January 31, 2020 • 11 mins
A week chock-full of headlines…everything from the impeachment proceedings to the Iowa caucuses to the Super Bowl…not to mention his upcoming birthday…has Tom reflecting on various parts of his legendary career and sharing his advice on how to deal with the many realities currently facing us as a nation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I heard Radio presents Tom Brokaw now here this. This
is a week of momentous developments in American politics and culture,
and in the world for that matter. The impeachment hearing
is in Washington, d C. Impeachment obviously the most serious
act in the U. S political system. How you remove
a president for high crimes and misdemeanors who has been
(00:23):
elected to that office but misbehaved to such a degree
that he or in the future she should be improved.
It appears that Donald Trump will survive the impeachment proceedings,
but no question about it. He has been, if not wounded,
seriously nicked. As a result of all that we learned,
the first in the nation political contest for Democratic presidential
(00:44):
nominees is now underway in Iowa. There's a terrifying virus
loose in China and spreading around the world. There are
new tensions between the United States and Iran, and America's
number one distraction this weekend the Super Bowl. Don't know
about you, I don't have a particular favorite. I used
to frankly cheer against the forty Niners because I was
(01:06):
an l A Ramas fan. But there's a first rate
team that San Francisco was putting on the field. But
like a lot of people, I am absolutely bedazzled by
the quarterback for Kansas City. So where to begin, Let's
start at the ground up. I spent several days this
past week in Iowa, a state I know well after
all these years. When I was in high school, I
(01:29):
worked summers in a rock quarry loading trucks and one
degree heat with no safety, headgear or hearing. Big tough
Iowa farm boys would get up early in the morning
and do their chores at the farm and then come
drive the trucks at the quarries where I worked. Then
they would go home and do their evening chores, no complaints.
(01:50):
That summer. I was literally dying down there and all
that heat and dust when I got an unexpected call.
I was asked to go to New York and be
on a quiz show with the famous governor then of
South Dakota, Joe Fauss, one of the great heroes of
World War Two, a Medal of Honor recipient, a great
Marine pilot, a man who later became the commissioner of
(02:10):
the American Football League before the leagues were merged. And
so I got to go to New York and see
it for the first time, and I must say I
was so taken with the excitement of the place. And
it also helped that I made a pretty good chunk
of change by appearing to know what I was talking
about on that quiz show. I walked all over town,
I went down to the village, and at the end
(02:31):
of four or five days, I thought, God, I think
maybe I'd like to come back here sometime. When I
called my father and said I'd like to stay a
day or two just to see everything, he said something
that has resonated with us ever since. He said, well,
I think you should. You'll probably never get another chance
to see New York. I've lived in that city more
than I've lived anywhere else in the world, and it
(02:52):
still excites me. My year at the University of Aisole,
where I arrived as a whiz kid and then went
off the rails, was too much beer, too many codes,
and too little studying. But I wasn't outstanding or OTC cadet.
But it stays with me, and I'm still trying to
figure out why I went so wrong. I think primarily
(03:13):
I was too cocky and there were too many distractions
so I went back to South Dakota to kind of,
if you will, reorganize myself. But I continued my errant behavior.
I dropped out of the University of South Dakota. I
wandered around the Midwest because I could always get a
job in radio stations, and then a big break. I
got a job at a television station in su City, Isle,
(03:35):
seventy five hours a week. I was a booth announcer,
I was the weatherman and the weekend newscaster. I learned
that I could commute to the University of South Dakota,
which is about fifty miles away, if I got up
at five am, went to class until noon, and then
back to work. It focused my attention. I began to
get good grades, and I began once again to earn
(03:57):
the respect of my friends who had wondered what had
happened to Tom. Most of all, I got the attention
of Meredith, who had written me a devastating letter saying,
I don't want to hear from you again. I don't
want to see you again. You're disappointing everyone, most especially
your parents. You're the first child to go to college
in your family, and look how you're behaving, so Meredith
(04:18):
and I had a long conversation, then began to spend
more time with each other, and after a year we
got engaged, and the two most surprise groups in South
Dakota were her friends and my friends. And when we
got married in August of nineteen sixty two, we left
Yankton with everything that we own, primarily wedding presents, in
the back seat of a Chevy two, the most inexpensive
(04:41):
new car that her father could find on main street
in Yankton, and we went to Omaha, where I went
to work at a television station for a hundred bucks
a week, doing four newscast today, working on weekends and
learning a lot. Mareth was teaching school at Omaha Central,
one of the best high schools in the Midwest, and
for reasons there's all not clear to me. One night
(05:01):
I got a call out of the blue from the biggest,
most important television station in the South in Atlanta, Georgia, WUSB,
and they said, we hear wonderful things about you. We
have an opening in our eleven o'clock news. And so
we were up to Atlanta, a whole new culture and
a place hot with news. I would do the news
(05:23):
at eleven o'clock at night, get off the air go
get on a charter airplane and go to wherever the
civil rights movement was breaking out and cover until the
NBC correspondence could arrive. That's somehow got the attention of
people at NBC in New York. And so after six
months in Atlanta, they came to me and said, we'd
like you to go to California and go to work
(05:44):
for us there. So I went to California and very
quickly I was covering Ronald Reagan, covering the conventions in
Miami and Chicago. I was doing both network and local news,
and I was very happy. All right, children were spending
their weekends on the beach. We were building a house
down there with every last dime that we had. We
(06:05):
had a lot of good friends, and of course the
weather was so much different than how we'd grown up.
And then NBC came and said, you've got to come east,
and as John Chancellor put it, you have to be
a grown up and help us cover the White House
because Watergate was underway. And so I did. And the
fact is, I've written a book about that experienced recently,
(06:26):
called The Fall of Richard Nixon. People who are reading
it seemed to be very taken with it because it
is a reminder of how quickly things can go off
the rails, how long ago that was, and how a
man as smart as Richard Nixon could make such devastating
mistaken judgments and be completely involved in Watergate and continue
(06:48):
to deny it until he was forced to resign. So
this past week and went back to Iowa, where I
have covered all the caucuses since nineteen Fully half of
Iowa now is trying to make up its mind. So
it's a state that is still ready for upsets. And
(07:09):
of all the caucuses that I've covered over the years,
half of them have ended in upsets. John Dene was
going to win until he did not win. Ronald Reagan,
who was practically a resident of the state, was upset
by George Bush forty one. George Bush forty one was
later upset by Bob Dole. It goes on and on.
So remember that Poles and Iowa are not reliable. I
(07:32):
think in part because people have to stand in a
room and commit themselves publicly, there's no secret ballot. At
the same time, there are other changes in Iowa. The
Hispanic population is growing. They're very important to Hispanics, to
the population of Iowa because they take the jobs that
Iowa's no longer want to do in food processing, plants
(07:54):
and other very tough areas. I was now slightly more
urban than it was before the mois for the first
time in my memory, is hip with good restaurants and
outlets all over the city. Iowa University and Iowa State
and Grinnell are three of the best institutions of higher
learning in America. Iowa has a strong Dutch population, Irish population,
(08:17):
Scandinavian population. It has Catholics and Protestants, more evangelical now
than it was when I was first going there. So
there's a lot going on, not just in Iowa, but
with the impeachment, the Caucuses, war in the Middle East,
deep division in this country. Culturally, we have a strong economy.
(08:38):
Health care, however, is still an issue. We also have
a promise by this president that he would do something
about public works. He's not yet done that. We have
a concern about immigration, how we're still going to be
a country of immigrants, but at the same time not
get overrun by all of that. The population distribution, more
people are leaving the north for the South. We have
(09:01):
survived so much in our lifetime. Vietnam, the resignation of
a president, the change in the Middle East, the change
especially in Europe. We in effect force Russia to change
without firing a gun at Russia. Mikil Gorbachev, one of
the great figures of history, understood they could not continue
(09:23):
as a communist country. So now Eastern Europe is a
much different place than it was before. So here we are.
We have an election coming up. We also have to
have a resolution of what's going on when it comes
to what is happening in the United States Senate, and
that is impeachment. Impeachment is not a pure legal process.
(09:44):
It's very political. He is not going to be found
guilty unless there is a belief on the part of
those who are prosecuting him that they can also sell
this to the American people. So we've been through a lot.
Take a deep breath. However, there's more to come. And
what is really obvious to me is that it is
(10:06):
still the United States of America. I'm about to have
a very big birthday. I'm about to be eight. Oh.
I find that hard to believe. And my friends who
are joining me to celebrate them grew up as I did,
working class kids who had later success as doctors and
lawyers and journalists, and they're coming in a way that
(10:27):
they never could have anticipated when we all started life
eight years ago. I'm not saying all of us to
saying happy birthday to Tom. I'm just reminding everyone we're
still a nation of opportunity. We have work to do,
so let's put our shoulder to the wheel and do
just that and that get panicked and not become less
(10:50):
than our some of parts. That's the greatness of America
will always be more than our parts if we agree
on certain value, use and institutions that are out there
as they have been for the long history of this
country in a way that no other country can match.
Who we are. I'm Tom broke Off. He I heart radio.
(11:14):
Now here. This
I heard Radio presents Tom Brokaw now here this. This
is a week of momentous developments in American politics and culture,
and in the world for that matter. The impeachment hearing
is in Washington, d C. Impeachment obviously the most serious
act in the U. S political system. How you remove
a president for high crimes and misdemeanors who has been
(00:23):
elected to that office but misbehaved to such a degree
that he or in the future she should be improved.
It appears that Donald Trump will survive the impeachment proceedings,
but no question about it. He has been, if not wounded,
seriously nicked. As a result of all that we learned,
the first in the nation political contest for Democratic presidential
(00:44):
nominees is now underway in Iowa. There's a terrifying virus
loose in China and spreading around the world. There are
new tensions between the United States and Iran, and America's
number one distraction this weekend the Super Bowl. Don't know
about you, I don't have a particular favorite. I used
to frankly cheer against the forty Niners because I was
(01:06):
an l A Ramas fan. But there's a first rate
team that San Francisco was putting on the field. But
like a lot of people, I am absolutely bedazzled by
the quarterback for Kansas City. So where to begin, Let's
start at the ground up. I spent several days this
past week in Iowa, a state I know well after
all these years. When I was in high school, I
(01:29):
worked summers in a rock quarry loading trucks and one
degree heat with no safety, headgear or hearing. Big tough
Iowa farm boys would get up early in the morning
and do their chores at the farm and then come
drive the trucks at the quarries where I worked. Then
they would go home and do their evening chores, no complaints.
(01:50):
That summer. I was literally dying down there and all
that heat and dust when I got an unexpected call.
I was asked to go to New York and be
on a quiz show with the famous governor then of
South Dakota, Joe Fauss, one of the great heroes of
World War Two, a Medal of Honor recipient, a great
Marine pilot, a man who later became the commissioner of
(02:10):
the American Football League before the leagues were merged. And
so I got to go to New York and see
it for the first time, and I must say I
was so taken with the excitement of the place. And
it also helped that I made a pretty good chunk
of change by appearing to know what I was talking
about on that quiz show. I walked all over town,
I went down to the village, and at the end
(02:31):
of four or five days, I thought, God, I think
maybe I'd like to come back here sometime. When I
called my father and said I'd like to stay a
day or two just to see everything, he said something
that has resonated with us ever since. He said, well,
I think you should. You'll probably never get another chance
to see New York. I've lived in that city more
than I've lived anywhere else in the world, and it
(02:52):
still excites me. My year at the University of Aisole,
where I arrived as a whiz kid and then went
off the rails, was too much beer, too many codes,
and too little studying. But I wasn't outstanding or OTC cadet.
But it stays with me, and I'm still trying to
figure out why I went so wrong. I think primarily
(03:13):
I was too cocky and there were too many distractions
so I went back to South Dakota to kind of,
if you will, reorganize myself. But I continued my errant behavior.
I dropped out of the University of South Dakota. I
wandered around the Midwest because I could always get a
job in radio stations, and then a big break. I
got a job at a television station in su City, Isle,
(03:35):
seventy five hours a week. I was a booth announcer,
I was the weatherman and the weekend newscaster. I learned
that I could commute to the University of South Dakota,
which is about fifty miles away, if I got up
at five am, went to class until noon, and then
back to work. It focused my attention. I began to
get good grades, and I began once again to earn
(03:57):
the respect of my friends who had wondered what had
happened to Tom. Most of all, I got the attention
of Meredith, who had written me a devastating letter saying,
I don't want to hear from you again. I don't
want to see you again. You're disappointing everyone, most especially
your parents. You're the first child to go to college
in your family, and look how you're behaving, so Meredith
(04:18):
and I had a long conversation, then began to spend
more time with each other, and after a year we
got engaged, and the two most surprise groups in South
Dakota were her friends and my friends. And when we
got married in August of nineteen sixty two, we left
Yankton with everything that we own, primarily wedding presents, in
the back seat of a Chevy two, the most inexpensive
(04:41):
new car that her father could find on main street
in Yankton, and we went to Omaha, where I went
to work at a television station for a hundred bucks
a week, doing four newscast today, working on weekends and
learning a lot. Mareth was teaching school at Omaha Central,
one of the best high schools in the Midwest, and
for reasons there's all not clear to me. One night
(05:01):
I got a call out of the blue from the biggest,
most important television station in the South in Atlanta, Georgia, WUSB,
and they said, we hear wonderful things about you. We
have an opening in our eleven o'clock news. And so
we were up to Atlanta, a whole new culture and
a place hot with news. I would do the news
(05:23):
at eleven o'clock at night, get off the air go
get on a charter airplane and go to wherever the
civil rights movement was breaking out and cover until the
NBC correspondence could arrive. That's somehow got the attention of
people at NBC in New York. And so after six
months in Atlanta, they came to me and said, we'd
like you to go to California and go to work
(05:44):
for us there. So I went to California and very
quickly I was covering Ronald Reagan, covering the conventions in
Miami and Chicago. I was doing both network and local news,
and I was very happy. All right, children were spending
their weekends on the beach. We were building a house
down there with every last dime that we had. We
(06:05):
had a lot of good friends, and of course the
weather was so much different than how we'd grown up.
And then NBC came and said, you've got to come east,
and as John Chancellor put it, you have to be
a grown up and help us cover the White House
because Watergate was underway. And so I did. And the
fact is, I've written a book about that experienced recently,
(06:26):
called The Fall of Richard Nixon. People who are reading
it seemed to be very taken with it because it
is a reminder of how quickly things can go off
the rails, how long ago that was, and how a
man as smart as Richard Nixon could make such devastating
mistaken judgments and be completely involved in Watergate and continue
(06:48):
to deny it until he was forced to resign. So
this past week and went back to Iowa, where I
have covered all the caucuses since nineteen Fully half of
Iowa now is trying to make up its mind. So
it's a state that is still ready for upsets. And
(07:09):
of all the caucuses that I've covered over the years,
half of them have ended in upsets. John Dene was
going to win until he did not win. Ronald Reagan,
who was practically a resident of the state, was upset
by George Bush forty one. George Bush forty one was
later upset by Bob Dole. It goes on and on.
So remember that Poles and Iowa are not reliable. I
(07:32):
think in part because people have to stand in a
room and commit themselves publicly, there's no secret ballot. At
the same time, there are other changes in Iowa. The
Hispanic population is growing. They're very important to Hispanics, to
the population of Iowa because they take the jobs that
Iowa's no longer want to do in food processing, plants
(07:54):
and other very tough areas. I was now slightly more
urban than it was before the mois for the first
time in my memory, is hip with good restaurants and
outlets all over the city. Iowa University and Iowa State
and Grinnell are three of the best institutions of higher
learning in America. Iowa has a strong Dutch population, Irish population,
(08:17):
Scandinavian population. It has Catholics and Protestants, more evangelical now
than it was when I was first going there. So
there's a lot going on, not just in Iowa, but
with the impeachment, the Caucuses, war in the Middle East,
deep division in this country. Culturally, we have a strong economy.
(08:38):
Health care, however, is still an issue. We also have
a promise by this president that he would do something
about public works. He's not yet done that. We have
a concern about immigration, how we're still going to be
a country of immigrants, but at the same time not
get overrun by all of that. The population distribution, more
people are leaving the north for the South. We have
(09:01):
survived so much in our lifetime. Vietnam, the resignation of
a president, the change in the Middle East, the change
especially in Europe. We in effect force Russia to change
without firing a gun at Russia. Mikil Gorbachev, one of
the great figures of history, understood they could not continue
(09:23):
as a communist country. So now Eastern Europe is a
much different place than it was before. So here we are.
We have an election coming up. We also have to
have a resolution of what's going on when it comes
to what is happening in the United States Senate, and
that is impeachment. Impeachment is not a pure legal process.
(09:44):
It's very political. He is not going to be found
guilty unless there is a belief on the part of
those who are prosecuting him that they can also sell
this to the American people. So we've been through a lot.
Take a deep breath. However, there's more to come. And
what is really obvious to me is that it is
(10:06):
still the United States of America. I'm about to have
a very big birthday. I'm about to be eight. Oh.
I find that hard to believe. And my friends who
are joining me to celebrate them grew up as I did,
working class kids who had later success as doctors and
lawyers and journalists, and they're coming in a way that
(10:27):
they never could have anticipated when we all started life
eight years ago. I'm not saying all of us to
saying happy birthday to Tom. I'm just reminding everyone we're
still a nation of opportunity. We have work to do,
so let's put our shoulder to the wheel and do
just that and that get panicked and not become less
(10:50):
than our some of parts. That's the greatness of America
will always be more than our parts if we agree
on certain value, use and institutions that are out there
as they have been for the long history of this
country in a way that no other country can match.
Who we are. I'm Tom broke Off. He I heart radio.
(11:14):
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