I Don't Have To Answer That

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Natural Sciences, History, Documentary, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2016

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Roosevelt, Kennedy, Eisenhower … they all got a pass. But today we peer back at the moment when poking into the private lives of political figures became standard practice. In 1987, Gary Hart was a young charismatic Democrat, poised to win his party’s nomination and possibly the presidency. Many of us know the story of what happened next, and even if you don’t, it’s a familiar tale. But at the time, politicians and political reporters found themselves in uncharted territory. With help from author Matt Bai, we look at how the events of that May shaped the way we cover politics, and expanded our sense of what's appropriate when it comes to judging a candidate. Produced by Simon Adler Special Thanks to Joe Trippi

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're listening.
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.5	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W. N. Y.
0:13.9	C.
0:14.3	See?
0:15.1	Yeah.
0:19.3	Hey, I'm Chad I boomrod.
0:20.9	I'm Robert Krollwich. This is Radio Lab. And, you know, here we are in this moment where we're about to get started with another election cycle. Another Iowa, another New Hampshire, Carolina. All of that. And this is the time when we report is decide, well, we're going to have to tell you some stuff. And you're going to have to decide what matters to you. And the story that we're going to tell on this podcast is about a moment, a shockingly recent moment.
0:42.7	That's how I felt when I first heard this story. A moment of when what reporters decide to tell
0:47.4	and what people decide to value really changed. So we're going to take you back to an evening in 1987, Tom Fiedler,
0:57.0	ace political reporter for the Miami Herald. It's late at night and he's in his office.
1:02.8	I'm sat at my desk and just in fact packing up to go home. My phone rang and I'm thinking,
1:07.6	oh, it's probably my wife and she's wondering why I haven't left yet. I said, all right,
1:10.4	I'll pick it up. Well, when he picked up the phone, turned out this... It turned out, it was not a voice he recognized. It was a woman's voice, maybe in her late 20s. And she said to him, I have something you need to know. It was a tip about one of the most powerful and charismatic men in American politics, former Senator Gary Hart,
1:28.4	who at the time was not only the most likely candidate to become the Democratic nominee,
1:33.4	he was very possibly going to be the next president of the United States.
1:36.8	Her words to me were Gary Hart is having an affair with one of my best friends.
	...

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