An Evening With White House Press Corps Star Helen Thomas As She Discusses Her New Book 'Listen Up Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President To Know And Do'

Thu, 12/15/2005 - 2:39pm

When: November 24, 2009 at the Michigan Theater

Since John F. Kennedy's presidency, Helen Thomas has covered more presidents as a member of the White House Press Corps than any journalist working today. The recipient of more than thirty honorary degrees, she was honored in 1998 with the inaugural Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award, established by the White House Correspondents' Association. From her long and illustrious vantage point, she has seen presidents succeed and fail, and has now collected that knowledge in her new book (co-written with Craig Crawford), 'Listen Up Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do.' At this special event, cosponsored by Michigan Radio, Helen shares her candid views about the White House and discusses her new book of Presidential advice. The event, which will include a booksigning, will be held at The Michigan Theater (603 East Liberty, Ann Arbor). Books will be on sale at the event, courtesy of Nicola's Books.

Transcript

• [00:00:11.22] CHRISTINA SHOCKLEY: Thank you for being here. My name is Christina Shockley. I'm the morning edition host at Michigan Radio. [APPLAUSE]
• [00:00:33.93] CHRISTINA SHOCKLEY:
• [00:00:38.80] Just in case you don't know it -- sounds like you do -- but in case you don't know, Michigan Radio is the NPR affiliate based here in Ann Arbor. We cover the southern portion of the lower peninsula. In Grand Rapids we're 104.1 in Flint we're 91.1 and in Ann Arbor Detroit we're 91.7 and of course Michigan Radio . org. On behalf of Michigan Radio, I am pleased and honored to explain that we are partnering with the Ann Arbor District Library to bring you Helen Thomas this evening. I think someone who is especially looked up to in my profession and I think especially among women in my profession. There's one thing that I want to mention and for fans of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor in A Prarie Home Companion will be in Detroit on Saturday, February 27th 2010. For more information about that you can visit Michigan Radio . org. So, again thank you very much for being here and here's the director of the Ann Arbor District Library, Josie Parker.
• [00:01:39.88] JOSIE PARKER: Good evening everyone. The first thing I'm going to do is to ask all of you to check again to make sure that you turned off your cellphones or put them on silent and I will wait while you that because I do not want to shush you in this program. I will say one thing about Christina Shockley while you do that. We claim Christina at the library. When I became director of the library Christina was our switchboard operator in the evenings and the weekends while she was trying to get going at U of M Radio. So when I listen to her now in the early morning, I used to call at night and get Christina's voice. Now I listein in the morning and say to my husband that's Christina Shockley and he says yes, Josie, I know. So I was delighted to have Christina introduce me this evening. I want to welcome all of you, including those of you who've made it up into the balcony to -- yeah, the balcony, the library program had the balcony open up, doesn't get much better than that -- to this event this evening. We're pleased to partner with Michigan Radio to bring all of you to the Michigan theater. I know many of you have traveled a ways to get here so my introduction of Helen Thomas will be short and sweet in respect for the types of questions that she asked.
• [00:03:20.36] She is someone I think the journalism profession holds up as an icon of the way to do it. She also is, for libraries and librarians, someone who understands the democratic principle that the library is founded on in this country and she supports it. I find it very moving to be a librarian introducing someone like Helen Thomas to you this evening and I'm very pleased to do it. So listen up Michigan, Helen Thomas.
• [00:03:56.21] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:04:29.77] HELEN THOMAS: If elected I will serve. I like to say that, that's the shortest obituary I've had. I enjoyed it. I'm very grateful to the Ann Arbor District Library for giving me the opportunity to harangue you. Good evening. It's always good to be home again and I know Michigan is bearing the brunt of a deep recession or is it a depression. For the jobless, I'm sure Detroit seems like the end of the road. Detroit helped save the country and the world. During World War II was it's transformation from the auto assembly lines to an arsenal for the United States and it's allies against the spread of Facism throughout the world. I know it will rise again because of the great fortitude of the people I've seen in Michigan and grew up with. I feel that right now the country, of course, needs a lot of help. I love books and history books. At the white house we are recording instant history every day. On the quietest day, I fasten my seat belt; the other shoe is bound to fall. As long as people are on this planet, there's never a day without news. Although we seem to thrive on bad news, it seems even more so now. There's no question that President Obama has inherited the wind: two wars, yet to be explained or even defined, in Iraq and Afghanistan, a collapsed economy with outside joblessness, poverty, hunger. We read today a federal report saying we have 50 million people who are hungry. There's something wrong with this picture.
• [00:06:42.60] In my glib way, I have a lot of advice for Obama: get out of those wars. The -- [APPLAUSE] -- the president should declare a victory and leave Afghanistan and Iraq
• [00:07:03.39] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:07:09.91] HELEN THOMAS: Stop the one wanton killing and dying halfway around the world. Yes, Saddam Hussein was ruthless but women had jobs, children went to school, the homes had electricity and clean water. Thousands of Iraqis and Americans are dead. Yes thousands. Two million displaced and living in camps, nearly five thousand Americans dead and some 30 thousand wounded during the ongoing seven years of war in Iraq. Former president George Bush's explanations for the invasion: weapons of mass destruction, ties between Saddam and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, and threats about a third world country against the world's only military superpower; all falsehoods. So why aren't Americans asking more questions? As for president bush's regime, he has put the albatross of torture around our necks, torture of prisoners. As for Afghanistan, the country has been invaded many, many times but survived it through the centuries. The armed attacks on their tribal society. The president, apparently, has decided to send, according to the rumors from Washington 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan. That's a little less than the commander there McChrystal who asked for 40 thousand more forces and news leaks indicate that he has decided after many months of pondering the whole question, he's decided to send more troops, a wrong decision. The U. S. ambassador to Kabul, who was top military commander in Afghanistan for a couple of years, is cautioning in against the escalation. As late as the 1980's, the former well armed Soviet Union was forced to give up it's occupation of Afghanistan. Afghans -- and a lot of other people -- fight for their land. Where in the hell are they supposed to go? We should declare a victory, as I said. That's what we're doing in Iraq under any other name, but it would take a profile in courage for Obama to do the same in Afghanistan. Republicans are bound to pounce on him and it a surrender if he did pull out. They started the wars without even the benefit of a constitutional approval, congressional approval.
• [00:10:21.48] As for the economy, well the President made sure that the big banks would not fail. With taxpayer bail out money, and banks are holding on to the money and refusing small business loans to build up their assets. As for the greedy Wall Street, their big bonuses and [UNINTELLIGIBLE] are getting bigger all the time. Now we come to universal healthcare, another big problem. I can't believe the heartlessness of Congress; playing politics with those who are deprived of medicine, healthcare, 47 million people in this country without any insurance. At the same time members of congress pay a pittance for almost day to day coverage, healthcare coverage round the clock. We should have medicare for everyone, single payer.
• [00:11:24.20] [APPLAUSE] HELEN THOMAS: Why would anyone in Congress reject a government plan when they wallow in their medical perks?
• [00:11:40.28] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:11:43.46] HELEN THOMAS: Should the poor and the sick be deprived in a country as rich as ours? The Congresswomen who say they can't bring themselves to vote for the government option and Senator Lieberman, a so called Independent, says his opposition to a government run insurance is a matter of conscience. If you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you.
• [00:12:12.51] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:12:16.91] HELEN THOMAS: Look up the campaign donations from the big health insurance companies who are spending millions to kill the government plan.
• [00:12:26.40] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:12:33.79] HELEN THOMAS: Also in foreign policy, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had first laid down the law that there should be a freeze on settlements in the occupied west bank. They caved into the Israeli land grant and they gave a green light for the settlers to continue building three thousand new homes on Palestinian land. So what else is new? It's against international law to annex occupied land.
• [00:13:10.19] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:13:15.92] HELEN THOMAS: In my book, great presidents have strong conscience with a moral compass. I went to the White House on John F. Kennedy's inaugural day and I never left. The man who came to dinner, it's a great beat for reporters. Kennedy was my favorite president because I thought he was inspired. He grew in office; he learned from his mistakes and he left a legacy of the Peace Corps, which he created. He signed the first nuclear test ban treaty and he set a goal of landing men on the moon in a decade. Kate He didn't live to see it but we did it. He went to the nuclear brink with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and both of them pulled back. It's what we call statesmanship; they made a deal. Russians pulled their missiles out of Cuba and six months later we pulled ours out of Turkey which were pointed toward the Soviet Union.
• [00:14:26.20] During his first year in office, President Kennedy invited the first class of astronauts and their wives to come to the White House for an informal dinner. He said to them, during the mix and mingle, "Do you think you think we could land men on the moon in a decade?" They said, "Sure, absolutely." You never say no to a president. When they left they said, "Is this guy nuts? Crazy?" Kennedy was witty, smart and he had known war. At a news conference, his first one, live on television, he told us, life is unfair.
• [00:15:09.19] Lyndon B. Johnson also show greatness on the domestic side. Of course, the Vietnam War was his political undoing. "Hey, hey, L. B. J., how many kids did you kill today?" While he was in office he moved a mountain on the domestic side. In his first two years in office -- on the tail wind of the Kennedy assassination -- he was able to ram through Congress: medicare, the Civil Rights Act, voting rights for blacks for the first time in the south, federal aid to education at all levels, starting with head start through college, public housing, The Great Society.
• [00:15:59.10] Richard Nixon made the breakthrough trip to China but the Watergate scandal forced him to be the first president in American history to resign from office. His successor Gerald Ford told us that the long national nightmare was over, meaning Watergate. Jimmy Carter helped to reach the first Camp David accods on the Middle East to find Middle East peace, the peace process. He has one the Nobel Peace Prize. Because of his work he's the best past president we've had in modern times.
• [00:16:45.34] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:16:53.16] HELEN THOMAS: Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize too, to his and our surprise. Ronald Reagan turned the country to the right and he helped end The Cold War. He really believed in trickle down and never turned his back on Dixon, Illinois once he go to Hollywood. The first President Bush won the first Gulf War and had the good sense not to go on to Baghdad. The reason he said he didn't go was he thought that there might be civil war; house to house fighting. Can you imagine that?
• [00:17:44.78] President Clinton left office with a surplus in the treasury. He thought the worst days in the White House were really good. He loved being president but he became entangled with an intern in the White House and he won't wind up on Mount Rushmore.
• [00:18:04.09] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:18:13.25] HELEN THOMAS: George W. Bush wanted to be a war president. He was. What price, glory? As for Obama, the return is not all in. His heart is in the right place but he needs more courage to do the right thing. I fear he has lost his great goals; more killing, more dying around the world.
• [00:18:45.85] I do have to bemoan the dying newspaper business overtaken by hi technology and money. Those in the field are looking for answers of how to survive. Everyone with a laptop these days thinks they're a journalist.
• [00:19:05.80] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:19:08.32] HELEN THOMAS: Everyone with a cellphone thinks they're a photographer. The would-be reporters can ruin lives and reputations without good editors. Accuracy is supposed to be everything in our field. As the cliche goes, if your mother says she loves you, check it out.
• [00:19:33.82] [LAUGHTER] HELEN THOMAS: Now I think I should lighten up, don't you? I came to Washington determined to be a reporter and Liz Carpenter -- who later became a great Texas reporter -- came at the same time from the University of Texas. She'd been editor of her paper and later on she became press secretary to Ladybird Johnson. Well, Liz was always on the plump side, who wasn't then? We went knocking on doors at the national press building looking for jobs. Liz ran out of money a couple of days before I did. She wired her brother, "Please send me 200 dollars or I'm going to have to sell my body."
• [00:20:27.17] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:20:32.11] HELEN THOMAS: She later told me to the Smithsonian but I don't believe her.
• [00:20:35.20] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:20:37.73] HELEN THOMAS: Her brother wired back, "Sell it by the pound."
• [00:20:40.62] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:20:43.95] HELEN THOMAS: He did send the money.
• [00:20:47.37] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:20:49.30] HELEN THOMAS: Another favorite story of mine was told to me by Phil [? Jury ?] who worked for The Voice of America. She started out working for a small Virginia paper and she recalled that she used to call the funeral director every day and ask if anyone important had died. The funeral director told her, everyone is important to someone. Then there was the cub reporter who was sent to cover the Johnstown flood, his first big story. He really knew he had to make good and he telegraphed his story to the editor and he said, "God sat on the bank of the Johnstown river today and cried." His editor wrote back, "Forget the flood, interview God."
• [00:21:45.23] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:21:56.33] HELEN THOMAS: President Johnson, like all presidents, had a stable of speech writers. He asked that a certain speech be prepared for his down home crowd. The speech writer brought him the first draft and Johnson looked at it and said, Voltaire, Voltaire . People I'm going to talk to don't know who Voltaire is. He grabbed a pen, scratched out Voltaire and scribbled in, as my dear old daddy used to say.
• [00:22:27.80] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:22:36.14] HELEN THOMAS: Once L. B. J. asked Bill Moyers -- who had been a baptist minister and later became his press secretary -- to say grace at dinner at the L. B. J. ranch. Moyers bent his head, began to pray, and Johnson commanded, "Speak up Bill." "I wasn't talking to you Mr. President," Moyers said.
• [00:23:04.29] During the Carter era, Midge Costanza headed the White House division that kept in touch with outside groups; women, ethnics, and so on. She was quoted as saying, "I don't mind Carter being born again, but did he has to come back as himself?"
• [00:23:22.27] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:23:27.03] HELEN THOMAS: Then there was Ms. Lillian, carter's mother, who was questioned one day about a French woman correspondent who belabored Carter's campaign promise, never to lie. She kept asking Ms. Lillian, "What do you really mean by that?" Finally and she said to Ms. Lillian, "Do you lie?" Ms. Lillian said, "Well, might tell a little white lie." "Well what do you mean by a little white lie?" In totally exasperation Ms. Lillian said, "You remember when you came through that door and I told you how beautiful you looked --
• [00:24:02.44] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:24:04.57] HELEN THOMAS: -- well that's a little white lie."
• [00:24:05.99] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:24:11.34] HELEN THOMAS: During the Martin Luther King march on Washington he made his famous I Have a Dream Speech. I remember -- even more -- the cameo appearance by a rabbi who had spent many years in a Nazi concentration camp. He said, the greatest sin of all in the Nazi era was silence, silence. When the leading Nazi's appeared at the Nuremberg War crimes trials, they said to the prosecutors, we're on trial because we lost the war. "No," said Robert Jackson, the chief U. S. Prosecutor -- who later became justice at the Supreme Court -- he said "you're on trial because you started the war."
• [00:25:11.55] After the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy went to American University and he told the students, "America, America would never start a war, so ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for all of us." " Thank you very much. I'll be very happy to take your questions.
• [00:25:34.91] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:26:03.84] SPEAKER: Ms. Thomas will take questions. There are microphones on each side of the stage here. Anyone who has a question can step up to the microphone.
• [00:26:15.66] [AUDIENCE] Who runs the media?
• [00:26:17.79] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:26:29.12] HELEN THOMAS: Wallstreet right now. I'd never thought I'd say this, but in the good old days a family would run the newspaper. The newspaper was a contribution to the community. They never expected to make bonanza 25% profit which Wall Street's now demanding. If they got 12%, 10% it was fine because they made their money in my real estate or mining. I think everything has changed now. Newspapers are going down the drain and I think it's a tragedy. I can't live without a newspaper.
• [00:27:12.60] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:27:19.91] HELEN THOMAS: The pros are looking for solutions but they really haven't found one yet. We gotta teach the young people to get off those computers and start reading newspapers.
• [00:27:33.60] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:27:39.50] AUDIENCE: What is your favorite part about being a reporter?
• [00:27:48.16] HELEN THOMAS: Curiosity. Nosiness. I think that the great thing about my profession -- I'm so lucky -- is that it's an education everyday. You keep learning, you have to keep learning. You have to care. I do think that you cannot have -- I know this is the cliche -- you cannot have a democracy without an informed people. You have to have reporters out there --
• [00:28:14.78] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:28:17.96] HELEN THOMAS: -- you have to have reporters out there doing the leg work, asking the questions, especially of the powers that be. I like to ask presidents questions that makes them very unhappy.
• [00:28:31.87] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:28:36.24] HELEN THOMAS: My favorite question of all is, why?
• [00:28:42.07] SPEAKER: We'll alternate sides on the microphone, so go ahead.
• [00:28:45.33] AUDIENCE: You're making me want to think of a question that would make you very unhappy but I can't that quickly.
• [00:28:50.36] HELEN THOMAS: Are you the preident?
• [00:28:50.96] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:28:53.49] AUDIENCE: No, not yet. I wondered if you could talk about your first decade or two at the White House. I imagine through the 60's and 70's you met with a lot of barriers against women in your profession. I'd just like to hear some of your stories about that and if you could tell us, what were some of the key moments or key tactics that you used that really helped break the glass ceiling among White House correspondents?
• [00:29:23.28] HELEN THOMAS: Of course, women in all the professions -- after World War II especially -- in law, medicine, journalism and so forth. There were great discriminations. Even Sandra O'connor started out as a secretary and would up as Supreme Court justice. There always has been injustice against women, women workers. During World War II they were taking every man who could breathe; if he had a pulse, he was going to war. Suddenly they discovered women could do these jobs, a lot of them. My favorites are the suffragists who marched 70 years. They were chained to the White House fence. They went to jail and so forth to get to vote and finally, they got it. It should not have taken that long and should have been in the Constitution.
• [00:30:20.21] Well, as for myself, I came from an immigrant family. My parents first came from Syria; by the time after World War I it became Lebanon. They couldn't be read or write but they wanted all their children, nine children to have an education and we all went to college. They really valued education but they never told me it was a man's world. I decided when I got on the school paper, my eagle swelled, I was a sophomore, I saw my byline and said "This is it." I decided then and there that I loved working as a reporter and the great congeniality of working on a paper and the good friendships and so forth. It was World War II and I decided to come to Washington. Well, there was discrimination but they needed us so it became different. I covered the justice department all the federal departments. The great interest in the Kennedy family boosted me to go to the White House said I sort of assigned myself and I stayed there. I decided they needed me.
• [00:31:40.88] [APPLAUSE] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:31:48.57] HELEN THOMAS: There's never a day without news as long as people are on this planet. I found that everything comes from the White House; whether it's tricky track, the most trivial, or war and peace. So you're always covering history and you're always alive and you think you're doing something for the world. You really mislead yourself.
• [00:32:11.29] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:32:15.03] AUDIENCE: On the way over here, I was telling my granddaughter about your unique role in ending the presidential press conferences for so many years and she asked me well, how did you know when to do? I mean, did you get a signal from the President or an advance saying that it'll be 45 minutes Helen and that's it? Or did you decide for yourself a certain time? Or did you say, all the good questions have been answered, let's get out of here? How did you decide that?
• [00:32:43.78] HELEN THOMAS: Tell her she asked a good question. It was always by prearrangement between the White House and the networks so you wouldn't miss As the World Turns and so forth. The press conferences were usually limited to a half hour. I would wear two watches and make sure I could cut it off in the right time and make enough enemies among the reporters. You can imagine, everyone comes arms with their favorite question. The first time I signed off on a news conference for the president, my boss was out of town so the privilege of saying thank you was mine. I saw that Kennedy was getting wound up, kept talking but couldn't find the answer to the question. I got up and I said, "Thank you, Mr. President." He said, "Thank you."
• [00:33:44.62] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:33:50.33] HELEN THOMAS: I did him a favor. Another time when I got up to close the news conference and Mary McGrory, great reporter, got up at the same time. President Reagan had been talking about tithing to your church so he picked her to ask her question. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] "Fine with me, the more the merrier, the longer" and so forth. She said, "Well Mr. President, how much do you tithe?" He turned to me and said, "I should have taken question."
• [00:34:25.91] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:34:30.26]
• [00:34:30.61] AUDIENCE: We haven't had our own newspaper here in town since the Spring and it seems like things are going to naturally devolve because people are less well informed. I'd like to get your thought on that.
• [00:35:03.57] HELEN THOMAS: Well I think that it's really a tragedy. I think newspapers give you the story in depth. You get sound bites from the television and more and more, you're getting really biased -- I shouldn't talk because I wrote for more than 50 years for a wire service where it was just the facts ma'am. Now I write an opinion column and when the editor first looked at it, he said, "Where's the edge?" I said, "What?" "Your opinion." "My what?" So now I wake up every morning and I say, "Who do I hate today?"
• [00:35:42.05] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:35:43.64] HELEN THOMAS: That's the way you write a column.
• [00:35:45.59] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:35:46.13] HELEN THOMAS: The point is that --
• [00:35:47.37] [LAUGHTER] -- I don't think you can get the straight stories or and certainly not in depth from TV and something has to work out. I mean the magazines are trying but nothing but can replace a good newspaper.
• [00:36:06.03] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:36:10.57] HELEN THOMAS: The New York Times still gives you a pretty good cursory sign of what's going on and The Washington Post but even they are cutting down. They used to have bureaus everywhere in the world practically. No more. It's a question of money.
• [00:36:28.08] AUDIENCE: We don't really have the kind of local coverage that you would want either cause the news and the free press aren't gonna cover our community unless somebody goes postal.
• [00:36:48.89] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:36:54.55] HELEN THOMAS: Well that's true. Everything's lacking in my opinion, as long as we're stuck with electronic journalism. Breaking news, breaking news, then all of a sudden the breaking news and they put in the commercial. You hold your breath, what is this breaking news? I mean this is very hyped, everything is hyped. There's no such thing as the situation room. It's really in the White House at CNN.
• [00:37:24.52] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:37:27.07] AUDIENCE: Thank you.
• [00:37:28.18] HELEN THOMAS: You're welcome.
• [00:37:34.46] AUDIENCE: Hello. My name is Thomas, Thomas Partridge and it's an honor to ask you a question. I'd like to ask you to compare the news coverage of the healthcare reform movement in this country, in Congress, in town forums around the country, to the passage of the 1960 medicare and medicaid acts that you referred to earlier; the similarities and the contrasts. I'd like to ask you pointedly, if you do not think that the Democratic party, liberals attempts to pass the fair healthcare reform bill with a public service component -- I would prefer to refer to it rather than the public option -- is not being undermined by newspaper publishers and TV station producers in the reporting of this national debate.
• [00:38:48.52] HELEN THOMAS: I think you've got the wrong culprit. The health insurance companies are pouring million every week to distort the picture. The death panels are wrong. I mean the propaganda has been so -- if you tell a lie often enough, I mean, it sticks. I think that the people have been so misinformed. The White House has made a very bad [? jibe ?] by not pretending a formal proposal and not really showing any dedication to the public option. I think for whatever reason President Obama has not fought for it. I kept asking questions every day at the briefing, "does the President really support the public option?" "You asked that question yesterday, you asked that question the day before, and you asked that question the day before." I said, "I'm still waiting for an answer." Now they botched it back because when Hillary Clinton was in charge of healthcare during their administration, she really didn't touch base with Congress. She drafted a legislation in the dark practically, without really cluing herself into Capitol Hill. President Obama is trying to make up for those mistakes to schmooze with all the Congressman and not presenting a real plan himself. I think he's let the insurance companies take over and spook everyone. Look, social security works. Medicare works. Don't nobody in this country should lack for medicine and healthcare. It -- [APPLAUSE]
• [00:40:43.61] HELEN THOMAS: It's
• [00:40:48.92] the basic right. Who want's the children to go without vaccinations and everything else? We owe it to each other and it can't be a good society and all unless we really to the right thing by everyone. We should have a government, whether it's competitive or not, but it should be available for everyone. Medicare for everyone.
• [00:41:13.73] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:41:19.47] AUDIENCE: Hi. Thanks for speaking with us tonight and thanks for the great questions that you ask in your work. I was curious about something you said earlier in your talk. You asked, "why aren't Americans asking more questions?" I have a personal opinion of the answer to that. I think that we don't really -- we feel kind of alienated social change -- we don't really think that we can make a difference by asking questions. Even though we do have some really great instances of Americans making social change recently. I was wondering what you think, why do you think we're not asking more questions?
• [00:42:04.13] HELEN THOMAS: I think we have lapped into a passivity. I like the fact that during Vietnam everybody hit the street: mothers, children so forth. They thought it was wrong and they did something about. I think we've all been frightened by 9/11, the constant publicity of terrorism. People have retreated to their own homes and so forth. There is no unity in this country, it's very, very divided. The right wing are making sure that we are scared of everything, afraid of everything. I never have seen, really great unity in this country, since World War II. everyone understood why we had to go to war. Everyone understood the purpose. Everyone sacrificed. Today there is no such unity t and there is no unifier. Where are the peacemakers? Who are we? What have we become? A bunch of people watching television entertainment tonight or who's the best dancer? I shouldn't say that because Abby, my companion, loves that program. No, I really think that we have to get much more involved, we have to care more. I mean presidents have to listen to the people but they won't listen to them unless they hit the streets, unless they really do something. We've all we retreated into our shells out of fear. Fear has been used against us, I think. We're not really the people we once were and we should care about one another. We are our brother's keeper in every sense of the word. I just feel sorry because I don't see any great leaders around.
• [00:44:03.98] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:44:10.60] AUDIENCE: All right. I was just wondering, you accompanied Nixon on his historic visit to China. How would you compare that with President Obama's recent visit to China. We've made China very rich so they can tell us to go to hell.
• [00:44:32.04] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:44:33.84] HELEN THOMAS: I mean, they're holding all the cards. I think that's why you see this kind of standoffishness. We can't dictate to the rest of the world anymore because we are in so much debt, into wars that we shouldn't be and so forth. I think it was not a failure because it really was a get acquainted trip for all the Asian leaders and so forth. I think Obama is still is very popular and very respected but the real clouts, they're beginning to wonder if we have it. We have really given all our productivity away, possibilities and so forth. We've produced nothing. We're losing on that ground and yet we have the great brains I believe, to become great entrepreneurs again. So, they can tell us off.
• [00:45:39.32] AUDIENCE: Thank you for all your years of service. I think you have made a difference for a very long time. Many of us really appreciate that. My question is --
• [00:45:49.77] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:45:56.21] HELEN THOMAS: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
• [00:45:57.41] AUDIENCE: What's that?
• [00:45:58.78] HELEN THOMAS: Women I knew, we were all a cabal. we were fighting all the time.
• [00:46:05.16] AUDIENCE: -- for those of us who are not political scientists or politicans, how do you recommend with the information that we do have available we cut through what is good information and cut out what is, you know, just fed to us and may seem like the truth but is stretched thin. Do you have any advice for how to read the news as a good listener?
• [00:46:30.60] HELEN THOMAS: I think you have to read a lot. I think you should read the New York Times, the Post, The Nation, and so forth. Read both sides of the question and I think you have to make up your own mind. I think without newspapers there's really going to be a big lack in this country. On the other hand, if you were stuck with the editorials of the Detroit news only, you would be very limited too.
• [00:46:59.66] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:47:07.29] AUDIENCE: Since you're a woman who broke so much ground, I wanted to ask what you think it would take for a woman to break the glass ceiling to become president and when you think that might happen and how.
• [00:47:25.26] HELEN THOMAS: Well, I don't want Sarah but --
• [00:47:28.18] [APPLAUSE] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:47:36.27] HELEN THOMAS: -- I think that Hillary got as close as you can and I think it's one more step. I think definitely, we will see many women presidents in this century, the 21st century definitely. I never saw anyone get that close, Obama cut into the line, she was supposed to get it.
• [00:48:01.65] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:48:04.44] HELEN THOMAS: But that's life.
• [00:48:05.42] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:48:11.00] AUDIENCE: I first thank you for a holding all the past presidents accountable with your tough questions. What was the toughest question you ever asked that you got a straight answer to?
• [00:48:22.83] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:48:31.93] HELEN THOMAS: Toughest question. I asked President Bush, "Why did we go to war?" He said, "9/11." I said, "No." I said, "There were no Iraqis in 9/11 so why did you go into..." and he kept repeating. I think that was a tough question. I stay awake at night thinking, "How can I get them this time?"
• [00:48:55.58] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:48:59.22] HELEN THOMAS: I did ask President Obama -- and his man hasn't called on me again since -- I said, "Do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?" He said, "I don't want to speculate." I said, "I didn't ask you to speculate. How come you know what Iran has? How come you know what North Korea has? How come you know what everybody else has?" I think it's very hard to think of tough questions. Although, President Nixon told me that did he like tough questions. I really wonder about that.
• [00:49:37.75] [LAUGHTER] HELEN THOMAS: Once he was holding a news conference and I had been named bureau chief at UPI at the White House. Big deal, I mean I had two people on the staff in the bureau. Anyway he complimented me at the start of a news conference and I came armed with a question about what was on the tape on March 23 which was very damning to him. I really felt bad. I hesitated to ask him because, here I was being complimented by the president and I was going to spit in his eye. I thought, "What can the American people think of me to be so brutal after being so nice?" Then I thought, "Well flattery will get you everywhere and what will your colleagues think?" So I asked the question.
• [00:50:49.10] HELEN THOMAS: First of all, I think I saw you out to lunch today at Six Mile on Haggerty in [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Maybe not,
• [00:50:56.50] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:50:58.12] AUDIENCE: I'm glad I didn't say, "Hi, Helen Thomas. You mentioned before, Sarah Palin. What do you think of her chances in the celebrity culture? Obviously, this crowd, nor am I a fan but she does seem to have a rabid following. Does she have as shot for republican nomination 2012?
• [00:51:26.23] HELEN THOMAS: I mean she sold a million and a half books. She certainly has some fans. I think that -- I don't know what her aspirations really are -- but I do think that she's not ready.
• [00:51:47.61] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:51:55.96] HELEN THOMAS: I want everyone to have great aspirations but I'm a little wary. I know that Katie Couric asked her what she read and she couldn't even say that and that was a very telling point in that when I had to introduce Katie Couric last year at a dinner, I said that she saved the country. I know I'm coming across as very mean and I don't mean to be but I think she can handle me.
• [00:52:38.29] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:52:42.45] AUDIENCE: Helen, thank you for being here. I don't think you come across mean. Would you be able to, if you had to, to make a cogent argument that Fox news is a legitimate news operation.
• [00:52:55.63] HELEN THOMAS: Sure. It is. It certainly is a news coverage in it's own style. They have called me everything: Hezbollah, Hamas, terrorist and so forth and I tell them, consider the source.
• [00:53:15.23] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:53:17.83] AUDIENCE: A brief follow-up. What about WorldNetDaily? WND. Do you know that organization?
• [00:53:25.64] HELEN THOMAS: Which one? I'm not familiar with it.
• [00:53:32.27] HELEN THOMAS: It's an online only organization, perhaps, you haven't read it, thank you.
• [00:53:39.31] AUDIENCE: Hi. As a woman with so much gusto yourself, do you have any suggestions for President Obama to show some courage and regain the respect of the world when he goes to accept his Nobel Peace Prize, then hopefully goes to the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen? Suggestions for Obama to show courage?
• [00:54:07.99] HELEN THOMAS: Forget the next term. Do the right thing. In this case, I will think that he does know the right. There is a right and wrong. I do believe in relativity but in this case in terms of, what's right, what's wrong? It's wrong to kill, it's wrong to keep killing without any explanation of why and so forth. I don't understand. I know he's being advised by a lot of military people but when you think that the U. S. commander to Kabul had been the military commander in Afghanistan -- for I don't know how long -- and he says, "be cautious, be careful." He knows. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the Brits, the Russians couldn't do it. Why should we do it? Why should we send thousands of people there to do it?
• [00:55:15.78] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:55:17.66] HELEN THOMAS: And what is the real purpose? Probably pipelines through Afghanistan to avoid China and India and Iran and so forth. I think we've fed the military industrial complex enough. Halliburton, no bids, billions and billions of dollars for all the services they gave, a hundred thousand private contractors, mercenaries in Iraq? I mean we used to fight war for a purpose. You had to have a reason to die. "Always not to ask why, always but to do and die."
• [00:56:17.82] AUDIENCE: You spoke earlier a little bit about how you felt about technology in regards to newspapers but I was wondering what you felt about the educate to innovate program that Obama spoke about, I think yesterday.
• [00:56:44.53] HELEN THOMAS: Oh I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with what he proposed. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
• [00:56:54.18] AUDIENCE: He spoke about how he wants middle schoolers and high schoolers to create an interest in science, mathematics and technology like different fields. He wants to get them interested in the those fields for jobs and to follow them throughout college and stuff.
• [00:57:13.88] HELEN THOMAS: I think that's a great idea. I'm with you Obama on that. That's one of the things. No I'm sorry I'm too ignorant of what's really -- I do regret the emphasis on science and math and no civics and no history and so forth which is so --
• [00:57:37.60] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:57:40.24] HELEN THOMAS: -- I mean we have to know what's going on in our country. Our lives depend on it. Everything is in high tech and you see everybody with their Twitters and so forth. What is this? What's going on? No conversation. Or there is conversation, a 127 words.
• [00:58:09.08] SPEAKER: Take a question right here.
• [00:58:09.94] HELEN THOMAS: OK
• [00:58:10.51] AUDIENCE: I wanted to compliment you on your dramatic performance that you did with Colbert in the film. You know, when I saw the tape, President Bus looked a little uncomfortable that evening. He put on a brave face. He tried to act like he was enjoying it but you could tell that it was a false face. Anyway, after that, it seems to me, that he was a little humbled - for the rest of his administration it seemed to me. You were there that night. You were in closer contact with him. Do you think that he was humbled? Did it finally get through to him that night? Or was it just in my head.
• [00:58:54.18] HELEN THOMAS: The parties were very embarrassed because they felt the President was being insulted so that they didn't dare laugh but I was roaring. I felt bad because Colbert had all his family there, everybody dressed beautifully and so forth. They were going to watch this favorite son play this is great role and it fell like a lead balloon. But later on he got a lot of good publicity of out of it.
• [00:59:28.63] AUDIENCE: He took on the press too. He was tough on them also.
• [00:59:33.21] HELEN THOMAS: He was but he's right.
• [00:59:35.31] AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
• [00:59:39.35] HELEN THOMAS: I think it was very valid.
• [00:59:42.03] AUDIENCE: Do you pick the president's tone or - he seemed humbler after that. Do you think that is true or not?
• [00:59:52.84] HELEN THOMAS: Hell no.
• [00:59:53.92] [LAUGHTER]
• [01:00:00.37] HELEN THOMAS: Humble is not a world you attach to him, maybe a few other things but not that. No, I think he's very proud of himself. One track mind.
• [01:00:19.93] AUDIENCE: Hello. Have you ever met a president that was able to make good on his campaign promises? Or should we believe that everything that a candidate says is simply rhetoric.
• [01:00:31.04] HELEN THOMAS: No. No, I haven't met anyone who really lives up to their campaign. But it's very different in the Oval Office than on the campaign trail. What was the last part of your question?
• [01:00:45.33] AUDIENCE: If we should simply believe that what the candidates say is rhetoric and take it with a grain of salt. Well, I'm a born cynic with hope. I do think that people do believe. I do think that President Obama did a very unusual thing in being able to rally young people to get interested in politics and to want it to happen and that was great. I do think the promises are not just in the sky, I think he really meant them. But once you get in the Oval Office, the roof falls in and you realize you have to make - too many times now, he has followed Bush's footsteps and I think that's wrong. Wiretapping and so forth, rendition, sending people to be tortured in other countries. Who are we? Why isn't there an uproar? So horrifying.
• [01:01:54.76] [APPLAUSE]
• [01:02:01.59] AUDIENCE: Well my question has to do with journalism but the role that journalism plays in educating us as to what is really, truly going on? As you stated, the war is probably something that has more to do with pipelines than it has to do with Al Qaeda than anything else. Who holds journalists accountable? If you're a lawyer, you've got this board, you can be debarred and so on and so forth. Who is it that holds journalists accountable? How can journalists be accountable for giving us the right kind of education that we need so that we can make better decisions and we can let the President know what it is that we want to really happen there? As it stands, we don't have any real alternatives or any information to weigh out? What are our alternatives and to be able to advice the President in that way? I feel like part of the responsibility yes, of course, it's us to be informed but journalists have the responsibility to give us the information that we can't access ourselves. So who holds journalists accountable? How can we take part in holding them accountable for the kind of information they give us?
• [01:03:08.82] HELEN THOMAS: You obviously do hold them accountable bowl and the people do. I can assure you, if you're a journalist, at least in the old days, if you wrote and untruth in the story -- deliberately to embellish the story or whatever -- you would have a job the next day. It was that tight and that tough and it still is; accuracy is everything. As for presidents, I don't waste my sympathy on them; they asked for it, in every sense of the word. They're not Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm. They know what the problems are, they may not know the extent of them and it may be very difficult to make decisions. I'll never forget in Plains, Georgia, we were watching President Carter on his front porch. We were across the street and his youngest son, Carter, his youngest son came over and the photographer said to him "Don't you feel sorry for your dad? All of us watching and so forth?" He said, "No, he asked for it." It's really true. They have to be accountable, who else is there? They have the whole world in their hands, our lives. No, I don't waste my sympathy on them. They have every possibility to do the right thing.
• [01:04:34.25] AUDIENCE: The accountability I'm asking about is the journalists accountability in terms of giving us the information that we need. For instance, somebody says to the President, "Is it the Al Qaeda or is it the pipelines that we're actually after here?" Being able to kind of really grab -- so to speak -- to give us the right information, the true information so that we can stand up and say, "No this is not what we want."
• [01:05:02.62] HELEN THOMAS: You're trying to hold journalists responsible for asking a tough question when the President won't answer it.
• [01:05:11.30] AUDIENCE: Well if it's the truth [OVERLAPPING VOICES]
• [01:05:13.82] HELEN THOMAS: What they learn is how to avoid answering questions like that, especially if they really are crucifying them. No, the biggest problem for reporters is secrecy, the secrecy in government which is all pervasive and it hits the candidate as soon as he steps into the Oval Office, he becomes very secretive. Everything is their secret: the color over the walls, everything. It's just amazing. They hold onto it and they hate leaks. This President resented the fact that someone leaked, to a reporter, the very fact that the U. S. Ambassador in Afghanistan was against sending more troops there. That's a factoid that we should know. And know very well.
• [01:06:10.69] AUDIENCE: Thank you.
• [01:06:17.64] SPEAKER: Two more questions. One here and one there.
• [01:06:21.76] AUDIENCE: First of all, I would like to make a comment and that is that as a former journalist, I used you and Jane Collie and Barbara Walters as examples of how I could develop my interviewing skills in my career and I want to thank you for that. I grew up watching you on the various press conferences over these years and you're truly an icon and an inspiration to --
• [01:07:01.13] HELEN THOMAS: Thank you.
• [01:07:01.74] AUDIENCE: -- how I held myself as a reporter. Second of all, now I've transitioned from being a newspaper reporter to a teacher and while I work as a substitute teacher in the for Ann Arbor District, I still am a certified teacher. I wanted to know -- going back to the Clinton administration -- if the North American Free Trade Agreement had not been signed and brought into law, do you think that our current financial crisis would have evolved differently? HELEN THOMAS: Well I thought I believed I believed in these international treaties and everything but I don't believe in giving away the store. So I think there has to be some adjustments about that. I think the real cause of our financial catastrophe is Republicans.
• [01:08:18.63] [APPLAUSE]
• [01:08:27.90] HELEN THOMAS: Can you imagine the biggest tax cuts going to the richest people? And no regulation on the FCC, no regulation of Wall Street or anything else? They could see the storm coming and they didn't give a damn.
• [01:08:44.50] AUDIENCE: I agree with you on that statement but I also has to give partial credit to Bill Clinton because when he signed the NAFTA, that's when industries started going across country lines this and fleeing from the United States.
• [01:09:08.58] AUDIENCE: I have an observation and then a question. The observation is that when I get to be your age, I hope I have one tenth of the savvy that you have.
• [01:09:18.54] [APPLAUSE]
• [01:09:25.68] HELEN THOMAS: I'm pretty rickety. Thank you.
• [01:09:30.38] AUDIENCE: My question is, I was very pleased that you referred to Jimmy Carter as the best of our past presidents. He's one of my heroes. I would love if you'd say a few more words about his administration.
• [01:09:42.92] HELEN THOMAS: I think he was very misunderstood. Even though we had a democratic congress, he didn't know how to really schmooze with them. The leaders came out the same door they went in, meaning, there was no connection. Somehow he was a loner and he didn't quite belong in their ideas. I never have seen such a disconnect between a congress of your own party and the President. So I think that was a fault. He seemed to be much better as a past President and he really has been pilloried He's done so many good things since then. I think his wife took it hardest, their defeat, but he just sailed on and I think he has a spiritual guidance. He's very religious.
• [01:10:44.42] SPEAKER: Thank you for your questions. Ms. Thomas will --
• [01:10:50.40] HELEN THOMAS: He's very good on the Middle East.
• [01:10:55.07] SPEAKER: -- thank you for your questions. Ms. Thomas will sign books at the table up on stage if you would form a single line and I'd like to thank you very much for coming this evening.
• [01:11:05.64] [APPLAUSE]