Authors: Katharine Graham
Probably the most demanding interview on all our trips was the one we did with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev later that year. Jim and I had been working on setting up an interview with the Soviet president for about five years and through three different presidents: Chernenko had agreed, but was taken ill and died; Andropov had then given us hope of an interview when he, too, got sick and died. When Gorbachev came along, I immediately started again, and was frustrated when both Tom Brokaw of NBC and
Time
magazine preceded us. Finally, just before a summit meeting with President Reagan, an interview in Moscow was granted, and we worked terribly hard preparing for it, right up to the last minute.
When we went into the meeting room, Gorbachev came on in his usual strong, charismatic way, but as soon as we sat down and began asking questions, there was a noticeable change in his manner. He was no less articulate than he had been when I’d met him at official functions in Washington, but he seemed strangely subdued in voice and demeanor, even “laid back” in the physical sense. However, he started sitting upright and tensing up as the questions grew distasteful to him, reacting almost physically to questions about possible dissension in the Politburo and the jailing of vocal dissidents. Nevertheless, he answered at length in a very controlled fashion until he cut off the interview abruptly after the fifth question, which was about human rights.
So nervous was Gorbachev about any hint of dissension in the Central Committee that he had Nikolai Shishlin, an important Central Committee official, call the
Post’s
Moscow bureau to pass on the message that he didn’t want to be quoted as mentioning the names of anyone from the
Politburo. Bob Kaiser took the call from Shishlin, who also said that, since President Gorbachev didn’t want any Politburo person named in the transcript of questions that had been asked, we would have to reformulate one of the questions that had specifically referred to Yegor Ligachev, a conservative antireformer and Gorbachev’s reputed chief rival at the time. Shishlin told Kaiser, “Let’s play this by Moscow rules.” Kaiser’s response was that, since he was asking us to use the Soviets’ official transcript of the interview rather than our own, only I could make that decision.
After we insisted that it was impossible for us to delete Ligachev’s name from the interview, Shishlin called the bureau again to say that Gorbachev himself wanted Georgi Arbatov—the Soviet Union’s foremost “Americanologist”—to deliver a message to me. Arbatov found me in the apartment of Gary Lee, the
Post
’s Moscow correspondent, where several of us had gathered, and he and I went into a separate room so that he could talk with me alone. He argued hard that we owed this small favor to Gorbachev, who had granted me the big favor of the interview. I said I was sorry but this was not a favor within my power to grant; once we had asked a question, it was unthinkable to go back and edit the question. We wouldn’t even do this for our own president, much less another country’s. I held firm.
After a while, we joined the others, and when he rose to leave, Shishlin, who had accompanied Arbatov, looked at me and said, “Don’t worry. You won’t be arrested.” We never learned why Gorbachev was so sensitive about having Ligachev’s name mentioned, and soon thereafter, as Bob Kaiser pointed out, “Gorbachev willingly answered a question about his relations with Ligachev, with no sign of sensitivity.”
The Gorbachev interview was in some ways the cap of all these trips with Meg and Jim and others, which were such an important part of my life for fifteen years or more—we logged tens of thousands of miles over the years in traveling to South Africa, the Philippines, China, Korea, Japan, India, and countries throughout the Middle East and South America. Although Don was the publisher of the
Post
and editorially responsible for the paper, with his encouragement I stayed involved in ways that never interfered with his authority. These trips were one way. Receiving certain foreign visitors was another. Often, people I had met abroad came to Washington, and I would invite them to the
Post
for editorial lunches. I also often entertained people at my house. For the most part I didn’t give public dinners just for the sake of giving them; they almost always served some purpose. Frequently, the guests of honor were people we had met on our editorial trips. Both President Kaunda of Zambia and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe came when they were in Washington, as did Willy Brandt, Václav Havel, and Helen Suzman.
Occasionally, because I had the room and the facilities to accommodate sizable groups, and because I had the staff to bring an event together
without too much effort, I was asked by go-betweens to entertain prominent visitors. This was the case with President Febres Cordero of Ecuador and with the king and queen of Jordan. I was happy to do it, though somewhat to my dismay I began to see myself mentioned in the press as a “prominent Washington hostess”—a term I very much disliked. Again, it seemed to me a sexist way of viewing what I was doing, which, to me, was a natural part of my job.
I also felt strongly that it was part of my job to keep up with people in and out of office. It was all in my day’s work to get to know those in government and help them know journalists. Many of my dinners involved members of various administrations over the years and could be described as political, although they were always nonpartisan, or at least bipartisan.
I have been friends with presidents from both political parties, but any relationship, even an old one, can grow strained when you become—as I did—a symbol of a major newspaper and magazine and the target of presidential displeasure. This occurred with Johnson, Nixon, and Bush, but, curiously, not much with Reagan. Ford was professionally friendly. Except for entertaining the Clintons on Martha’s Vineyard when they were there on vacation, I have had little contact with them; they have been polite but are of a younger generation, so it’s perfectly natural.
Those who come to Washington as president and who haven’t lived here and known the city (as had, for example, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and even Richard Nixon) seem to have a skewed idea of socializing between people from the press and people from the administration. There are those in both groups who feel that we shouldn’t see each other except in working situations. Though I recognize that this issue of friendships or relationships is a touchy one, I take a different view. A hands-off approach may be best for those who are covering people in the government, but for a publisher I feel sure openness is best. I consider it the role of the head of a newspaper to be bipartisan and to bring journalists together with people from government. I think that an easy relationship is constructive and useful for both sides: it helps the publication by opening doors, and provides those who are covered in the news with the knowledge of whom they can suggest ideas to, complain to, or generally deal with. When people don’t feel easy enough to call, they just sit there grinding their teeth. I fear unspoken anger. Especially, people who may disagree on politics must still be able to communicate, and it’s crucial for all of us in the press to listen to all sides.
Jimmy Carter was one of those outsider presidents who found it difficult to find the right
modus operandi
for Washington. One spring night just a year into Carter’s presidency, Ben Bradlee and I gave a reception for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which was meeting in Washington. There must have been three dozen or so editors from all over the
country, so I tried very hard to round up members of the government and people from the White House to meet them. Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff, sent a polite but firm regret. Incredibly, I never even received an answer from the press secretary, Jody Powell. Thinking how stupid it was for the press secretary to ignore an event involving so many top editors, I called his office and asked to speak to him. I was told he was in a meeting. I explained about the party and that I felt it would be useful for him to attend. Still no answer, and he didn’t come.
Some years later, after Carter had left office, another such party took place. Powell was present, and he and his wife, Nan, were charming—in fact, he brought a harmonica and danced and sang late into the evening. Later, too, I got to know Hamilton Jordan, and his ability and his charm were evident. I gave a dinner for him at which my toast began, “Hamilton, welcome to the establishment.” He replied that if he had joined earlier Jimmy Carter might still be in the White House. I don’t know that that’s true, but I do believe that the Carter administration missed some good opportunities.
With all of Carter’s troubles both inside and outside Washington during his presidency, it was no surprise when Ronald Reagan defeated him to become the fortieth president of the United States. I had met the Reagans several years before they came to Washington as president and first lady. Truman Capote told me he had gotten to know them in the course of some research he was doing on death sentences, in which he had become interested after writing
In Cold Blood
. “Honey, I know you won’t believe me, but you’d really like them,” Truman told me in his falsetto voice. Truman was right: we got along well and began a long friendship that puzzled many people in Washington.
When the Reagans first came to Washington after the election, they gave a dinner for Washingtonians who were active in one way or another. I was unable to accept because of an out-of-town speech, but decided to invite them in return and was delighted when they accepted. Shaping a dinner for a president is tricky; there is a delicate line to be drawn as one tries to center it on them—to give them a good time—and, in a sense, to ignore all else, including hurt feelings and pressure from people who would like to be there or think they should be there.
The night the Reagans arrived for the dinner, my two wonderful longtime maids, Lucy and Dora, were leaning out a second-floor window, watching the limousine pull up. They saw President-elect Reagan step out and embrace me, kissing me on both cheeks. Dora, a forceful and funny woman, turned to Lucy and said, “I hope she enjoyed that because that’s the last time that will ever happen.” Dora was wise in the ways of Washington and ordinarily right, but in this instance she was wrong.
In our toasts at that first dinner, we spoke about the advantages of
knowing each other, which both the president-elect and I firmly believed in. For Reagan, however, there were repercussions from coming to dinner at my house. The political right was appalled. One newspaper featured a photograph of him embracing me, which
The Wall Street Journal
called “a photograph that may upset arch-conservatives almost as much as the famous one of Jimmy Carter bussing Leonid Brezhnev at the Vienna summit.” Howard Phillips, head of the Conservative Caucus, lit into Reagan in remarks at the Religious Roundtable, saying, “You cannot always have Kay Graham going to your cocktail parties and smiling at you. If by June the Washington establishment is happy with Ronald Reagan, then you should be unhappy with Ronald Reagan.”
With some ups and downs, we managed to remain friends throughout the eight years of Reagan’s administration. At some point Nancy and I started lunching together regularly. At first, just the two of us would have long gossipy lunches; later, Meg joined us, either at my house or hers. Probably the most public time Nancy and I had was a weekend she spent with me on the Vineyard in August 1985. I couldn’t imagine Nancy on the liberal and distinctly unchic Vineyard and thought Mike Deaver was mad to suggest such a thing, but when I invited her, she said yes right away, and she came, along with the Deavers and Meg and Warren. It was a typical Vineyard weekend, very informal, with walks on the beach and casual dinners. I think Nancy enjoyed it, and I know I did—despite the solid week of work and planning.
Our last dinner at my house was in November, after the election, in 1988, just as the Reagans were getting ready to leave Washington for California. Security surrounding the president had gotten much tighter. Although my door sits way back from the street, I was asked to put up a tent so that the president could get out of his car concealed from view. When I brought them in, I was told not to take them into the living room, because by then it was too crowded, but I simply ignored this and did so, and they were both quickly surrounded by well-wishing friends. The throng created one minor problem when someone knocked against a glass, which spilled a drink with ice onto the floor. I was dumbstruck at seeing the president of the United States down on his hands and knees in the middle of the crowd, picking up the ice. On the phone the next day, Nancy told me this reminded her of something that had happened in the hospital after the assassination attempt. The president, who was not supposed to get out of bed, went to the bathroom and spilled some water on the floor in the process. When attendants came in, he was on his hands and knees wiping it up. Asked why, he said he was afraid the nurse would get into trouble.
——
T
HE NATURAL ARM’S-LENGTH
relationship between the government and the press always takes on an even more adversarial nature during any presidential campaign. The election year of 1988 was no exception. There were the usual stresses and strains with both Bush and Michael Dukakis, his Democratic opponent, and there were some unusual ones. Both candidates, of course, complained about our coverage of their campaigns. Both visited the paper for editorial lunches, but our troubles with each of them mounted sharply, as did our editorial dismay at their campaigns.
I had known George Bush for years, not intimately but pleasantly. My father had invested in the oil company Bush had started as a young man, and I liked both George and Barbara and thought of them as fine moderate Republicans in the tradition of his father, Senator Prescott Bush, whom I had also known. I hadn’t seen much of them in the previous eight years, when he had served as vice-president, but was well aware that he had been loyal to Reagan, politically as well as personally.
Newsweek
, however, had gotten on the wrong side of the candidate when it published—the very week Bush had announced his intention to run for president—a cover story on the vice-president titled “Fighting the Wimp Factor.” The “wimp” label had been a thorn in the Bush campaign flesh since that time. The profile of Bush had been fair and complete, but the effect of the word “wimp” crying out from the cover on newsstands everywhere was hard to overcome.