Rena Pederson -- A Trailblazer in Journalism

Nicole Hawkins:

Rena Pederson is a true trailblazer in journalism. During her storied career, she interviewed five U.S. presidents and countless history makers, including Margaret Thatcher and Fidel Castro. Texas Monthly described her as one of the most powerful women in Texas during her time serving as Vice President and editorial page editor at the Dallas Morning News. Rena has left the newsroom, but her love of words continues in her next chapter. She recently released The King of Diamonds, the search for the elusive Texas jewel thief, a book about the infamous thief who stole millions of dollars in jewels from some of Dallas’s wealthiest residents in the 1960s.

She joined host Andrew Kaufmann and the Bush Institute’s Bill McKenzie to discuss her time in the newsroom, what inspired her new book, and how to consume news in the age of growing disinformation. Hear more from Rena on this episode of The Strategist presented by the George W Bush Presidential Center.

Andrew Kaufmann:

Our guest today is Rena Pederson, who has had simply a remarkable career. She served as editorial page editor for the Dallas Morning News for 16 years and served on the Pulitzer Prize board for nine years. She’s been in DC as a speechwriter in the Department of State. She’s taught at SMU. The Bush Center is on the campus of SMU here, so we always love having SMU people here. She’s also a longtime friend of the Bush Institute, in particular with our work in Burma, and she’s very recently written a really fascinating book called The King of Diamonds: The Search for the Elusive Texas Jewel Thief. Rena – thank you so much for being here.

Rena Pederson:

Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you.

A Kaufmann:

And our co-host today is our friend Bill McKenzie, Senior Editorial Advisor and Pulitzer Prize winner who – exactly – applause for Bill!

Bill McKenzie:

And I should interject right here, she hired me in 1991. So, there we go.

A Kaufmann: I did not know that. Was that when you started at the Dallas Morning News?

R Pederson:

Best decision I ever made.

B McKenzie:

We had gotten to know each other for two or three years for that. And I wrote some op eds for them. And one thing led to another.

A Kaufmann: That was why you were editorial page editor, yes. And so Bill, you started on the on the ed page there.

B McKenzie:

Yep

A Kaufmann:

That’s amazing. Yeah, I had no idea what we had here. We’ve got some real, some real powerhouses here. And I want to talk journalism with you guys, with some who really have some in-depth knowledge of that world.

But I want to start with the book The King of Diamonds. This is, this is a bit of a departure from your previous book, which was The Burma Spring: Aung San Suu Kyi and the New Struggle for the Soul of a Nation. How did this The King of Diamonds, which we would love for you to tell us about come out and come about?

R Pederson:

Well, back in 1970 when I first came to Dallas, I worked for UPI right out of grad school, and while I was working the wires late at night, reading the news from around the country and from Dallas and Texas, I came across this story about this jewel thief that couldn’t be caught. And that was just catnip, because I grew up on Nancy Drew books.

And I think all reporters are really detectives at heart, so I tucked that away in my mind. I wasn’t in the right place to pursue it. At that time, I worked the overnight at UPI because I was the newest, youngest employee, I had to work all night and sleep in the day. But, you know, years later, it sort of stayed with me and marinated. And then years later, while I was teaching at SMU I thought, you know, I’m going to do what I wanted to do, yeah, and I’m going see if I can find that jewel thief.

A Kaufmann:

So it’s the story of a jewel thief here in Dallas, Texas, right?

R Pederson:
That’s right. He stole millions in jewels for some of the from some of the wealthiest people in Dallas, who at that time were some of the wealthiest people in the country. HL Hunt’s daughter, Margaret Hunt Hill, oil man, Clint Murchison, Herman Lay, of Lay’s potato chips, Jim Ling of LTV, Ling Tim. So he defied the FBI, and Scotland Yard, and the local police. They just couldn’t catch him. It went on for roughly 15 years, actually, from the middle (19)50s to 1970. And then they stopped. But I could make a good case, I think, that he was the best jewel thief in U.S. history, not just because of the duration, not just because of the amount he stole.

He stole the equivalent of $6 million in jewels, and not just because of the compact area that he hit. He hit mostly in Preston Hollow, Highland Park, and University Park. So it’s a very compact area.

A Kaufmann:

Which is very the most affluent areas of Dallas.

R Pederson:

Yes, and so it’s just remarkable that somebody could get by that long without getting caught in such a defined area. But really, really made him stand out is that he did such acts of daring do. He climbed across roofs, he climbed trees. He was just remarkably nimble. But he also did not think that he came in while people were in their homes, asleep in their beds, walked like I am, or entertaining downstairs with friends are watching TV.

Jim Ling and his wife were watching TV. They had a security guard patrolling the house with the guard dog and the “King of Diamonds” climbed straight up the wall of their house to the second story, and in the window, and down to their dressing room. So that was part of the mystique about him is that he did these incredible things, but also it was very peculiar.

A lot of people said that – you know, it was so peculiar because he would come into their homes while they’re sleeping and walk by them in their pajamas, and you think about having somebody in your room while you’re asleep

A Kaufmann:
That’s creepy.

R Pederson:

Vulnerable – he hid in their closets.

One woman, Barbara Verrell, told me she’d been to dinner at her friends, they got back around midnight, and as she was walking up the stairs, she heard a sound like “Click.”

So she called down to her husband, she said, “Honey, have you locked up yet?”

And he said, “Yes, I am now.”

She said, “Good.”

So she walked into their bedroom, where she heard the sound, and she looked around, and she noticed her closet door was open. So she went over, looked in her closet a little bit, shut the door, went to bed, put on her pajamas, went to bed, woke up the next morning, and the closet door was wide open. She was in the closet the whole time, and of course, her jewels were missing.

But what really spooked her was that he was so close to her and such proximity, she said, even 50 years later, when I talked to her. She said, “I have not opened the closet door since then, that I didn’t think about it.” So it definitely leaves scars, and I think that’s part of why people remember it today. Is because it went on for so long they never could catch him. And it was so odd, right?

A Kaufmann:

Well, this is, I mean, it’s true, it’s True Crime. And there’s just such a fascination with True Crime right now. Are you another true crime? Do you listen to True Crime podcasts? Maybe watch Only Murders in the Building. I love that.

R Pederson:

Slow horses. I like mysteries. I like trying to solve them before they reveal them. So yes, I bet I’m at it -Rena Pederson.

A Kaufmann:

And is this book is kind of a second, second chapter, in a way for you, like you spent all that time in journalism and you’ve actually even written about second chapters. Can you talk about that? You know, the namesake of this building, President Bush, is famous for. He loves talking about his second chapter now is that, as an artist and a painter, he loves painting. And it looks like True Crime authorship is your second chapter?

R Pederson:

Oh, very much. So I wrote a book, in 2003 called What’s Next? about women changing direction at midlife to do something more meaningful to them, something that they always wanted to do. And people would come up to me all the time and say, Well, what are you going to do? You’re still at the paper.

And indeed, I was, and just the time was not, not right then, but seven years ago in 2015, I thought, you know, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this. If I’d known it would take seven years, I’m not sure I would have. But I’m glad I did. It was a real stretch. It was a real stretch.

A Kaufmann:

Bill, I’d love to expand more on this. Journalists as detectives idea. I love the way you put that, and it’s true, you’re searching for the truth. Or, are you now? The world of journalism is changing. Is that still true?

B McKenzie:
Well, I first want to say this, and Rena and I were just talking about this. This book is a page turner. It is also really good journalism. And the more I read it, it is True Crime. And I grew up in Fort Worth at this time this stuff was happening, it was, it was a big deal. And yet it is more than just crime. It is. There’s a lot of interviewing, there are a lot of constant going back to these sources. And it’s really a piece of journalism, as much as anything, I think.

R Pederson:

Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that coming from you. Because you’re a terrific journalist.

A Kaufmann:
Did you do investigative journalism at some point in your career?

R Pederson:
Everything but sports.

A Kaufmann:

So far –

B McKenzie:

Which was the one thing I wanted to do and didn’t do.

R Pederson:

Leave that to other people,

B McKenzie:

So, to follow up on what Andrew is saying. We obviously are seeing a change in journalism today, and you, particularly, and myself as well. We were fortunate to be in journalism at a time where we were, you know, flush with cash, and we could do a lot of things. I heard somebody say the other day, and I’d forgotten this, that The Dallas Morning News sent 28 reporters from sports to the Olympics in 1992. You know, also we were sending reporters out to cover not only Texas candidates running for president (This is before George W Bush). We’re saying they’re covering everybody. I have, you know, being a pack rat, I’ve come across some of those places. So those days are gone.

So I’m in no illusion we’re going back. But where do you see us going? Where do you see journalism going?

R Pederson:

Well, gosh, that’s a terrific question. You’re right. Those were flush. That was the golden era.

We like to say when we get together, the old hands, that we were there when it was fun and profitable. I remember one year we were anticipating hitting a circulation of a million on Sundays, and we got up to 800,000 something, I think. And, you know, and then the internet happened.

Totally new ball game. And today, I think if you look at the recent circulation figures, The Dallas Morning News print circulation is like 67,000, their digital is about the same. The Fort Worth Star Telegram is 37,000 print. I’m not sure about their digital. But that bothers me, because you need people in the community to cover the community. And you need places to print that and people to read it who know what’s going in, going on in their community, and what community voices have to say. So I worry people get their news from a smattering of places like podcasts, like TV, radio, but it’s abbreviated usually. It’s usually distilled through one voice.

And that was the thing about newspapers, that it was team effort, usually. And you worked under the maxim that you newspapers shouldn’t get more than 20% ahead of its audience, 20% ahead of its community, or 20% behind. And now I think we’re just struggling to keep up, right? Just struggling to keep up. So I wonder who’s covering City Hall? Who’s covering the police? I did find in The King of Diamonds that there were police reporters in but they got comfortable with their beat. Sometimes that’s a danger. I covered the federal beat. I’m not sure anybody covers the federal beat in Dallas anymore.

There were so many important federal agencies and federal courts in particular, so you do hope that there’s somebody watching and taking notes.

B McKenzie:

On the other hand, we did have this last year – speaking of Pulitzers – The Lookout Santa Cruz, a nonprofit site started by Ken Doctor, who was a journalist, if not professor, somebody who’s often cited in journalism circles, you know, as an expert, and he started this site in Santa Cruz. And my recollection, this was when they had big, huge winter storms hit there, and they did all this really good reporting, and they won a Pulitzer. So, I mean, there are examples of these nonprofits that are there at the local level.

R Pederson:

Yeah, it’s a new model, a hybrid model. It’s like the morning news getting people to sponsor their education coverage that made me uncomfortable at first, getting money from well to do readers to pay for coverage of education. But so far, it looks like it’s working, and the education reporting has remained, that’s right, remained good. Yeah, you have things like The Texas Tribune. I actually think you asked about what the future is going to you guys. I think it’d be more of those hybrids and partnerships like KERA partners with the Denton paper. I think that’s going to be part of the survival that people will partner with each other to stay afloat, right?

B McKenzie:

And then the question is.

And I don’t think any of us knows. The answer is, will there be enough of them to make up for the deficit that we have seen of the decline of so many local papers? And you know.

R Pederson:

Well, kudos to you. You did through The Catalyst. You did a wonderful essay about the need for community journalism, and you had a figure in there about the number of papers that had gone out of existence since 2005. It was 43,000.

B McKenzie:

I don’t recall top of my head, but it was, it was, it was a real a percentage that will get your attention.

R Pederson:

Yeah, it was shocking. It really was shocking.

A Kaufmann:

Yeah. And that’s where we all follow the national news so much, and it’s often a lot, like following up your favorite sports team or you’re rooting for a side but government really affects you most at the local level. You can talk about national politics, but local politics is what really affects a lot of your day to day life.

But it seems like people don’t care about it so much. And then the is the tail wagging the dog, then people don’t care as much. There’s not as much coverage. How do we make people care about it?

R Pederson:

Yeah, that’s true, and so many people are critical of the media today. It’s restoring credibility. I know what The Morning News, they’ve added this community editor. A lot of people are doing that. They used to call it an ombudsman, ombudsman, and I’m not sure people knew exactly what that was.

A Kaufmann:

I thought that’s what you put your feet on next the couch, right?

R Pederson:

Yeah, that’s right. But I think we’re going to have to experiment like that and have more of a dialog, right? With readers. It really annoys me when people will be attacking what they call “the media,” as if it’s some monolithic creature. And I’ll ask him, I said, were you including Fox News in that, or are you including Joe Rogan in that? Who? Who is the media? Media? Yeah. And the truth is, they, they need to define, and when they do, they it’s usually some small thing where they disagreed, had a different political opinion with. That was a difficult thing about being an editorial page editors, no matter what your opinion is, somebody’s going to have a different one.

A Kaufmann:

Right.

R Pederson:

And back then you just had to worry about him writing you a hot letter or calling you and saying, How dare you? Today. You got to worry about your personal safety.

B McKenzie:

Right.

R Pederson:

So, it’s a different game.

A Kaufmann:

Well, you actually bring up an interesting point. I think one of the one of my struggles with the news, when I watch the news today often, is that and read it too, is the line between opinion and news has blurred. And you know, the hot opinion takes are really bring in attention – and it’s not as always as clear to tell am I watching news or am I watching opinion?

As an opinion page editor, how did you make sure that those lines were clear?

R Pederson:

Well, it was easier back then, and I think there was a really a clear boundary between what was news and what was opinion. And then people started labeling it, and then News Analysis kind of crept into the front page. I think that ship has sailed. I don’t think you can put that back together. I think we can try. Certainly, things are pretty clear. People would often call and say, “Well, I read your editorial the other day, and you know, how dare you?”

They were probably talking about an op ed column. And so we would periodically run a facsimile of the opinion pages and explain, this isn’t, this is an editorial – tt’s the opinion of the paper. These are the literacy editor. That’s your opinion. We give much more space to that which we did. And here are the guest columns. We give much more space to that.

I used to sometimes invite people, if they were really irate, to just come down and try doing it.

A Kauffman:

And that’s how Bill got his first

R Pederson:

1991 – The world changed. But you know to have people come in, and today you see lots of “top of mind” opinions, no matter where you are, but to come in at that time, we would have a staff meeting at 8 or 8:30 discuss what was happening. What we should take a stand on, and what that might be then would break. And they’d have to write, well, they’d have to have the copy back into me by noon, so that we could send it downstairs and get it set and to type, and then send a proof up, which we would have to have proof read and approve to go out by six o’clock, which was when the trucks were at the back dock

A Kauffman:

Right.

R Pederson:

Ready, revving their engines. So, I mean, you invite most people to come in and write an editorially in that short of time on arms control, you know. it’s a lot harder than you think.

B McKenzie:

And I would say, probably our most memorable time together was, was September 11, and a like all of us, remember where we were. I was getting ready to come into work, and my mother called and said, “You need to turn on the TV.”

And I did.

And I called you (Rena), and then we were, you know, driving into work. And we used to have what was called the back dock, where you parked and others parked. And so I was walking up the back dock the same as you, and you said “they just hit the Pentagon.”

And it’s just a sense of disbelief.

But then we went into our conference room, and, like everybody else, watched it on TV, and it was, you know, you have all these emotions as a human being. You can’t believe this, and yet, you have your professional responsibilities as a journalist. And I remember we were putting out a special edition, I think that early that afternoon, and, you know, we had to figure out, okay, what are we going to do?

Nobody prepares for this. Nobody. There’s no way.

And we had to, I don’t, I don’t remember all of the different roads we went down. All I remember mine was to kind of write about some of the historical parallels. And so I called a historian who was so upset. This historian said, “I can’t talk.”

And hung up the phone. And then I called somebody else, George Christian, who’s no longer living, had been LBJ press secretary, and he was just wonderful. And he said, and, you know, it was like an hour after this hit, and he, as I recall, was, I think that day or the next day on his way to London, so he’s having to redo his plane and everything.

R Pederson:

Oh, wow.

B McKenzie: And we talked through it. You know, what does this mea? And all that by noon – probably earlier than noon, because you had to get that out.

R Pederson:

Yeah, we did a multi part layout, I think, where we tried to walk to it. But the overall theme was, stay calm, look for constructive measures. We will get over we will get through this. So, but it was, it was very Churchillian.

A Kaufmann:

And that was the that was the editorial that day?

R Pederson:

We even had a front-page editorial.

B McKenzie:

I don’t know people, I think, sold it on the street that afternoon, as I recall,

R Pederson:

Yeah, it was truly a “Stop the presses!” moment.

A Kaufmann:

I still have my copy at my parent’s house. I came across it the other day. We still have that, you know, that was, that was the day too, on the sports section. The sports section, a lot of days had the two section, sports page. You know, it was a different it was a different time, but I loved hearing those.

B McKenzie:

One other story, not to bore our listeners with this – was the 2000 presidential election. I was telling some I teach at SMU, and I was talking to some students about this other day – we had as customary, we had a Bush wins editorial and a Gore wins editorial, because you have to kind of – you can’t write that on the fly. And I never will forget around 10:30 or so that night, Texas time, we were in our conference room, and we’re looking at and thinking, I remember looking at Rena thinking, I don’t think either…

A Kaufmann:

What’s Plan C?

R Pederson:

We did have a Plan C. I think we came up with one.

B McKenzie:

Yeah, yeah. We had to otherwise.

I think it was much later than 10:30 they just kept extending the deadline, extending the eadline. It was so nerve wracking.

A Kaufmann:

We hadn’t seen one of those in modern times where it was down to such few votes. And yeah, we didn’t, I didn’t plan for that. I was like, I’m not going to bed till there’s a winner.

B McKenzie:

Nobody would have expected that. Yeah, we went with Plan C, and then we had to keep doing it day after day after day. But, I remember that day that night too, just thinking, This isn’t going to work out as planned.

A Kaufmann:

So do y’all miss being in the newsroom?

R Pederson:

Well, from time to time. I do wish I were there now, in a way, not to take the hot calls and all that. But there’s some periods of history that are thin with history. Not much happen. There’s some that are thick with history, and where are we in one now,

B McKenzie:

There sure are.

There was a great cartoon in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, and it’s the people at the amusement park. And, you know, they used to have the little boats that people would ride through tunnels and whatnot, and they’re entering this dark tunnel, and it’s like the tunnel of the next three weeks.

A Kaufmann:

Where what is going to happen?

R Pederson:

Yeah, the tunnel of uncertainty. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So, I don’t miss that, but I miss being able to talk about things like the constitutional issues. This would be a wonderful time to be a constitutional lawyer, with everything going on and we haven’t seen the end of it yet.

A Kaufmann:

No, no, no, and who knows what’s coming next. I mean, if you’d have said that we had a an assassination attempt on a president, there’s a real former president. There’s a real chance that wasn’t the biggest news story of the of the month. It’s an unbelievable time, and it’s a time where we need good journalists and good sources. So how, as veteran news folk, how would you tell listeners to go about consuming news? Knowing that there’s a lot of social media out there. There’s a lot of different ways to get news. How would you all go about advising we do that in the next year, in the next few weeks?

R Pederson:

Yeah, Bill take it

A Kaufmann:

Yeah, good luck.

B McKenzie:

Yeah. Well, I confess I am old school, so I don’t really use social media, other than to push out things we may have written, you know, something like that. I don’t, unless it’s my favorite football team trying to see if I’m not at a game, following what’s happening. But, you know, check out who else is reporting what you’re reading. Assuming you’re getting this from social media, as opposed to the Dallas Morning News or Wall Street Journal, wherever you may live, your hometown paper.

You know, if you’re getting from social media, just see who’s who publishes that. Who – if you can find who owns it – Do they run corrections? And if I didn’t say so, is anybody else publishing the same thing? Or is this just something that somewhat playing on your emotions, and you can’t find it someplace else? If that’s the case, then good chance it may not be true.

So check those things out before you share it, and believe it.

You know, it may be true, it may not be, do your diligence.

R Pederson:

You know, I think that’s why this PolitiFact has been such an interesting to me, helpful development of checking the facts. But I noticed the community editor at the (Dallas) Morning News the other day, the same thing that people were calling into saying, “You’re slanted this direction, or politically slanted the other direction.”

I always tell people that you have to have a multiplicity of sources. I think I read (Dallas) Morning News, the Austin paper, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Then I watch NPR, listen to things on air. Subscribe to The Atlantic. Now, I had to add The Atlantic and air mail, and I still, you know, don’t have the whole picture. It’s a mosaic, and you have to have all those sources to do it. Most people don’t want to spend the time to do that, but you have to today is so complicated.

B McKenzie:

Completely agree.

A Kaufmann:

Yeah, very much so. I’d love to pivot to another topic, unless, Bill, you want to keep going on journalism? Burma. So Rena is a real friend of the Bush Institute, and really, she wrote the, really, the book on Aung San Suu Kyi, who’s the leader of Burma for a while. And you know, we did a lot of work – we had a program called Liberty and Leadership Program here at Bush Institute, which Reno was a was a real asset to us for. Where we tried to educate young Burmese leaders to go back, and they could go back to their country and really help establish what was for them a very young democracy. Unfortunately, that program is no longer active because the democracy failed in Burma, that the military came in and took over the democracy.

That’s a brief recap.

Rena, I’d love to hear from you. Like what do you think happened in Burma and why didn’t democracy take hold there?

R Pederson:

Well, I’m so glad that you put this on the table, because the Bush Center deserves credit for starting that leadership program, because the last hope for democracy now in Burma are many of the people who went through that program and learned to be leaders like Zin Mar Aung is now the foreign secretary of the shadow government, which is really trying to keep democracy alive at the point of a gun. The junta came back and took over because they saw that democracy was making gains. And it wasn’t so much that democracy failed, but that democracy was hijacked by the junta and Aung San Suu Kyi was put back under house arrest after 15 years.

And today, I think there’s the one hopeful thing I saw just the other day where two senators and interesting enough, they’re both in their 80s – Ben Cardin and Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell has been a longtime supporter, strong supporter, of democracy in Burma, and they have sent a letter to the White House urging the White House to revitalize their assistance, their aid, their focus on Burma, because the time is extremely great right now because China is encircling Burma while it’s in disarray. In China, they’re big advocates of the “Game of Go” which is the Japanese name, but it’s, it’s the same game, and basically it’s a game of encirclement and playing the long game.

And that’s what they’re doing in Burma. So the junta, which got very insecure because democracy was gaining foothold, or stronger foothold, in Burma, took back over, put her back, not just under house arrest, but in prison in one of the most brutal, awful prisons in the world, insane prison, which spelled differently, but it’s just might as well be spelled like insane in dreadful conditions. She is 79 she’ll be 80 next June. She’s in bad health. She’s been in detention most of her adult life. She has, for a long time, had a problem with bone deterioration, because, of course, she never got enough calcium while she’s in prison with the poor diet, and now she has some horrible dental problems.

There was a story that they had the military put out, the story that she had been released back to house arrest, but she’s not in her house.

Nobody can find her, and so they may have moved her to the house of a general. So in a way, she’s being held hostage. She is a shield against people attacking the generals, and at the same time, she’s a hostage for them to bargain with a certain extent. So this proposal by Ben Cardin and Mitch McConnell would ask for revisiting the sanctions that Ron Burma before the economic sanctions, to tighten that up and to tighten them on things like aviation fuel. Because this is not this is hand to hand fighting in most areas, but also aerial fighting with bombs and missiles and drones. And so if we would tighten up on providing the aviation fuel or the insurance for it, which is essential to get it the UK, surprisingly, they were champions for Suu Kyi for a long time, but they have not really joined on newer, tougher sanctions, so we have to lead the way on that.

Another way we could help is – there was a provision that we would not provide lethal aid, that we would provide non lethal aid, but they have narrowed their interpretation of that so much that we’re currently not even providing simple things like medical help or bulletproof vests or radar that could detect drones.

And so we need to revisit that and just do more every way that we can, because if we don’t, we’ll be asking, who lost Burma? Who lost Burma? Because China would love to have Burma to use their coastline as their southern port, because of energy, to import more energy, and for other reasons, they’ve been building railroads, building oil refineries. They’re on the move, and we’re not. So we need to, you know, it’s so hard with all the awful things going on in the world, the Sudan, the Middle East, but this is another thing, you know, we can chew gum and walk and we can stand up for democracy where it needs help, and we’ve kind of taken our eyes off of that.

So I would love to see them, see us do that.

A Kaufmann:

Yeah, I think, you know, you jumped right to my next question. Well, no, but it’s perfect, a good segue. That is we, the it’s you hear all the time like, “We can’t help in you in Ukraine, we can’t help in the Middle East, because we have too much going on here.”

And how do we – there was a time where people were really rallying behind democracy, and it feels like we’re not doing that right now.

How – I ask this all the time when guests come through. But how can we make people care about democracy overseas? And make it feel tangible? It always feels so far away – like these are things happening 1000s and 1000s of miles away, and how do we really bring that home? And why you should care?

R Pederson:

Yeah, you know the old self interest. What’s in it for you? What’s the threat to you? I think President Bush did a good job of doing that with his strong supported democracy and picked up by the Bush center. I think we just need to speak up, to pick up the torch again and say what needs to be done through it, that whatever form that we can.

A Kaufmann:

So we always like to wrap our conversations with a question that that we kind of spring on the guest and so the question is. I know, get ready. What are we not talking enough about as a nation that we should be talking about there? We’re talking about all sorts of different things. But what really isn’t getting the attention that that it should?

R Pederson:

Well, I think people feel so disaffected. Now, and it’s part of this. They don’t trust the media anymore. They don’t trust the government anymore, and I think we need to rally their spirits to find the right voice that says the right thing. I’d like to see people of character stand up and speak up, and not for any one particular person, but to speak up for rule of law, to speak up for our basic American values, in a way, it doesn’t sound like a civics textbook, because we know these in our heart. We’ve got it in our marrow, you know, to do the right thing, and we just need to call that up better for people, it just comes back to leadership. And again, I’m not trying to sell for the Bush Center.

A Kaufmann:

We don’t mind if you do!

R Pederson:

No, I just think you’re playing an important role to do that. Maybe provide a louder megaphone for some, you know, stomp your feet,

A Kaufmann:

Yep, yeah. We gotta, we gotta believe, yeah, yeah. I think we’re inherently optimists here, and we still believe that America’s best days are ahead of us and the arc of history isn’t in a straight line, and we’re we are the long term arc is headed in the right direction. And while we these are challenging times, we still believe that there’s a lot to be grateful and optimistic about.

R Pederson:

True. True.

A Kaufmann:

You know, I think voices like yours are important to help, to help us keep spreading that word,

R Pederson:

Oh, and yours. Thank you for having me on the program! A special honor. Oh, absolutely.

A Kaufmann:

Bill – Thank you great to be here, for being here.

Thank you, Rena!

N Hawkins:

We hope you enjoyed the episode. Let us know what you think and @thebushcenter on your favorite social media platform. Thank you for listening.