USA: Writers; 7; Richard Rovere: Journalism as an Art

the set i'm richard rove ear and for the better part of the last thirty years i've been a journalist mainly for magazines and mainly for the new yorker magazine west twenty years in washington correspondent i deal mainly with

politicians which means that the new people i deal with barbed wire a man in a profession that's enjoys very much on her niche in this world some people sort of serbia pro hard to tell which is the most is written more disreputable great irish poet billy b yeats said no difficulty there was this problem he once wrote if i remember probably of a statesman is an easy man he tells those laws by wrote the journalist makes up his lawyers and graduate the throat i don't think that's quite fair but don't i've seen enough instances of it my own view journalism really see kind of the night what do whatever the opportunity for that self as sir as russ and was as a bunch

of criticism and i've never seen why ear society or politics or government can't be a campy look dollars a year as a production rather his work performance rovers one does will have a critical to a player critic reads a book our critic looks of beef stew for protection board and the st tools can generally be you was a very famous old matthew arnold notion of criticism was that you were try and look with sympathy and what the person's who's trying to do and judge for yourself whether he's doing it badly wants a fairly well simple rule of criticism of the sums up my view my approach to politics and the certainly quite well on the whole i

signed that kept me out of some trouble and allowed me to have to do some some pieces are not totally ashamed of good deal of this work consists in interviewing talking to two were politicians mainly in washington and i i'm now going to work have a candidate toward hope as possible with a rather interesting man a senior senator for jacob javits republican mr o'meara was invited by national educational television usa write a series to give an example of his interview techniques he's been intimately acquainted with the washington scene and one of the most respected and incisive critics of this political and world capital much of his interviewing style is indirect

his questions are contemplating his interviews of dialogues during this have fallen we will see the start of a profile so jacob cage of its senator javits we want i think over a fairly long looks into the future now your future in and out of your party start out a bit talking about the party i'm jewish and christian familiar with fortune lose action interesting long range for that plus bert work to that tune how is the feeling which i have very deeply that the next two years are going to be as rough or referendum the

last few and the security along the only time i do think that so well i gather you mean a long and ugly time in terms of the republican party as the response assad is the research organization up in boston gauging a lot of intellectuals etc for the party i don't know that it's going to be an ugly time or a long time but i do think the next two years i'm gonna mark a real struggle as plainly progressive that progress is in the republican party and the ultra conservative what i had in mind was that you can you and your associates can look for just about as as better time in pre convention days of nineteen sixty eight as of nineteen sixty four i don't think the results will be the same but the syrian forces will be engaged and i know myself i sort of attending that

convention just as much as a hundred sixty four but i think you're right about that but it i doubt very much that will persist until convention time in my temper and for those reasons the year of the nineteen sixty four earthquake was characterized in its last days by two struggles no wonder what a struggle song lovely conservative on lies gaston and the album by the struggle of the progress is to get together and something of somebody in iraq for kerry the opposition in himself and this was yet of that struggle and i think this time you'll find that the progress is the moderates in the party i would've gotten together well before the convention concentrated on a candidate and to be prepared follow through and i look for farm or similarities i work with the same results and the conventions of the six a fifty two and sixty eight and conventions of a sixty four and sixty eight well we put it this way

it seems to me that if we were to get involved you are or people of your gentle persuasion your ear and republican politics that would be fine with a great many people but it would hurt it would lead to defections the way the whole thing has organized now that would be just as compelling as the other kind of defections in in other words i'm trying to say that i don't think there's that your your party and sixty eight is going to be ready for the people of your general out what well i think that there were before about in the next two years second i think if there are defections and undoubtedly there will be somebody there be very minor i've had that experience in my own state where there were inventions but they were small well within the five percent range

but in our case i will compensate for it enormously in the votes of independents and democrats where is the goldwater that nothing to lose i'm sad that the gay man that will do what plans of you were what were your work what role of you cast yourself are not talking about candidate cesar and i think the sort of how you write at this moment and i'm looking in the next couple of years we do you're part of those fighting my struggle in my struggle that might call the struggle is the idea and policy and ideological struggle not maybe necessary to cast that in terms of the candidacy an automated vivid and dramatic our allies it they may not have the same impact when we met but leaving that aside and you say my job will be to show that i'm a progressive republican position does

involve specifics that it's not me to learn that it's entirely viable within the republican coalition that good for the country and can win or how are you want to tell you to seven years i wonder what our elders as change your role as a as the senators are forty member you were live it makes me more active nationally not it makes me also were more involved in party debates themselves there will be states which are deciding you know the man for a national committeeman and shannon and whatnot and i will be the sentiment out of the party within states which will go to determine the composition of that delegation to the convention i don't see my role too much different ideologically exempt more intense and as i say it may have to be carried and the personal candidacy in order to have their goodness and drama and second i see myself more involved in need politics of the party as a party non i hear for chavez and for

those reasons i think my role will be somewhat different indeed my role was already in those resentments begun to check you started in the urban representative vote at the time or know there wasn't the awareness of this sector of the singularity of this problem that there is now an airman you were to hold statewide offices as that was this emphasis on an urban isn't compelled you to operate differently is a state were officially but to some extent that has no i think it has had an impact on me as a matter of fact i dealt with him at considerable length in the book which she reviewed nomad a broad chapter of the metropolitan area and my say it's changed it in this regard when i ran for office in nineteen forty six roughly twenty years ago and was elected to the house of

representatives a national issues didn't dominate but even then there were local issues of the national character resemble one iran meat rationing now was a big issue housing is an enormous issue because veterans had just come back and ratified one of the first things i did in the congress response of the taft on the wagner housing those days marion famous and liberal stature that you didn't have the feeling of being so specialized and respect to art all the nations now you have that feeling more and more you got the war against poverty wages a very big factor in terms of the city's accept what it has done is to one concentrating more on welfare and matters of that character than before and interestingly enough it's also mark my committee assignments was anything to journalists who moved concentration urban affairs and in your own terms undo what you wear tell us time for foreign affairs

well i would say that i'd be doing the human rational brains and now put after all being limited by human capacity i haven't felt that but i'm sure it so i'm sure that there is some effort which was therefore concentrated among other matters which now has to be concentrated upon this great problem of the cities as i say i'm not conscious of them and as far as i can see i my interest them a concerned with and preparation and that with foreign affairs and has been at the expense of myself not that's a little less time to the contemplative and they're more in action but for example within the last six months i've been to vietnam i've been to align the market on missions as far as the senate is concerned i've been on nato are all said so last november and so the though that were hardly indicate any diminution of

the intensity of that and foreign affairs but i do think that the time to sit back and really think about them are perhaps in an omelet committee hearings perhaps read more books and more documents and suburbs that that probably has yielded to some extent the exit and sees a city problems which have the space some of the time here for available video how do you feel that this stir that i'm sure comes to from time to time about the past the possibility of a vice presidential nomination and the importance of this sin in terms of the precedent of the first jewish candidate too he talked of in this way anywhere where and the something awful i think about the idea of a number of firsts were work getting there they're good but on the other hand there are really only for me what were we

hope will end up on were getting back to balanced against gun of glory in the ritz instrument and you of course this has been an orphan is about you and your future well hot i think that the balanced ticket synthetically balance for the purpose of having a juror catholic or protestant or a negro are oral or something else on the ticket i disapprove of family life oppose them in new york and on the contrary as strongly back those who hadn't gone in for them now and i feel very strongly about that and i do believe that where exaggerates it now that's fine that indicates a striking down of the barrier i think that the president john kennedy or is not of my party and i was the first one to a broken an important barrier other people felt the rate of that i figured either charge should forgive me i hope it

will be because i have the talent on the calendar and the capacity and the experience and the record about which reserves that are as far as the people are concerned that it will also have the fallout and again breaking another barrier which will be good for our nation and i'm good for its future but i thoroughly agree with you that that should not be done because i am jewish but because i am a suitable candidate whom the people feel strongly enough about the making candidate now if you do that there's a car than a double thing has been served a barrier has been broken and people are chosen without regard to ancient prejudices because the us does put her ear when it's done it's always been a particularly awkward sword always been a factor and politics and i don't think people can disentangle the year of these things as neatly as you know and here i mean they don't really know

well you say of course it's suitable candidate nobody wants to say he's backing and suitable candidate for anything but it is a kind of extra element an extra consideration and i think the world a good once be welcomed and yet seem a kind of burden for you too to caring i don't think you would want to be understood to mean that only white protestant anglo saxon candidates should be nominated because then you're sure your average synthetic that absolutely no one on one other bases be achieved except the best man who isn't that one of the glories of our country that perhaps a person of the jewish faith as a person of the catholic faith as a negro tomorrow will be the best one in the country that's all i'm talking about cultural are not challenging that i'm going to get a juror of your general feeling about it in your own

in your own political career because it has been working as well and i think you've given to me oh you're not say this to a bar my complete thought yeah i'll take my chances on the fight that people would regard such a choice of the show matt know i should be the candidate as not being a success as synthetic selection of the ticket on the basis of faith i think that at a virtual made after two decades of recreate a subject i'd rather have confidence and now i think people are pretty discerning you know and in the politics i found that so builders are no fools and the idea can see a synthetic taken a mile away at the same time they will take great pleasure as they did with kennedy and the fact that the barrier has been broken and on the basis of merit some voters have been fools in the majority's i'm pretty fortunate that we really are

go by that rule except in a kind of long run historical sense we've made it in this country i mean it's a thing as in fall apart yet i know i can't think of any of this real engine in the end would stand by that the notion that the people are always going to lisette lee walton averages vary get an average is an average of thirty i moved venice senators during most of the years in which shirt of the senate has become the year of the prime source of manpower for the top of the ticket and won terribly interesting development it seems to me because i think it's partly it's partly the senate looks concerned with foreign affairs but so also partly me early in the fact that you're in washington remote communications center and that sort of thing

you go on it you get more national exposure than others how you feel about the us senate as an institution what kinds of use that country's been the making of that do you think it's a good breeding ground of the supplies that the best place to be well i it and i was no quota best place to be it depends on you know you can make something out of anything depending upon your quality and character and you might be a subordinate official and some stations still use stand out tremendously ah but i don't agree that the year that the senate has been a breeding ground for presidents and presidential candidates because it's only recently been the reason as with our problems have in a sense accelerated and complexity so that you really have to be there right at the center of events is soaking up all of this information and knowledge in order to have a feel

of what's going on and the relationship one piece to another at a national international sense and these things are so complex and take so much homework that is very hard to get it just by studying from the state capital firm of some city hall and hence i think it's a very logical but the complexity the subtlety of a problem as well as our exposure as a given us this right in the senate now is to the usefulness of the senate as an institution i think it's more useful than ever it is a essentially it's a compact body though often that that worked very very slowly and in addition it's somebody in which people spend a considerable term of years our committee responsibilities a very diverse and we are the we have nearly enough staff still compared to the member of the house representatives we have a very considerable staff in addition there is a certain prestige that attaches to a senate which enables him to press many buttons and get additional help that colleges and universities business concerns of trade unions and many other places

for that reason i think or you find a standing on a platform from which it is possible to merge others named were smarter better a nice house colleagues are other people but we do have the advantage is which i've been nominated in addition to relocate because when it comes to treaties when it comes to approving appointments other senate theres this so while including members of the cabinet and that does give an enhanced authority and power and stage which has various human qualities been proven i think the quality or people has been improving in the sense of the educated working echelon look at the enormous improvement in business executives how we're much better educated well around that they are for their jobs a night i'll take your word for that hasn't been probably a dozen children about richard wright i think we're well i've been covering the summit longer you've been an agnostic qualities indeed improved insulin well

thank you very much senator john ensign juggling or vehicle journalism involves a good many of the reason that so optically american journalism for we have a almost unique situation having our politicians so so accessible and in fact so eager to be year to talk about themselves and they talk to warn us and learns after a certain amount of time that there are politicians perhaps old human beings can be divided up into working and the two prices along the sort of person who search personality is revealed almost in a moment a search on the surface there is and they are sold to

serve booze one the surface i'd known and a good deal of subsurface these distinctions in the way or in videos but i point out most of corruption and many people can see that a senator javits a longs only own enough in the first category of those to say if you know if you see in the public performance of any kind you see in pretty much the homeland of this is not true of old was like the opposite that i would say is true of lyndon johnson but the year the categories so i'm pretty fast and i would put jacob javits along with o'shea hubert humphrey and harry truman perhaps boy d eisenhower among those who were nothing

much and there would be revealed by any amount of probing a book johnson was a supreme example of the man who has to exist on many levels and i have often found people unable to believe it when i said that these days one of the greatest conversationalist in the country one of the funniest conversations on the bus i don't believe that it's necessary for hands on how to conceal work that side of them now senator javits i think something that interested me very much were certain and i think that was just talk about the flight politics and i was one word wasn't on to reflect that was this reveals snow revealed rather interesting goldman in american history just rising in american politics doesn't that doesn't hesitate wood wood never be

cory about about whether he was the negro politician or not of course it is and what else is at risk as people need in in politics as people meet him as their man he wants power and he doesn't try to work it doesn't try to conceal the fact this is raul us senator javits representing area minority that has the risk it's been assimilated pretty well is in a position to world to say oh yes it's not really a balanced ticket it's almost accidental that we are that we have this and this kind of situation is not yet the fact is slowly sure he would acknowledge that we've known for the way that that that is slowly

began as an ethnic politician an honest played the row very honorably through weren't well over many years and i think that was served and what i got from this was little exchange more money fails and the un however senator javits is a good deal more than that he's always there is always engaging is always going genuine integrity i don't think that they the ph rule and cited earlier applies to hand and i hope it doesn't apply to me as ben

this is an ep national educational television it's b