Ray LaHood Oral History

We want to just open by saying this is the Secretary Ray LaHood interview, along with Joan DeBoer, for the Barack Obama presidential oral history as done by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. As I said to Joan, I loved your memoir and went back through it again last night to take it all in. I read it over this semester. We don’t want you to feel like you have to repeat things, but you can’t be sure that everybody will read the memoir, and so to be able to go to your interview and say, “Here is the full story of Secretary and Congressman LaHood,” is really helpful.

Remember, too, that a lot of students and teachers use these materials. I think that hearing about where people come from and what shapes them—what are their values? How do they pick politics to go into and become leaders of our country? Particularly at this time when, let’s just say it’s fraught. Our time is fraught in terms of politics. I think it gives young people hope that it’s a worthy career to go into.

I want to hear about your parents and your grandparents to start with. Let’s just start at the beginning. I want to hear about them and coming from another place in the world and settling in Middle America, in Illinois.

My grandparents on my father’s side came from Lebanon, a small village named Aitou, which still exists with about 200 people. During my time in Congress, I have visited that village many, many times. The last time I visited, they put a sign up called “Ray LaHood Boulevard.” That was unannounced.

That had to be very gratifying.

Yes, it was a nice occasion. I think all 200 people in the— [laughter] and surrounding areas came back. My grandparents’ home, where they grew up in Aitou, no longer exists, but obviously the property does, so we have visited that.

Has it been pretty peaceful, or has it gotten—

It’s been very, very, very peaceful. It’s on the way to the Cedars [Bsharri], which are up higher in the mountains there, but also the Gibran memorial [Khalil Gibran Museum], where he is buried, is also very nearby there. You pass through Aitou and end up at Gibran’s memorial. On my mother’s side, her ancestors were Irish. They were born in the United States. I tended towards my father’s family because when we were growing up in Peoria [Illinois]—I had two brothers—every weekend we would spend with my father’s relatives. He had a sister and two brothers, and we’d have these big, big family dinners and move around to the different homes. So growing up, I knew all of my cousins and aunts and uncles. We were a very close family.

Lebanese food?

Always.

What’s your favorite?

We have all kinds of favorites: cabbage rolls; I would say kibbeh, which is lamb and wheat; I would say grape leaves. All of it is very good, very good. As a matter of fact, I stayed in Washington, D.C., last night and ate at a Lebanese restaurant.

That was my next question. What’s the best Lebanese restaurant in D.C.?

There are several good ones. Lebanese Taverna is very good, on Connecticut Avenue. But there’s a new one in the Wharf area called—it’s I-L-L-I [ilili Restaurant], pronounced “ee-lee,” and it’s a restaurant that was started in New York by an immigrant Lebanese. He moved to Washington, and now he’s establishing one in Miami [Florida].

In any event, my grandparents were people who, on my father’s side, came from Lebanon. My grandfather and grandmother came on the same boat, went through Ellis Island [New York], ended up in Peoria, we believe because—Peoria is in the middle of the country, and it’s in the—

Yes, how did they get from New York to—

They took the train. The train stopped in Peoria, and we think that’s the reason that they ended up there, because that’s where the train stopped. They actually stopped in a small town just west of Peoria called Kewanee [Illinois]. Opened a confectionary store there. During the [Great] Depression, that closed, and they came to Peoria and opened restaurants. Almost all of the Lebanese people who came early on to central Illinois and to this country—restaurants, some were tailors, and many were in the grocery business.

In what era did they come? You said pre-Depression.

In 1895, my grandparents ended up in Peoria.

OK. Do you know what drew them to the U.S. to begin with?

I think the Ottoman Empire was wreaking havoc in that part of the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire, I think, killed a lot of Lebanese people. Lebanon wasn’t really formed until the time that Israel was separated off and became a country of its own, and then Lebanon, and then Syria, and some of those—

Right. A lot of that was broken up after World War I, right?

Exactly.

The Middle East then shaped into these countries that may or may not have logical borders—

That’s correct. That’s correct.

—in terms of ethnicity, religion.

Lebanon is a very small country, maybe only—no more than 4 million people total. Once my grandparents were established, they started writing back to Aitou and other places in Lebanon and told people, “This is a pretty good place to live. You can make a living.”

Again, two or three things: (1) they didn’t speak a word of English; (2) they had a great faith, and they had a great work ethic. Not dissimilar to many other people who came to America. That was established early on. They were accepted in the Peoria community, which—there were many—a big German population, Irish population. But they were well accepted and worked hard. And to think about the fact that my grandparents came not speaking a word of English but with a good work ethic and a strong faith.

My father was born in Kewanee, and my mother was born in Peoria. My father never graduated from high school. My mother did. They were, again, just very hardworking people. So, (1) to have someone like my grandfather’s grandson get a college education; (2) I started out as a teacher professionally; (3) become a member of the highest legislative body in the country, the Congress; (4) become a Cabinet secretary. It’s extraordinary in the sense that what we have done, not dissimilar to what other people have done, just continued to stand on the shoulders of our grandparents and our parents because they were good examples and good mentors. Faith in God, hard work, and play by the rules, and you can be successful.

Obviously, my grandfather and grandmother lived the “American Dream,” and we have, as well, only tried to stairstep on their accomplishments and their achievements. So it is an example of the American Dream. It’s not unique. There are many people that have done the same thing. But we took advantage of the opportunities that America provided and still provides today.

Did your parents live to see you go to Congress?

No, they didn’t. No, my parents died very young. As I said, when I finished my work at Bradley University, where I met my wife—we were both married while we were students there. I was a teacher at the time that my parents—actually, I was working in a different part of Illinois and more involved in government at that point. But the fact is that becoming a teacher was quite an extraordinary thing in our family. Again, college degree and becoming a teacher. I don’t know that I was the first teacher in my family, but I was one of the first, that’s for sure.

You say in your book right up front that really politics was not something that was infused into your household or that you talked about a lot.

I don’t know that politics was a dirty word, but it was not something that our family was ever involved in. When I was growing up in Peoria, I couldn’t have told you who my city councilperson was, maybe even who the mayor was. Certainly didn’t know who the governor or—we had a long-, long-standing congressman named [Robert H.] Bob Michel, who I ended up working for. Everyone knew who he was because he was a dominant figure in our political community. To be honest, his office was very helpful with a number of our family members who wanted to become citizens. He had someone in his office who helped people become citizens—fill out the paperwork and all of that. The point is, politics was not a part of our life.

When you look at families who have come up in politics and have been dominant in politics, it’s usually because their family pushed them that way. Our family, our parents, never really pushed us into—

Voted, I’m sure.

Oh, of course. Yes, yes, they voted.

Did they talk about when a presidential election was coming up?

No, not really. I really got interested in politics when I started teaching school. In Illinois, probably like many states, I was teaching eighth grade, and you have to pass the “constitution test”—state constitution and U.S. Constitution—in order to pass on. That’s one of the requirements to pass on to high school. I don’t know if it still is now, but it was back when I was teaching. My interest in politics was really sparked by teaching the Constitution, and government, and three branches of government, and all of those things.

Civics, what we would call civics.

Yes, civics. Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I taught: civics.

What had you studied at Bradley?

I was sociology and education. Then I got my—in Illinois, you have to have a teaching certificate, so you have to student teach, which I did in Peoria. Got my certificate and then qualified to teach. I taught four years in the Catholic schools and two years in the public schools, and then left teaching and went into—as I said, I moved to the Quad City area [Iowa and Illinois border], which is 75 miles west of Peoria, and got more involved in government. Ultimately, I worked for a congressman there and so forth.

Let’s talk about—well, before I get to that question, why do people say, “This has to play in Peoria”?

It was a standard that was really brought about because Peoria became a test market for products. For example, maybe soap, or maybe Procter & Gamble, or somebody like that was testing out some kind of new product, or somebody was testing out a new cereal. They thought that Peoria was such a homogeneous community made up of midwestern people, and so they might bring their products there and test them out. If people liked them, then they thought, Well, this would be good enough for the rest of the country. Then a lot of vaudeville acts came to Peoria. A lot of people in vaudeville got their start thinking that if they could make people laugh or if they could entertain them in Peoria, it probably would be pretty good in the rest of the country. So those two things.

Richard Nixon really coined the phrase when he was in the White House. Somebody said something about some policy or some issue that he was going to be involved in that maybe they thought was controversial, and he made the statement, “Well, if it plays in Peoria, it’ll play anywhere.” That got broadcast around the political environment and around the country. It still holds true a little bit, but there are a lot of places today in our country like Peoria that people test things out and try and figure out if they make sense. But that’s how it came about.

It’s truly Middle America, I guess, as the average of meeting there in the middle.

That’s correct.

That’s helpful. I’ve always wondered about that origin. Tell us—I know that you at one point ran for school board, twice.

I did. That was in the Quad City area, when I was in the Quad Cities and some people asked me to. I was involved with an organization called the Rock Island County [Illinois] Youth Service Bureau, a delinquency prevention program that I was hired as the first director for. It was funded through the Department of Justice. The money came to the county, Rock Island County, and they established the Youth Service Bureau as a delinquency prevention program to keep kids out of the courts and intervene in their lives in the school and before they went to court. I got very active with a lot of school systems, got to know the superintendents, and someone persuaded me to run for the school board, which was not a good decision. [laughter] You’ve got to be a local person. You’ve got to be locally known to be elected to a school board or a city council. Here I was from Peoria, Illinois. Nobody knew me from Adam.

Seventy-five miles away.

Yes, yes, exactly.

Did the delinquency program seem to work?

It did work, and it still works today. I was invited back recently to meet with the director in Rock Island. I went there, and I was asked to help with a little fundraiser that they were putting on. They’re still working with young people and trying to keep kids in school and out of court.

What are some of the strategies that you were using at the time and they still may be using?

To really work with the school systems where the kids were, where kids were getting in trouble, and with the police departments, who sometimes would encounter these juveniles. Back in the day, they were called “juvenile delinquents.” What would happen is—say that a police officer would arrest a juvenile for shoplifting or something. They would send them to the Youth Service Bureau, where we would have counselors that would meet with their families and try and figure out how we could change their behavior. Or the school system would have children that were delinquent from school or absent, and their parents maybe weren’t as involved as they should have been, so they would be referred to us, and again our counselors would meet with them.

We had some success in terms of recidivism and in terms of our ability to really encourage kids and their families—the family part of it was very important—to stay out of trouble, stay in school. We worked with business leaders to provide jobs, starting jobs for a lot of these kids, give them an opportunity to work. It was a program that the federal government was funding to really try and reduce juvenile delinquency.

Another of those examples, it seems to me, when people complain about the government. You know, “Get the government off our backs,” or, “We’re antigovernment.” Stories like this—I hope people understand that it can be helpful.

Yes, right. I would too. I moved to the Quad Cities in 1972 and became the first director. To think that here I went back to this same community a year ago, 2024. The program is still going, which means it still has value, still helping families, still helping kids, keeping kids out of jail, keeping kids in school. It was a pretty good idea.

And that comes in the Nixon era, right?

That’s correct.

Block grants? Were those called block grants?

You know, it was called the juvenile justice program funded under the Law Enforcement [Assistance] Administration of the Justice Department. It was a new program created by Congress and the Nixon administration.

Well, let us get you then, as I refer to my notes—you have your first jobs in that realm. Tell us then how you get linked to your Congress positions by starting in staff positions. You get linked to the Congress as a staffer before you are elected to Congress. How did that work?

I was involved with the Youth Service Bureau, which, as I said, was funded by the Department of Justice. Tom Railsback was the congressman from, then, the 17th [Congressional] District [of Illinois]. He was on the [House] Judiciary Committee. When we needed to get additional funding, it would have to come from the Justice Department. We began to meet with his staff to figure out how we could use his influence to help us continue the funding for our program. That’s how I became aware of Tom Railsback and he became aware of me. We worked with his office for a couple of years.

Was that primarily a field office you were working with?

Yes, a district office.

Yes, rather than in D.C.

Yes, district, not really D.C. It was the district office. Then I gravitated from the Youth Service Bureau over to the bi-state regional planning commission. Again, we worked with Railsback’s office on a lot of federal funds for a lot of different areas, planning and so forth. I got to know Railsback very well because we worked with him and his staff on federal funding for these programs. He was looking for someone to run his district office. His district director moved on to something else. I interviewed for the job and was fortunate enough to get it. That was my first venture, or adventure, really, into politics. [laughter]

Tom Railsback was a very, very popular moderate Republican in what we call the western part of Illinois, the 17th Congressional District. He had been elected in 1966 and, as I said, served on the Judiciary Committee. He had been a practicing lawyer in Moline [Illinois]. His father was a very well-known lawyer. He was in his father’s firm. Then he ran for state rep [representative], became a state rep from the area, and then got elected in 1966 against a one-term Democratic congressman.

Who had probably swept in in ’64, right, with the Lyndon [B.] Johnson wave?

Precisely. A fellow named Gale Schisler, who was a schoolteacher. Nobody wanted to run in that district, so Schisler decided to run and, as you just said, got swept in in the Johnson landslide of ’64. Railsback came along in ’66 after the Vietnam War was beginning, and Johnson was in the midst of that and in the midst of passing a lot of legislation, the Great Society [legislative programs].

Was that not playing well in that part of Illinois?

It was not playing well in that part of Illinois.

Had that district typically been Republican?

Republican, for sure.

So the outlier was the ’64 race.

Exactly. Railsback got elected, and when I went to work for him, I worked for him for five and a half years. Then he lost a very close primary in March of ’82. His district had changed, and they shifted the lines and shifted the geography.

Democrats had done that in the state legislature?

That’s correct.

Ah. Gerrymandered that district. [laughs]

Yes. He was in a district where many people did not know him. The Republicans that knew him remembered him for the fact that he cast one of two or three Republican votes as a member of the Judiciary Committee to impeach Richard Nixon, which was a very, very tough vote for him, very tough. Nixon had come and campaigned for Railsback when he was running for Congress. He knew Nixon. I don’t know how close he was to him. But that vote, for conservative Republicans, was the death knell that defeated him in his ’82 primary.

He had a conservative state senator from another part of the district, that he had not represented, run against him, so he used that. Railsback was so-called pro-choice. The district was more conservative. Railsback also voted for some gun legislation, so people didn’t feel that he was as strong on Second Amendment as they liked.

You had mentioned that he was—you described him as a moderate Republican.

Right.

You’re giving us some information about his policy votes that made him more moderate.

That’s correct.

Was it that that district that had been gerrymandered, was it that the part that was more conservative, had that always been more conservative? Or were the people moving in a more conservative direction?

The thing that Railsback had going for him—he was very popular in the district that he represented prior to ’82. People knew him. Some people were willing to turn a blind eye on some of these things because they felt he was doing a good job. He had a great constituent service organization, really provided good service to people. He was a very likable fellow, also, and he lived in the district. He lived in Moline. His father was a well-known attorney for years.

All of a sudden, he gets moved to other areas where people don’t know him and don’t have quite the tolerance for the fact that he’s not pro-gun, or that he’s not anti-abortion, or the fact that he voted to throw out a conservative Republican president. Those two or three things hurt him—

That’s the death knell, yes.

—very badly against a conservative state senator in, now, a more rural district. This conservative state senator was a farmer and was beloved by the [Illinois] Farm Bureau, which is a big organization in Illinois. He had an opportunity to beat Railsback and saw it. The problem is that in the general election, a conservative Republican could not get elected. A young Democrat had filed to run against Railsback. Railsback gets beat. Now this young Democrat named Lane Evans comes in, beats the conservative Republican. This guy was a legal aid attorney, and he was maybe no more than 30 years old. He served for 20 years. The seat went from Republican to Democratic.

Oh, my goodness. That’s a fascinating story in and of itself.

It is. Lane Evans served for 20 years. Unfortunately, he became very ill and had to retire from Congress, and has passed on. But that was the beginning. From a political point of view, the beginning of the shift that we see today where—prior to ’82, issues like abortion, gun control, were not the litmus test issues that they are today. That was the beginning of the start of these mass mailings. There were mass mailings against Railsback, votes that he had made on gun control, votes that he had made on abortion versus so-called right to life.

The so-called wedge issues.

The wedge issues.

You saw that from the beginning, rising up.

Saw it played out to a fare-thee-well.

Could I pause there? We mentioned in reference to this congressman, Railsback, voting on the Judiciary Committee for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. You must have been taking all of that in. What were your thoughts about Richard Nixon, since you viewed yourself as a Republican, and as you said, I would think, a rather moderate, reasonable Republican?

When those votes were taken—I’m trying to think. I might not have been with Railsback’s office at that time. I may have come on maybe a year after that.

Right. But you were following the—

No, of course I was following.

It was everywhere in the news, and the Watergate hearings. What did you make of Nixon before that? And then what did you make of him once all of that came to the fore?

Well, I voted in 1967 for the first time, and I voted for Nixon.

In ’68, for his second run for the presidency?

That’s right, ’68, that’s right. Yes, I voted for Nixon then.

And I presume in ’72 for reelection?

Yes, of course.

Since you’ve talked about—Nixon obviously had to sign that policy coming through the Justice Department about juvenile delinquency. How did you view his Republicanism, and then how did the Watergate scandal impact your feelings and thoughts about him?

Well, I was an admirer of Railsback, and I thought that he was a very thoughtful member of Congress. I thought that when he voted for impeachment, that was a very thoughtful, deliberate, thoroughly examined vote. To be honest, I thought he must have known a lot more about this than common, ordinary Ray LaHood or any other voter. [laughter]

And he was a lawyer, you said.

And he was a lawyer.

And his dad had been a lawyer, so presumably he knew the Constitution, even maybe better than you, as a civics teacher, as a lawyer, let’s just say.

Yes, that’s right.

Do you think Nixon should have resigned in ’74?

Well, of course. He probably should have had better control of what was going on. Clearly, he did some things that really didn’t meet the standard for ethical governance.

Though now it seems somewhat minor. [laughs]

That’s right.

Every time I watch [the film] All the President’s Men, it almost seems minor compared to things that go on today.

No, that’s correct, yes.

We should say for the record that no one has ever connected President Nixon to the actual break-in or the bugging of the Democratic national headquarters in Watergate. But the smoking gun, so-called, on the tapes that the Supreme Court required that he turn over was found that he was part of the cover-up. As they always say, the cover-up can be worse than the actual action.

Right, exactly.

Other thoughts and lessons that you were learning—thoughts that you had then, you have looking back—in serving Congressman Railsback in his district office?

Well, other than what we just talked about, really the beginning of these wedge issues.

What were you learning about constituent services?

That it’s very, very important. That some people will overlook a vote here or there if they were able to get their passport, if they were able to get their visa, if they were able to get their citizenship. Getting a Social Security check, getting a Medicare problem fixed—that means a great deal to people. Even today, I live in Peoria, which is my hometown. I run into people all the time that say, “Thank you,” not for some vote that I made on a bill but for recommending their child to an academy.

I ran into a fellow who’s in a very good position in the state of Illinois who came from Sudan to Peoria as an engineer. He showed up in—this was when I was working for Bob Michel—showed up in our Peoria office with a handful of papers wanting to become a citizen. He never forgot that we took an interest in that and helped him maneuver through all of the paperwork and became a citizen. That’s more important to people than a piece of legislation that they don’t understand and take for granted, that hopefully whoever is voting on it took the time to read the bill or whatever. Constituent service is as important as any legislation that a member of Congress can vote on. It just simply is.

It’s personal. Politics is personal and local in that setting, isn’t it?

Yes, that’s right. Right.

How often did Railsback come home?

Every weekend.

Every weekend flew home.

Every weekend, yes. His family lived in Moline. He had four daughters. His wife and daughters lived in Moline. They went to the public schools there, the same schools that he went to.

Just for folks who are reading this, when I was in college in the 1970s and majoring in political science, there was a book called Home Style: Congressmen [House Members] in Their Home Districts, by a political scientist called Richard [F.] Fenno. It was my favorite book that I read in political science. It is all about that, just what you said. They call it the “soaking and poking method,” that he, as a political scientist, would link up with members of Congress and say, “Can I go home with you when you go home to your district?” He would go around that weekend with those members of Congress all over the country and see exactly what you’re describing. I just thought, Oh, that really helps me understand that job, what they do.

Anything else for Railsback before—

You know, after Railsback lost, I had the good fortune of being appointed as state representative because there was a vacancy, and the local county chairman appointed me to that. I served until November, and I lost that election to a very well-established Democrat, and again, in a newly drawn legislative district. But it was fun to serve.

Did you serve one session of the legislature?

Yes, one session exactly. I served from May 1st through maybe October.

What did you see in Springfield [Illinois] in that one session? You’ve seen now Congress and what somebody’s doing from the federal government back to the local district. Did anything impress you positively, negatively, about the state legislature and legislative politics?

Not too much really. The Illinois legislature has a long, long, rich history of having a lot of characters serving there, so it was fun to meet them.

Colorful?

Colorful people, yes. And to have a front row seat on watching “the sausage being made” at the state level was fun. Good learning experience. Following my defeat, I was called by Bob Michel’s office, who had just finished a very close election himself. In 1982, he was in a redrawn district and had a young lawyer, Democrat, run against him, and he only won with 2 percent. It was the closest election he ever had. He was redesigning and rethinking about his district office and his service because he was Republican leader, and he did not come every weekend. He stayed in Washington and was really marshaling President [Ronald] Reagan’s legislative program through, some of which had a negative impact because the economy wasn’t too good then. So Michel had a very close election.

The point I’m telling you is, then Michel decided to reorganize his Peoria office and opened an office in Jacksonville, Illinois, and Springfield. Jacksonville is just a few miles west of Springfield, which is where Joan [DeBoer] is from.

Oh, we must talk about that.

We were brought on. I was brought on with another state rep who lost his election—a fellow named Craig [J.] Findley. Craig was in Jacksonville. His father was a very well-known congressman, Paul Findley, who served maybe 25 or 30 years. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is we moved from the Quad Cities, from East Moline [Illinois], back to Peoria. I headed up the Peoria office. Craig was in the Jacksonville office. We really created a service program for Bob Michel that the people really hadn’t seen before.

He got this idea, no doubt, from that close election in ’82.

That is correct.

That, I better spend more time—

Being accused of being more interested in Washington rather than Peoria, more interested in the people in D.C. and lobbyists and all of that than the common, ordinary people who sent him to Washington. He got the message on that.

That can be the kiss of death, can it not?

Yes, that’s right. That’s really what launched my opportunity to be back in Peoria, my hometown, and really get ensconced in politics there. And the community—I got involved in the community and served on different boards and stuff.

You make so clear in your wonderful memoir, Seeking Bipartisanship, your admiration for Congressman Michel.

Of course.

Tell us about what you learned from him. One lesson: Be at home and have good people reaching out to your constituents. Did he start coming home every week, as best he could?

Yes, he really did. He didn’t come home every week. His children were raised by the time I came on board. He and his wife, Corinne, raised their children in Peoria. They went to the public schools. After his children were raised, Corinne moved to Washington. Bob became Republican leader. Without him, Ronald Reagan would have never passed his legislative initiatives because Reagan inherited a Democratic Congress except for two years. Six of the eight years were controlled by Democrats. Because Bob Michel had such a great relationship over the years with Democrats, he was able not only to rally his own troops but to talk to Democrats about why this would be a good vote for the Reagan program, whatever it was. That was very helpful.

And [Thomas P.] Tip O’Neill, Speaker [of the U.S. House of Representatives] at the time. Chris Matthews has written that book, Tip and the Gipper, and about Tip O’Neill going to the hospital after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, in which he almost lost his life, and the two praying together. Certainly your theme of bipartisanship. Is too much made of that, or was that genuine?

No, not at all. No, no, I think it’s very authentic. I think it’s true. Tip O’Neill and Bob Michel were—I don’t know if “best friends” is the right word, but certainly very good friends. They played a lot of golf together. They played in the Bob Hope [Classic] tournament several years together. They socialized together. Now, again, Tip O’Neill and his wife lived in Washington, and Bob and Corinne lived in Washington. It was much easier to become friends when you can go to dinner on the weekend or play golf on the weekend together.

That’s an important point you’re raising because you hear a lot now that one of the contributing factors to this fraught time in which we live and the polarization is that so many members of Congress don’t live in Washington. They are not seeing each other on the weekends, or having dinner with their families—or if their families are there, their kids aren’t going to those schools in D.C.—or seeing each other at the grocery store. But then there is that conflict, isn’t there, trying to find that balance between being painted as D.C., colored by D.C., as opposed to the home folks?

Right. I do think those relationships have fostered good policy, good legislation. In the absence of that, nothing gets done, and we see that being played out more and more often today, rather than what was being played out back maybe during Reagan, or George Herbert Walker [H. W.] Bush, or maybe even George W. Bush. To be honest, Bob Michel helped [William J.] Bill Clinton pass the NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] agreement. He did it because it was good for Caterpillar, which was the dominant employer in Bob’s district, but also because Bob felt it was good public policy, even though Clinton was a Democrat. That kind of legislation doesn’t just happen. It’s a process where people from both parties have to come together.

What are you seeing in the Reagan years from the White House, and the fact that the concept of Reaganism and the Reagan Republicans, and Reagan Democrats, for that matter—blue-collar men [manual workers], particularly, often ethnic men, moving more conservatively and being supportive of Reagan and Reaganomics—and feeling like we were pulling out of the difficulties of the [Jimmy] Carter era, both in foreign and domestic policy?

I think Reagan had his touch on the pulse of the American people. That’s why he was so popular. He passed some tax cuts that maybe Democrats didn’t like very much, but he also did some other things that I think encouraged and really fostered the kind of relationships that he was able to develop with some conservative Democrats. I think he set a standard for how a president should get along with Congress, even when the president’s party is not in power—that you do have to reach across the aisle. You can’t just count on your own troops. Reagan had a good way of doing that and used the White House and his office to curry the favor of members of Congress by inviting them to dinners, or lunches, or one-on-one opportunities, and it paid big dividends for him. It takes a lot of time and energy to do that, but it pays off.

Anything more from this time in your career, before we get you to Congress? And Joan, when do you come into the mix in our story?

In 1990. In September of ’90, I moved to Washington and started working for my hometown congressman, who was Bob Michel at the time, when he was [House minority] leader. That’s the same time that Secretary LaHood had just started as chief of staff for the leader. I started as a staff assistant.

And you’re from Springfield?

Jacksonville.

I’m sorry, Jacksonville. What drew you into the political realm?

I was a poli sci [political science] minor and had done a—

Where was that?

At the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Our Rick Willis [executive assistant at the Miller Center] went to Missouri.

I heard him mention it, right.

You’ll have to talk to him about that at lunch maybe.

I had done an internship for Senator [Christopher S.] Kit Bond when I was at Mizzou [University of Missouri], and so I drove over to Jefferson City [Missouri] every day for a semester. I really got a feel for the constituent service work that has been talked about earlier, which made me interested in public service. Then an opening happened to come up in the Washington office for my hometown member, and it was just really nice to work for someone who you really saw make a difference back home where you were from.

Oh, good. All right. Continue to jump in when necessary. [technical interruption]

[BREAK]

[To LaHood] Let’s get you to Congress. What causes you to—after not having success in three different races at the much lower level, but taking your time to be working with Congressman and Leader Michel—say, I’m going to cast my hat into the ring, and I’m going to run for Congress?

It was always clear to me, maybe towards the end of Bob’s career, that eventually he would retire. We talked about it. We talked about succession. Bob had been a congressional staffer for eight years prior to being elected. He graduates from Bradley University, I think, in 1948, maybe. The president of Bradley University says to him, “Our current congressman is looking for someone to help him.” Bob interviews with Harold Velde. Harold Velde is the congressman. Bob goes to work as what he would term as “his man Friday” [right-hand man], or his—[laughter] what we’d call today his “body man” or whatever. Back in those days, members of Congress maybe only had a handful of staff people that were paid to help them.

Bob worked for Harold Velde for eight years. Congressman Velde decided to retire, and Bob was elected in 1956. It was not uncommon—I mean a lot of people remember that Bob was a congressional staffer, but they remember a lot of other things about him—also, his [military] service.

You followed, then, that pattern.

That’s correct. I followed that pattern. He and I talked about the fact that at some point, he was going to give it up. I think his family was encouraging him to hang it up, and he had always wanted to be Speaker—never had the opportunity. Then Newt Gingrich got elected to the Congress and became Republican whip. [Richard B.] Dick Cheney was actually Bob’s Republican whip, so that would have been number two. Michel number one Republican, Dick Cheney number two from Wyoming. George Herbert Walker Bush picks Cheney after he’s elected to become his secretary of defense. Cheney resigns from Congress. Newt Gingrich runs against an Illinoisan named Ed Madigan, gets elected whip by one vote.

The way these elections happen is, for Republican leader, the Republican members cast their votes. It’s not done by all the members of the House, just the Republican members. Michel gets elected leader, Cheney gets elected whip. Great team, bright future. Then all of a sudden, Cheney’s gone. There’s a vacancy. Gingrich, who is a real firebrand even at that time, comes in, says, “I’m going to run for whip.” Ed Madigan, who is one of Bob Michel’s best friends from Lincoln, Illinois, long-standing congressman—the two of them [Madigan and Gingrich] go against one another. All the Republicans get in a room. Gingrich wins by one vote.

Now, what was happening in the Republican Caucus?

Things were changing. Things were changing. Newt was saying, “We need younger members. We need antiestablishment members. We need to think differently about who”—

“If we’re ever going to be a majority in the House.”

That’s correct. That’s correct. Newt comes in, and he is not quite the team player that Cheney would have been, or that Ed Madigan would have been, or that Bob Michel was accustomed to, having served in leadership for many, many years.

Now Congressman and Leader Michel is dealing with an insurgent leader and an insurgency in his own caucus.

Yes. And Gingrich is the one that went after Jim Wright, who was the Speaker elected from Texas, the Speaker of the House. Wright had written a book.

That was the ethics issue, right, on his royalties, as I recall?

That’s correct. He wrote a book, and then he got all these lobbyists to buy the book. He got the proceeds for himself. There was an ethics investigation brought on by Gingrich. Gingrich eventually comes to the floor and says that Jim Wright should resign, and Wright resigns. Democrats never, ever forgave Newt Gingrich for doing that to their Speaker. They basically ran him off.

Newt becomes a nettlesome— [laughter] not quite the team player that Cheney would have been or that Ed Madigan would have been. He forms his own group. It was called the Conservative Opportunity Society, COS. All of these younger members coming in, very conservative. Today they’d be called Tea Party [political movement]. Back then, they were called the Conservative Opportunity Society. Newt lays the groundwork because he wants to be Speaker.

What’s happening in the country, though, in those districts where these “young Turks” [younger members], I’ll call them, who would become the COS-ers—these young Gingrich acolytes are being elected in the districts?

I think they’re coming from districts where people are tired of Washington. They want the place turned upside down.

The wedge issues again that we talked about, right? Guns, abortion, religion.

Yes. They want to elect people who are going to care more about them rather than themselves. The bank scandal occurred where members of Congress had their own bank—you could write checks whether there was money in your account or not. That was happening.

Savings and loan scandal happening about that time.

Yes, exactly. The country was in turmoil in terms of their leadership. Part of it happened—played out by the fact that George Herbert Walker Bush, president, campaigning, said, “No new taxes,” then had to reach an agreement with Democrats on a budget. Tip O’Neill said, “Well, in exchange for all these things, we’re going to have to raise taxes.” Bush decides, “I’ll raise taxes.” That threw Gingrich, the COS crowd, into a complete chaos against Bush.

Yes. What we talked about with the Reagan years, it is the Bush 41 [George H. W. Bush] not being viewed as a loyal Reagan Republican that upends his presidency.

Correct, and the statement that he made at the convention.

“Read my lips: no new taxes.”

“Read my lips,” correct. Gingrich and his acolytes came out full force and told Bob Michel, “We are not going to vote for this. You don’t have our votes. You may have the Democrats on board, but we are not going to be on board.” More than a handful of Republicans voted against that, which was a real—it was a very difficult time for Bob and for Bush, to think that his own troops were not going to support what needed to be done.

All of these things were steps that led up to Bob’s consideration in ’93, leading up to the ’94 election, to decide to retire. Frankly, Newt basically told him, “If you run again, and win your seat, and want to become leader, I will challenge you.”

And probably, You’ll be ousted from the leadership?

Well—

That was the implication.

That’s the implication—because I’ve got my COS group, and I’m going to be out campaigning for all of these members that are going to be coming in here.

And that group will increase in number.

Yes.

In the meantime, you have the ’92 presidential election, in which Bill Clinton is running as a moderate Democrat to say, The days of George McGovern are gone. The Democratic Leadership Council is supporting me, and I’m not for the big government of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. And you’ve got Ross Perot entering the picture as a third-party candidate who gets 18 percent of the popular vote, running almost as a single-issue [candidate], balance the budget, which I know is of issue to you and of great concern to you.

Right. Sure, sure.

All of this is coalescing at the time, and then, you run.

That’s correct. Bob decides—

He’s going to step out and retire.

Newt has a clear path then and comes up with the idea of the Contract with America [legislative agenda]. Ten items to reform Congress, 10 items to include term limits, doing away with the bank, all kind of reforms for how to pass legislation, and tax cuts.

They stand out on the plaza of the Capitol, the [National] Mall side.

That’s correct. Right, and everybody signs.

And everybody signs on.

Right, right. At that point, Gingrich decides he’s going to run a national election rather than district by district. Get everybody to sign the Contract with America. You become a part of a national congressional effort or movement to take control of the Congress. To be honest, it was brilliant because it worked. It worked.

Now, what is happening in your district—you will come to represent this district. We’ve talked about gerrymandering that had happened and how district lines would change. What are you seeing in your district as you run?

That I would carry on the traditions of Bob Michel.

Moderate Republicanism?

Yes. I mean, more balanced. Conservative on the issues that people care about, but certainly more balanced, and someone who would work with people on both sides of the aisle—friends on both sides of the aisle. I distinguished myself in this regard. I was one of three Republicans who did not sign the Contract with America because I felt it was a little gimmicky, and I wanted to run on my own. And to be honest, I was not in favor of the tax cuts until we balanced the budget. That was a big issue for me. I thought balancing the budget was the most important thing we could do and campaigned on that. I campaigned on the idea of, “Let’s balance the budget first before we give tax cuts.”

And that worked. People accepted that.

They did. I was successful.

And they knew you.

That’s correct because I was involved in many different ways representing Bob Michel and providing the kind of constituent service that people really wanted.

Now I have to say, when you all came in this morning, I already felt like I knew Joan because we’ve been emailing, and I felt like I knew you because I’d read your book, followed your career. But I notice for both of you, as you met our staff, you look them in the eye, warm handshake. I thought, This is why these people have been successful in politics. [laughs]

Yes, yes, sure.

Does that come naturally to you? Are you a people person?

Well, I don’t know that it really comes naturally to anybody until you start doing it, and you get the kind of reaction that you would expect: that people respect you because you’re interested in them, and you’re willing to listen to them, and you’re willing to meet them on their own terms wherever they’re at. Over time, you understand that this is—it’s important because when you’re asking someone to cast their vote for you, that’s a big ask, particularly for people who may not know you. So, over time, you develop that kind of rapport with people.

I think of politicians that I have known over the years. I think when you get elected president, you have to be able to relate to people. People know it when you don’t, when you don’t look them in the eye, or you interrupt people in the middle of their sentence, or you don’t really care about their own opinions.

You see that played out in presidential campaigns. To think that—just two examples: To think that an African American can get elected in the state of Iowa, where there are few black people, you have to have some charm about you, and you have to be sincere in your approach to people. I felt that way about [Pete] Buttigieg. He won the Iowa caucuses—surprised everybody—as a gay man from a small town, South Bend, Indiana. Nobody knew who he was. But what they [presidential candidates] do is they go, and they reach out. That’s why Jimmy Carter was successful in Iowa.

The one president that people tell me that they think impressed them more than anybody else was Bill Clinton. If you’re talking to Bill Clinton, he’s looking you in the eye, you’re the most important person in his realm, and it seems like he really cares what you have to say. I’ve had more people tell me that. Obama was that way, in a sense. I remember watching him campaign, and he’d work the rope line, and he’d shake every hand that he could, give every autograph that he could. I think about [Ron] DeSantis’s campaign. The one thing people faulted him for? He didn’t meet people very well. People didn’t think he really cared about them.

Did well in his gubernatorial campaigns in Florida, but you’re right. When he tried for the nomination—

On the presidential level, people—they’re looking to measure up the person that’s running.

It’s that, “Do you want to have a beer or invite this person to your backyard barbecue?” question. It really does mean a lot, doesn’t it?

Exactly. Yes, yes. Politics is very personal. It really is, at any level. School board, city council, whatever.

As it should be. [To DeBoer] Were you on the campaign trail?

For Secretary [LaHood]?

Yes.

Yes, I went back a little bit. But I was still working for Bob Michel.

At that time before he cycled out?

Correct, yes. I couldn’t go back, so I wasn’t on campaign staff or anything because I stayed with Mr. Michel’s office until the end. But obviously, we were all part of the family that was supporting LaHood.

Tell me about fundraising. We haven’t talked about that. We know that that’s part of the—we talked about the reason for members of Congress coming back to be with the people: to hear their thoughts, to look them in the eye on the weekends if they can. But we also know, certainly nowadays, coming back for funding and talking to people with lots of purses and lots in their purse when they come home.

Do you see, since you are part of staff for that period of time before you become a member of Congress, are you seeing that? Are you seeing that in Congressman, Leader Michel’s office? What about when you’re running and getting money to run? What are you using it for? What is happening over that time period?

You can’t really get elected to Congress or the Senate or the White House without raising an enormous amount of money. The Supreme Court decision that just allows money to wash over everything, and very little reporting, and all of that, it’s a problem. Just think about the fact that a common, ordinary person can’t really run for president, when you think about the fact that Vice President [Kamala] Harris spent a billion dollars. That’s just mindboggling. Most people don’t even know what that means.

In about three months.

Yes, yes, in about three months. In our state of Illinois, our governor is a billionaire a couple of times over.

This is Pritzker, JB Pritzker?

Yes. He spent $400 or $500 million of his own money the first time he ran, and $250 million of his own money the second time he ran. Basically, while I was in Congress, I thought about running for governor, but when you start talking to people about running for governor in Illinois, you talk about spending all of your time raising money, not really going to the parades, or the fairs, or door to door, or whatever. It costs an enormous amount of money to run for public office.

Do you remember how much you raised for that first campaign?

About a million dollars. What you’re doing—you’re begging your friends and relatives and neighbors to contribute, and you’re having a lot of fundraisers. Now the district that I once represented doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been merged with others. But it would cost several million dollars to run for Congress in Illinois in any one of the districts that currently exist. That’s true around the country. If you wanted to run for the Senate in Illinois, you’d be talking millions of dollars. Money is important, but it’s also a distraction.

What is it used for in these campaigns? How did you use it?

Primarily for television to get your message out, 30-second commercials. That’s primarily what it’s for, targeting voters on whatever issues are topical during that particular campaign. Maybe it’s the abortion issue. Maybe it’s the transgender issue.

Nowadays it is.

The other thing is, when I ran in ’94, there was no social media. There were no cell phones. We had a big box phone in our car that we used.

[laughs] Like in the Batmobile.

Right.

Yes, yes. My point is, I think a lot of campaigns spend money on staff people who just do the social media stuff. And you can put a lot of messages out on social media. That’s a part of campaigning that I know little or nothing about, but it’s the way of the world now in politics.

And the consultants who help you know what—make those commercials, or, This is the commercial you need, or, Get this on TikTok [social media], or, Get this on Instagram [social media]. Marketing—marketing, polling, all of that, right?

Right. Yes, yes.

What could be done? If you could wave a magic wand right now to fix that problem, what would you do?

I mean, in the presidential campaign, Congress did pass a law that said each candidate will get X amount of dollars. Well, what’s happened is they sign and say, “We’re not going to take it. We’re going to spend whatever we want.” You get—Donald [J.] Trump. I don’t begrudge him the fact that he’s a multimillionaire, but look what he did. He used his own airplane, his own helicopter, his own money the first time he ran, and signed off on whatever money the federal government—said, “We’re not going to take it.”

Public financing isn’t working at that level, for sure.

No, of course not. Of course not. The Supreme Court decision that said, Raise whatever you want from whatever whom you want it, and you don’t have to do any reporting, and so forth.

That’s both overturning McCain–Feingold [Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002] through Mitch McConnell’s—Mitch McConnell is named in the case. And then Citizens United [v. Federal Election Commission], I guess. You add that to the mix and really, all the bets are off.

That’s right. Money is very, very important, but it can also be a problem.

First of all, would you support McCain–Feingold types of restrictions? And if you were on the Supreme Court, would you vote to uphold those kinds of attempts to limit the impact of money?

I think we do need to limit the amount of money that’s spent. It means that common, ordinary, average people—I don’t know if Abraham Lincoln could run for president today. [laughter] I don’t.

Interestingly, Obama—we’ll soon enough come to Obama. You know, Jimmy Carter—I’m thinking of in our time, modern presidents don’t come from money. Nixon didn’t come, Reagan, but they ended up—even [the Obamas] I think, via Michelle Obama’s work, had enough money to live on so that they could—although they were saying they were still paying back their student loans when he was in the Senate, I think. But for somebody who doesn’t have enough money at the time to run, you can’t raise a family and run for office.

Obama could not have run for president from the state senate seat. He could logically do it from a U.S. Senate seat, even though his own personal wealth was limited, with the idea that he’d raise the money, that there’d be enough people to support him to do it. But without any limits, then you can go and do whatever you want to do.

My point is this: Not a single average, ordinary citizen would think about running for president. Many would never think about running for United States Senate or the House of Representatives because it would be daunting to them to think about the kind of money they would have to raise.

Right. They wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t have the contacts to start.

That’s correct.

They don’t know people of wealth. They don’t know people in high places of business.

Look, I had an advantage. Now, ’94 is completely different, completely different time, but I had an advantage. I was a congressional staffer for two members of Congress, so I knew what I was getting into, and I had made enough contacts to know that—and I’d worked for somebody who could help me encourage other people to contribute.

Yes, because you were the common, everyday person, but you had had those positions.

Yes. My point is, Barbara, that it would be very difficult for you to run for Congress. It would be daunting.

You’re absolutely right, even though at 16, I was in a little fashion show, and they introduced me. I had been interested in government and politics since my mother took me to see John F. Kennedy campaigning in our hometown when I was four. They announced, as I walked down the runway, “She would like to be the first woman president.” The people in the department store all laughed.

I don’t know if it was money or being an intern—I was an intern for Senator Wendell Ford—I just somehow, once I got there I realized, coming from my background, which is very similar to yours, although not the immediate immigrant status. Our family came in the 1840s running from the German and Irish and English revolutions of Europe at the time. But I was first in our generation to go to college, and realizing that I probably didn’t have that money or background, or maybe the desire, to do what that required. So happily, I became a professor and a faculty member.

How about a little break?

[BREAK]

Let us get back to—you’re coming in with the Gingrich class. Gingrich achieves his desire, his goal. He makes the Republicans the majority, and he becomes the Speaker, and he immediately turns to the Contract with America to start to get that through. Again, you have great detail in your memoir, but anything that you want to embellish on, or add to that, or the people you were working with in Congress at the time in the Clinton era that you might want to focus on a bit?

Yes. I think that there’s a little bit of a misunderstanding. Even though I didn’t sign the Contract with America, I voted for 9 of the 10 items, number one. The only one I didn’t vote for was the tax cut provision because I felt that we should be balancing the budget first, which we ended up doing. We had three years of a balanced budget.

And surpluses during that era, as I recall.

Yes, yes.

People have to understand, of course, it doesn’t take away the debt, but you don’t have a deficit every year that you’re adding to the debt, right?

Yes, right. Exactly. Then, I think also, the one thing that I established—so when we were sworn in on January-whatever-it-was, third or fourth—

Of ’95.

—’95—not one member of the Republican Party had ever presided over the House, including Gingrich. So what happens when you become the majority party? The Speaker has to preside or assign someone to do that. One of the advantages that I had as a staffer to Bob Michel is I had access to the House floor. I’d come over and watch debates on—controversial or spirited debates. I took an interest in the person that was in the chair and developed a method.

I developed a method that was appealing to what was considered a very controversial Congress because the Democrats hated, in the first 100 days, every day of having a debate on one of the 10 items. They became very controversial and spirited debates. I developed a good method for presiding, and I probably ended up presiding during our time in the Republican majority more than any other member. In spite of the fact that some in the leadership disliked the fact that I was only one of three who didn’t sign the Contract [with America], the fact that I was a good presider did not inhibit them from putting me in the chair.

When people ask me, “How were you chosen to preside over Clinton’s impeachment?” Gingrich made that decision, and he said, “We’re going to have Ray LaHood do it because he knows how to do it.” What I did for two days is preside in a balanced way. I knew it was going to be very controversial. The Democrats hated this. They hated that Gingrich was doing this. They felt they were trumped up charges and trumped up impeachment articles. What I did is I made sure everyone had their time to speak within the time that they were given, and I treated everyone with respect. The reason that Gingrich asked me to do it is because he knew that I had presided over other very controversial issues in a bipartisan way, which is what the Speaker of the House is supposed to do.

The second thing, the most important thing besides doing it with balance and respect, is to pay attention to the parliamentarians. They’re the ones that decide rules and procedures and, if the chair is being challenged, how to answer the member that’s challenging them. I developed a very good friendship and relationship with the parliamentarians.

At the end of the two days, I had many, many compliments from Democrats and Republicans that it was done fairly, it was done in a balanced way, every member got to have their say within the time that they were supposed to say it. What my feeling is about this—even though I never really passed any major legislation, because when we were in the majority, the only way you could get your name at the top of a bill was to be the chair of the committee. Even though you may have introduced a bill, it probably was incorporated in another bill, and the chairman’s name was on the bill, not yours, even though—but that’s—

You had this historic role, not just in normal times—“normal,” and by that I mean more routine times where you’re presiding. May I ask, you talked about the parliamentarian. Presumably for routine debates, even if they’re heated and/or controversial, there is a set of rules—

That’s correct.

—that once you’ve been—

That are adopted on the first day by the Congress.

Yes. You already know what those are, and the more you preside, the more used to fulfilling those you know.

That’s correct.

For the impeachment, were there separate rules developed for how the whole debate over those two days would run?

The only thing that was different was the fact that we knew the Democrats—and the Democrats told the parliamentarians, “We’re going to offer a motion to censure Clinton. Not impeach him but censure him.” There is no provision in the Constitution for a censure.

Now the Senate can, is that right?

I don’t know.

I don’t think that’s in—I don’t know if that’s in the Constitution. We’ll have to check that at lunchtime. [Joseph] Joe McCarthy, I think, was censured by the Senate, but we’ll have to check that out to see. But I remember from your memoir that that is not an option.

Yes, look it up. I think you can censure, and we have censured, members of Congress. But what I’m saying is the ruling that I read that was written by the parliamentarians in response to the resolution that was presented by Dick Gephardt, the minority leader, was a resolution of censure of the president. My point is I don’t believe—we can check this [see Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45087]—I don’t believe there’s anything in the Constitution that allows for censure of the president. There is for impeachment, which is what we were doing. That was the only thing that we knew where a ruling was going to have to be made.

Now, on the second day of the impeachment proceedings, Bob Livingston, who had already been established—Gingrich had decided he, at the end of that term, was not going to be Speaker. Bob Livingston waged a campaign, and it was clear he was going to be the next Speaker of the House—the chair of the Appropriations Committee from Louisiana. He comes to the floor on the second day and asks to be recognized. Everyone thought he was going to give a speech. Well, he announces that he’s going to vote one way or another on the articles of impeachment, but he also announces, “I will not stand for Speaker,” because it was disclosed in the media that he was having some kind of an affair outside of his marriage with another person.

And that didn’t seem quite right, given what was happening with the president. [laughter]

He says, “I am not going to stand for Speaker.” Well, the air went out of the place.

Why was Gingrich stepping out? Why was Gingrich stepping out as Speaker?

I think he’d worn out his welcome. Republicans lost seats in the midterms, and a leadership challenge among Republicans made him vulnerable.

This is ’98, right?

That’s correct, December of ’98.

Right, right before the holidays.

And right before—the election was over, and right before a new Congress was going to be sworn in.

Right. People who don’t remember—you were there, you were in the room where it was happening—or people who are coming to this with a foggy memory or are new to the whole concept, it’s only four years after Newt Gingrich’s amazing takeover.

That’s correct. The “revolution,” yes.

And revolution. We always say, that’s something you can just add. When you go to the transcript, you can just add.

Yes, we’ll add that. Do you remember, Joan?

You know, I don’t. What I’m kind of recalling, wasn’t it—he had issues, too, of—

He had issues, but I don’t know that they came out until afterward.

That’s what I’m wondering.

What I’m remembering, too, about his downfall was that—remember how he and Clinton flew over to Israel for the [Yitzhak] Rabin funeral.

Yes, and he had to get off on the back of the plane.

He had to get off on the back of the plane. Then the ’95 [government] shutdown, there were also issues related to that. Eventually, there were personal morality, marriage issues.

That’s correct.

I’m trying to think. Were there any ethics issues beyond that?

There was an ethics issue, and this may be—you may have pinpointed it. Gingrich signed a document that was not quite right about a loan that he had received. He claims, Well, I signed it, and it wasn’t accurate. It went to the Ethics Committee, and in 1997, the House voted to accept the committee’s recommendation to reprimand the Speaker, and he was ordered to pay a $300,000 penalty.

I think all that was swirling, that really knocked him out.

My point in even bringing this up is, some of the Democrats came up to me while I was presiding, while somebody else was speaking, and said, “Should we suspend?” Because people were running over to Livingston saying, “Oh, don’t do this.” We were trying to keep order in the House, and the proceeding was still going on. Some Democrats were saying, “Should we—” I think it was John Conyers [Jr.], who was the chair of the of the Judiciary Committee, or ranking member because Henry Hyde was the chair, but said, “Should we suspend?” I said, “No, we’re going ahead. We’re moving forward.”

That’s not something I consulted with the parliamentarians on. We just needed to—the second day, people knew they were going to vote, so we needed to get the debate over. We knew that the Democrats, once the debate was finished, were going to walk out of the chamber, go out on the front steps, say whatever they wanted to say. But the vote on the first article of impeachment had started when they walked out, so they wanted to be sure and get back in within the 15-minute time frame so they could vote.

Anyway, the Livingston thing really took the air out of the chamber briefly. The side story on that is Tom DeLay, secretly, gathered a bunch of his acolytes together. He was the whip. He knew [Dick] Armey couldn’t be Speaker. Armey was majority leader. He knew he couldn’t be Speaker. Both of them were way too controversial—more controversial, maybe, than Gingrich. So he handpicked Dennis Hastert, the deputy whip.

From Illinois.

From Illinois. When everything was over and the day was over, we go downstairs in a big room like this [interview space] where we always met as Republicans. Gingrich stood up and said, “I want to compliment Ray LaHood,” and I got a standing ovation from all the Republicans on the way this was conducted.

Two articles had been confirmed.

Two out of four passed.

Two out of four, right. Perjury was one, and one obstruction of justice?

Yes, we’d have to go back and—

Yes, I think you had those listed in the memoir. There were two different perjury ones: one to the grand jury and one in the Monica Lewinsky deposition. I think it was the second one? In any event, one of those, and then one obstruction of justice.

Right, right.

OK. You said you would have voted “yes” on all four.

I did vote for all four.

Yes, you thought all four should have gone forward.

Yes, I did.

Now you’ve got a new Speaker.

We go downstairs in this meeting, and Gingrich says, “I support Dennis Hastert for Speaker.” No debate. That was it. We knew that Hastert was going to be Speaker. It might be the first time in the history of an election of a Speaker that it happened in that short a period of time without any kind of campaign.

Was there an actual counting of votes?

Not that day, but we knew there was going to be a vote on the first day after we got sworn in.

When the new session begins after—

When the new session begins January 3rd or 4th. But Newt wanted to make it clear, Nobody here is going to challenge this. This is the way it’s going to be. And nobody did challenge it.

You had to have known Dennis Hastert—

Oh, very well.

—from Illinois.

Back when he was running for Congress in a special election, because his predecessor had died in office—Hastert was a state representative in Springfield from the Aurora, Illinois, area. He was from a town called Yorkville [Illinois]. Bob Michel and I went—Bob Michel campaigned for him, and I went with him up to that area when he was running in the special election. He and Bob became very good friends. We became very good friends with all of his staff people. The answer is, Hastert was a good friend.

Was he your style of Republican, would you say?

Yes.

He wasn’t in the Gingrich—

Not at all, not at all—

He predated all of that.

—even though he was Tom DeLay’s deputy whip. I think DeLay was trying to bring in the Michel wing of the party at that point, maybe, and that’s why he got the appointment. Hastert was conservative, but he wasn’t nutty about it.

Whereas you’re saying Armey and DeLay—too extreme to be leaders.

They were too extreme, yes.

And they even knew that.

That’s correct.

Was the “Gingrich Revolution” losing steam and air by this—

Yes, of course.

Within four years.

Yes, yes. The reason it was losing steam is Bill Paxon, the head of the NRCC [National Republican Congressional Committee], Delay, and I think maybe Armey, to a lesser extent, were a part of a little cabal—that did not come about—to throw Gingrich out, and they couldn’t figure out who they were going to put in. They were thinking about putting Paxon in, and the whole thing fell apart. We had a big conference about that. That had happened earlier on.

DeLay ended up with ethics issues, I think—

Yes, he did.

Definitely.

—involving his business, as I recall.

Yes, he did. He had a state’s attorney or a local attorney—we call them “state’s attorneys,” maybe a county attorney—

Oh, “commonwealth’s attorney,” we say in Virginia and Kentucky.

Yes, yes, who went after—

Local prosecutors.

—went after him and charged him. I can’t remember what—over his PAC [political action committee] or something. He had a charitable PAC that he was taking money from. Anyway.

What a time, and what a time for you to be in the chair presiding over the impeachment of a president. Just to remind people who are, again, maybe new to their civics: that’s the indictment part of the process, then to send over to the Senate for the trial.

Which we knew was not—he was not going to be impeached. I mean he was impeached.

He was impeached but not convicted.

He wasn’t going to be convicted, that’s correct.

Wow. All right. Other thoughts that you are seeing from a staff position, Joan? Are you looking at correspondence? What is your role in staff? Say a little bit about what a member of the House’s staff is like in D.C. and then back in the home states?

Yes, Joan, tell them what your title was and the role you played in the office.

Yes. I started with LaHood as a scheduler, and then moved up. [To Perry] By the time we left office, I was deputy chief of staff. The prior discussion about constituent service was really something that was most important. When we hired our folks, LaHood would meet with them, and it was all about constituent service. If you looked at his record, he’s really not known for major pieces of legislation. He is remembered for his dedication to constituent service.

The “LaHood Act” of some time.

Correct. Right. But he was known for his time in the chair. He was known for his time being respected on both sides of the aisle. You couldn’t say that about too many people in the House at that time and about constituent service. That was something that was very important. No matter what your role in the office or your title was in his office, it was all about working together. Everybody picked up the slack to make sure that everything was covered for constituents back home. Everyone answered the phone. Every piece of mail was answered. He signed every letter. There was no autopen [signing machine]. It really took an effort of the whole staff to pay attention.

How many staffers in D.C.?

We had a smaller D.C. staff and a larger district staff, which goes, again, to constituent service. I think probably seven in D.C., and then the rest was district staff.

What are you hearing—because you have a very poignant moment in the memoir where you’re at church. The cook from the school where you had taught is behind you, and you do the sign of peace, as Catholic liturgy does. And, is it after the Mass, she takes you to task over the impeachment of Bill Clinton, saying that, Oh, it’s just the Republican are jealous or envious of Bill Clinton? What are you hearing about other issues, if you feel free to speak about them? What are you hearing from the folks in Illinois about the impeachment or, again, other things that they’re interested—they’re not talking about impeachment, they’re interested in something else that’s going on.

Well, it was an interesting time. When he was presiding, our offices were flooded with calls from all across the United States because—it’s interesting that we talk about civics because a lot of people, when they watch C-SPAN [Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network], they really think that it’s that presiding officer’s decision on whether that person is going to be impeached or not. They looked at Ray LaHood as the deciding voice.

Like he’s the judge at a trial and there’s no jury.

Like he’s the judge, correct, and it’s his decision, and he’s the one making it happen. He’s the one who’s doing this to Bill Clinton. It was a very interesting time. Again, it goes back to the fact that he was very adamant that we answer every phone call. You didn’t turn your phones off. You didn’t let it ring. We were on the phones during that time period. You heard a lot of unhappy people.

I will tell you, the other thing that we heard a lot from is that people respected how fair it was. They respected the way that he was not favoring the Republicans by any means. He was cutting people off, Republicans and Democrats, when they had gone on too long.

Over the time limit assigned.

Correct. Never letting anyone get more time than they were allowed. Very respectful to both sides. He always seemed to be in control, which was very important, during the debate. It was a sense of pride for the staff, knowing that our member was so well thought of by folks out there. We also used to get compliments from other staff members and your peers saying, “Your boss is doing a great job,” and you knew they were from a Democratic office. They always would say, “It makes us feel comfort knowing that he’s in the chair.” So that was nice.

You hear now, in 2024, so many stories about the horrible, nasty calls with vulgarity and profanity that members of Congress get and that their staffs have to answer, not to mention—but I will—threats of violence. Let me ask you: Did you get nasty, vulgar phone calls? If so, maybe a rough percentage? Any threats of violence against the congressman or you? Did the Capitol Police have to beef up any presence around your office in D.C., the field office, your home?

We definitely got very aggressive and nasty phone calls. Again, it goes back to the character of Secretary LaHood—that being a staffer, you almost feel like you’re a therapist sometimes. It’s all about listening to people and making sure that they feel that they have been heard. But he also said, “You shouldn’t be disrespected.” If someone was being vulgar or nasty on the other side, then we wouldn’t allow that call to continue.

Would you say, “I’m so sorry. We can’t take this call any further. We’ll have to hang up now”?

Something very respectful, but yes, yes. Some offices wouldn’t take calls from people outside their district. If I’m calling from Atlanta, Georgia, people would say, “Well, then, you need to call your Atlanta member.” But that was never our policy.

You took all callers.

We did. It took up a lot of time. I don’t really recall any security issues that we had. There were a lot of people who were very unhappy and would say unfavorable things, but there were no security issues that I recall.

No, there were no security issues.

No threats that you had to report to Capitol Police.

Correct, right.

Back in the day, the Capitol Police were much more interested in leadership offices than individual members. That’s all changed now. But there were no threats.

When you went home for the holidays, other than at church, [laughter] you didn’t have to have a police presence outside your home, for example.

No, not at all.

You didn’t have people gather on your lawn or at the street corner?

No, we didn’t. We had no protests at our office in Peoria or Jacksonville.

Just to note the contrast with today, sadly.

Barbara, can I—and maybe you’re going to cover this. Before we get off of Congress, I want to talk about these bipartisan activities that I was involved with because it was an important part of establishing who I was as a member of Congress.

It makes another perfect reason to have you preside over the impeachment hearing.

That’s correct.

Tell us about that. That also relates to the Hershey’s Kisses [chocolates] you received as an early birthday present, so please. It is such an important theme, takes up several chapters in the book, and is fascinating. I think it will be again to people going forward.

We were approached by David Skaggs, a congressman from Colorado, maybe—I’m not sure if it was ’95 or ’96, but he said, “Would you be willing to sign a letter asking the leadership if we could gather together a group of members to provide an activity where members could come together with their families?” I said, “Of course I will.” He and I penned a letter. We got a whole bunch of members to sign it, maybe 80 or 100. We gave it to Gingrich and Gephardt. Gephardt is the minority leader, Gingrich is the Speaker.

We put a group of members together, and invited staff, and came up with idea of a bipartisan retreat where members and their families, including their children, would spend the weekend together. Basically getting to know one another, with the idea that if you get to know somebody, it’s much more difficult to criticize them. We gathered members who we knew, on our side, the Republican side, would go along with this. We had a great group on both sides of the aisle. No leadership. No leadership people, just members.

Just the rank and file and came to Hershey, Pennsylvania.

We came up with the idea of meeting—

Oh, the train, going on the train together.

Yes. We came up with the idea of the meeting, including families. [Amory] Amo Houghton [Jr.], who was a part of our committee, who was part of the Corning—his family was from Corning, New York, as he was. He was obviously a very successful businessman, and his family owned Corning [Glass Works]. He was a wonderful, wonderful member. He knew somebody in Hershey from his business interests, and he said that would be a place to go.

People like Joan and others on the staff organized this. We took the train from D.C. to Hershey, Pennsylvania. We had maybe—more than 200 members.

More than 200? So almost half of the House.

Yes. We had about 150 spouses and maybe 100 kids. We spent the weekend.

I have not been to Hershey. Friends have. First of all, you can go through the factory, right, and see them producing, and you get a Hershey’s Kiss at the end, or a Hershey [Milk Chocolate] Bar. And then is there not almost like an amusement park or theme park there?

There is, yes. We went in colder weather, so we weren’t able to take advantage of that. We really created some activities around issues, but opportunities where members could just talk to one another about—not really come to any big decisions, although we did come up with some recommendations for some changes in the House rules, and the way that the House operates, and the way that people debate within the committees. We really tried to create a more family-friendly atmosphere in terms of scheduling debates and scheduling when the House was going to be in.

We went there maybe, I don’t know, on a Thursday or Friday.

Yes, it was a weekend.

Yes, and stayed till Sunday. It was a lot of—the kids played games on the train.

You said you had activities for them and spouses.

We did.

Right, right.

While you all were meeting on topics or rules or things related to—at the Miller Center, and I think this is very common now, we call that “workplace culture.” We have a workplace culture committee. I think other people would be used to the concept of teambuilding with a ropes course. That’s sort of the standard. You were ahead of that movement, I think, in the workplace, by necessity. You saw that this was something that was now called for, in part, maybe, because of what we said: that lots of people weren’t living in Washington anymore. This was a way, then, for families, spouses, children, to meet.

First time a congressional kid met another congressional kid, first time spouses met one another. We tried to get some of the senior members to go, chairmen of committees and ranking members. I had a couple of Democrats who said, “I’ve never shaken hands with the Speaker of the House. I’ve never met him.” This was an opportunity for somebody, if they wanted to, to have a cup of coffee with Gingrich or other leaders and just talk to them.

We ended up doing four retreats. The last one was probably the one that was least attended. The first one was the best. There were changes in leadership. Hastert became Speaker, and Gephardt continued as the Democratic leader. These were worthwhile. A lot of these friendships were preserved even after people left Congress. A lot of these friendships engendered opportunities for people to work on legislation together, to work on issues together, and to really form friendships that lasted well beyond Congress.

In the daily work of the Congress, of the House, you saw the effects of this.

That’s correct.

Who would you say was your best friend on the Democratic side in the House?

I would say David Skaggs. He’s the one that really came up with this, and he and I cochaired this together along with our colleagues from both sides of the aisle. Amo Houghton, of course. He’s a Republican. But I would say Skaggs was really the one that we probably bonded with on the other side as much as anybody.

The other bipartisan thing that I want to mention is I was approached by Rahm Emanuel, who was a congressman from Chicago [Illinois], who I got to know just flying back and forth together to Chicago. When I’d be going to Peoria, he’d be going to his home in Chicago. He approached me about having bipartisan dinners where he would invite seven or eight Democrats, I would invite seven or eight Republicans, and we’d go to the Monocle, which is a restaurant right on the Senate side near the Capitol, and have dinner together. These dinners turned out to be very, very successful. We’d probably have them once a quarter, so maybe four times a year. Members would get to know one another. Sometimes we’d talk about politics. Sometimes we’d talk about legislation. Sometimes we’d just talk. Those turned out to be very, very helpful, I think.

Rahm and I really became good friends after that. He went on to become mayor of Chicago. He was chief of staff, then mayor of Chicago, and our friendship has continued today.

He will come into our story very soon as we get to the Obama presidency.

Anything else? Oh, I know one thing I wanted to ask about staff: legislative assistants. You’ve made clear, Joan, that constituent service is paramount and that all members of the staff engaged in that. Did you have a person titled and dedicated to legislative assistance, an LA [legislative assistant]?

Sure. We had LAs based on different—

Topic areas?

Yes, policy. Then later, we actually did have an LD [legislative director].

A legislative director?

Right, right.

OK. You’ve been honest about saying that it was difficult from when you came in—both because of the way the committee structure was, because you hadn’t signed the Contract with America, and because of the Gingrich Revolution—to try to get a foothold in order to produce a piece of legislation with your name on it, or to get some of the plum assignments as a chair of a committee or leadership. It seems like you would have been well qualified to be a leader, not only because of your understanding of how the House operated but also because of your willingness to work across the aisle and be bipartisan. It so happens that was not considered paramount, it seems to me, by the Gingrich Revolution, Gingrich himself.

That’s correct.

Yes.

How did the legislative assistants and then director work on legislation? You worked on it, you just couldn’t get your name associated with it, ultimately?

Secretary LaHood was really great about letting people really do their thing. It’s the former staffer in him. He expected a lot of the staff, but he gave you a long leash to really dig deep and do some research. He was great. He would come in with some ideas on things that he may want to try and champion, but he also let the folks think about it and do some research, and then he would like to hear from them on things that we were hearing from constituents back home or things that would be good for the district. Obviously, agriculture was huge in our district, and so he would let our ag [agriculture] LA, who then became an LD, really do some research on what would be helpful to the farmers back home. That’s how you approached—

Would contribute. That’s the way you and your office, with your expertise, could contribute to the legislative process, the committee process, and, ultimately, to the policies that would get passed, that you could also then go home to say, “Here’s what my office has been doing. Here’s what I’m contributing to.”

The way the process worked back in those days, a member of Congress might send a letter over to our office saying, “Would you cosponsor this bill?” or come up to you on the floor and say, “Would you be interested in this?” We’d turn it over to our staff, do a little research, and figure out if this fits the direction we would want to go. We did a lot of that, a lot of collaboration with other offices on issues of mutual interest.

What are you seeing on those wedge issues that we talked about beginning to bubble up early on in your career? I’m thinking—you mentioned Henry Hyde of Illinois, chair of Judiciary [Committee]. Hyde Amendment regarding abortion, not allowing federal funds for abortions. How are you seeing that both continue to bubble and continue to bubble into Washington and through Washington and through constituents, perhaps? I don’t know. Correct me if I’m wrong, if you’re not being flooded by right-to-life postcards or something, but tell us if you are, and how are you dealing with that as the member of Congress?

Yes, I established pretty early on during my campaign—you have to, during a campaign, stake out a position on these issues. I had a 100 percent pro-life voting record, opposed to abortion except for the three exceptions. I had a pretty strong stand on gun control. I would have voted for a ban on assault weapons, but we have a lot of hunters in our district. During a campaign, you have to tell people where you stand on these, and then you’ve got to stand on them when the votes come. Otherwise, you don’t stand for anything, and you look a little wishy-washy. On the social issues—for example, when I was in the state legislature, we had a vote on ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], which I supported. But again, on the social issues, you just have to take a stand and then tell people where you stand.

Part of the job of a member of Congress is going back and explaining to your constituents the reason that you voted the way you did, and the information that you had at hand when you made that vote, so they understand the issue. They may not agree with you. A lot of people didn’t agree with me on impeachment when I explained to them what the reasons were. At least they understood it. Sometimes you’re not trying to change somebody’s mind. You’re just trying to, as their representative, explain the facts that you had at hand when you cast your vote.

On so many of these, as you say, you had taken the stand and were not—there are two views of representation. One is I think what you’re explaining, your theory, which is you have your own understanding and ideas and views, and you take those stands, you tell the voters where you are, you hope that you mesh in more than you don’t so that you can get elected and keep getting elected, which you did, and even had—were you unopposed?

A couple times, yes.

Yes, a couple times unopposed. But the other theory is that the person who’s running says, “What would you like me to do?” You hold your finger up into the wind, see which way it’s blowing, and then go that way. Again, it sounds to me like you were in the former camp of saying—again, trying not to get too far ahead of or behind where your constituents were, but you had your ideas and your views that were well settled before you made your first run.

Right. Exactly.

And communicating that was so important, and making sure that people knew that.

How did you do that?

You mentioned the flood of postcards. We did. We would get flooded on a particular issue, and people would sign their name. Sometimes people—I don’t even know that they really understood what they were signing. [laughter] But it was very important. He was adamant that people got an answer. If someone called the office to voice an opinion, we would take down their name and address, and they would get a letter. If they signed a postcard, and their address was on there, they would get a letter back.

Even those you would sign in person.

Correct.

Absolutely.

No signing machine.

No.

No, and stacks and stacks of letters would go out. People would be shocked that they were getting a response to a preprinted postcard. Again, it was really important about communicating that message of why he did what he did.

How about newsletters? Frequently sending out newsletters?

That didn’t come till later. Toward the end of his time in Congress, people were starting to do town halls, like the tele–town halls. He always did in-person town halls, but people started doing tele–town halls, and that wasn’t as big. We didn’t really do a newsletter, per se. Sometimes quarterly, I think, maybe one went out. He was really more about the personal experience. When he was back home—you went around to, all weekend was counties, county visits, and during district work periods, and—

Breakfasts and—

You name it.

Exactly.

As you said, fairs, and bingos, and church festivals.

You get in the car, and you hit every county that you can, yes, yes.

All of those, “rubber chicken circuits” [political campaign dinners].

Exactly. Right.

Oh, my goodness. Well, I know in your memoir you say after 14 years, you felt like you didn’t have more to do there. You’d done what you wanted, didn’t have more to do, and would step out. Tell us about how you—

Part of the problem for me—and it was a problem. I did not like to tell people “no” when they invited me to do something. I felt that when someone invited me, that was an important thing for them, so I went to everything and participated in everything that I possibly could if I wasn’t in Washington. It got to be a little bit like Groundhog Day [film in which the same day repeats]. [laughter] Not that—look, I love the people, but I just decided that, You know, it’s time for somebody else. Give somebody else a chance to have this great job, this great opportunity for public service.

It sounds like, from your memoir, no regrets?

None.

No, no.

You left with head held high and a good feeling.

Yes, went out on top. To be able to say you go out on top in these jobs is very important. I had no regrets at all, and I never thought, Boy, there’s just one more thing I want to do. None. None.

That ends—you leave in 2005? No—

In 2008, at the end of 2008.

Right. Oh, anything about Bush 43 [George W. Bush] you want to allow for us, about serving when he is president?

George Herbert Walker Bush?

W. Bush. Oh, and the war in Iraq.

First of all, just back to—let me make one more point about congressional service. I regret, really, these members that stay too long. Some members stay too long. It makes me wonder why they do it. I didn’t want that for me. I wanted to go out on my own terms. I wanted to go out on top. I wanted to go out with the idea that people felt, You know, he gave it his all, didn’t really leave anything on the table.

You didn’t want people to say, “Why is he staying?” [laughter] You do see that. I’m not a psychologist. You double-majored in psychology. I guess it’s ego for a lot of people, or maybe that’s mostly what they have in their lives, especially as they get older, if their families are gone, or they’re divorced. But you do see it, much like athletes, I think, who can’t leave the game even when their game is gone. They just can’t step out of the limelight.

I liked George W. Bush a lot. He came and campaigned in Peoria. We had a big rally.

There’s a picture in the book of you and him campaigning.

Is there? Yes, after the convention he took a train ride all across Illinois. He stopped in Lincoln, Illinois, and I got on the train with him. Cheney was on there, and Mrs. [Laura] Bush. I got to know George W. Bush. I admired him very much. I really did. I thought he was a very good politician. He was one of those people—he loved to shake people’s hands. He loved to talk to people. As I said before, you cannot get elected president unless you like people and like talking to people and listening to them. Bush was very good at that. He really was. I was very happy when he got elected president. And he had a good relationship with his people.

The thing about Bush—he visited a hundred schools when he was running for president on the idea that he was going to develop legislation to really get kids to reading and doing math at the level they should, i.e., No Child Left Behind [Act]. He did it in a bipartisan way, which I liked very much. He went to [John] Boehner’s district and signed it—Boehner was the chair of the Education Committee—and he went to Senator [Edward M.] Kennedy’s state. He went to both. Signed the bill in both states. I liked that very much.

Then 9/11 [September 11th, 2001, attacks] happened. It changed him. It changed his demeanor. It changed his agenda. Everything was about the terrorists after that. I was on the Intelligence Committee for eight years, and I was just astounded that we knew nothing about these people living in Florida, taking flying lessons, living there illegally, and then crashing the planes and killing 3,000 citizens. That was the worst day of my career. It really was. Bush did the best he could.

I made a note to myself in my notes, looking back again at your work in this space of intelligence. I was making a mental note to myself to say to you, do you think that was a good idea? After the congressional committees and the 9/11 Commission, we didn’t bring the points together. We didn’t connect the dots. As you said, why didn’t we know about these people? How could we not know about them? Do you think it was a good idea to—my understanding of the director of national intelligence and that Office of National Intelligence was try to have more coordination in the intelligence space. Do you think that that was a good idea?

No, I voted against it.

Why was that?

Because I didn’t think we needed any more bureaucracy. [laughter] We don’t need somebody at the top telling people down here to talk to one another. What the hell?

It would seem you were right about that, wouldn’t you say?

Absolutely. They created a whole bureaucracy that exists today. I don’t know what those people do. They’re not collecting intelligence. We didn’t need that. I almost got kicked off the Intelligence Committee when I told them I wasn’t going to vote for it. Hastert’s office said, “Well, maybe we’ll have to take you off the committee.” I said, “That’s fine. Take me off the committee.” It didn’t happen because they didn’t need my vote, but I voted against it in the committee and I voted against it on the floor. I thought it was a terrible idea to create a whole new bureaucracy because these people aren’t talking to one another. Then hire people that do talk to one another. Anyway.

The war in Iraq.

I voted for all of the funding because I wanted to support the troops.

Right. For both Afghanistan and Iraq?

That’s correct.

The authorization to use the military force.

That was the reason I did it. For me, a “no” vote was saying that you don’t support—this money is going for the troops. But as it turns out, there was no WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. As it turns out, we went after Saddam Hussein.

Was the WMD error, was that a failure of intelligence? Or was—

Absolutely. I think it was—well, I don’t know. Trotting out Colin Powell and having him appear before the UN [United Nations].

Holding the vial [model of supposed weaponized anthrax].

Exactly.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

No. I just think they had it in for Saddam Hussein. That’s clear. They did. A lot of people didn’t even know why.

Well, in the few minutes before lunch, shall we get you through the 2008 election and into office? Then we can spend our afternoon talking about that.

Sure, that’s fine.

Your thoughts about the ’08 election? Hillary [Rodham Clinton] and Obama, to start with, on the Democratic side, vying for the nomination, neck and neck and neck. And then Obama—you know him from the Senate. He’s from Illinois. He represents Illinois. And then, ultimately, McCain and the [Sarah] Palin ticket.

Yes. Look, I loved John McCain. He was a friend. I liked what he did on immigration. I considered him a war hero. I visited the prison he was at when I went to—

The “Hanoi Hilton” [Hỏa Lò Prison]?

Yes, when we went to Vietnam on a trip.

Oh, you went with him?

No, I didn’t go with him, but I went on a CODEL [congressional delegation] with some other members. Part of it was just to visit the place where he was. It was clear that he was tortured and all of that. McCain was a good senator. He really was. He was really onto something with immigration and with campaign finance reform too.

And bipartisan, both of those.

Yes, both of them, yes. I ran as a delegate, went to the convention in Minneapolis [Minnesota], and was completely stunned when he picked Sarah Palin, like most people. I guess—I read afterwards, maybe somebody else picked her and he went along with it. He wanted the now-deceased senator from Connecticut.

Joe Lieberman.

Yes. He wanted Lieberman, but his people told him, “No way will the Republicans stand for that,” and they were right.

Actually, when I said Hillary and Obama, Hillary hails from Illinois. She’s a [Abraham] Lincoln stater.

Right. Well, I wasn’t that involved in that election that much.

Did you have a preference—not from your party, but for knowing that one of the people nominated by the Democrats could become president. Did you have a preference of one over the other at the time: Obama or Hillary Clinton?

I thought it was going to be difficult for McCain to win because I was afraid that people, because he’s a war hero and a war hawk, would see him as the third term of the Bush Iraq War. People were very weary of the Iraq War at that point, obviously. That’s why Obama won, in part.

Yes, he did come out directly against it.

Yes. I thought it was going to be hard for McCain to win. Then he picked Palin, so at that point, he probably has two strikes against him with some people. Even though Obama was a senator, I don’t think he was really considered a part of the establishment in D.C. the way McCain was.

And that was a plus for him.

That was a plus. That was a plus. And Hillary—

So, actually, the lack of experience, D.C. experience, was a plus for him.

Yes. Hillary was an established D.C. person, so the party obviously was looking for somebody different. She supported the war, and so that hurt her with Democrats.

And married to Bill Clinton, which didn’t help her with many people.

No, no.

All right. Did you have any sense ever that you would end up in the Cabinet of a Democrat president?

No, never.

Or a Republican president?

No, no. [laughter] Not really.

No?

No, not really. The thing that really sparked my friendship with Obama is after he was elected to the Senate from Illinois, and I had just finished my election to the House, he called me and said, “I’m coming to Peoria. I want to sit down and talk to you about how we can work together.” He and I had never met. I never met him on the campaign. He came to Peoria. We met for 90 minutes in my congressional office, and we talked about how we were going to work together, and try and get along, and do things for Illinois. And we did, for two years.

What struck you about his personality—you mentioned his charm, to be able to win the Iowa caucus—and his conversational style?

Well, he certainly wasn’t arrogant. He wasn’t—I don’t want to say he was a common person, but he had a lot of good traits about just being a good person. A good listener and a good person.

I respected him for the fact that when he was running in the primary, he was running against a multimillionaire who spent a lot of money against him for the U.S. Senate, and he [Obama] beat him. He basically did it downstate Illinois in a lot of white communities. He was able to persuade people to vote for him. Then we nominated a Republican with a good name, Jack Ryan, but he fell into some real controversies with him and his wife and some things that were going on. He ultimately had to get off the ballot. Stupidly, the Republicans brought in Alan Keyes from Maryland, who wasn’t even an Illinois resident, and put him on the ballot because he was an African American who had run for president. Anyway, that was a dumb thing to do, and Obama obliterated him.

When you meet someone like Obama, you can just tell he’s a good person.

Did he ask you questions in that first meeting?

We talked about my district and what my interests were, and we talked about his campaign and some of the things he wanted to do. We talked about the fact I was on the Appropriations Committee and the Intelligence Committee. Then he opened an office in my district in Springfield, and I went to the opening of his office. I think people were stunned that I did that. During the two years, he helped me on some transportation issues, helped us get some money for some of the communities because he was in a position in his Senate committees to do that. He didn’t have to do it. Our staffs worked together, and he set aside the money. He called me and said, “Hey, we got this money for”—I don’t know, Pekin, Illinois, or whatever.

During that two years, I mean, we never went to dinner together. We didn’t—we’d see one another on the airplane flying back and forth because he went back home every weekend. It was just—

Ever talk sports—you know, he loves sports—or family, or—

Family but not sports. Yes, yes. I think the fact that he reached out to me was significant. He probably was told by maybe Rahm or somebody that, If you want to do some stuff in downstate Illinois, LaHood’s probably the best person to talk to.

David Axelrod’s memoir is really good about Obama going downstate and working toward the Senate race, so people can get a real sense of that flavor from one of his top campaign people. Last minute before lunch, did you work with his staff in the Senate on something like this transportation funding?

Yes, definitely.

What were your thoughts about his Senate staff? Maybe [Peter] Pete Rouse, for example?

Pete Rouse, Chris Lu.

Chris Lu, right, who ends up in the White House with him.

Right, right. The Illinois delegation was actually very unique. It was very bipartisan. We would work with [Dick] Durbin’s office, with Obama’s office, on issues. You sort of put politics aside, and you worked for what was best for the state, which was—like I said, it was unique. Not every state did that. They would have Illinois delegation lunches, where the members would all get together.

From both sides would get together?

Yes. There was a lot of collaboration for the good of the state.

That’s an inspiration on which we should pause.

[BREAK]

All right. We’re on our way, now post-lunch. We’ve mentioned Rahm Emanuel a number of times, and I know that he and the president, now president-elect by December of ’08, are both crucial to your coming into the Cabinet. Tell us how that happened.

Yes, yes. I talked to Rahm about my interest in continuing to serve, and he said, “What are you interested in?” I said, “Oh, maybe agriculture, maybe transportation,” because I had served on both of those committees in the House for six years before I went on appropriations. He said, “Let me run it up the flagpole. Don’t be talking to anybody else, and don’t say anything to anybody.”

Maybe a week later, four or five days, we spoke again. He said, “I ran it up the flagpole, and no opposition.” I think what they had is, maybe they had Axelrod, [David] Plouffe, [Robert] Gibbs, [Joseph R.] Biden [Jr.], Valerie Jarrett, maybe.

You’d describe those as the inner circle.

Yes, yes. Michelle Obama, maybe. I don’t know about her. But those were the people that I think he—

Ran it through?

I think they were meeting every day in Chicago, considering who they wanted. Then he said—I don’t know if he said it that day—“Come for an interview.” They had a transition office in a federal building in Chicago. My wife and I drove up there on a very cold day in December. I had no idea how many people would be in the room. So I got there. I was in a small room, waiting area. Obama comes in. We do the “bro” [guy] hug, and I congratulate him on his win. We go in his office, and it was just he and I. We talked for 40 minutes. We talked about agriculture, and I could tell he was a little conflicted on that. I later learned that they’d already offered it to [Tom] Vilsack. We talked about transportation.

I left, and a few days later, I called Rahm and said, “How did we do?” He said, “Well, he’s thinking about it.” He said, “I’ll let you know.” Then maybe a few days later, he called and said, “He wants to know if you’ll take transportation.” I said, “Yes.”

Did the president talk to you about bipartisanship and the fact that you would be, not the only—I guess [Robert] Bob Gates staying on would be considered a Republican in the Cabinet.

We did not.

He didn’t even say, for symbolism purposes—

No, no. No, we did not. Rahm and I talked about—and I didn’t even know if I knew Gates was—maybe I knew it by then.

Was going to be asked to stay on.

Yes. I’d fill the bipartisan slot that they were—I think it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to be more than one, [laughter] surely not more than two.

Right. Did you have any qualms about that?

Not one. Not one bit. No. No. I think the interesting thing about this is people don’t really know how the process works, and it’s different with every administration. I mean, I didn’t know how it worked. If I hadn’t had a friendship with Rahm, I probably would not have been in the mix because I wouldn’t have known who to communicate with. I knew Axelrod, but I didn’t know him the way I could pick up the phone and say, “I’d like to talk to you about this.” And I certainly knew I wasn’t ever going to get to Obama. So that’s for starters.

Secondly, the interview we had was 40 minutes. Some of it was just talking about his campaign and politics, and some was talking about a Cabinet post. We didn’t really spend a lot of time, and I think part of the reason—they knew who I was. They didn’t have to figure out, Who is this guy? Is he going to be a team player? And blah, blah, blah.

Do they ask you—well, maybe I should put it this way: At what point are you asked to start submitting all that paperwork? And do they—in this case, as you say, different from every president-elect to president-elect—had they done any background work on you? I mean they knew you, but did they do any background work as far as you knew, or did they say, “Before we go any farther”—like Rahm, say—“you seem like a straight arrow to me, but is there anything in your background that could be a problem? If so, tell us now”?

That question was never asked, I think, in part, because both of them had served with me, knew me. We’d worked together on things. I think Durbin might have put a good word in for me. Durbin—I think his daughter had passed away during this period, and I had gone to his home in Springfield to pay my regards. I may have mentioned it to him there or sometime after, and I think he talked to Obama. He was having lunch with Obama after the election or something. He was the only other person that I talked to.

Rahm says transportation. I said yes. Then maybe an hour or two later, maybe the next day, he calls and said, “You’re in vetting.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “You’re going to get a phone call from a guy named [Michael] Mike Froman,” who ended up being the trade rep. Froman was in charge of the transition. Maybe that day or the next day, Froman calls and says, “We’re going to do an initial FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] background check. We’re going to ask the FBI to call around. This is just the initial. It’s not the full blown.” So I assume they did that.

Then I was told to be up there where they were going to announce the fact that I was going to join the Cabinet. Ron Kirk, former mayor of Dallas [Texas] and former candidate for, I think, governor or Senate, was named the same day. Former Congressman [Hilda] Solis was also announced that day. We drove up that day, my wife and I and my son. My press guy—on the way up, I said [to Froman], “Do you want me to put something together?” He said, “Yes, put something together and send it to us.” He said, “The only thing we care about is we want a quote in there, ‘I’m going to carry out Obama’s agenda for transportation.’” We put together the release, and they used most of it and included that quote.

Then we met in a room like this [interview space]. I think Axelrod was there. Rahm was there. Obama was there. Just pre–“here’s what’s going to happen.” Gibbs was there, on the phone, I think. Plouffe might have been on the phone. Anyway. Then we go out, and he announces it.

Sounds pretty simple.

We spent the next month—my wife is a CPA [certified public accountant] and has always done our taxes, so she kept all of our tax returns. You have to—as a part of the process, there are Senate Commerce Committee forms, and the FBI, and the White House. We spent a month filling out all these forms. You have to list all your addresses that you’ve ever had. My wife had kept all of our income tax returns.

That was a help, I’m sure.

Big help because it had all of our addresses from all the places that we had lived over the years. A lot of other information. Most other Cabinet members, I found out later, hired lawyers to help them. We didn’t. We couldn’t afford a lawyer, first of all. [laughter] But anyway, we figured out how to fill them out.

Did staff—did former staff for you on the Hill [Congress]—did you have to gather any materials?

[To DeBoer] I don’t really remember that you did.

I did, but it wasn’t that comprehensive because I was not up for a Senate confirmation post.

Right, right. But did you have to call on—

Oh, did we—yes, we helped you a little bit. Yes, yes.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

To gather materials or—

Yes. We were all part of—although, like he said, Kathy LaHood is unbelievable with her records, [laughter] so that was a huge part of it. But yes, we had to pull together your financial disclosure reports and include those from when he was in Congress.

Right, right. Any job, anywhere you had ever worked, any investments that you might have.

Absolutely.

I was stunned when I ran into a—I taught school back in, started in ’67 and finished in ’71 before I moved to the Quad Cities. The FBI had gone back and talked to some of my former teachers. [laughs]

That’s crazy. I don’t think I even knew that.

It really is.

They’re thorough.

Yes, they’re very thorough. And some of our neighbors. Went back to some of our old neighborhoods that we lived in. We probably lived in maybe five or six houses during the time we were married. We lived in two different houses in the Quad Cities and maybe three or four in Peoria. Anyway.

My goodness. And no stumbling blocks were presented.

None.

So that was good.

No, that was good.

Once you’ve put all those forms together, how does one prepare for the Senate confirmation hearings?

Well, fortunately, the Obama people had a transition—a group of people that had been meeting for months, putting together all these briefing papers. I asked Joan to be my chief of staff and another woman that I had worked with during my campaigns, from Peoria, Marlise Streitmatter, to also just—because I knew they were going to try and put their people in place, but I wanted a couple of people that I really trusted.

You didn’t get any blowback from—

You know what I said? I told John Podesta, I said, “John, I want these two people: one as my chief of staff, the other as deputy chief of staff. These are people I trust. I’ve worked with them for 30 years” or whatever. “I’m telling you, I think they’re both Republicans. I’ve never asked them, but I’m sure they probably are, and I don’t want anybody giving me any grief about this.” That was the last—

And he was part of the transition team.

Yes, he was. He was the personnel people. We went to a bunch of meetings—Joan and I and Marlise started going to these. It was a group of maybe 10 people. Jane [F.] Garvey, former FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] administrator; Michael Huerta, who was at the FAA and ultimately became the administrator under our administration; Roy Kienitz, who is a transportation geek, who came to work for us running our policy; Polly [Trottenberg] was in there.

[Peter J.] Jack Basso, Mort [Mortimer Downey].

We sat around a table every day. We went to the Department of Transportation. They were camped out there. They’d bring a different briefing book every day. Maybe one on the FAA, one on transit, one on pipeline safety, and we’d just pore over it, all of which helped us then put together our testimony for the Senate Commerce Committee, because we knew we were going to get a lot of questions about things.

Was that group put together by the—they were a lower level from the top transition?

By the—yes. They’d been in existence six months.

Yes, all in transportation.

Gathering all of these briefing materials, talking about what you would need to get through confirmation and to get up and running.

Right, exactly.

Correct.

There was a group like that at every major department. They were way ahead of the game. They were well prepared. They really, I think, hit the ground running, at least at DOT [Department of Transportation]. I got sworn in on January 23rd, two days after Obama. I was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate and immediately was sworn in. Then we had a ceremonial swearing in down at the Old EOB [Eisenhower Executive Office Building], and Obama came to it. I met a few other Cabinet people there. We started working January 23rd. We couldn’t do anything before then. You weren’t allowed to until you were sworn in.

That’s important to know because somebody just called me from the press yesterday—I think from The Wall Street Journal—to say, “Oh, you know, Trump is doing a lot of calling of foreign leaders and making a lot of statements. Do you think that—don’t we just have one president at a time?” I said, “Well, that’s the tradition, and I think the Constitution requires that as well.” So that’s an important point to make.

Let me just ask Joan if I missed anything in any of that.

Transition, confirmation?

No, no. I will say his confirmation was very smooth, given that he had been a former member. It’s a theme, but he is so respectful and so well respected that he knew—it’s not that he didn’t get tough questions, but he knew how to handle it. It was just a very congenial hearing.

I did visit every member of the committee. Every member. Both Ds [Democrats] and Rs [Republicans].

Individually, you would go to their offices?

Go to their offices, hear what they had to say. They all had issues they wanted dealt with. And the leadership, also, leadership on both sides.

You’re coming in in the midst of a financial crisis and meltdown of our financial system [2007–8 financial crisis] that is about to take us off a cliff. As you well know, people are saying, “If we do go off the cliff, this will be as bad as, maybe worse than, the Great Depression in this country. And because we’re the leader of the world’s economy, we will take the world down with us.” What are you thinking about that and how that’s going to relate to transportation policy and spending?

The thing that we knew we had to do—we knew that there were going to be at least a hundred political appointees. Joan and Marlise and—I don’t know, who else?

Nate [Turnbull].

Nate, who was our White House liaison person—they really went to work. Their job was to really screen these people. A lot of people wanted to work at DOT just because that’s what they liked. Joan can really talk about that.

Where were they coming from?

All over. You mean the candidates?

These hundred positions to fill.

All across the country.

These people worked on Obama’s campaign, and they felt that when Obama won, then they—I don’t want to say they were “owed” a job, but they wanted to be considered. All of these names came from the White House—White House personnel?

The vast majority. You’d get to a handful that were really expert positions, where we didn’t necessarily have a campaign staffer who knew pipeline safety. You really had to go and figure out, Who do we need for that? Who is going to be the best expert in that position? Is their policy aligned with President Obama?

A number of checkpoints, right?

Correct, correct.

Were there people who hadn’t been on the campaign, as you say, from maybe all over the country, who are experts—

Correct. Definitely, there was a—

—or view themselves as experts in some area of transportation, or love that policy area.

Right.

And then you might find somebody who happens to have expertise in pipeline safety. Were there many positions like that that you—either of people on campaign or others who were writing in to say, “Oh, I’d really like to be in the Transportation Department.” Did you have to go outside that group to try to find some of your experts?

A little bit we did, yes. Not too much, but there are some positions that are very important. Safety is paramount at DOT, so you really had to make sure you had those experts in those specific fields, so a little bit we did, yes.

Let me just go back for a minute. A couple things I left out. [Norman Y.] Norm Mineta called me. He was in either China or Japan, and he said, “Immediately, I want to get together with you and talk to you.” The night before it was announced, a few days before that, [Samuel K.] Sam Skinner—who was a former secretary, from Illinois, and former chief of staff to George W. Bush—called me and said, “I want to get together with you.” We had dinner the night before I was announced at the Drake Hotel.

You and Sam Skinner?

Yes, and my wife was there and my son. He was just tremendous in terms of a lot of good advice about the department, what to expect, who are the most important people you need. One thing that he said really stuck with me, which was, “There are 55,000 employees, and all of them are going to do—irrespective of politics, they’re career people, they’re professional people. They’re going to do whatever the president and the secretary want. You can count on these people. Use them.” And he was right. All good people.

That’s the thing I don’t think people realize about our government. There are career people who spend their lives working on important issues that they care about because they care about the country, they care about the American people, and they just go to work and do their job every day. We met a lot of them. Thirty-seven thousand of the 55,000 are FAA employees, air traffic controllers, and they’re in different locations. We were in two buildings in the Navy Yard, and they’re in two buildings across the street from the [Smithsonian National] Air and Space Museum and in control towers all over the country. One piece of advice somebody gave me—I don’t know if it was Norm or Sam—“Make sure you get the right FAA administrator. You’ve got to have somebody that you get along with and will work with you. Very important.”

Of these hundred positions, our number one priority was deputy secretary, which is the person that runs the department, and we came up with a couple names and finally landed on the secretary of transportation in Maryland, John Porcari.

White House have any input there?

Yes.

They do, yes. But I will say, again, that the relationship that LaHood had with Rahm was so important because I think there was a trust level there that he was not going to suggest someone that was off the radar or—

That they would not approve of or would start doing things—

Correct. That would be completely out of anything that they would—that might go rogue in some way. So I think there was a real trust factor there. But yes, they definitely had people who they would bring to us, but they also knew that the deputy—the chemistry between the deputy and the secretary is huge, and so you really need to have that be a solid working relationship. We took our time with John Porcari because we wanted to get it right. He didn’t come on until like June, at least.

Yes, and the deputy that was there. Career guy, deputy under Mary [E.] Peters—

[Thomas J.] Tom Barrett.

Yes, Tom Barrett—he stayed on.

The White House was actually good with that because, again, he was so well respected. He was so helpful to us in those early months.

From that transition group that we met with day-to-day, Roy Kienitz was the chair of that. We hired him as our number three person: policy. We hired Polly—who was on that group, who is now the deputy secretary at the department—as his deputy, right?

She was assistant secretary, yes.

Was [Robert S.] Bob Rivkin on the transition?

He was, yes. He was our general counsel.

General counsel. A lot of those people were—

They could move into those areas of expertise.

Well, they had to go through the White House, right, to—

Oh, yes, definitely. Yes. I was trying to think if there’s anyone else. Well, Michael Huerta. He went in as deputy FAA administrator.

We spent our first few months articulating a little bit that the White House was putting together an economic stimulus bill, which ended up being $870 billion. They wanted a line item for transportation because they felt that was a way to get people to work, and get unemployment down, and get the economy moving. They landed on $48 billion. We had some discussions with them. That was pretty much done by them, but they talked to us a little bit about it.

With whom were you talking about that in the White House? Was it OMB [Office of Management and Budget] people?

What was the—yes, OMB. Rahm asked me for a figure. But then the guy that worked for John Lewis, the black guy?

Rob Nabors.

Yes. He had called me a couple times. He would call and say, “What do you think of this?” And I’d keep going higher and higher. Finally we got $48 billion.

You start your public service, money coming from the Justice Department that helped deter, maybe reduce, juvenile delinquency, and it’s still running strong in Illinois. And yet you believe in a balanced budget. How are these things playing in your mind as you go from one branch to another?

You go from being one of 435, right, people in the House to the head of a 55,000-person department in the midst of a financial collapse and a great recession, unemployment at 9 to 10 percent—knowing, as you say, that this is a priority of the president and now is a priority of yours—to help with things like infrastructure, and building transit systems that will put people to work. Do you have a conflict, or do you say, Well, this is what we have to do now, so we have to spend whatever money we’re going to need to get out of this situation? Do you have a conflict, and if so, how do you resolve it in your own mind?

Look, when you go to work for an administration, you become a part of a team, so I’m a part of the Obama team. He’s got his priorities. They think $48 billion is what they can get through, which is really—it’s a lot of money. I think $28 billion for roads and bridges, $8 billion for transit. We started a program called TIGER [Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery], which was a discretionary program, where we could go directly to mayors and other local officials and give them grants—$8 billion for high-speed rail.

Well, as [Everett McKinley] Dirksen said, in this case, “A billion here, a billion there,” adds up to real money but to solve real problems. Is that how to see it?

Correct, yes. We were a part of a team of people who were trying to help the president get the economy going and get people back to work, and no better place than transportation to make that happen. We played a very integral, vital part of that.

Plus, I think we needed those things. Bridges needed to be repaired and upgraded, and we need better transit. We don’t do it, typically, in times when we’re not in trouble or till the bridge collapses. It’s not as though this was just money that was being scattered about for some pet project somewhere.

We also then were able—so Vice President Biden was put in charge of making sure that all the stimulus money was being spent correctly. He put together a committee of the Cabinet that got pretty sizeable chunks of money, and we would meet once a week. He put an inspector general in charge of the committee as the staffer, and then he ran the meetings. We’d go around the table every week and talk about what we’re doing. Then Biden and I would get on his plane and fly somewhere and start handing money out, either to governors or mayors. We spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania. But we traveled to other places.

Did you feel popular?

Very popular. Very popular.

Lots of smiles when your plane and the vice president would land.

Yes, yes, that’s right. And lots of workers that knew they were going to go to work building a road or a bridge or a transit system. Then we took the TIGER money, which was discretionary, and started building out communities with mayors that couldn’t find the pots of money that they needed in the federal government to start a bike path, or to start a bike program, or to—

Curb drops I know were big here in Charlottesville [Virginia], and bike paths. Louisville [Kentucky] has bike paths now.

We called that our livable, sustainable community program—anything that improved communities, improved transportation, accessibility, all of those things. After four and a half years, we had visited all 50 states, 225 cities, and really made the improvements. The money that we had was to be spent over a two-year period, and we did a pretty good job. We got a high-speed rail program started. The lion’s share of it went to California. That project is still going on. Some went to Nevada. Florida got a train line from Miami to—

To Orlando, right?

Yes. Wildly popular.

What would happen when governors—Rick Scott, for example, Chris Christie another example—when you would run into people for whom you had much money to give to help put people in their state to work, to improve their transit system, or build their bridge, and they would turn it down?

We’d give it to another state. We took the $2.3 billion that we were going to give to Florida. The project was Orlando to Tampa along the interstate. Everything was ready. All the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] stuff was done. Scott turned it down because it was somebody else’s idea. We had everything ready for the two tunnels between New Jersey and New York. Christie turned that money down, and he had to pay a huge price—$95 million, a fine.

And that was, you said, coming from “somebody else”—coming from the other party?

That’s correct. That was Jon Corzine’s project.

Just total partisanship.

Yes. In Wisconsin, the previous governor, Jim Doyle, had a rail project from, I think, Milwaukee [Wisconsin] to Chicago, and it was turned down by a new governor. A guy named [Scott K.] Walker. That was maybe $800 or $900 million. California really benefited. They got the lion’s share of the high-speed rail money in the beginning.

And that wasn’t partisan in the sense that, Oh, well, that’s a Democrat state, so they—

Right, right.

No.

But these other Republican governors turning down the money, Sorry, you don’t want it? We have others who do. Other states, other governors, other transportation secretaries.

Right, yes. Gave some to Pat Quinn in Illinois to speed up the train from Chicago to St. Louis [Missouri]. But there was a lot of bipartisan activity going on, particularly in the cities, and in transit systems, which were clamoring for new infrastructure, for new cars.

Had you known Biden—if we can circle back to that. I remember when that was announced, that he would be taking care that this money was spent properly—no graft, no corruption. One, had you known him or worked with him at all when he was in the Senate?

Not too much.

This was really your first time of working closely with him.

Yes, correct.

What were your first impressions of him at these meetings and then as you got to know him in traveling around the country?

Well, he was truly an infrastructure person. He liked rail, obviously, having ridden it every day, [laughter] so it was fun to work with him. He was a pretty joyful person, and very positive, and he knew a lot of these elected officials. It was fun to work with him and his staff.

Were there any times in those meetings or anything that—we should say that the Obama administration is pretty well known for lacking in scandals, and corruption, and graft, just to say that up front, and certainly for him personally and Mrs. Obama, and his marriage, and his family. Were there any times when anything would have happened in those meetings or anything that you were hearing, or something that was going on in a state or in a city, where a red flag went up?

I can’t remember any.

Not really, no.

There really wasn’t anything to—maybe because there was an inspector general and this committee with the vice president as an alert, Be straight as arrows on this money.

I think part of it, too, is what you said. Obama made it very clear in our first Cabinet meeting, “I don’t want any—we’re doing everything by the book, everything above board, everything ethically. I don’t want any problems.” That was the first thing on his agenda.

Because don’t they say either— [Checks watch] What is happening here?

Yes, there’s an alert.

An AMBER [America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response] alert?

An AMBER alert, yes.

Aw, 10-year old. [Pause] Back to your point about the president saying, “Everything above board,” and the AMBER alert caused me to lose my train of thought, speaking of transportation.

Well, he made it clear, he really did, in the first Cabinet—that was the first thing off the bat.

And you made it clear within our own department, I have to say, with everybody that was brought on—

That’s where I was going. Thank you.

—that everything was pretty well vetted. We had our own internal system to get it to the point of where, then, when he got to the Cabinet-level meeting with the vice president, we felt very secure about the projects that we were putting—

The people you were hiring in those 100 spaces to fill.

Correct.

What I was going to say when the AMBER alert came in is related to that. I think I’ve heard the thing that either presidents are told or secretaries are told, Just be prepared because someday, somebody in your department—or to the president—somebody in the executive branch is going to be doing something wrong, and so you’ve got to be prepared for that. Something is going to happen no matter what you say.

As it turns out—and maybe with that IRS [Internal Revenue Service] exception of some people in the IRS going after the conservative thinktanks or the nonprofits—you’re hard pressed to find something in the Obama administration. But it’s coming, you’re saying, from the top down, to the vice president, to this committee of the Cabinet officers. At least—and you know in your department, you’re making that statement as well.

Correct.

In those four and a half years, you did not encounter anything like that.

We didn’t. Yes, we really didn’t. Particularly as it relates to the $48 billion, no bad stories, no controversies.

No investigative reporting that digs in and finds somebody’s cousin got big money and did nothing.

No. One of the things that—I can’t think of the name of the fellow, maybe we can run this down too. He was the IG [inspector general] that—

Earl Devaney.

Yes, Devaney. He would meet every week with the IGs from every department to make sure they were doing their job and to make sure they knew that this was a priority for this administration, to make sure there were no problems.

You’ve spoken about the Recovery Act and the stimulus as one, but you had never led a giant institution or a giant bureaucracy, nor had you had that big of a budget anywhere. For people who look at this years later, we’re right in the midst of the second Trump administration making appointments, making nominations. Sometimes some of the criticism about some people is, Oh, this person for the Department of Defense has never led any large group of anybody or has not had control of any budget like this. That’s a criticism, but I think because people trusted you from your time in Congress, you’re not hearing that. You did have your deputy, as you say, who runs the department, but is there anything that you’re having to learn about being at the top of that giant department with that budget, even aside from the stimulus?

Of course, many things. What all the acronyms mean. [laughter] Every department—I don’t know. How many were there, major?

Oh, the modes?

Yes.

Oh, at least like 10. So your transit, pipelines, aviation.

You’ve got a department for aviation, for transit, for pipeline safety, for safety.

These are all divisions within the department.

Correct.

Yes, and they don’t just have one thing that they do. You have to learn the multiple things, and you have to figure out who the real experts are so that you can get up to speed on the things that they want to get done. It’s a big learning curve.

How did you do that, in addition to the meetings with the transition team where you had all these briefing books preparing you for the confirmation? That had to help hit the ground running on day one to know all of that. How did you learn in the job itself?

Each week, we would have what we called a “cabinet meeting.” Before the political appointees were appointed, the career people were acting in those jobs. I met with them once a week. They had to give a report on what they were doing. I could respond to it or give direction. It was a great way for me to know what everybody was working on, what their priorities were, and I could tell them what the priorities were for the administration. Those were regular meetings. You had to be there—mandatory attendance and a mandatory report.

Always good to have a former teacher as a Cabinet secretary.

Agreed.

I am taking attendance, and you must have your report.

What else did we do besides that?

Chris Lu was a fellow. He was one of our first fellows because [William J.] Bill Antholis, our director, knew his brother, who was a fraternity brother with Bill here at UVA [University of Virginia]. He knew Chris, and Chris became one of our first fellows here. Of course, now he’s off to the UN in the Biden administration. But I talked to him a lot about when he went from being Cabinet secretary then over to [Department of] Labor with Tom Perez. He talked about how his role working with Tom Perez would be to sit in the cafeteria and just say, “Hey, everybody who works here in this building”—I don’t know if it was every day, but let’s say, “Every Wednesday, I will sit in the cafeteria. Come sit with me, and if there are any issues—you need another coffee machine or whatever—let us know.” Did you have anything like that that you tried to do?

And you mentioned Sam Skinner, the former transportation secretary, saying, “Look, these 55,000 people are great, and you will love working with them. They are so committed, and they’re so good at what they do.” Did you find morale to be high among those 55,000 people, including the two-thirds of those that were FAA people scattered around the country, but particularly for the bureaucrats who get such a bad name?

I have to say, that’s what is so upsetting to me about the Oklahoma City [Oklahoma] bombing. When people complain about bureaucrats, or even people run for office based on, “These horrible bureaucrats in Washington.” Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist, as you know, acted on that and blew up the [Alfred P.] Murrah Federal Building—blowing up 160 bureaucrats, and the average person who was there at the Social Security office that day, not to mention the kids in the daycare that day.

Nevertheless, not every department is all “beer and Skittles [candy].” There are some departments where morale isn’t so high, and they have studies that show that. What did you find among these people when you came in?

One of the things that we did that was very helpful—I don’t know if it was once a quarter, probably—we’d have a town meeting. We had a big, big, huge atrium. We’d announce the time. I’d say a few words. But more importantly, we just took questions. We had microphones set up. You can ask any question you want. If I didn’t know the answer, I said I would get back to them, and we’d get an answer back to them.

The other thing that was pretty devastating for me was when I read in The Washington Post of a survey that was done by—

The Partnership for Public Service.

Yes. They did a survey of employees of the different agencies, and DOT was, I don’t know, way down the list in morale. So we set about a plan. Joan and Marlise put together a plan for how we get our morale up so that we become one of the top agencies.

In morale, in employee morale.

Yes, in what people think about their job, the workplace, and all of that. I don’t know. Joan, maybe you—a couple of the—

Yes, how did you do that? Again, we’re back to workplace culture that you had worked so closely with others and the secretary, then the congressman. Did you go to Hershey? [laughter]

I went to Hershey, yes. We didn’t with the department.

Did you take DOT people to Hershey?

No, that was not possible. I think a lot of it was his accessibility. They had never really done a town hall where it wasn’t scripted. He took a question about anything.

What did you get? What did you get in those town halls?

You got a little bit of everything.

Yes, we got a lot of—

Oh, do tell. Anything stand out?

Nothing stands out.

There was one that was actually funny. The Obama administration was promoting bike lanes and biking to work as a mode of transportation, as opposed to exercise or recreation. It was a mode of transportation, so we were promoting bike lanes and biking for transit. There was a woman who stood up, a DOT employee, and she asked the secretary if—she said, “I love what you’re doing, but I just can’t get involved in it because I don’t know how to ride a bike.” You said, “Well, we’re going to fix that.” She was desperate to learn how to ride a bike, so we put her in touch with an organization that could help her ride a bike. You really got from top to bottom of—

We had some questions about our daycare, and we tried to fix that too.

We did, yes.

That’s a real workplace culture issue, isn’t it?

Yes, yes.

But you literally found lessons for this woman to learn how to ride a bike.

Absolutely, yes. Yes.

Yes, sure.

Now that is hands-on.

That’s constituent service at its best. [laughter]

I will tell you, my dad taught my mother—when he had to retire on disability at 60, and she was 58, they moved to a condo and had a nice—where they could ride bikes. But she, as a girl growing up in the 1920s, was not taught how to ride a bike. The one time she got on one, she fell and broke her arm in eighth grade. She was scared to death of them. My dad taught her, at 58, using training wheels.

Oh, I love it.

Yes, that’s the best way to learn.

Then eventually, she was so proud. They took the training wheels off, and she rode till they were in their eighties, I guess.

What was the program that we—where people could call in with a complaint?

IdeaHub.

Yes, we created IdeaHub.

Oh, for the general public, or for the—

No, for employees.

Just for employees.

Just for employees. Oh, like a suggestion box.

Correct. It was online, and we’d modeled it after [Department of] Homeland Security had started something.

All anonymous?

All anonymous.

Unless you wanted to say your name.

Correct. But you definitely got a response back. It’s not like your suggestion went into a black hole. People would put in suggestions, and then your peers could vote on them. If it got enough attention and votes, then it would bubble up, and then it would be considered for implementation.

OK. Were these mostly policy things, or again, more workplace culture? Could we have a better coffeemaker?

All of the above.

All of them, yes.

One of the things that came up out of that was a better health unit. We had a nurse on staff, but she maybe came once a week for both buildings at DOT. We—you finally—it bubbled up, and it was a priority. You got the funding to put in a health unit with a staffed nurse and a room for nursing mothers. It was those kinds of things that really came out of that.

Again, all very workplace culture related.

Also, it helped—within, I would say, three or four months, Obama made a visit to the department, and he hadn’t done that at every department. We were the first one. He came over—

You hadn’t asked. He volunteered to come.

No, no, they volunteered. He came.

Rahm? Could that have been Rahm, do you think?

I think Obama wanted to visit—I don’t know. Maybe it was because we were spending a lot of money, and he wanted to encourage people to get on board and, Let’s get this money out the door. Michelle Obama also paid a visit.

You have pictures of that in the book.

Yes, yes. That really helped engender a good esprit de corps also.

Could you get a sense of the audience when both of them came at separate times?

Oh, people were thrilled. Oh, yes, for sure.

Big turnout, lots of cheering?

Oh, yes. Filled up the atrium.

How many people do you think were there?

I don’t know. I mean it was full.

The DOT is set up where each floor has a balcony, so there were people on all—up to the ninth floor, that would line the balcony so they could see. It’s hard to say how many, but it was—

Thousands, it sounds like.

Yes, standing room only.

We really worked on that. We got our 100 political people in place. I spent a lot of time with the idea that we need to pay attention to members of Congress. If somebody calls, you need to call them back within 24 hours. If somebody from Congress writes a letter, we need to answer it quickly. Even if we don’t know the answer, we send them a letter, tell them we’re looking into it. A lot of times, I would go up to Capitol Hill when a member would call and have an issue in their district. I’d go up and sit and talk to them. We paid a lot of attention to Congress, a lot, and not just to the people on transportation and commerce—anybody. And not just Republicans—anybody. That paid big dividends.

In getting things through?

Well, yes, in getting things through and getting people to appreciate the fact that the department was bipartisan, and transportation was a priority, and we wanted to help.

This is so important because now, linking from the executive branch to the legislative branch—and you had talked about the importance of constituent services when you were on the Hill and at home, and even before you were elected. There is this theory in political science called the “triangle.” Some even call it an “iron triangle.” I think it’s a positive thing, where you have—one point is the people; and one point is the bureaucracy, the executive branch; and then one point is members of Congress and their staffs, who help run interference.

You’ve talked about getting the child to the academy, getting the Social Security check, all the things that people need in their daily lives, and that triangle works really well. The book that was written by this political scientist was called Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment, knowing how important Congress is in that triangle. Now you’re seeing it, in a way, from the other side—or another part of Pennsylvania Avenue, I’ll call it—and that’s really helpful to know that theory is true. You were making it work now in another branch of the government.

Right, right.

Back to civics, I would say. When you were working with people in Congress, there had to be—I’m not sure how to say this because it will sound negative, but I’m going to use the term “pork barrel” [using government funds for projects to win votes]. Obviously, when you have all these billions of dollars that you are pushing people to take—governors, mayors, city council people—did you get a lot of pressure from members of Congress that might be viewed as “pork,” but is just doing good for their states, doing good for their districts, knowing that there’s money there to bring a project to their state, to their district?

No, no. I’d say generally people wanted the money, right?

No one was lobbying—no, members of Congress were lobbying to you.

You mean—yes, they were. That is correct. You had lots of members calling and saying—

Oh, yes, yes, for sure. Oh, yes.

Yes, very much so.

Oh, yes, and we paid attention to them. We tried to be helpful.

Yes, because the money was there, and as you say, Make your case and we’ll—

Absolutely.

Right, right. And even the ones that didn’t vote for the stimulus, which no Republican did—

That’s right—they were coming for the money.

Yes. Yes, yes, right.

I do remember reading about that. And then they ran on that, that they had gotten money for their district or for their state. [laughs]

Right, exactly, yes. Yes, that’s OK. It’s for good projects to help the people.

Yes. Could I ask, though, is it OK about how people view Congress or the government when they’re being told by someone, “I am against Washington. I am against this spending of money,” and then they go back two years hence or a year and a half hence and say, “Please reelect me because I got this project for you”? Do the American people understand what’s happening?

No, and it doesn’t make any difference.

It is what it is.

Yes, it is what it is. You’re not going to change that.

Oh, it just hurts. It hurts me.

It’s not going to change. And it’s not the member of Congress that benefits. It’s the people that are impacted by the projects.

They will benefit.

Of course.

Yes. But they’ll still think ill of government. That’s what hurts because I love our government.

There are plenty of people who despise Congress and love their own congressperson. That’s not going to change.

That was something else that—it might have been Richard Fenno in this book, Home Style, who discovered that he knew, as a political scientist, where Congress was when people are asked “Do you approve?” often in the teens or even below, and then discovered when he’d go back to the districts how beloved these members of Congress were. You’re absolutely right, and I guess that won’t ever change.

It’s not going to change.

This is—you know, people say, “I hate the public schools,” but they love their child’s teacher. Or, “Doctors charge way too much. I don’t trust them. Oh, I love my physician.” I guess that’s human nature. That’s that personal connection that you’re making.

Right, right.

OK. I have got so many topics that we could stay several days, and we don’t want to do that. What about some of the issues and policies beyond the stimulus?

Let me make a point about something that was very important to us. When people ask me, “What’s the most important thing you did?” It’s safety, in every mode of transportation.

That covers so much.

So trains, planes, automobiles, buses, transit, pipelines, bikes. We started a program in the beginning called Distracted Driving, which not one person in the country was talking about. Most people didn’t know what it meant. Only 18 states had passed laws. Today, all 50 states have passed laws. We got people to think about, “You can’t drive and text, you can’t drive while you’re talking on the phone.” We had two or three big meetings about it, a couple here in Washington, a couple out around the country. A lot of people now are beginning to think about that. That’s number one. [Looks at watch]

How are you doing on time, by the way?

I’m doing fine. Let’s take five minutes, then we’ll finish talking about safely, and then you decide what else you want to talk about.

OK, perfect.

[BREAK]

One of the things that people told me when I appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee for my confirmation was, “What you have to emphasize is safety.” I agreed with that. What we say often is, every day, people get up in our country. They get in a car, on a plane, on a train, on a bus, whatever. One thing they don’t think about is safety. There has to be somebody that does think about safety.

We had two pipeline explosions, one in San Bruno [California] and one in Pennsylvania. People were killed. These people had no idea that pipelines were running through their front yard. We got the industry together. Most of the industry has hundred-year-old pipes running through these communities.

And these are gas pipes.

Correct, natural gas. We got Congress to pass a very strong—with the companies, the industry—a very strong pipeline safety program and replaced a lot of aging pipes.

There was a Colgan Air crash in Buffalo [New York] where 49 people perished. Every one of those people thought they were going to get to Buffalo safely when they boarded the plane in South Carolina. And it was pilot error. The wings iced up. The pilots didn’t know what they were doing. As a result of it, we worked with the families and with Congress—more pilot training, more pilot rest, and Congress worked with us on that.

And passed laws about that, right?

That’s correct. We had controllers that were bored with their jobs because they were the only one in the control tower. One person, falling asleep. We had sleepy controllers. We worked with the unions, and we corrected that problem.

I talked about distracted driving. Every mode of transportation—we took buses that were traveling from Washington, D.C., to New York that were completely in need of repair but filled up with college kids because they could get a cheap ride, and we took those off the road. We fined Toyota the largest fine in the history—now they fine car companies more today, but $32 million, largest fine ever, for the sticky pedal that caused two or three people to perish in one of their cars. Dr. [Akio] Toyoda came here and testified before Congress.

You went to Japan, as I recall.

Yes, we went to Japan, toured their facilities. We think we helped them improve their—

The sticky pedal. Was that the one where the way they had put the floor mats in was causing—

That’s correct.

Floor mat entrapment.

That’s exactly right, floor mat entrapment. Yes.

Therefore, it should be an easy fix.

Right. I could continue to talk chapter and verse, but the bottom line is safety is and always has been the number one priority for DOT. When Buttigieg was nominated, the White House told him to call me and talk to me. The first thing that Joan and I—we had a Zoom [videoconference] meeting with him. We said, “You’ll never go wrong talking about safety, encouraging safety,” and he’s done a good job with that, I think. Boeing’s [aviation manufacturer] problems right now are a result of the fact they don’t have the right safety culture. They had a whistleblower come out yesterday and talk about this—safety problems. Anyway.

This is the blowing out of the doors and the windows in air.

Yes. With us, it was batteries in the hull of the planes that were catching fire.

Which is why you’re asked, when you go to check in, “Do you have any batteries?” And when you check in online, These are not allowed.

Right. We also did what we called the “Passenger Bill of Rights.” People being treated very shabbily by airlines, going online, paying for stuff that appears on their credit card that they had no idea they were paying for. We corrected that. The airlines didn’t like it.

The tarmac rule.

Tarmac rule. Three hours [maximum wait on the tarmac], four hours for international flights. If they violate it, they pay a big fine per passenger.

Did you get—I’m sure you did—a lot of complaints coming in from—

From the airlines.

Well, from the public first, to say, “I was stuck on the tarmac with no food.”

Yes. Well, [laughs] we read about it too.

We did. And you’ve experienced it in all the flying that you have had, going back—

Anybody that’s flown has experienced it.

I am still waiting for my suitcase. I arrived back from Louisville two nights ago, and as of this morning, I still didn’t have my suitcase. I had gone from Louisville to LaGuardia [Airport, New York City] to here. They sent my suitcase to Atlanta. They promised it would be here yesterday. They said it would be here yesterday on the first flight out. I called around 5:00 and said, “I have an AirTag [tracking device].” Do you have these? These are the most wonderful things.

You know where it [the suitcase] is.

When I got to Charlottesville, I said, “According to this, my bag is in Atlanta,” and he said, “Yes, that’s right. It will be here tomorrow morning.” Well, that was yesterday, and then at 5:00, I said, “It’s still in Atlanta,” and they said, “Oh, it will come in late.” And no word. It did actually—I did see on the AirTag that it got there by this morning. Maybe it’s on my porch. Anyway, thank you for those of us who fly a lot. [laughs] Thanks to both of you for getting that through.

One other item of policy that I found intriguing was the Mexican trucks coming across the border, and by law, could only go so far into the United States. What really caught my eye was the tariff war that was going to start over that, now that we are back into tariff issues again. How did you deal with that?

I don’t know. Who worked on that? We had somebody—

Katie [Kathryn B. Thomson].

Yes, Katie Thomson.

Chris Lu’s wife.

Oh, OK.

Yes. She negotiated with the Mexican government. It took a while, but we got it fixed, and it was amicable in the end. People were happy, particularly those that were transporting things—fruits and vegetables, and other food commodities, and other things.

Now, I should know this now that I’m in my fourth year of doing this project, or maybe even five by now, but I still was stunned when I saw that—am I remembering correctly, your first full Cabinet meeting was not until April of ’09?

Yes.

Almost three—well, at least two months after the inauguration.

Yes. A lot was going on. Obama was really trying to work with [Timothy F.] Geithner on the economic stuff. [Lawrence] Larry Summers was involved with it. There were a lot of meetings going on. Their main focus was really around three things, I think: fixing the economy, the Iraq War, and putting together their strategy for passing Obamacare [Affordable Care Act]. Those were their priorities.

And also figuring out what to do, on top of Iraq, with Afghanistan. So the two wars, right?

I think there wasn’t much, really, for other Cabinet members to do around those issues. We knew what our marching orders were once we got our $48 billion. Biden was in charge of that. We met with him once a week.

Right, so you didn’t really need a full Cabinet meeting?

No, no.

Then the way you describe it, though, is quite interesting, when you did meet, finally, in April of ’09, and then when you would have these periodic meetings. Could you say a little bit about what they were like and the president’s style?

They were all prescribed. Everybody knew who was going to speak and pretty much what they were going to talk about. The first meetings were about the economy. Geithner and Summers did a lot of talking. Susan Rice, who was at the UN, maybe talked a little bit about the wars. Really that pretty much took up the meetings. Biden talked about the work he was doing with our group in getting the money out the door.

Did he stay within time limits?

No. [laughter] No.

Did the president ever do one of those, “Joe, wrap it up,” or did he let him—

No, he let him. He was pretty respectful of him.

What was he talking—how come he went so long? What would he be saying?

It was a small group of people really focusing on the thing that Obama wanted to—that he was working on.

And just making sure everybody was on the same page.

Exactly.

But there are no decisions being taken.

None.

There’s no discussion.

None. No votes.

No votes. Other than just, again—first of all, is it necessary?

Well, it’s also for, Bring the cameras in and give the impression around the country that Obama is working, his Cabinet is working, and these are the things we’re working on. Then Obama gets to make a statement, and they get to ask him a couple of questions for the topic of the day. It serves a good purpose in terms of messaging.

I see. Tell me about the inner circle. We’ve mentioned the people in the Obama inner circle, and that’s a pretty well-known fact of what it was and who they were. But you do speak about it in your memoir. Tell us about it and how you felt about it.

Well, first of all, the fact that I had a friendship and relationship with Rahm was very helpful because you can’t really get anything big or major or important done unless you have the White House, because you’re a part of the president’s team. He’s the team leader. He’s the quarterback. You want to do the things that he wants to get done. I never picked up the phone and tried to call Obama. I worked through Rahm, and I had a friendship with him and a good relationship.

Did you ever need to see the president and go through Rahm to see if you could get an appointment?

No. Look, I knew Rahm was speaking for the president.

And you knew your message would get to the president if he thought—

Yes, if it needed to.

Yes, got it. Tell us—talk about “colorful.” We’ve mentioned colorful people in this conversation today. He’s certainly viewed as colorful.

Yes. I think there’s a misconception because of a couple of stories that maybe circulated about him. First of all, he’s very smart, very politically smart. Maybe one of the smartest political people in the country. And very thorough and very structured. He knows how to get things done.

Disciplined?

Yes, very disciplined.

I think the “colorful” is the language, the profanity.

The language, right.

Yes, yes.

Did you encounter that?

Yes, but that was—I’ve known him for a long time, so it didn’t really faze me. I didn’t think that much about it. The other thing that was good for me is Obama invited me to play golf with him quite often on the weekends. He played golf just about every weekend at Andrews Air Force Base [Joint Base Andrews], which was very secure, so he’d invite a few Cabinet people to play golf with him. That was really enjoyable, in terms of just relaxing and fun, and, you know, talk about golf and not really talk about any issues or anything that’s going on.

That was his way, presumably, of relaxing and getting out of the bubble.

Very much so.

I mean he’s at a secure location, but he’s out of the White House and that bubble.

Yes, very much so.

His handicap?

I think when I first started playing with him, it was maybe 18, and now he’s down to about 8. He loves to golf, and he plays a lot of golf, and he takes it very seriously.

Not a “Bill Clinton mulligan” [extra shots]?

None. None.

Plays by the rules.

By the book. Completely by the book. Yes, for sure.

That says a lot, doesn’t it, about the two of them.

Yes, it does. That’s right, yes.

You can redact this: You want to give us your handicap?

Oh, 20. Yes, yes.

You can redact if you wish, hold it for however long.

He wouldn’t do that.

No, no. Very average golfer.

You’re transparent, as always. Favorite golfer, either currently or in history for you?

Oh, I think Tiger Woods, for sure. He’s done so many great things for golf. Yes, for certain.

What other topics, what other issues—

I was going to jump in.

Yes, please.

You mentioned Rahm and colorful. He is colorful, but I will tell you, from my time on the Hill and then watching him at the White House, so beloved by his staff. Sometimes people who have a rap about being larger than life—

Or maybe even difficult.

Right. They’re looked at—yes, being maybe someone that’s hard to work with. Complete opposite.

That says it all.

His staff loved him, and he respected them, and knew their families and their kids’ names, and took time to ask. So really, it shows something about him as a person and as a manager.

Yes, for sure. You mentioned Chris Lu. I just wrote down, knowing that Chris was the Cabinet secretary, but I didn’t realize his wife was working with you at DOT. The role of Cabinet secretary: Did that have any impact on the organization of getting to the president, or Cabinet meetings, or the meetings with the vice president? Did you need to work with Chris quite a bit?

Joan interacted with him on a regular basis.

Chris did an excellent job in his role as Cabinet secretary. I think he elevated that role, and really utilized it, and really implemented the office. In our first couple years, that was the one point. That was one point that you would go to if you needed something outside of the secretary calling Rahm or whatever it might be. Other Cabinet members didn’t have that relationship, so your one point of contact was [Office of ] Cabinet Affairs, and they stressed that. It really worked. It wasn’t just a bottleneck because it’s a small office, and you’d think that with all this incoming from the agencies—but his deputies were excellent. It worked very well. You could tell after he left—

That was my next question. A difference?

There was a difference. They restructured it. To be honest with you, it didn’t work as well from an agency perspective because you didn’t feel that maybe you were getting that answer immediately. It just had a different priority later on. Chris started this weekly lunch that we would have. All chiefs of staff were to come down to EEOB [Eisenhower Executive Office Building], and we would bring our own brown bag lunch, but we would sit around. There would be a topic of each lunch, but yet that was the time, too, where everybody could ask a question, or you actually just got to meet your fellow chief of staff and work on ways where you could collaborate or be helpful to one another. It was really—

Did those carry on after—

No, they didn’t, unfortunately.

Oh, well, there’s one difference there.

Yes.

I had a question on—

Let me just say something about Katie because Katie came on board as my counsel. I’m not a lawyer. We quickly learned that the White House wanted us to work with the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] on changing the CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards, the gas standards. We knew immediately Katie was the one to do it because she was an environmental lawyer.

Oh, I didn’t realize that.

She took this on, and she led our team. We had the EPA team. Between the two of them, they put together a phenomenal proposal that Obama absolutely loved. Launched it at Georgetown [University]. Big press conference. Katie was just invaluable. She went on to do some work at the FAA. She became general counsel at the department. Now she’s chief of staff over at—right, chief of staff?

Deputy FAA administrator.

Yes, deputy administrator at FAA.

I had lost track because, again, Chris had to leave our fellowship when he went up to the UN.

Yes. The work that she’s done, though, is just phenomenal.

Well, it doesn’t surprise me, then, that those two would be together. The other parts of the inner circle—Axelrod you mentioned in relationship to Illinois politics when Obama ran for Senate. Anything about him? You speak about Gibbs a little honestly, let’s say, in the memoir. Valerie Jarrett, we had talked a little bit about her role before we even started recording today.

She’s a friend. I still stay in touch with her. She’s leading the [Barack Obama] Foundation for President Obama to try and get his library open.

Which is exciting. What a great thing that will be for Chicago. Oh, and of course, she was based in Chicago, so you all had that connection of Illinois.

Yes, but I didn’t really know Valerie before. But we’ve become good friends. I’m on—when Axelrod left, he started the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, and I’ve been on that board since the beginning. David and I are good friends.

He is, I have to say, like you, a very lovely person.

Yes, and I got to know Plouffe a little bit.

He seems wicked smart, as they say in Boston [Massachusetts].

Yes, he’s very, very, very smart politically.

Oh, and Gibbs.

You know, Gibbs I didn’t really know that much. Pete Rouse and I became friends, and he’s very influential.

Right. He stepped into chief of staff after Rahm left to go back to being in Chicago.

Right. And then [William M.] Bill Daley, who is a friend of mine.

Another with obvious deep Illinois, Chicago roots.

Yes, he was a friend. He and his wife were friends.

Did anything—well, I should say, did things change when Rahm left, as far as—

Oh, of course.

You didn’t have that—

The management style was completely different.

How so with Pete and then with Bill Daley?

Well, they’re just maybe more low-key and maybe not as—I don’t know what the right term is, but they had their own style about them, which was quite different than Rahm.

Did you feel that you could pick up the phone if you needed to talk to them?

Absolutely. Completely.

Good. And they were accepting.

Very much so. Oh, yes, for sure. I think they realized that what we were doing at DOT was very important to the president’s agenda, and I think they also realized that Obama and I were friends and played golf together, and they wanted to be respectful of that, too, I think.

I’m so glad that you mentioned that, the golf playing, because you mention, I think, once or twice in the book—one time he said, “Oh, come play with me,” but you were back in Illinois. This is really helpful to see your relationship grow with him while he was president.

Sure, that’s right.

Did you see any difference in—I remember when I said, “How did you find him when you first talked to him, that first meeting,” and you said, “He wasn’t arrogant.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but were you saying that because some people say he is or was?

No, I was saying it because I’ve met a lot of senators who have a chip on their shoulder, think they’re very self-important, and are arrogant.

And he was not.

And he’s not.

Did you see anything change when he became president?

Absolutely not.

That’s good to know.

Absolutely not, no, no.

We often ask this for all of these different presidential projects: Did you have a sense of how President Obama liked to learn, how he wanted to get information?

I think he has an insatiable appetite. I think he’s very, very smart. I think he probably either understands or remembers just about everything that he reads. He is a voracious reader. He reads everything. He’s just very, very smart. I think anybody that can write their own book and does it in longhand is a very smart person.

[laughs] I agree.

Yes, I do.

His turn of mind. He’s a lawyer. He taught constitutional law, right, in Chicago at the [University of Chicago] Law School. Did you get a sense of how he thought, in addition to how he acquired information?

Well, I don’t think he ever made snap decisions at all. I think he tries to get as much information as he can. I think he’s a tremendous analyst in terms of taking everything in. Obviously, when you’re in a political position, you have to put some political calculus in, but I think he liked to base his decisions more on the information and the analysis of it and what impact it’s going to have.

Most people know he’s considered a great communicator. You mentioned Reagan as well. How would you compare and contrast the two in their communication styles?

Equal.

Equally effective?

Yes. I mean equal at their ability to communicate a message, yes.

And interesting with Bush 43—I had the opportunity, when I was at the University of Louisville as a fellow at the McConnell Center, to see him come in. It was ’07, and Mitch [McConnell] was getting ready to run for reelection in ’08, and so he had the president come in and do a fundraiser. Mitch had founded the center and said, “Can you meet with our 40 students—we have 10 in each class—and a few faculty?” He said, “Sure.”

He came into a meeting room at the hotel in downtown Louisville. I was really completely stunned by how different he seemed in person from on TV and just much more comfortable. As you talked about him coming to Illinois for you, just at ease in talking to these students. They said, “He’ll do a photo at the end,” and I thought, Forty-five people will gather around, and they’ll snap a photo. Oh, no. He took a photo with every individual student and faculty member. He wasn’t ever going to run for anything again.

He told great stories about his daughters, who were in college in those days, and some of the escapades that would end up in the paper. He’d say—I think it was Jenna [Bush Hager], down at Texas [University of Texas at Austin], had a fake ID [identification]. He said she said, “If you weren’t president, this wouldn’t even be an issue.” He said, “I said to her, ‘Don’t you blame this on me. This is what you’re doing.’” The kids, of course, loved that.

He took Q&A [question and answer]. He remembered every question that every student had asked, so when they came up to do the “grip and grin,” he would comment, “Oh, yes, that question you asked me about Sammy Sosa, I shouldn’t have let him go from the [Texas] Rangers to”—was it the—

[Chicago] Cubs.

The Cubs. I always get my Chicago teams mixed up. But somehow, not as good on TV as a Reagan, for example, and just seemed much more at ease in the presence of people in person. Any other things I’m leaving out from policy?

I don’t know if we missed anything.

Then we just want to get you to your decision to leave. Called on at all in 2012 to campaign?

No. You know, I had an agreement with Rahm. I was not going to get involved in politics because I’m a Republican. I’m not going to—I just would be uncomfortable doing that.

I’m sure he understood that. You did say, though, I know, in the book that you said at the time that you would have voted for ACA [Affordable Care Act] if you had still been in Congress.

Of course.

That’s a good thing to mention. Why?

Because in my own district, I started, with the help of the federal government and local people, four or five health clinics for people who had no health insurance. We went to the poorest neighborhoods in Peoria and elsewhere and worked with the local hospitals, and got money from the federal government and the state government, and opened up health clinics so that people could get an annual physical or a mammogram or whatever because they had no health insurance.

And that’s some 40 million Americans, right?

Yes, so I’m thinking, What the hell? The government should be doing this.

Did that money for those local clinics come from HHS [Department of Health and Human Services]?

Yes.

I know when we did the Edward [M.] Kennedy [Oral History] Project, he talked about that and people who worked with him—that here he was in Boston, where they have all these great hospitals, but if you are poor and live in South Boston, you might not even know about those hospitals, or how to get there, or pay for them. He founded one of those clinics out—got some of those doctors out in South Boston near the Kennedy Library [John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum] and now his institute [Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate]. I remember reading at the same time, Adam Clayton Powell [Jr.]—though, this would have been in the 1970s, I guess—they figured out how to get that funding, and Adam Clayton Powell started some in Harlem [New York City], I guess. That’s interesting to know that you had that experience.

Yes, I’m very proud of that.

Yes, you should be.

Yes, helped a lot of people get health care.

Right. There’s your bipartisanship coming back on ACA. So, no campaigning. That was down on my list. And I say, anything else that comes to—oh, Superstorm Sandy [tropical cyclone], working with Chris Christie.

Yes. I went up with Chris Christie. The White House said, “Go up there.” We had a pot of money, didn’t we, that we gave them?

Yes, emergency—

Relief from the superstorm for infrastructure repair?

Right. We spent a whole day up there touring around, and Christie came with us the whole time.

Right. That happened right about the election in 2012 because remember the famous hug between the president and Chris Christie, and bipartisanship.

Yes, that’s right.

That’s right, yes.

Right. And so even though he had turned down the money for the tunnels, he, I’m sure, was happy to accept this.

Yes, of course.

And you got along fine with him.

Yes, of course.

Yes. The administration put together a huge task force, remember? The Sandy Task Force [Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force]. It was an interagency task force that met on a daily, weekly basis on relief and rebuilding that area.

Yes, and raising the standards—sustainability for the next flood.

The resiliency factor.

And the environmental element of it. Was there also a sense of, Let us not do what maybe went wrong with [Hurricane] Katrina in the aftermath?

Yes, that’s right.

Right, right.

There had been after-action reports. [Frances] Fran Townsend, for example, wrote up that report.

That’s right, yes.

Again, unless you have anything else, your decision to leave?

OK. Let me just—I saw something in your notes about my son in Egypt, and I just wanted to talk about that. The reason I want to talk about it is—

I didn’t know whether it was uncomfortable.

No, not at all. Very quietly—well, when I heard about it, I heard about it from my son, who called me and said he was at the [U.S.] Embassy. They came into his office with guns and confiscated—

He was there with a nonprofit?

Yes, IRI—nongovernmental [organization], NGO.

Which stands for International Republican Institute.

Nongovernmental, you said, and nonprofit supporting—

Correct. Funded through the State Department. Similar—the Democrats have one.

The National Democratic Institute.

He ends up at the embassy, and he’s staying there. His wife is with him, and she’s doing library work at American University in Cairo [Egypt], but she kept her maiden name, so she continued to live in their apartment while he was at the embassy.

No one came after her?

No. I don’t—they maybe knew who she was, but it didn’t seem like it.

Why were they saying they were there?

This was the Muslim Brotherhood. They were trying to exercise their—you know, they overthrew [Hosni] Mubarak, but this was just not agreeing with the kind of work these people were doing, which was democracy building, finding candidates, training them, and then trying to make a change.

That was not their mission, safe to say.

No, no.

So Mubarak is still in.

Yes, he is.

This is before—maybe the Arab Spring [antigovernment protests] is just beginning in Tunisia?

Yes, I think it’s just beginning.

They see maybe this is their opportunity.

Yes, right.

Of course, Obama had to decide and was—as you well know, there were many discussions going on within the White House by his thinking, We’ve supported this guy for all these years. It’s part of our Cold War policy from years gone by. The stories claim that it was the younger—the Ben Rhodeses and the Susan Rices saying, “Look, we shouldn’t be supporting this fellow.” Did your son have to get involved in any of that conversation?

No, no.

OK. But it must have been scary for you and your family?

Well, it was worrisome because we weren’t sure, you know—

What was going to happen?

Yes. And Obama took a great deal of interest. He told his people, “We are not going to let this stand. Figure out a way to get him out.” About 20 days after he had been there, they brought a plane in about 3:00 in the morning, took him to the airport, and his wife, and they came back.

All was well then?

Yes. The important point—you know, Obama didn’t make a lot of noise about it publicly, but I was told that every day, he talked to his staff about, What are we doing? How are we going to get him out of there? I never really placed a call to Obama and said, “Hey, come on.” They just—they told me, “He’s taking care of it.” That was it.

That’s an important story. I’m glad that you raised it. And I’m glad that it was in the briefing book. I will tell—we have a panel of researchers, professional researchers, and I’ll tell them. They always like to hear—“Is what we’re doing OK? Was that helpful?”—and I’ll say, “It produced a very important story.”

Sure.

They’ll be thrilled by that. But I say, I didn’t know if it was controversial enough that—I don’t ask all the controversial things because it’s uncomfortable sometimes, but that’s helpful.

As far as leaving, I think I was, I don’t know, maybe 68 years old, and I just felt like, You know, I’ve had a good run. We’ve done a lot. I tried to convince them to raise the gas tax.

Oh, yes, that was another.

Yes, to really continue the momentum we started with the $48 billion. But Obama, apparently, during the campaign, said he wasn’t going to raise the gas tax.

In the reelect of ’12?

Yes, exactly. But that wasn’t the main reason. The main reason was we’d done a lot of good things. In these jobs, there’s only so much you can do. Anyway, it was just a good time to leave.

This may be too personally political: For whom did you vote in 2012? You can pass.

I voted for McCain in ’08, and then I voted for Obama. Yes, of course.

Ah, OK. Well, I was going to ask about [Mitt] Romney. I just noted that he gave his farewell remarks on the floor of the Senate yesterday, going into retirement, and speaking in the diplomatic, moderate way that he always has. Really not to pry but mostly to say, how did Obama win reelection handily in 2012 when, in preparation for all these interviews, it sounded like—in some ways, he never got quite as low, I don’t think, as Biden in approval, but pretty much into the 30s [percent] because unemployment was still where people didn’t want it, and they were still scared in housing, and mortgages, et cetera. The year before the reelect, Peter Baker was writing in The New York Times, “It’s unclear whether Obama will be reelected.” How did he pull that off against a very good and strong candidate in Mitt Romney?

I think they, again, ran a very disciplined campaign. I think Obama’s first debate with Romney, where he was terrible—

It was awful.

—was a real wake-up call for everybody. They knew they had to get back in the game. They got very disciplined again, had the same people running the campaign.

Right. Axelrod, Plouffe came back. I mean they had left to go into the campaign, yes.

Right, yes. I think Obama got back in the political mode again and realized that he just had to get out there and talk about the things that he had done.

Do his homework, be ready, be prepared. Was there anything else?

My son, Sam [LaHood], worked—did a lot of advance work for McCain, but also for Romney and got to know the Romney people.

How did he compare and contrast the two campaigns?

You know, I think he and McCain became friends, so I think it was a different dynamic. He really liked McCain. They became friends. I don’t know if he got to know Romney that well.

I see. Last thing, I think, for me would be of that inner circle we talked about, of the Obama inner circle, was there anyone—again, this is a typical question we’ll ask about presidencies. Was there any one of those people—some people would say about Bush 43, W. Bush, that Dick Cheney was usually the last person he would speak to before making a decision. Whether that was Bush saying, “I want to see Dick Cheney as the last person,” or people would say about Dick Cheney, he’d be in the Cabinet meetings. He wouldn’t necessarily say a lot, but they would see that he would stay behind and speak to the president, maybe giving his view.

Did you have a sense of either that inner circle or somebody else in the Cabinet who would have been that last person typically to speak to the president, maybe aside from Michelle Obama, because I always refer to that as “pillow talk.” I’m sure that husbands and wives in the White House talk to each other, especially when they are smart.

I don’t think you can underestimate the influence of spouses.

I agree, as someone who studies First Ladies.

I really don’t. I think Jill Biden and Biden’s sister are probably the two most influential people in his life. I think Michelle Obama was Barack Obama’s most influential person in his life, and still is. I don’t know about this business of who the last person in the room was or whatever. I just think that when it comes to major decisions, I think presidents usually do turn to their spouse.

We know from your conversation today how important your spouse, Kathy, [laughter] was to your confirmation. Well, unless you have anything else—

I don’t know. Is there anything else?

—or Joan, have we left any stone unturned?

No, I don’t think so.

You have done a great job. You did a lot of research.

You’re a great interviewer. You really are. You’ve got a great way about you.

Yes, yes. I brought my book back. I don’t know. Do you want it back?

Oh, sure, if you want.

The notebook.

Oh, unless Joan, do you want to keep—did you ever get yours?

Yes, this is mine.

That’s hers. I left mine in the car.

This one’s mine, but we could—

No, you can keep it.

Yes, OK.

I’m just looking to see if there’s anything else that may have been suggested topics that we didn’t hit.

What I did was I usually go through those, and then as I’m reading the briefing book, and the memoir in this case, to see if there’s anything, we want to avoid where—I’m writing right now on the fraught political relationship between [John F.] Jack Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt. I think it was Columbia [University] that did an interview with her a long time ago, or maybe it was just two scholars from there. But you get a question, and either you get to the end of an interview and you think, Why didn’t they ask—this obvious topic needs to be covered—or a topic is covered, question is asked, there’s an answer, and you’re thinking, Oh, the follow-up, the follow-up. You turn the page thinking, Surely the interviewer—

The answer is right—asked that, yes.

Yes, and then they’re on to the next topic. Joan, you would know if I have—and this is also why we typically do our teams, and why we had called on [Michael] Mike Nelson, who has been at this for decades, and Sam Skinner. This is the first time this has ever happened where two people at the same time had to drop out.

We covered it. I think one of the—

Oh, I had—on the VW [Volkswagen] plant in Chattanooga [Tennessee], about dealing with right-to-work states and they having, it seems—I know Kentucky, for example, got a, was it a Toyota plant, I think, in Georgetown, Kentucky? But these states that are right-to-work have an easier time of drawing in, especially from abroad, these car companies because they don’t have to worry about unions. Did you find that that was the case? That as you were thinking about these people coming in, jobs, good jobs, that that could be an issue? Go find Southern states, particularly, that are right-to-work.

You know, I never really thought that much about it. I was invited to go down there and participate in the ribbon cutting. It was a pretty joyful day.

I bet. I mean it means so much to these communities.

Oh, absolutely.

Whether it’s some town of some size, Chattanooga, or this little Georgetown, Kentucky, not too far from Lexington [Kentucky]. Anyway, I think I may have interrupted you, Joan.

I was just going to say—and we did discuss it. I think it was a unique thing. Obviously, it had been done before, but the fact that Ray was pretty much the lone Republican in the Cabinet. It was never an issue. I never felt that he was there as a token. I actually, from day one, I always felt like they looked for the right person for the job, and someone they could trust and rely on to be a part of the team to implement the president’s vision—that he was their person.

Which he did, and you did.

Right. It wasn’t like, Oh, we need a Republican, so let’s put him in a nonpartisan department like transportation. It really wasn’t any of that, and I never felt like he was conflicted in anything.

That’s also good to know. [To LaHood] I wonder if Norm Mineta, when you talked to him when you were nominated, and you said he called you because, of course, he’s the only Democrat in the Bush 43 administration. We had the most wonderful interview with him, which is on for the Bush 43 [Presidential Oral History] Project.

That can be our second-to-last point because the last point is, we say, we may exhaust you, but we never exhaust all the questions. We just want to thank you both so much—

Of course.

It’s our pleasure.

—for your long service to this country.

Thank you.

Thank you. It’s nice of you to say that.

We believe that this is another part of it. You didn’t have to come all the way to the East Coast. You didn’t have to drive down here. It’s so much—we can do these online now. We got expert at that during the pandemic. And I don’t mind it, but there’s just nothing like sitting at the same table and having lunch and chatting.

Sure, sure.

Sure. Agreed. Yes, totally agree.

Thank you for including us.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, it was a great opportunity. Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]