I'm Jonathan K. Parton. Welcome to K-PART. Any given Tuesday, a political love letter,

is the new memoir by veteran Democratic political strategist Liz Smith.

She's been the behind-the-scenes force behind some of the top Democratic lawmakers in the past decade,

most recently former presidential candidate and current transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.

But in this conversation, first recorded on July 20th for Washington Post Live,

Smith talks openly and honestly about two rough moments that affected her personal and

professional life. There are along the way, either before you start working for someone,

before you start dating someone, there are red flags, there are alarm bells, and you should

probably pay attention to them. And after all the personal questions I ask Liz Smith,

you'll never guess which one she dodged by pleading the fifth.

Good to see you. I'm going to save all of the political crystal balling questions that I have

until a little bit later. It's a luxury for me to have 50, five oh minutes with a guess.

So I'm going to take advantage of it. And let's start talking about your book, any given Tuesday.

Why the title? So throughout the book, I weave in my love of professional football.

It was something that tied me very closely with my dad, who I also, who I devoted my book to,

and I speak a lot about in my book. But there's a saying in football, any given Sunday.

And what I guess to is that any given Sunday, the worst team in the league can be the best team in the

league. And even Sunday, the best team in the league can lose to the worst team in the league. And

what it takes to make a great team is an element of belief that your losses don't define you,

your wins don't define you. And that's a lot of how I think about politics. And that's a lot of what

I write in this book. Because this book isn't just about all the campaigns I've been on that have

been successful and have gone you smashingly well. It's also about lessons I learned from losses,

...