Talking Back

by Andrea Mitchell

  I’ve written this book for people who love politics and journalism, but occasionally hate politicians and journalists. I hope that by showing the human interactions that go into covering Congress or the White House or the State Department, people will better understand the successes and failures of both government and the news media. And why we reporters never stop chasing after that elusive next story—all the while, loving the chase.

  PREFACE

  Miss Virginia Clair could have been the character played by Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday—the film remake of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s newsroom classic, The Front Page. I idealized her as a tough, wisecracking newspaperwoman in a man’s world. Appearing tall and imposing, at least to an eleven-year-old, she wore a hat and, improbably, gloves. As I remember her, she was never without a cigarette. The newsroom was a noisy, dark place in a sliver of a building on the corner of North Avenue and Main Street in my hometown of New Rochelle, New York. As the school editor of The Standard Star, Miss Clair was a pathbreaker. She had started, as women invariably did, writing “social” news, as part of the women’s department, in 1947. Her salary was thirty-five dollars a week, her first byline a baby announcement. Four years later, she had worked her way up to assistant school editor, and by 1955, inhabited the top schools job herself.

  I can’t recall seeing another woman in the newsroom. Clearly, she had struggled to carve out a place for herself. Today, even she acknowledges that she was “tough” on us school reporters—one from each of the city’s nine elementary schools, plus an alternate. Certainly, to this sixth grader, she was very intimidating.

  I had won my “job” as school reporter for my elementary school in a writing competition. The assignment was simple: I’d go to all the other classrooms and collect stories about their latest projects. Mr. Paolicelli’s class was doing a social studies report on New York State history; Mrs. Kinsler’s class was having a mathematics contest. I was to choose the best examples and write about them.

  On Tuesday afternoons after school, my mother would drive me downtown with my stories. New Rochelle in those days was a bedroom community of seventy-five thousand people, described by George M. Cohan in his 1906 musical as “Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway.” We lived in the “north end,” and I attended the Roosevelt School, named after Theodore, not Franklin. Unlike the rest of the town’s population, the children in my elementary school were largely Jewish émigrés from Brooklyn or, in my case, the Bronx. For our family, having a split-level house in the suburbs with a backyard was a step up from the apartment building in the city where we’d lived until I turned six. New Rochelle had large Italian-American and African-American populations and a highly competitive school system, but until I went to junior and senior high school, I had little contact with children from different backgrounds. Our little neighborhood was an enclave on a dead end, ideal for riding bikes and playing softball. Always at the center of the action was my father, the pied piper of the block, organizing pickup softball games and eventually coaching Little League.

  On those trips downtown to submit my news stories, I would sit in the passenger seat of the gray Olds with rear fins and a broad white stripe, hunched over as I balanced my lined notepad on my knees. In a pattern that has persisted over the decades, I was often late, scribbling my final version, or at least copying it over, in the car. Miss Clair was not happy about sloppy additions. She had a deep, throaty voice and edited with quick strokes of a soft pencil. I would stand nervously, watching her read the copy. Even if she liked it, which she rarely if ever telegraphed, that did not mean it would make it into print. There was a lot of competition from the other schools. I can still recall the stress of not knowing whether my work would make it into print until the schools column appeared every Friday afternoon.

  Even at age eleven, there was a thrill when I saw my byline, and heard my voice on the air for the first time. My first broadcast? Making the morning announcements for my elementary school on the public address system. To this day, I remember feeling nervous in front of that microphone when I said, “Good morning, boys and girls. This is Andrea Mitchell reporting from the principal’s office.” From such moments ambitions are born. For as many years as I have been reporting, there is still a kick watching my stories on the news.

  I’ve often thought about why I so love daily journalism. Fundamentally, it’s the sheer joy of storytelling, the spinning of the narrative itself. It’s like reading a good novel, or watching a movie. How will the story end? What will be the outcome of that close Senate vote? On the most exciting stories, honest reporters will tell you that we have no idea either.

  Separately, there is the excitement of being an eyewitness to history. As journalists we are privileged because we gain entry to places where the average reader or viewer cannot go. Once we are there, it’s our mission to relay the facts and more—context, background, the larger meaning of events. Often the challenge is to provide the right words to give focus to the lasting images that, stitched together, create our visual history. Even now, the moment that captures the beginning of the end of the Cold War for me is Ronald Reagan in Berlin on a June day in 1987 demanding that Mikhail Gorbachev tear down that wall. It is indelible, because I was there. Just as I will always recall the September morning in 1993 when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat finally shook hands on the South Lawn of the White House, representing the first real hope that Israelis and Palestinians could someday live together in peace.

  That day on the White House lawn, I stood on a box that raised me to eye level with the camera. As the two lifelong enemies reached toward each other, past Bill Clinton, to shake hands, the cheers were so loud from the invited guests that I could barely hear Tom Brokaw’s questions through my earpiece. Only Clinton and his closest aides knew how tense that moment actually was for the participants. As former U.S. Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross later explained, Rabin had made Clinton promise to block Arafat if he tried to embrace the Israeli leader. Rabin was willing to shake hands as a step toward peace. Hugging the man he still thought of as a terrorist was going too far. It is a story that perfectly captures the ambivalence Israel felt about entering into a long-term relationship with the Palestinians.

  On a much less elevated plane than becoming an eyewitness to history, being a journalist lets you satisfy the guilty pleasure of enjoying rumor, gossip, and special access to uncommon knowledge. Along with these impulses comes the nobler aspiration of educating and informing the public. We broadcasters also have that performer’s gene, generating oversized egos that need constant nourishment.

  Being a reporter has transported me from a row house in Philadelphia to a yurt on the steppes of Mongolia. I’ve tangled with politicians of all types and presidents of every political persuasion. I’ve been tossed out of bed by an earthquake and a NATO air strike on the same night in Belgrade, and had my job threatened by figures ranging from a big-city mayor to the chief of staff of the president of the United States. Along the way, from Kabul to Havana, I’ve seen courage and generosity that define the best of the human spirit. In the rain forests of Jonestown, Guyana, I’ve also witnessed how evil unchecked can twist the human heart and mind. From wartime to peace, through struggles over race, gender, and economic justice, I’ve been privileged to cover politics and foreign policy during the administrations of every president from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush.

  From the vantage point of a front-row seat, this is that story, and mine. It is the story of a woman who made her way in an old boys’ world, ever Miss Clair’s eager pupil, inspired not just by Miss Clair but also by amateur detective Nancy Drew and comic strip character Brenda Starr. In my dreams, I was that detective or that “Girl Reporter,” eager to uncover plots and investigate mysteries—gutsy, glamorous, and ageless, an independent woman leading a fabulous life.

  It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, and I didn’t often have a “roadster” or a plan of action as reliable as Nancy Drew’s. But to this day I love digging for
details, speed-dialing to find eyewitnesses, persuading insiders to talk. In a way I am still the police reporter I was trained to be as a young journalist in Philadelphia, puzzling things out, looking for the story behind the story, trailing a breaking lead the way I first responded to the bell when a fire alarm went off. It doesn’t matter whether the final result will help one side or the other. The chase and the reporting are the reward.

  Our job as journalists is to throw ourselves into this great game, celebrating moments of political courage while never hesitating to expose hypocrisy and corruption. Sometimes, that requires “talking back” to power, whether to presidents, dictators, or lesser scoundrels. That is still my mission today, as clearly as it was the first day I entered a newsroom, eager to share the latest news from the sixth grade.

  CHAPTER 1

  Copyboy

  I’m not sure how I got to be so pushy. In the beginning, and even now, I wanted to emulate Miss Virginia Clair and be a lady and an ace reporter at the same time. It’s a balancing act I’m still sorting out after nearly four decades in the business. Though I’m viewed by many of my colleagues (and my subjects) as aggressive, I see myself rather differently, as shy, trying to overcome a basic reserve and bookishness.

  My mother, a first-generation American who lived through the Great Depression and World War II, used to worry that I was too tough when questioning political figures. As a younger woman she had a fear of authority, and she couldn’t figure out where I’d developed such a “fresh mouth,” as she put it. But I’d always been something of a rebel, getting into trouble talking back to teachers at school or cracking jokes in class. Maybe it has something to do with being the middle child of three, eager to carve out my niche and attract attention in my own way.

  My parents provided an example of lives lived with a deep sense of purpose and a strong code of behavior. To them, and to most of their generation, nothing was as important as the work ethic. We were not just encouraged to perform; we were expected to outdistance all of our peers. If we came home with a score of ninety-five on a test, our father would ask, only half-jokingly, what happened to the other five points? Perfectionism was a family disease. I’m certain that my parents are responsible for the seriousness with which I tackled my new profession, even as a fledgling reporter. It was not a great leap from their lessons of social responsibility to my unquestioning belief as a young adult that journalism was a mission.

  We were supposed to be adversaries of those in power, wardens against abuses and conflicts of interest. Both of my parents came from tightly knit Jewish families. A big part of their life was building and supporting community organizations, as well as sustaining the synagogue. In particular, my father came from a long line of scholarly, observant Jews, and took the traditions very seriously. From an early age, we were taught that we had a moral and religious obligation to give back to society.

  My father built a business, manufacturing furniture and house-wares, and ran it for forty years. After he finally sold it to new owners, they asked him to stay on, which he did; his attempts to leave always elicited eager offers of a more accomodating schedule, until he was past eighty. My mother worked just as hard, first as a homemaker and volunteer, then as a school administrator. She organized visits to nursing homes for our Girl Scout troop and spent years playing the piano at a school for children with developmental disabilities. Teaming up with a friend who was a former Rockette, my mother knew, intuitively, that music and dance would be good therapy. And although she began on the women’s auxiliary of the local symphony orchestra, before long she was the president of the orchestra’s board. When she had a goal in mind, nothing could stop her.

  My family was always interested in politics. Even before we moved to the suburbs, my mother took my older sister and me to watch major events—like the first televised inaugural when Harry Truman was sworn in as president in 1949—on a television set in a store window near our apartment in the Bronx. Once we had our own television, I recall our parents watching the Army-McCarthy hearings, and being outraged by Joe McCarthy. As kids, we traded I LIKE IKE and ALL THE WAY WITH ADLAI buttons in elementary school. And by the time I was in high school, John F. Kennedy was debating Richard Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr., was marching for civil rights, and the dinner-table conversations with my older sister and younger brother were dominated by arguments over the Vietnam War.

  We all went to a public high school that was a hotbed of political activity. A stone building, it was beautifully situated on twin lakes that were perfect for ice-skating excursions with our father during the winter. But the bucolic atmosphere barely masked the temper of the times. The local NAACP organized groups to demonstrate at Woolworth’s lunch counter, part of a national protest. A few more daring students became Freedom Riders down south. The entire school mourned the death of Mickey Schwerner, one of the three civil rights workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, whose mother was our popular biology teacher. According to testimony in the 1967 trial of eighteen suspects, Mickey, twenty-four when he died, was known to the Klansmen as Goatee or Jew Boy. Four decades later, a seventy-nine-year-old preacher was finally indicted for the murders.

  But even more than politics or public service, my adolescence was dominated by music. My mother, a fine pianist, gave boundless time and energy to foster our musical educations. Tirelessly, she juggled a complicated after-school schedule and ferried me to violin and piano lessons, choir practice, All-County Orchestra, and eventually, rehearsals for the Philharmonic Symphony of Westchester, a community symphony. My sister, Susan, played the piano, string bass, and bassoon; my brother, Arthur, played the cello. We had two pianos in our home, in order to play duets. Often, we fell asleep listening to our mother downstairs, playing Chopin nocturnes or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The school system also made music education easily accessible. I was in first grade when a teacher first put a violin in my hands. Practicing was a joy, not a chore. I could close my bedroom door, shut out the rest of the family, and transport myself into a self-created world of beautiful sound. A junior high school teacher took us to the Metropolitan Opera, exposing me to rehearsals of La Bohème and Lohengrin. School choirs gave me my first chance to sing Christmas carols and, later, more advanced liturgical music.

  I loved all types of music and listened to everything, even if it meant sneaking a radio under the bedcovers to hear jazz when my parents thought I was asleep. Because I lived so close to New York City, a favorite high school date was a trip to Greenwich Village to a jazz club. Being underage, I borrowed an ID from my older sister to get in. On Christmas Eve, her boyfriend Lewis Greenstein—later to become my brother-in-law—took us to Alexander Schneider’s chamber music concerts at Carnegie Hall.

  Having a sister so close in age—only two years older—was critical to shaping the person I have become. When we were four and six years old, she protected me from street bullies and taught me to read. As I became an awkward adolescent, she overlooked my sillier obsessions—like the fantasy that I could become a cheerleader—and concentrated on the serious stuff, like helping me prepare for college. This early love of teaching persisted, leading her to a career as a college professor in two widely different fields: British and African literature. Of course, being so close in age, we also fought as children, but our father’s refrain—“You two will be each other’s best friends when you are grown up”—has proven true. And I’ve often thought it was my special bond with my sister that helped me to develop strong friendships with other women, both in and out of work, for the rest of my life.

  My siblings were less outgoing than I. In our family, I was the drama queen and classroom cutup. For two summers, my parents sent me to music school at the Aspen Music Festival, even though I was technically too young to qualify for the program. For a while, I thought I might even attend music school, like Juilliard or the Curtis Institute, rather than a liberal arts college. But soon I got beyond the stage where I could coast on whatever talent I had as something of a prod
igy. In the world of professional music, I was not going to stand out.

  So when I entered college, it was to study liberal arts. At the University of Pennsylvania, I studied English literature. My family and professors fully expected that I would go on to graduate school at Cambridge, England, where I had been accepted at one of the women’s colleges, but I was determined to do something very different. It’s difficult to recall what fueled my restlessness, but my parents had raised three very independent children. My sister and her husband went to Kenya as Peace Corps volunteers in 1966, when being in the Peace Corps was still considered very adventurous. My younger brother and his wife homesteaded in a remote section of northwest Canada, building a log house and running a general store in a small mining town.

  My travel lust was satisfied more vicariously. I fell in love with broadcasting, with telling stories about other people’s exploits. At first, I combined my love for English literature with educational radio by importing BBC programs on Chaucer and other writers for our campus radio station. When I proposed exploring further adaptations as part of graduate study in England, a faculty committee at Penn judging fellowship proposals dismissed the idea. Though I was groping toward the kind of programming produced successfully years later on Masterpiece Theatre, one of the committee members found the notion “vulgar.” She and her husband, also a professor at Penn, were proud of not even owning a television. So instead of going to graduate school, I decided to take a stab at this vulgar profession.