Jeff Greenfield, where did you get the title "Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow"?

And when Neil Nyron, my editor, called to say, `I want you to do a book,' he said, `Look, I don't want to--I don't want a tick-tock. I don't want it--democracy...

You get a couple of things. What you get--I'm a--I'll be a--modest enough to tell you what Publishers Weekly said you get. You get a very funny book...

Well, because--because you--it's inappropriate, I think, to hear people doing spin--now it's perfectly appropriate, and I've done it a lot, on television...

Everybody i--in the po--let's--let's start th--in--in the first post-election blush, within 48 hours, it struck me that both sides were picking up pudules...

This is a quote from your book: "A generation of jaded coverage had taught us to assume the worst of everyone in public life."

What are you talking about?

But I--it's as if--if Harry Truman were announcing the Marshall Plan today, I think our coverage would be, `In a desperate effort to win the votes of...

I think it was a--a--it was a slow build-up, but certainly there are a lot of things. One of them, the con--the con--the--the--the conventional wisdom...

So I think you throw those things together, and somewhere in that period, between, you know, the assassination of John Kennedy and--and the resignation...

Yeah.

I was working for Mayor Lindsay at the time as a speechwriter.

In New York.

He was then--well, he had just lost the Republican nomination for re--for renomination as mayor and was running as an Independent, and two years later,...

Yeah.

In Washington as a Senate aide. And as things were then, with very different rules, when he announced for president, the Senate campaign's--the Senate...

I have been hooked on politics from childhood. I mean, when I tell people that I got hooked at the age of nine, they look at me as if I was somewhat...

In Connecticut, my grandfather's cottage, with my mom--in Danbury, Connecticut. She said, `You can't listen to the Yankee games this week because there's...

'52.

I was interested...

Eisenhower-Taft.

It was the Republican convention.

And I--I just thought this was the most amazing stuff of all. I didn't--I remember to this day, and we're talking a long while ago, picking up a tabloid--New...

My parents were--my mom w--my--my parents were politically active. My dad was treasurer of the first reform Democratic club in New York to win a district...

Where had you been up to '67? In school and...

And I'll tell you what I learned, in retrospect. I was up for a Supreme Court clerkship, and I didn't get one. And I know that I was sufficiently hypnotized...

In the mid-'70s. I never actually worked there. I was a contributing editor. So I would go over there and sit in on s--on these editorial meetings and...

Do you ever hear yourself, in the middle of a commentary, sounding that way and say, `Ooh, I've got to get out of this'?

What do you hear before a presidential debate? You know, `It's important the candidates appear presidential.' This I know I have never said. `This is...

Because he was a man who actually thought what--thought. You could see the thought process going on, and he never, never, never thought like the herd....

Now we talked about a lot of things, but go back for a moment to the '67 Bob Kennedy association.

How did that happen?

At Yale.

And they--they hired people right out of law school, who worked for a year as like kind of a junior legislative aide. I don't remember the name of it,...

Well, I'm su--it was a couple of things. First of all, you know, I assume, on sheer magnetism, he was a president in waiting from the time he entered...

You know, it's hard to tell this to our kids; that there was a period in this--not in my lifetime--when you would wake up and politics was at--was front...

No, no. I was at--no, I graduated. Never took the bar, but I graduated.

My dad was a lawyer--a single practitioner lawyer in New York. I would say that--that, as I said, he--he was active in kind of grass-roots politics,...

Well, I mean, the Tammany--Tammany Hall was the regular Democratic organization, the people who--who were the heirs to the Littleton box--Carmine DeSapio....

This was my--if you're raised where I was raised, that's the--that's the sea you swim in. You know, you--but you can break. You can--you know, I've...

The Upper West Side of Manhattan, basically from Lincoln Center up to Columbia University west of Central Park.

It means it's a--it's a neigh--it's a neighborhood of people where--where cultural and political liberalism is ingrained. It's a neighborhood with a...

But your mom was a strong anti-Communist.

And you still live in this neighborhood today.

W--without talking for the moment about some of your earlier experiences, then is it your dream that you're writing books about an election in 2000...

Does it get any better, I guess.

And the way you put it is very instructive. I've--the line that I've used in--in talking to the next generation is if you want to be where you've got...

Yeah. I don't think--I think--I think both of these fellows could have been presidential candidates, say, 50 years ago. You know, people talk a lot...

But I don't--I didn't--I don't find those folks that far out of the mix. I do think that if you had told me, at the start of my life, `Someday you will...

Well, you know, people--I've found that a lot of people in--in public life tend to exaggerate their relations with important people. I was 24 years...

First day I spent on his staff, I followed him over to some education committee. It wasn't even the Department of Education then. It was the office....

So there were these elements of him that made him a really fascinating fellow, beyond the fact that he was running for president.

I was in the Ambassador Hotel, dressing, getting ready to go out to a victory party, and the phone rang upstairs and somebody downstairs said, `Something's...

Because it was at the--it was `the season of the witch,' if I can quote an old song of the era. You know, Martin Luther King had been killed six weeks...

Yeah.

Not that well. I mean, I've worked with him on--ghost, you know, a couple of chapters of a book of his, but I--I did not know him particularly well.

I think was over working...

Yeah. I was in New York. You know what? No, I wasn't. I was in England. I was in England doing a--a--a tape of--I was a "Firing Line" panelist at the...

I was then married, yes?

No.

Because--because I think Chappaquiddick dropped--or raised--I'm trying to think of the right verb--a curtain. There was a tradition--and you can argue...

And I think Chappaquiddick was one of those moments where the press fundamentally changed its approach. And then you add a couple of years later Watergate,...

You know, I've re--I honestly--you mean politically?

Well...

Oh, the way he handled it? It was terrible. I mean, it was just one of the worst public relations disasters, or maybe it goes beyond public relations....

I don't know. I wasn't.

I just--you know, I would tell you if I knew, but, blessedly, as I say, I was over in England, you know, waiting for the--but whatever happened, it...

The--I think--I think Lyndon Johnson's character flaws would have doom--doomed his--doomed his presidency. And, in fact, I think it may have been David...

You mentioned Peter Edelman.

And there's another quote in your book--ju--jump 30 years ahead. He worked for Bill Clinton, had worked for Bobby Kennedy.

His wife, Marian Wright Edelman...

...close friend of Hillary Clinton's.

You write about Bill Clinton, `He demonstrated contempt for the office literally and symbolically.'

Symbolically, I--I mean that beyond that, if--if you are--if--if you regard the Oval Office as your--as the place you can do pretty much whatever you...

In fact, one of the things that I always asked during impeachment, because I was never particularly impressed by the perjury and lying--I mean, that's...

Let me ask you a--a somewhat leading question? Is Bobby Kennedy your high and Bill Clinton your low?

Who's your low?

I mean your low in your lifetime. We've got Richard Nixon we haven't asked you about.

Jeff Greenfield, in his lifetime: law degree from Yale, worked for Bobby Kennedy. How did you get into the "Firing Line"? At that--at that point, what...

Were you ideological?

How long did you do that?

For the rest of your life, big chunks of the jobs--how long with ABC?

How long with "Nightline"?

The whole time.

What else have you done? CBS for a while.

And why CNN?

Nobody says in the middle of a--of an election cri--post-election--disputed election, `Well, you know, it's November; it's sweeps month. We--you know,...

Palmeany (pronounced PalmANEY)?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's a--Palmeany is a--is a dish that is served at Russian restaurants. It's a--it's a--basically soup with--with dumplings that have are themselves...

It's chicken. It's a fancy--it's a chicken soup stock with dumplings. I mean, and you put mustard in it and a little sour cream. It's OK.

Andrew Bergman...

...is a dear friend. He is the man--screenwriter/director. He wrote the original story for "Blazing Saddles," "The In-Laws." He wrote "Honeymoon in...

Jerry Della Femina is an advertising legend and now successful restaurateur. He is the man who grew up a poor Italian in Brooklyn and claims he became...

Gerry Imber is a prominent plastic surgeon in Manhattan. He's a guy that all of us think sooner or later we might need the services of; also, a very...

It's through a con--through a connection when he was an old chum of one of these other people, and we all kind of came together.

Michael Kramer is a political writer. He's written for New York, for Time magazine. He's now writing for the New York Daily News. Again, met him close...

Yes, that was a--well, that was a personal experience. When Michael was covering the father for--I can't remember if it was New York magazine or Time....

Joel Siegel is the film critic--longtime film critic and probably knows more insignificant trivia about sports and movies and old politics--if it happened...

What do you get out of meeting old friends who know your worst flaws and like you nonetheless? I mean, what do you get out of people who care about--care...

Well, that was real--that's true. I mean, you know, people--one of the things that I tried to do in this book is to be, kind of, very blunt about how...

You also write in your book about cynicism: cynicism...

...of politicians, the press and popular culture. What are you getting at?

But I think if you look at the kind of humor that is around on late-night comedy--and I don't mean cable; I'm talking about the Lenos, the Lettermans,...

Yeah.

Well, remember, some of them were deserved. I mean, I--you know, when--when--when people began--here's a good example. In 1962 or '3, the most popular...

It then became something--and, by the way, I had people--this is another thing you--you can point to Bill Clinton's behavior as helping to accelerate:...

Yes.

A very good question because I think a lot of us who do that show are constantly confronted by the argument, `Well, how--if you feel this way, what...

Is he what we're really like, though, if you cut away the veil that you get on broadcasting?

Does he pay you to go on?

So you give him your talent for nothing?

How old are your kids?

Casey...

What do they do?

What's the difference in their cynicism levels and yours?

For?

Your friendship with Joe Lieberman goes back to when?

What was he like then?

The other one was Paul Tsongas, the quietest, most self-effacing, most invisible member of our class, which, you know, when I--when I--in '92, when...

W--well, as you know, I'm a huge fan of C-SPAN. Just watch--would rather watch it than almost anything, except "The Sopranos" and a really fine baseball...

When you watch the Senate, as a s--as a se--as a series of sketches, when they were debating, say, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty or some major piece of...

But I--I realize that this is not what my colleagues want to hear--`Oh, we're for opening up everything all the time.' I don't know. I'm not sure. I--you...

Yeah.

And I--by the way, I--you know, that--that's fine. And someday--I once asked Rehnquist, `Are we ever going to have television?' And he said something...

...had said--had said, `Not in my lifetime.'

Yeah, `over my dead body.'

Yeah, OK. That's right, it is.

"Greenfield at Large" at 10:30 Eastern time.

It's one of the things I've wanted to do, is to have a conversation show with people who don't come on armed with their talking points and blast faxes,...

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.