If you look up “Washington insider,” you’ll see two words: Sally Quinn.
She is a longtime journalist. In the early 1970s, she became the first female network anchor in America as co-host of the “CBS Morning Show.” It lasted a nanosecond. She then wrote the scathing bestseller “We’re Going to Make You a Star.”
She went on to become a star columnist for The Washington Post and marry the paper’s legendary editor, Ben Bradlee. Their dinner parties were legendary: A gathering of the most powerful from both sides of the political aisle — something she now says can’t happen anymore.
Her recent op-ed in The New York Times is titled: “Watergate-Era Washington Was Less Toxic Than This.” Here & Now’s Robin Young wanted to talk to her about the mood in the more rarefied air of the city and Quinn’s new novel, “Silent Retreat.” It tells the story of a journalist who withdraws to a monastery for a silent retreat.
5 questions with Sally Quinn
You came up with the novel about 15 years ago when your beloved Ben Bradlee, a giant who oversaw the Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers from your home, was beginning to decline from dementia. He died in 2014.. Did you go on a silent retreat?
“ I did, this monastery in Berryville, Virginia, Catholic monastery for a silent retreat. I’d never heard of that before and it had never appealed to me. And my husband died laughing when he said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think you can stop talking for three days.’ And I wasn’t sure I could either, but I went and I was just blown away by the experience. It was just magical.”
Are you communicating with Bradlee through the main relationship in your new book?
“The feelings and emotions they had with each other were the same kind of feelings that I had with Ben. And so they couldn’t stay away from each other. I mean, in a way, you know, the Archbishop of Dublin is the main character and this New Yorker writer is the main female character, and it was a forbidden relationship. And when Ben and I first met, he was married and had seven children and was 20 years older than I was. And he was my boss. So it was a totally forbidden relationship. So there was that longing and lust.”
Your recent op-ed is about a longing for another time. You say power brokers in particular used to meet with each other, used to sit down to try to put some humanity on the political enemy’s face. Can you give us some examples to make your case?
“ There’s this club called the Executive Branch that’s been started by Donald Trump Jr. And it cost $500,000 to join. It’s all for their crowd. And so they wanna be away from the enemy of the people, the media and people who live in Washington.
“ Most administrations, the people reach out to the people who are in Washington. They wanna be part of them. But this isn’t the case here. These are people that he brought from outside and the first Trump administration, he had some actually real people in the administration, people who were responsible, intelligent. And what’s happened now is that he, having been president, he knows all the power. He’s hired everybody who will encourage him and suck up to him.”
You argue this moment is worse than the former President Richard Nixon-era. Back then, it was Republicans like Sen. Barry Goldwater or Congressman John Rhodes who told Nixon he had to step down.
“Barry Goldwater was one of my father’s closest friends, and he was an honorable person and he was a decent person and he was going crazy over what was happening with Nixon. And they went to the White House and they said, you’re gonna have to leave because otherwise you’re gonna be impeached and thrown out. And that’s what made Nixon leave. But this doesn’t happen anymore.
“I have many friends in the Senate. Democrats and they all say that their Republican colleagues won’t look them in the eye because they’re too ashamed and too embarrassed. They know exactly how horrible this situation is, and they’re too afraid because they’re putting themselves in front of their country.
“ What always amazes me is how people will continue to go work for Donald Trump in search of power. In the first administration, they should have seen that he fired everybody.”
Why should we care about the social fabric underpinning Washington, D.C.?
“Well, because evenings and events, dinners are a method of communication and much more effective than sitting across the desk from somebody in an office. One of the things that Washington is is a community, and they’re a community of people who have lived here for years. People who’ve been in other administrations, they stay journalists who come and they stay. It’s a transient town, so most people come from somewhere else. They stay and they create a community that people go to the same churches and the same synagogues. Their children go to the same school, they see each other, and you don’t wanna hate the neighbor across the street. So it just made sense when the people that you knew who were on the other side of the aisle had the same ethics and values and morals that you do.
“And that’s what’s changed is that suddenly these people that you thought you knew are out committing some atrocity. They’ve totally dismantled the entire climate change organizations and taken money away from that. And if you care about things that are existential threats to our world, to our globe, to our country, to our future, then it’s really hard to sit across the table and have a conversation with them when you know that their values are very, morals are very different from yours.
“I think it’s really important. And in the old days, people would sit across and people would end up on the hill, you know, they’d argue over bills and everything, and the Republicans, the Democrats would come together for dinner and everybody would be friendly. And that’s the way it should be. You shouldn’t have this rage at people you’re working with or you’re seeing, or who are running the country, but there’s, there’s really no possibility of communication. They don’t wanna be with the people in Washington anymore than people in Washington wanna be with them. And I think it’s really sad because there’s no way to communicate anymore.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Thomas Danielian produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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