And it was, I think, the second or third night of the Convention and Teddy was speaking. This was during the Democratic Convention in Boston. Well, we were invited to it, as I believe everybody was, and Symphony Hall is a big place. It’s a marvelous portrait of what he’s- she remembers the details. The last time we saw him was at Jordan Hall. But first, I’d like to hear Jane’s rendition of our last meeting with Teddy, which was-well, we didn’t meet him. You have an enormous amount of material, particularly on this early period, but I want to start out with the big thing. You certainly can get facts and dates wrong. After I get the transcript I think I can, if need be, add details. and I have masses of notes on this, having known Teddy ever since 1962, and have seen him sometimes close or afar, and I don’t have the material here. Well, I’ll need to go over that transcript because here I am in D.C. Any questions you have about the project itself we can address right now or later, if you’d like. All of these materials will be released down the road in about six years or so at the completion of the Edward M. You can delete certain things if you have second thoughts about anything that you say. I should say that anything that you say here today we will put in a transcript that you will receive in about two or three months, and you can make any changes to that transcript that you like. We are interested in talking to Professor Beer about, particularly, the early days, your early relationship with Senator Kennedy and your role in Americans for Democratic Action, both in Massachusetts and on the national level. Kennedy Oral History Project and we’re with Professor Samuel Beer and Jane Brooks Beer. This is an oral history interview for the Edward M. Those were the days when you had to control freedom of speech, the Alien and Sedition Acts. So I was kind of interested in the roots of covert activity. Right, and there was this contingency fund that was created in the very first Congress that allowed the President to fund both secret diplomacy, but also occasionally intelligence operations and covert operations. I wrote about early presidential use of covert operations. There’s a woman named Sarah Binder at the Brookings Institution who does good stuff. They don’t write these institutional books any more. I’m a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and I was asking Don Wolfensberger about it. Beerĭo you know any good, recent book on the Senate? The old one was Matthews.
And now for the first time we’re branching into the U.S. The Miller Center has a Presidential Oral History program where we do oral histories on Clinton, Bush, Sr. I worked at the Kennedy Library for six years. Yes, between the library and the university. They don’t actually have a physical entity yet, but it’s going to be next to the Kennedy Library in Dorchester on the grounds of U Mass-Boston. Senator Kennedy has created the Center for the Study of the United States Senate. We didn’t really invite the folks who we were going to interview because those are in the hundreds. There was a small contingent from the Miller Center. There were eight or nine Senate colleagues there. Senator Kennedy invited a lot of his staff, his family. Beerĭid you have your contacts assembled there, the people you’re interviewing? Knott Yes, it was in the Russell Senate Caucus Room. Where’d you have it, in the Capitol? Knott Also when you're going after somebody, doing peacefulish yet enemy-LER-dropping actions first can really hamstring their response.I couldn’t get to the opening because it was the day before we came down. Usually you have to plan a mix to do because each action raises/lowers a bunch of things, and you need to shore up the ones that are being dropped while you pursue you main goals.Īlso, the #1 thing I try to do is get Leadership Effectiveness Rating to 90%+ (ideally 100%) ASAP, and keep it there - find the actions that raise it relatively harmlessly and pop off enough of those to build it back up when it drops. AND you know which ones you can accept (some really harmless sounding ones actually have annoying effects on you).
Then you know what actions to do to countries if you want to boost your or their economy, cool down their aggressiveness, etc. I haven't been able to fire up the game in a while, but my main tip if you want to learn to play well is to try each and every action several times on both friends and enemies, and make notes on what attributes they raise and lower.