Transcript - Cutting Room Takes
Welcome to portraits a podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Where art and biography history and identity collide. I'm Kim say it. Today, we honor our recent guest political reporter, Cokie Roberts.
We have some very sad news to share. ABC News is now reporting that legendary journalist Cokie Roberts, has died today due to complications from cancer at age 75.
With her sharp reporting and analysis. Her quick wit and grace, Cokie said she had empathy for politicians human beings, however flawed who mostly tried to do what they considered right.
Cokie came on the podcast just weeks before her death on September the 17th. To talk about the portraits of four first ladies. Kochi, of course is known as a longtime contributor on ABC News and a founding Mother of NPR. But she was also the author of several books on the political history of women.
Here's Cokie from our interview,
First ladies have been involved in politics, from Martha Washington on Martha Washington went to war, every winter of the American Revolution, eight long years of war.
Cokie was a dear friend of the show and of the National Portrait Gallery, she had contributed to at least one of our exhibition catalogs, and of course, just cheered us on from the sidelines. And like so many we were really caught off guard by her death, we were actually in a kind of shock. And we quickly realized that we had so much great material from our interview with her that didn't make it into the final cut. So we decided to make a special episode to share a few clips that ended up on the cutting room floor, as well as some kind of hilarious behind the scenes moments.
Starting with her arrival here at our so called studio at the gallery. Truth be said it's the corner of my office. Thank you so much for doing this.
She came in sort of like a hurricane and sat down
I'd love some that cold water.
So typical Cokie. She came prepared. She says: I'm ready to go. I've looked them all up. I know they all are. And I've done my homework because girls do homework.
As if we were ever in doubt that we were in the presence of journalistic royalty.
What did I do this weekend? Last night, I had my friend Nina Totenberg and her husband over for dinner.
We kick things off by talking about Martha Washington:
Cokie Roberts, welcome to PORTRAITS. It's so lovely to have you. It's lovely to be here. Thank you.
So we're gonna, and I'm, you know, trying to be respectful and deferential it’s the First Lady's after all. And I show her this picture of Martha Washington and I say, “what do you think of this very fetching head?” And in true Cokie fashion, she says, I actually think her hat does a great disservice. Really, yes, it just makes her the dowdy and she wasn't dowdy.
So we moved on into the interview. And then there's this moment. Again, there's this portrait of Jackie Kennedy in the White House. And immediately this funny and downward side of Cokie was on full display. She wasn't just knowledgeable, she had this ability to keep it real and relatable.
I always say about Queen Elizabeth, who I love. You know, the one thing she wasn't trained to be was a mother.
And of course, who was to know that this would be one of the last interviews that she would give. Regrettably, we didn't take a picture of her when she was at the Portrait Gallery. But when we look through our files, we actually do have her portrait of a sort that is actually part of a larger project, a time based video artwork that was done by Lincoln Schatz in 2012, called The Network. And it in fact, features 89 people, scientists and politicians and thought leaders talking about America and American history. I love the clip that we're going to play for you now from that work of art where she talks about bipartisanship in Washington, or the lack thereof. One of the things that really struck me was this kind of ability to sort of chat about history as if it had just happened yesterday, you get a sense of how she could think big picture how she had a sense of humor, how lively she was. Have a listen:
It is bad. It's not the worst it's ever been in our history. People are always asking me that. Is this the most partisan time we've ever had? No, they're not shooting each other. This is a plus, I guess. I mean, you know, the metal detectors are helpful. But the, you know, we did have periods in our history where they shot each other. And I mean, Burr/Hamilton is just the most famous of the duels and think about Burr/Hamilton. Aaron Burr was the sitting Vice President of the United States. He murdered his political enemy over political speech. So we've had worse times. And that was just as I say, the most famous, they used to call each other out on the floor of the House and go out to Bladensburg where there was a dueling ground and shoot each other. So we're not doing that anymore. And that's a good thing. But it is far more partisan than it was in the period when I was growing up.
That clip was just one example of how Cokie was able to put things in context. And she had that huge wit about her. Cokie knew so much about Washington because both her parents had been lawmakers. Her father, Hale Boggs from Louisiana had been Speaker of the House until tragically, he died in a plane crash flying over Alaska in 1972. Her mother was also in the House. In fact, we had a little bit of a glimpse into this background, a fascinating moment in the interview, when we were speaking about Eleanor Roosevelt. This clip was left on the cutting room floor, but I think now, in hindsight, is really interesting to listen to. It gives you a sense of how Cokie was inexorably bound up with politics and journalism in Washington from the youngest age.
My mother had a wonderful story that when my father was elected to Congress when he was 26. My mother was 24. Oh, my God, the first lady had a party for new members of Congress’s wives. And my brother, who was a baby was teething. And my mother was late. And she was distressed, of course, to be late to the White House. And she came running in late and all a-flutter and, you know, apologized profusely. and Mrs. Roosevelt grabbed her arm and said, “My dear, you have your priorities straight. That baby needed you then, and now you're here.”
“And now you're here.” What a lovely way to remember a woman who was so gritty and accomplished and funny and smart. When I hear that story, I realized that Cokie had a great ability to talk to contemporary politicians and thought leaders on their own terms with a sense of grace and understanding. She was also able to do that with historical figures. And I think in this last clip I'm going to play you'll hear another example of Cokie, looking at a historical figure through a really human lens. And it's a longer section that we couldn't fit into our First Lady's episode, and Cokie is talking about Mary Todd Lincoln. It strikes me how generous she was about this woman who I think today is often considered the spendthrift a bit of a shrew, who yet, was very sad, depressive. And yet Cokie had this sort of ability to be very supportive of her and put herself into this other woman's shoes and say, it's actually kind of unfair of all of us. I think it's a little bit of a leitmotif of Cokie’s approach. This idea that no one's perfect, we all struggle, have a listen:
Washington, DC is between Maryland and Virginia. Lincoln got about 1% of the vote in Virginia, and about 2% of the vote in Maryland. These were not popular people in Washington, and she was not popular was not at all popular. The women of Washington did not like her. They thought she was a country rube, which was really unfair. She was at least as educated as most of them were. But she can be an extremely difficult person. Today, we would probably diagnose her as manic depressive, really where she would have long periods of, of being of taking to her bed, and then periods where she would be flying off the wall. She was again, though, when you think about things that that happened to first lady's that happen now that you don't think of happening in the past. She was hounded by the press. And she now she deserved to be in my view. Because that because she spent money like there was no tomorrow and Congress had allocated to her $20,000 which was an awful lot of money to refurbish the White House and she overspent it by many, many times, and then tried to hide it and all of that, and then maybe they wouldn't find out because they wouldn't find out in the day wouldn't find out.
There's a quote of her: “Actually” she says “to keep up appearances, I must have money more than Mr. Lincoln can spare for me.” So she's kvetching about it as well all the time and finding schemes to make money that were all improper. And then she would go off on a shopping trip to New York. And the press would follow her every step of the way. And I don't blame them. I mean, there was one day where she bought 300 pairs of gloves.
Now 100 years of ago, First Ladies shook hands a lot, and you wear gloves the whole time. So after you wear them actually have one of those receptions. Generally you threw them away. But still, it was not something that was a very politic thing to do.
Now, the interesting thing, too, is that she was quite short, she was five foot two and her husband was very tall. He was six foot four. And that was remarked upon by himself, right? Didn't President Lincoln say he used to joke about “the long and the short of it” as he introduced them. I think they were actually very fond of each other.
I think it was a true love match. It was just very difficult. And he had long periods of depression as well. So I just think they were troubled people. He was a brilliant, troubled person. And I've come to admire him probably more than any politician I've ever encountered.
But she had a very, very difficult time when I looked at this portrait and saw that the date of the provenance could be somewhere between 1860 and 1870. The answer is, No way. By 1870. She was a broken woman. She had completely fallen apart. She had tried to sell all of her clothes. And that had become a huge scandal. Her son had her committed to a mental institution. She was a very sad person at the end.
And just to ask the question, how politically involved was she-- how much agency did she have?
Mary thanks to him was very involved. She had strong views about the cabinet. And she expressed them not only to her husband, but to others as well. And of course, people didn't like that much. But she tended to be right.
I'm just so grateful that I was able to spend an hour and a half with Cokie talking about art and portraiture in history. She was smart, she was witty, she was irreverent. Cokie will miss you.
Don't forget you can also listen to our original interview with Cokie on first ladies at our website, npg. si.edu, slash podcasts. Our podcast team includes Jason Orfanon, Ruth Morris, Deborah Sisum, and Rebecca Kasemeyer. Our theme music is by Joe Chi and Tarik Fouda is our engineer.
And before we go, we wanted to play Cokie’s final comments from our original interview. She was stating that First Ladies had been making unsung political contributions as far back as Martha Washington. Only in this version, you get the director's cut.
Keep looking at them. And the more you learn about each one of them, the more you understand how incredibly influential they were. And that adage that behind every great man is a truly exceptional woman.
Not all these men are great.
That's great. That is fabulous. Until next time, I'm Kim Sajet.