to anything. And his reply to that was, they can't prove nothing. They ain't got a thing on me. And my dear friend Tom Stokes put those two lines together and oh, Susanna, I'm going down to Berkeley for to get me a degree. They can't prove nothing. They ain't got a thing on me. They are saying there's always a there's always a song that grows out of any one of these trips. I used to be in those days. <v Bill Moyers>You remember election night? 1948.

<v Richard Strout>Oh, yes, surely you bring it back to me, I, I remember very poignantly because I write for The Christian Science Monitor and I also write for The New Republic, and I had to have my column in The New Republic ahead of time, so I had Dewey all elected in print and then, by golly, Truman deceived me and I had these mingled emotions, I was going to be mortified as everybody else, all these other reporters were the Alsop's and everybody else. We all had what kind of a president will Dewey make. And yet I have the rejoicing that the little game little fellow had won. <v Dewey on newsreel>I sent the following where the president doing my heartiest congratulations to you on your election and every good wish for a successful administration. I urge all Americans to unite behind you in support of every effort to keep our nation strong and free and to establish peace in the world. <v Truman on newsreel>Mr. ?inaudible? was saying the president is a million vote ahead in the popular vote, we have yet to [laughter erupts]. And we are very sure that when they come in when these votes come in Mr. Truman will be defeated by another [laughter erupts]. And I went back to bed and went to sleep.

<v Bill Moyers>There's a wonderful paragraph from one of your columns that no political writer who sat through the astonishing returns last week will ever forget them. There was personal humiliation for us as a prophet, but a glowing and wonderful sense that the American people couldn't be ticketed by polls, knew its own mind, and had picked the rather unlikely but courageous figure of Truman to carry on its banner. <v Richard Strout>It's very true. Yes, I had just the same feelings now. It was showed that despite all the machinery and mechanical part of the election, the American nation is there and breaks through at the appropriate time.

<v Bill Moyers>The other happiest recollection I've heard you talk about was traveling with Nikita Khrushchev of all people in 1959. <v Richard Strout>Well, that was unbelievable. We went right across the United States with this little Roly-Poly figure who was alien in every way and looks and so forth, and was agreeable and affable and having a wonderful time. And we got out to San Francisco and they took us into a supermarket, they wanted to show the Nikita Khrushchev what real America was like, so they took us into a supermarket and we wrecked the market because we liked it. And to understand that, you have to realize that when a celebrity like Nikita Khrushchev or the president travels about a thousand or 1500 people travel with him, we had the photographers of all the French and German newspapers, and they these European photographers, they are a breed by themselves. They stop at nothing. And we got into this great supermarket where there was a crowd of people and we barged in on that thing and flashing away and they're in the center of the wost. It would always be little Khrushchev who was about I guess he was about a little over five feet tall. I got up onto the checkout counter and I thought that was the safest place for me. I climbed up on top of. And right down below me, there was a recumbent figure of a woman on the floor and there she was people trampling around, not stepping on her. But there she was on the floor. I asked one of the photographers later, did you see that woman who fainted was right there on the floor. He said, fainted? I thought she was dead. And then over on one side of this huge supermarket, a fight had broken out. A fight. And I don't know that things are going on all around. And I asked the fellow we asked them all at the end what what had been going on. And I asked, what were you fighting with the butcher for? And he said, I don't know. He attacked me. But you were you were over there at the meat counter. Why would he attack you? I don't know. I didn't do anything. I was standing on his meat. <v Bill Moyers>Well, those are some trips, weren't they. I mean, you've seen it from the ground up as well as from the Senate gallery.

<v Richard Strout>That's right. Yes. <v Bill Moyers>There's another episode in your life you write very movingly about, and that's watching the invasion of Normandy in 1944. <v Richard Strout>D-Day. Yes. That was out of the normal track of the Washington reporter. And I was aligned to the U.S.S. Quincy. One of the most magnificent cruises in the world, and I was the only reporter on board and the captain took me up to the forward look out, and there I was to watch the battle of D-Day. He provided a stenographer for me, was to stand right beside me, and I was to dictate to him as it went along. But I found I couldn't dictate. So I typed the story out. I typed that on a typewriter that spoke French and had all the French. And every time they let go a salvo of a gun, something would fall off the walls, a shaving brush, mold or something. ?inaudible? the whole boat. That evening, we didn't know who won the battle, our hearts were in our mouths, and then over from England came a line of airplanes. Every airplane had a glider by it and it was towing. We could see the airplane and along a little way for Zephyr and then a glider. And it just came from England. It didn't stop coming. They kept coming more and more of them by the time they had reached done whatever they had done, the airplanes began coming back again, but without the gliders. The gliders had been let off and they had landed on Normandy and they were behind the lines. And I still have a feeling of. Well, there's no other word to use in religious I had a religious feeling of prayer. This was the- it lifted me out of myself. We can phrase it in any way you want, but there it was. This was America. We had done this. <v Bill Moyers>We reporters can never truly finally separate our own feelings. We can never really be objective, can we?

<v Richard Strout>No, of course not. We don't. We shouldn't be. No, but we should keep it under under restraint. <v Bill Moyers>You once wrote that this has been an extraordinarily fascinating half century from Teapot Dome to Watergate. It was marked, you said, by America's coming of age. What do you mean coming of age? <v Richard Strout>Well, there was this innocence that we had when I came to Washington. And everywhere you go back, the streetcars and no television and-. <v Bill Moyers>No airplanes coming over here. <v Richard Strout>No airplanes overhead. And we couldn't lose a war. It was impossible for the United States. We never lost a war. So we must be superior to anybody else. That was before Vietnam. And things have constantly got more complicated and things have speeded up and the tempo is faster. The dangers are vastly greater than they were. I think we've been united and I think we well, we have to say that we have to put in a word of praise for the American nation, democracy. We believe in democracy and we believe in live and let live. We've got better. You know, when I came to Washington, the World Almanac every year at the end would have a horrible list of lynchings that occurred in the United States during the past year and there'd be 60 or 70 or 80. Well, the World Almanac doesn't carry any account of the number of lynchings in the United States. You can say anything you want about how civil rights have a long way to go in this country. But compared to what they used to be, we have a first civilized nation. We have a magnificent achievement. We've done pretty well. <v Bill Moyers>Have you enjoyed this show?

<v Richard Strout>Enjoyed it. Yes, of course. And it's a never ending variety. You always think you've seen everything and then you've got something brand new that has never happened before. It happens every day. You get a new kind of president. You get a new set of questions that are asked him. You get a new challenge to him. You get a new international problem. <v Richard Strout>So it's quite a spectacle from 1922. <v Richard Strout>Oh, it's the greatest show on Earth. <v Bill Moyers>This has been a look at presidents and politics with Richard Strout. I'm Bill Moyers. <v Announcer>This program has been brought to you by the people of Chevron who have been helping to supply America's energy needs throughout the 20th century.

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