katherine graham and jacqueline kennedy onassis to have dinner. at katherine graham's house. i thought, well, i must be the most important person here. and i got over to this lovely dinner at katherine graham's house. and it's me, the two women on the end, and all of these male senators. and here's what happened. jacqueline kennedy had edited a book called "remember the ladies" from abigail adams plea to her husband when he was writing the constitution. obviously, he didn't do it. and it was about all the things that we didn't know about herstory, all the women in our background that had just been left out of history. i mean, they take history too

seriously. and figured there was no reason to put hers in it. so she wanted this as part of the official part of the bicentennial. it made sense to me. i thought it was about time women learned of history. i had passed it out. someone said to me, they were, like, no way. so i'm sitting here at this dinner, and i'm thinking, these are probably the two most powerful women i can think of in washington. and these guys are saying no. and they're saying things like, our vision, for what women -- probably plant bulbs and read. they wouldn't have anything to do with it. so, you know, at that point, i kind of drove home thinking, what am i doing here? their big compromise was, they would allow the book to go to europe and asia and the u.s. information libraries, but that would be it. it would not be an official part

of the bicentennial and the united states. i guess they were so afraid that we would get too radical. i don't know. so that happened. oh, the wonderful story about my coming into armed services with my wonderful african-american colleague, ron dellums, and there were obviously no african-american women in armed services. and the chairman went ballistic and only gave us one chair to share. because he said we were each worth only half of his regular members, and he had vetoed our coming on the committee, and he wanted absolutely no part of it. well, thank you very much and welcome to washington. so that was an interesting thing. maybe many of you know barney frank who's a good friend of mine in congress. and he always says that was the only half-assed thing i did when i was there, but i'm not sure that's true.

i figured he just didn't know enough about the other things i was doing. well, then i had been very interested in women in the military because there were young women who wanted to participate. so at the air force in particular was letting more women in and stuff. and i'm home one weekend. and these wonderful young women, air force officers, come to see me and said, oh, it's just terrible at lowry. and i said, what? well, we're supposed to go to the officers club because we're officers and it's -- but they have these topless go-go dancers in there. i said, what? so i go back to washington. and i call antonio shays, the first woman undersecretary of the air force. she said, that can't happen. i said, trust me, it's happening. she says, never worry. i'm putting out an order right away to stop all of that. so she said she did. i'm back a couple weeks later.

and the women said, can't you do anything about it? i said, what do you mean? i go back and call tony shays and say, i thought you put out an order. she said, "i did." so she called in the people. oh, we didn't send it out. we thought you were kidding. so we had a lot of ways where we really found that women were not making -- they weren't exactly excited about having us there. i also remember, too, when i first got to congress, we were supposed to have a separate credit card, you know, for our bills. i couldn't use my husband's credit card because you're turning them in to be reimbursed. so i applied to american express to get a separate card. and they tell me you can't because you're of child-bearing age. and actually, i had exactly the same problem, i had gone back to close the house.

we were going to live in. because joe was busy, and it was a crazy time. and i got back and they said you can't. you're of child-bearing age. so equal credit had not quite come at that time. so i got some people together. we got the equal credit bill through. and then i kept hearing from women that this was still going on. so i said, what's happening? so we called over arthur burns who was then chairman of the federal reserve. maybe some of you remember. and we said, we passed this bill. and women all over are telling us they're not getting -- oh, he said, we thought you just meant it for shopping. so, i mean, i could tell these stories all night. they're just absolutely amazing. but i think one of the things, too, we find everywhere is that women don't celebrate women enough. you know, one of the things we passed was to celebrate august the 26th, which is the day the 19th amendment passed. you would think that would be a

big day. over half the population gets to vote. but we're all too busy. and then we have wonderful helen reddy coming out here one time. she sang "i am woman," this whole bit. and we decided, i couldn't get back because we had a vote. so jim was looking for someplace to take her where there was some monument to women. and we found monuments to buffaloes, monuments to everything. but the only one we could find for a woman was this thing in city park that's just kind of, you know, liberty or justice or something. they're always -- no real women. so that was also interesting. and then i see marvelous sally brown back here. they decided there should be some kind of memorial in downtown denver where those wonderful suffragettes met with the wonderful supporting males. and it was a half and half in

this church where they got this thing through in 1893 for women to vote. that's very historic. fantastic. we discovered that that church had been where the first national bank was down on 17th street. so going in and explaining to them the wonderful historic place where they were and how we'd like to have something. you may as well have told them that there was going to be a nuclear attack at 3:00. i think we finally got to put a little tiny plaque down on the floor. i don't think anybody's ever seen it. and now they've moved it somewhere else, so i have no idea where it is now. maybe it's been removed to the circular file. but i do think those things are history. and it's wonderful to know we had forefathers and foremothers that were really out there caring, especially in 1893. it's amazing that passed because the silver panic was on. this place was in like a depression. and yet, men came out and said no women should be able to vote. you know, i'm still lobbying for

something down there. i don't know, maybe we should just all march down there this afternoon and put up a monument. i don't know. but colorado tends to go one way and then another. because while we were doing all of this in the '70s, the other side said oh, my goodness. we were asleep at the switch. all these hopeaholics moved in here. you know, these dreamers. we've got to get back to reality. and things like the mountain states legal foundation was established with people like james watt. i had never met mr. watt.

i will never forget, he called had he from the '70s from the mountain states legal foundation. he said, i'm james watt, i'm a constituent, and i would like for you to get me some feminists who are against the equal rights amendment. now, i said, okay, which one of my crazy friends is trying to crank me up? and, of course, he didn't think that was funny at all because it really was james watt and not a friend. so nevertheless, we were never too close. but you know what happened. he got promoted to the department of interior. he did wonderful things like turn the buffalo around on the seal so it was facing to the right and not the left. very important things. he refused to take private land that was donated for conservation purposes. and the great thing, he didn't allow the beach boys to appear on the mall in 188 -- or 1983. instead we had wayne newton. which even aggravated me. she liked the beach boys. well, he didn't last long, and he went on.

but i understand not long ago he gave a speech -- i guess it was in the '90s -- gave a speech up in wyoming. he hasn't lost his touch. he was saying, if we can't change all of this horrible federal intervention from outside through the jury box -- or through the ballot box, we're going to have to do it through the cartridge box. okay, well, all right. there you go. and we had ann boreseth move into the e.p.a. and try to undo a lot of clean air and cut the funding. and her husband, bob buford, moved boo the blm. you know, they were the private sector's friends. they could do whatever they wanted with public lands. many of us saw colorado as the

place -- the lungs of the nation where people kind of came to breathe. and we wanted to preserve this. and we wanted to have this put away for future generations. and they didn't see it that way. so there was some real hoopty do, as you know. we went back and forth. there was the era of the colorado crazies, and there were all of these things. but it still continues to go. now, you know, some of it -- i realize i'm running out of time, and i could talk all night on this stuff, as you can tell, being a recovering politician in the 12-step process is tough. you turn on the lights. jim claims i open the refrigerator door and i talk for five minutes and realize i'm talking to celery. i've tried to give a lot of thought to what was different in the '70s. what was different? why were we so willing to go out and risk and take on all of these institutions that had been here? you know, most of us were newbys that had come in.

and what a lot of chutzpah to come in here and challenge joe coors and all the powers that be that had been here and felt that it was really their feathdom. what was it that made us do that? you know, we were disappointed with government. we didn't like the war. we didn't like what happened in watergate. we were willing to do impeachment. we were willing to let women have an equal chance and african-americans and hispanics. we really felt needed to be treated differently. why? we hadn't given up on trust, i think. we kind of saw those things and rolled up our shirt sleeves and said, we think we can get in there and do a better job. so we're going to do it. i must say when i was teaching at princeton how frustrated i got because so many of the kids would say, i'm not going to do

that. i'm not going to do those jobs because that's terrible. politics has just gotten awful. rather than saying, i'm going to go in and change it. and i'm trying to think of what made that difference. then once i was in a wedding here in denver. and i began to think, maybe some of us are to be held accountable for their attitudes. at this wedding, what would happen is when anybody my age would hear anybody the bride and groom's age say that they were thinking about going into geology, teaching, the law, doctoring, whatever it was, whoever my age was one of those would move in on that kid and say, you don't really want to be a teacher. oh. you wouldn't believe what's happened. you don't want to go into the law. or you don't want to be -- and i began to think, what do we want them to be? baseball players? i mean, what have we got left that we would say oh, that's

great. you know, the mentoring and bringing along and making them really feel it may not be perfect, but if you get in, maybe you can help change it. that maybe we have been too negative in that. and somehow we have gotten to a point where it's like no one trusts anything anymore. they don't trust any institutions. think of an institution. the church. the government. banks. oh, yeah. investment bankers. yeah. they're all wonderful. people just don't trust them. and we really -- it bothers me that i'm not seeing that passion we had in the '70s resurge and come back because heaven only knows we need a cleansing. the supreme court's decision that corporations are people makes me crazy. the amount of money that you're

going to see spent in the state is going to break your heart because it's going to be just fire hosed in here in this campaign. and you can think of all the things you could rather spend that money on. and that would not be what you want to spend it on. it's going to be negative. i mean, it's going to be like who can slime who the biggest. so how do we get this turned around again? i'm not really sure i know. when i was teaching at princeton, i was teaching people in getting their master's in the school of public service, the woodrow wilson school. so you think, okay, now these are kids getting their master's in public service. and when you say, who's going to run for office and no run raises their hand, i thought i was in the wrong class. so i'd say, then, okay. so what is it you want to be?

and they'd say, maybe george stephanopoulos. or someone like that. you know? and if we're not attracting these bright, young, wonderful people, if we're not reinstilling them with the faith that they can get in there and truly make a difference, we're in trouble. now, to go back again to show how that changed a bit, you know the story about my shearing the chair. the wonderful thing that happened was in 1974, we had the watergate babies come. and we had so many people come into congress that it was kind of like all the people moving into colorado after the war. you couldn't encircle them all and shape them all up fast enough because there were too many of them. and they got through some huge reforms. like you didn't get to be chairman for life.

you had to be elected by the caucus. right. i got rid of my chairman that way. it was wonderful. but, you know, those kind of reforms came that were really needed. so we really need a whole new influx of young people coming in with new ideas to take over such as we tried to do in the '70s. and i think we really led the nation. i think we led the nation in all sorts of things that were just amazing. people blame it had on the altitude. people blame it had on all sorts of things. but i really think it was the western tradition, and people really believing you could live somewhere and make a huge difference and make an impact on the future. so i think all of us need to go

out and think more about how we challenge this next generation. i see them in the occupy movement. i think that's wonderful. but i don't know where it goes, you know. what is their vision? well, their vision is they don't want to have anything to do with politics because it stinks. really? what are you going to do? i don't understand how that works through. and maybe all of us need to engage more with them and see if we can't do a little steering to see where it does go because i think there's many young people with good hearts. i think many of them really feel that their future has been terribly diminished. and they're very worried. but they don't know what to do. and we get to stand around and tell them, don't do this and don't do that because this job isn't nearly what it used to be. that doesn't work. so let me just say again, that was kind of a heavy thing to end on, but i think that we do have sss to look at how we go through these cycles. and i am really ready for another '70s cycle. i am now 71. so come on, everybody, let's have a '70s cycle where we can go back and do some of the wonderful things that i think we

did in the '70s and make the tremendous changes that we did. because i see us going backwards very far. i started out as pro bono publico for rocky mountain planned parenthood. if anybody would have told me that in 2012 it would be under such threat, i would have never believe it had. well, i guess i should have believe it had. and we really need to get many more people involved in politics that have hearts larger than a swollen pea and aren't just -- you know, and that aren't in it to be politicians but to make change. see, i think in the '70s, we

sent a different group of people who didn't go to become politicians. they went because they were mad and they wanted to change things. and i want to see that kind of >> this is being filmed, as you may be aware, by c-span, and we want to get the boom mike over to as close as the person asking the question. so keep that in mind. >> can i have jim schroder stand up and say you can't ask questions, okay, jim? yay, jim. we will have been married 50 years this summer. can you believe that? that's one tough male. who has got a question?

yes, here we go and here comes the boom mike. >> why do you think the republicans have been more successful in getting an influx of getting -- >> the question is why are the republicans of the tea party been better at getting new people excited? >> that's an interesting one. i have not talked to the tea par pea here, but i have in florida where we live now, and that's where you live when you are 70. i would ask them, what is it you are so mad about? and they would say, don't you know? and i would say, i don't really know. so i still don't know.

the conversations about nobody everybody helped me, i was on food stamps and unemployment, i don't want to be sarcastic, but food stamps and unemployment, all of you helped that person. so there is some tremendous disinformation out there that's being fed. you know, in new york, they had a wonderful thing. maybe we should do it here. they had a ceremony where facts were buried. because they said, in the public debate, i mean, facts just mean nothing anymore, it's who shouts the loudest and who puts it out most, which is why all the commercials are so aggravating. it's really troubling to me, too, because you heard the people saying keep government out of my medicare, and we could go on and on. i really tried to find out what

was going on, and i came away thinking i don't know. it was -- i will tell you what. i think part of it was a real sense of frustration that america was not continuing to go forward the way they wanted it to. they did not see the progress they wanted that was applying to them. the tea party and the republicans were able to capture that and say it's because, you know, you have a president that was born in kenna, ya, or doesn have a birth certificate, or a socialists or fill in the blank, or a government that is too big, and so people believe that and we didn't do a good job on the other side. i am looking for backbones. i am looking for backbones to find people that stood up, but i think we have become too nice, and i don't know what to say.

as a woman, i must say probably sarah palin and michele bachmann are the number one and two speakers in america right now. where is the new voices, and it troubles me a lot. anybody else? we have this front row that is active. i like that. >> your children were raised in a political atmosphere, and i wondered how that has affected their lives? >> they claim that they were raised by wild wolfs. they are both very, very politically involved. my daughter -- we have wonderful family discussions. my daughter was clearly a hillary person, and my son an obama person, and they have not

gotten into politics per se. my daughter has been asked to run a couple times in montana, and she rightly looked at it and said this one whole state is one delegation, are you kidding me? and she has two young kids and has not done it. maybe she will. she stays active, and so does my son. my son would get frustrated because he said so many of his friends didn't read the newspaper or watch it. but will they ever be candidates? i don't know. i don't know. i wish. they or some of their friends would be, but i think a lot of them think it's too much sacrifice, which it isn't. there are bad guys but there's a lot of good people. i always say where else can you have this experience of representing the greatest

democracy in the world, and it's incredible, and why don't our young people get chills about that? and again, it's something that has happened to their minds. when i was in law school, you know, the most exciting thing you could do was to work for the united states justice department and be in the frontlines of fighting civil rights and all of those things. now, no, they want to go to the biggest law firm and make the most money. money has kind of overtaken some of that passion. there's a friend of mine, and i say it all the time, and i don't mean to offend anybody, but they say the trouble is, in the '70s we were very proud of our chevrolets and fords and parks and public schools, and this was great, and now we live in gated communities where the new thing is get what you can, can what you get, and sit on the can behind gates, and we have gated our hearts and our wallets, and

we're not interested in public schools because we have our private one and we are not interested in parks because we have our golf, and so why would we want to pay for that stuff? that's really concerning to me because that's tearing at the fabric of society. and, you know, my kids talk about that. but they have lots of friends who are living very happily gated. >> i am upset about what just happened in our legislature. i would like an explanation of how one man can derail representative democracy when he didn't allow the civil unions bill to be voted on because he knew the votes were there. >> she is asking an excellent question about what has happened to democracy when one man can

derail bills? and it's not just here. look, there are two nominations in the federal reserve bank and heaven only knows we need people there and can't get them through, and ambassadors and all sorts can't get through, and that's all terrible. and yet it's going on. it's really time we clear that out. common cause today, to do away with the filibuster, because you can't bring a bill up until you have over 60 votes, and that's crazy and not democracy at all. it's time to go back to the sunshine stuff and into changing the rules and the speaker doesn't have that kind of power. you can be the speaker, but that's supposed to be more like the referee or not like the guy that gets his way and nobody else does. those types of things are really ready for a revolt. it's time to have the revolt. and let's go get these young

people channelled in that way and tell them they still have the power to do it before we all lose it. yeah? >> [ inaudible ]. >> what went into your decision to leave congress when you did. because i am very disappointed when i see good people leaving, like olympia snowe is leaving now? >> what went into my mind when i left was newt gingrich, to be very honest. i had been in the congress for 22 years and had been able to do all sorts of things and pass bills and so forth, and newt became speaker, and if olympia and i were talking to the floor, newt