A Lesson Learned The Hard Way by a Cub Reporter in Iowa
56 years later it still instructs, still has value
This past week was the 56th anniversary of a very important lesson I learned covering Senator Robert F, Kennedy in Des Moines, when I was just starting out as a cub political reporter at the Dallas County News in Adel. It’s one of those anniversaries I don’t even have to try to remember. I see the date on the calendar and instantly recognize it. My memory transports me immediately to that day, time and place where - in my mind’s eye - I relive the experience.
It was March 9, 1968. I see it all as vividly as if it happened 15 minutes ago, not 56 years ago.
The political air was in a rolling boil with rumors and speculation that U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) - a fierce critic of the Vietnam War - would soon enter the 1968 Democratic presidential race. If he did, it would be a very big deal. He’d be running against the incumbent president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who RFK’s brother - President John F.Kennedy - had selected to be his Vice President, and who became President when JFK was assassinated.
Kennedy would also be running against U.S. Senator Eugene J. McCarthy (D-MN), who had taken the anti-war challenge to President Johnson in the primaries when Robert Kennedy refused repeated requests from anti-war leaders to do so.
Most folks, however happy they were to have an anti-war candidate in the race, assumed McCarthy’s candidacy was, at best, symbolic.
But when McCarthy started drawing big crowds - and apparently lots of support - among Democrats in New Hampshire, Kennedy started “reassessing” his decision to stay out of the race. McCarthy’s 42% to Johnson’s 49.6% - in New Hampshire on March 12, 1968 shocked everyone. It made clear to everybody how deeply unpopular the Vietnam War was, how powerful the anti-war vote was, and how much it had eroded Johnson’s support within his own party.
Johnson, it should be noted, was “running” as a write in candidate. He hadn’t even campaigned in New Hampshire during the primary. He did, however, have much of the state’s Democratic Party establishment backing him and actively working to secure a win for him there.
That McCarthy - a supposedly symbolic candidate, and a second choice one at that (after RFK for many) - could keep the president’s vote under 50% and claim 42% of the vote for himself in the president’s own party stunned everyone.
Probably most of all, McCarthy.
Kennedy had, of course, seen it coming. Days before the New Hampshire vote Kennedy had begun a last minute effort to explore the possibility of entering the race.
Which brings us to March 9, 1968, and the anniversary of the event - and lesson - that I have never forgotten.
Senator Kennedy came to Des Moines, on March 9, 1968, to speak at a fund-raising dinner at Veterans Memorial Auditorium for then-Iowa Governor Harold E. Hughes who was preparing to run for the U.S. Senate. Also quietly tucked into RFK’s schedule was a late night meeting, after the fund raising dinner, at the Hotel Savery with five midwestern Democratic Governors. Speculation had it that the meeting was to inform them of his decision to enter the race and to ask for their support and help.
That Kennedy might enter the race, after McCarthy had taken the fight to LBJ when Kennedy wouldn’t, set off emotional fire works all around. The Kennedy camp was thrilled. The McCarthy camp felt used, abused and betrayed. The old party guard was furious that LBJ would face yet another challenge. Anti-war activists were angry that a Kennedy candidacy would split - and thereby dilute - the anti-war, anti-LBJ vote, making LBJ and support for the war appear stronger than it was.
Tensions within the party were as high as I’d ever seen them in my - at the time - very brief reporting career.
So it was a very big deal when I caught up with Senator Kennedy in a Hotel Savery hallway after the fundraising dinner, as he walked to the meeting with the Democratic Governors. I did a quick, walking, “hallway interview.” It was brief.
But it was also exclusive.
I put the big question directly to Kennedy: “Is it true that you plan to enter the Oregon Primary or any other primary and run for president this year?” I asked.
Kennedy looked me in the eye.
“No. I have no plans to enter the Oregon Primary or any other primary. No plans at all.” He kept walking, entered the room where the Governors awaited him, and the door closed behind him.
I had just landed my biggest scoop ever. The nation’s entire political press was on fire with speculation that Kennedy was about to enter the Oregon Primary and launch a last minute 1968 presidential run.
I had it, directly from the Senator’s mouth - and exclusively - that, in fact he had no plans to do that. At all.
All that transpired on March 9.
On March 12, McCarthy - the anti-war candidate in the race - did win big in New Hampshire. His show of strength - the anti-war vote’s show of strength - was race altering. By the end of the month, LBJ would withdraw from the race entirely.
Here’s where things started to go haywire with my big scoop.
I filed my story for the weekly Dallas County News on March 10. Obviously, it prominently featured Kennedy’s denial that he planned to enter the presidential race. The denial I was reporting, I had exclusively. I had it directly from the Senator himself. I obtained it just moments before he entered the meeting where much of the nation’s political press was speculating that he would be informing a group of midwest Democratic Governors that he was entering the race.
I imagined - as only a 14 year old cub reporter would do - a life time of multiple Pulitzer Prizes stretching out before me, after scoring such a big scoop so early in my career.
The issue of the Dallas County News which contained my story was mostly delivered by mail in those days. It was landing in the homes of subscribers on March 16.
Which happened to be the same day Kennedy spoke at a press conference, carried nationwide on live network TV, from the Russell Senate Office Building’s historic Caucus Room, in Washington, DC.
Kennedy began his press conference with these words:
“I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States.”
Um. Wait. What????
Kind of embarrassing, even for a kid just staring his reporting career. My huge scoop and all those future Pulitzer Prizes evaporated into thin air in that instant.
Funny thing is, I have never believed - even today - that Kennedy lied to me. I understood then - and understand even better today after having read several histories of that campaign - what happened and why things went wrong with my “scoop."
At that time, on that March 9th, in Des Moines, in that hotel hallway, Robert Kennedy did, in fact, have no plans to run for president, or to enter the Oregon Primary or any other primary. What he had told me was absolutely true. In that moment.
The meeting he was walking to when I caught up with him in the Hotel Savery, was a meeting with midwestern Democratic Governors to discuss whether he SHOULD run for president. No decision had yet been made. That decision would be made only in the next few days after more consultation with other party officials, and a close look at the actual New Hampshire results when they came in. At that moment, March 9, 1968, with nothing yet decided, he indeed had no plans to run for president.
It was a very important lesson for someone just starting their career as a political reporter: Ask precisely the right question when interviewing a skilled politician. Then listen carefully to their answer. Hear what they actually say - not what you want them to say, or what you think they said.
It was a lesson learned the hard way at a young age. But it guided me for the rest of my professional life, both as a political reporter, and as someone who worked with and around major political candidates and public officials for decades.
Even today, as a university professor, the lesson comes in handy when trying to navigate with a student why they missed the previous week’s class, or why the assignment that was due two weeks ago still has not been submitted.
I suspect the parents of a teenager or two who missed a Saturday night curfew has learned the same lesson about how to ask a question and listen to the answer.
There are many ways to still tell the truth, without actually telling the whole story and revealing the whole story. It’s important to know how to hear those answers, to know how to find the whole truth, and to know that sometimes you have to dig to reach it.
To this day, I still do not believe that Senator Robert Kennedy intended to mislead me. I think he thought he was giving me a precisely accurate answer to the question I asked. But also one that protected the information he was not ready to yet make public.
It required a skilled dance for Kennedy to pull it off, but at that point in his career, he was a very skilled pro. And it was not lying.
I had simply asked the wrong question. I asked him if he planned to enter the Oregon Primary or any other primary and run for president in 1968.
At that time, he did not have any such plans. He was heading into a meeting to hear advice from others about whether he SHOULD plan to do so.
There’s a difference. A huge difference.
Had I asked my question a bit differently - for example: “Are you CONSIDERING entering the Oregon Primary or any other primary this year or running for president this year?” I likely would have gotten a very different answer; and people might call me today by the nickname I might have earned that night back in 1968 - “Scoop” Piatt.
But I didn’t.
And they don’t. I’m still just “Barry” Piatt.
But, all these 56 years later, I am a lot wiser than I was on March 9, 1968, especially when it comes to asking skilled politicians the right and precise questions and listening - really listening - to their answers.
Every year for the past 56 years, on March 9, I pause, remember, and thank the late US Senator Robert F. Kennedy for that.
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I’m so jaded that I tend to think all politicians’ responses and statements are suspect at some level. Bobby Kennedy’s career (and personal life) by some historical accounts apparently had its darkness too, but Spring of ‘68 …man, what a spark of hope until it all crashed.
Great story, Barry, thank you!