Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon | A radio book show and podcast featuring interviews with authors, poets, playwrights and more

On this page, you’ll find a excerpts from transcripts of shows we’ve broadcast. You can order the FULL transcript for $15 by clicking on the Donation button below. Remember…your support helps keep Writer’s Voice on the air.
Right now, you can find our interviews with:

* Barry Werth: 31 Days
* Kate Michelman: WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

“31 DAYS: THE CRISIS THAT GAVE US THE GOVERNMENT WE HAVE TODAY”

31 DAYS is journalist Barry Werth’s fly-on-the-wall account of the first month of the Ford administration, after Nixon resigned. In his April 7 interview with Writer’s Voice, Werth talks about:

How Ford’s pardon of Nixon set the stage for the neo-con ascendancy in government and drove out the Republican moderates
Why the pardon was linked to amnesty of Vietnam war resisters
and how the Nixon/Kissinger realpolitik was supplanted by Rumsfeld and Cheney’s fantasies of Armageddon.

WRITER’S VOICE: Ford inherited not only the tail end of the Watergate crisis, but also a whole host of problems: stagflation, the rise in oil prices, the Cypress crisis, the winding down of the Cold War, problems in the Middle East. What were the greatest challenges facing Ford in making a successful transition from vice president to President?

WERTH: The challenges were staggering. He had to get up to speed very quickly and then deal with a complex matrix of issues that, as Henry Kissinger put it, were probably the most daunting in foreign policy of any president since Truman, and domestically of any president since Lincoln. The country was back on its heels. The country was reeling from Watergate and the Nixon resignation. And Ford had no preparation and very little time to plan before he actually took over. He was notified somewhere between 36 and 48 hours that he was going to become the president of the United States. So, probably the most daunting challenge he faced was simply taking over the machinery of the executive branch. There were 550 people working in the White House under General Alexander Haig, who had been Nixon’s last Chief of Staff. They had no loyalty to Ford. They didn’t especially welcome Ford, and he had to move in and become the president. That was the challenge.

…

You subtitled this book, “The Crisis That Gave Us The Government We Have Today”. Why did you title it that?

There are a number of reasons. The first and most obvious one was that this was the moment at which Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld vaulted from the periphery to the center of power in this country. On the day before Ford became president, Rumsfeld was on the Riviera vacationing with his wife. He had been a member of Nixon’s extended inner circle, but at that time he was our Ambassador to NATO. So he was living in Brussels and working in a small corner of our foreign policy. On the way into the White House from his home in Alexandria, Ford was given a planning memo that said, “you need to find somebody who will organize a transition, but who does not want to be Chief of Staff himself.” And Ford and Rumsfeld had been allied since their days in Congress together and he wrote in “Rumsfeld”. Cheney was then 33 years old. He had been Rumsfeld’s deputy in the White House. When Rumsfeld left, Cheney took a job as an investment counselor—not because he knew anything about investing, but because he was well-connected in government. And he was, as I said, 33 years old, a Yale dropout, somebody who sought five deferments so that he didn’t have to serve in Vietnam, and on Thursday he was working for this investment counseling firm and driving a VW Bug and on Friday he arrived at the White House with Rumsfeld, as his deputy during the transition. So that’s the beginning.

The other reason is that the historical forces that are so central to our role in the world right now were all really taking shape at that moment. As you said, Vietnam was just about over. We had just had the first oil shocks. It was the beginning of the Middle East becoming central to our national life and our view of the world, and lastly, the whole of what is generally referred to as the realism of the Nixon foreign policy was beginning to be challenged by people on the right, who felt that by accommodating the Soviet Union and China, the country was becoming provocatively weak. These were principally the neocons. So all these forces were gathering just at the moment that Cheney and Rumsfeld arrived from almost out of nowhere to the center of things. And a month after this, Rumsfeld became Chief of Staff and Cheney became his deputy, the second most powerful person in the White House… [to order the entire transcript for $15, email us at writersvoice [Email address: writersvoice #AT# wmua.org - replace #AT# with @ ] for an order form and instructions.]

Barry Werth is the author of several previous books including THE SCARLET PROFESSOR, Damages: One Family’s Struggle In The World Of Medicine, and THE BILLION-DOLLAR MOLECULE: The Quest For The Perfect Drug. 31 DAYS: The Crisis That Gave Us The Government We Have Today was published by Random House on Tuesday, April 11. Writer’s Voice interviewed Werth in early April. The show aired on April 7.

WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, Kate Michelman

What Does The Alito Nomination to the Supreme Court Mean for Women’s Reproductive Choice?

(excerpt from interview broadcast on Writer’s Voice on Feb. 3, 2006)

On January 31, Samuel Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor as Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. A long-time opponent of Roe vs. Wade, his appointment to the court does not bode well for the future of abortion rights in America.

As president of NARAL-Pro-Choice America from 1985 to 2004, Kate Michelman has long been a key player in the fight to protect reproductive choice for women. Now she’s written a memoir of her work called WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL: A LIFE SPENT PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE.

The interviewer is Writer’s Voice host Francesca Rheanno .

FR: What is a Justice Alito going to mean for Rose vs. Wade?

KM: The impact on our court, the direction of the nation, and the future of our rights and liberty — particularly our right to privacy — is in grave jeopardy. Judge Alito does not believe there is a right to privacy, or he certainly does not believe there is a reproductive privacy. He has repeatedly worked to overturn Roe vs. Wade when he was in the Justice Department of the Reagan administration. And, on the court as a judge, he has continuously sought to give the state power over a woman’s right to decide. He is a danger to our rights and liberties.

It’s extraordinary to me that there hasn’t been a greater outcry. I think that people who believe in privacy rights, who fight for the rights of the most disadvantaged, and who believe in balancing the power between the president and the Congress should have seen that there was no choice but to stand up against Judge Alito, but for reproductive rights, Judge Alito will roll back the clock. He laid out a strategy to undo Roe v. Wade without explicitly overturning it: giving states more and more power to interfere in a woman’s decision about pregnancy and childbearing and abortion; more and more power to the states to interfere, to take away the protections that women have from the government intrusion.

FR: Could you explain this? Because I was talking to my mom, who is eighty five, and I was telling her that I was going to interview you. And she said, “Oh, they can’t undo Roe versus Wade; the states will protect us.” I think a lot of people think they will.

KM: Well, that’s one of the problems that we face: that people don’t believe that, one, Roe can be overturned — and Roe can be overturned in many ways, including not explicitly. But, number two, states will not protect the right. In fact, if Roe were overturned today, twenty states would immediately enact criminal bans on abortion. Abortions — all abortions, under all circumstances, for any woman at any time during pregnancy — would be illegal. Right now, as we speak, the state of South Dakota is moving to pass a total ban on abortion. And Roe isn’t even overturned.

So twenty states would move immediately. Another nineteen would probably not totally criminalize, but severely restrict. So, people need to be disabused of this idea that Rowe can’t be overturned and that states would protect. Women would be faced with having to fight for their right to privacy, [their] reproductive liberty, state by state, year-by-year, legislature by legislature. Many women would be left out.

And Rowe can be overturned without explicitly overruling the decision. Judge Alito, along with Scalia and Thomas and Roberts, can uphold more and more state restrictions that make it more and more difficult for women.

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