Alan also wrote of my introducing him to friends of mine in Los Angeles, where he would “tag along” with me to parties, even though he felt totally out of place. “Business economists are not exactly party animals,” he wrote. Today those people, who are still friends of his and mine, probably brag about having met Alan all those years ago.
I didn’t know a thing about economics. I didn’t have to. Alan and I would discuss the news of the day. We would talk politics, although he was always very careful not to tell me anything I shouldn’t know. We would go to the theater or occasionally to concerts. Alan had a fascinating background. We had all read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead with its mysterious and independent hero-architect, Howard Roark. The message of The Fountainhead was that laissez-faire capitalism was everything, that government should stay out of all things, and that charity was poison. Ayn Rand was perhaps the most passionate and controversial advocate of free enterprise you could find, and she had a small but devoted and influential following. They called themselves Objectivists. Alan was still a follower of Ayn Rand in those days. He encouraged me to read her other most famous book, Atlas Shrugged, which I did. Neither book had a great influence on me, but I do remember wishing that my parents had thought to call me Dagny, the name of Ayn Rand’s beautiful capitalist heroine.
How Alan Greenspan, a man who believed in the philosophy of little government interference and few rules or regulations, could end up becoming chairman of the greatest regulatory agency in the country is beyond me. It was a big issue when Alan was first appointed, but he was so brilliant at this job that the Ayn Rand relationship faded from conversation.
Alan, to my great surprise, had been a musician before becoming an economist. He had studied the clarinet at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and, for a time, played with the Henry Jerome band in New York, along with Len Garment, Nixon’s future White House counsel, on saxophone. (They became friends, and it is said that Garment later recommended Alan for the job as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, which is when I met him.)
Through Alan, I remember meeting a very pleasant Dick Cheney, who was then White House chief of staff to President Ford. I also met Donald Rumsfeld, Ford’s defense secretary. Nice men, I thought, interesting though unexciting. We occasionally had dinner with them and their wives, evenings that were not noteworthy. I met them again years later when George W. Bush was president. They seemed like very different men to me. They also didn’t seem to remember that we had known each other. (I requested interviews with each of them and was turned down.)
Back when Alan and I had a relationship, he lived in Washington during the week and kept a small apartment in New York near the United Nations. His mother, to whom he was devoted, came over every weekend to bring him food and make sure that a housekeeper had come to tidy up. Alan’s parents had divorced when he was very young, and he rarely mentioned his father. He was raised by his grandmother and mother, both of whom worked. I liked his mother very much. She was warm, lively, and, unlike her son, an extrovert. She loved to play the piano, and as I had a piano in my apartment, she often played for us when she visited. Years later, when Alan was chairman of the Federal Reserve, and living full-time in Washington, he would come to New York every week to see his mother. We would sometimes have lunch after he visited her. I admired this devotion to his mother very much.
When he was in his twenties, Alan had been married for a short time to a woman who, I think, was also part of the Ayn Rand group. The marriage ended in divorce, and he had long been a bachelor with, it seemed, little desire to remarry. As I, too, had no real desire to remarry, the subject never came up. Furthermore, I never heard Alan express a desire to have children. He was sweet to my daughter but had no real relationship with her. Since I didn’t think of him as a prospective stepfather, that was okay with me.
I felt calm and secure being with Alan. The same qualities that made him so admired in Washington were present on a personal level. He was so smart, so knowledgeable, and had little of the dominating ego that many powerful men possess. Although I rarely understood what he was talking about when he testified before Congress, I had no problem understanding him when we were together. He never talked down to me. He could and did listen to my worries and complaints for hours and never talked to me about his own. He never criticized. He had a surprisingly wry sense of humor. He was, in short, the nicest person you could meet.
If I had any reservation, it was that Alan was very frugal, not just with me but with himself. He wore the same navy blue raincoat until it practically fell apart. He was a bit like the classic absentminded professor. He rarely remembered to pick up a check or buy a Christmas or birthday gift. But that is the only small failing I can recall.
After Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election, Alan left government to return to the economic consulting firm he had founded called Townsend-Greenspan. (I never did find out who Townsend was.) People often asked Alan for advice on buying or selling stocks or bonds. He politely brushed them off. That was not his area of expertise. His mind, so keen, was best at examining long-term trends and financial conditions that would influence all elements of society.
In future years we often laughed about the one time I asked him for financial advice. After we had been seeing each other for a few years, I decided to leave my rent-controlled apartment and buy a co-op. Shirley found a beautiful one for me in the same building that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis lived in. It had four bedrooms, a huge living room and dining room, and it faced Central Park. It was 1977, and New York City was facing a financial crisis. There were even concerns that the city might be going bankrupt. The seller was asking $250,000, which seemed pretty fair for a big, beautiful apartment on Fifth Avenue. I asked Alan’s advice. “Don’t buy it,” he said. “The way New York City is going, it’s not a good investment.” So I didn’t buy it. Today that apartment is worth at least $30 million.
Alan and I never actually broke up, but when a relationship doesn’t grow, it gradually diminishes. We didn’t want to marry and in those days we couldn’t live together. Still, I was shortly to be going through a very turbulent time professionally. Alan, it should be noted, was at my side throughout that time, and I don’t know how I would have gotten through it all without his wisdom and support. You will hear more about that later. Although it was some thirty years ago, my essential feelings about Alan Greenspan have never changed. He is one of the finest people I know.
Eventually I fell in love and married someone else. Alan met and fell in love with the wonderful NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, another strong woman. Andrea is a great reporter, and she and Alan have much in common. Alan finally got over his marriage phobia. I was so pleased to have been invited to Alan and Andrea’s wedding in 1997. It is the happiest of unions. They adore each other, and I adore being in their company. I am proud to be their friend.
In the fall of 2007 I joined some friends of Alan’s in giving him a book party. The book, by the way, is a fascinating read about his eighteen years as chairman of the Federal Reserve and his own life journey (including me and those boring dinner parties). When you finish this book, and I hope you will, do read Alan’s.
And finally some words about John Warner, one of the finest and most effective senators in Congress, who, at this writing, is serving his fifth consecutive term as the senior senator from Virginia. I also met John in the early seventies, years before he became a senator. He was then the head of the Bicentennial commission, preparing to celebrate two hundred years of America’s independence. Gerald Ford had appointed him to this federal position after several others had failed to do very much with the job. Actually there wasn’t really a great deal of heavy lifting to do. It was mostly making sure that all the states were going to contribute something to the celebration.
John took the job very seriously and committed himself to visiting all fifty states. As the spokesman for the Bicentennial, he appeared on the Today show, and I was assigned to in
terview him. He remembered me, he later said, as brisk and attractive. I remember him as having great hair and being rather pompous. Still, when he asked if I would have lunch, I said okay. He talked a lot about himself and his plans for the Bicentennial. I liked his Southern manners. He was definitely from the old school. I asked around about him, and this is what I learned.
John was one of two sons of a doctor in Virginia whom John adored and was close to his entire life. John had finished law school at the University of Virginia after serving with the marines in Korea and cut quite a swath as an eligible young lawyer at the various Virginia debutante balls. In 1957, he married Catherine Conover Mellon, the only daughter of Paul Mellon, one of the richest men in the world. (The Mellon money came from Paul’s father, Andrew, who had helped found such companies as Alcoa and the Gulf Oil Corporation.) John was an advance man for Richard Nixon when Nixon was campaigning for president. In 1972 Nixon appointed John to be secretary of the navy. John was secretary from 1972 until 1974 and that’s when he was appointed to head the Bicentennial celebration.
In the meantime John and Catherine had three children, two girls and a boy. But Catherine was young and, I gather, didn’t enjoy John’s way of life. She was more artistic and sought a lower-key and simpler style. The marriage ended in divorce in 1973, and for many years John pretty much raised their children. Paul Mellon had given his daughter and son-in-law a magnificent home in the fashionable Georgetown section of Washington and a huge farm in the horse country in Virginia. In the divorce agreement Paul Mellon gave them both to John, I guess because he was such a good and responsible father.
I remember asking John, when he first talked about the farm, how big it was. I had no idea how large farms were supposed to be, but I knew enough to be staggered when he told me it was almost three thousand acres. It had horses, cows, a tennis court, an indoor swimming pool, and a state-of-the-art kitchen. When I got to know John better, he invited me to visit, along with Jackie and Icodel. We passed acres and acres of corn, which Jackie had never seen growing. We then made ice cream in the kitchen, which had every possible piece of cooking equipment you could want.
The house was only partially decorated. John had a splendid study with a fireplace and a huge desk. Upstairs the master bedroom also had a fireplace and was decorated in a lovely paisley. The interior designer was Billy Baldwin, one of the most famous decorators in America. But John had stopped work on the house when he and Catherine separated.
Anyway, that’s how things were when John Warner and I met. He talked of wanting to run for senator from Virginia, but he didn’t seem to have much backing from the Republican Party. He also knew few journalists. I remember taking him to a birthday party for the Washington Post’s executive editor, Ben Bradlee, and introducing him to many of my friends. Although they found him very pleasant, he wasn’t exactly their sort, or, at that time, mine. But we grew closer. When the Today show went to Hawaii, John arranged to be there, too. I was surprised and pleased by his attention. I had brought Jackie, and John arranged for us to have a special tour of Pearl Harbor and to visit a submarine. We had a fascinating time and even little Jackie was excited. I appreciated John’s kindness, but our relationship was winding down.
It drew to a close in 1976 when John was invited to the White House to be the escort of no less a superstar than Elizabeth Taylor. Knowing them both, I could not imagine a less well-suited pair. But each had a fantasy. Elizabeth’s career was on the rocks, and she was seeing a series of not very appealing men. Then along came this knight in shining armor. Independently wealthy, handsome—did I neglect to tell you that he was very handsome?—and, I think most important, there was his fabulous farm.
Elizabeth loved horses and perhaps she thought herself back in the days of her childhood when she first appeared in the film National Velvet, a classic story about the love of a child for her horse. The film made the exquisite girl a star and Elizabeth had not known a day since when she was not famous. So now, at last, a farm, peace, security. She and John were married in a field at the farm on December 4, 1976. Elizabeth, in photographs, with the cows and horses in the background, is a symphony of rustic elegance. She is wearing a lavender gray dress, a lavender turban, gray suede boots, and a silver fox coat, and is holding a bouquet of heather.
The marriage gave John instant fame, in spite of the fact that this was his new wife’s seventh marriage, counting both of her marriages to the British actor Richard Burton. For a moment or two John considered an acting career himself. He even had a screen test. But what he really wanted to be was a senator from Virginia. He finished second in the Republican primary in 1978 to a young up-and-coming politician named Richard Obenshain. When Obenshain was tragically killed in a private plane crash just a few weeks later, John was tapped to be the candidate.
The Republicans couldn’t have made a better choice. With his celebrated wife at his side, John traveled the state of Virginia from one end to the other. Elizabeth introduced him and shook so many hands that she later complained that she got ulcers of the hands. John made the political speeches, but it really didn’t matter what he said. Everybody wanted to meet his famous wife. In November, John was elected to the Senate and soon became one of the hardest-working and most conscientious politicians in Congress.
That was a problem for Elizabeth. Being the wife of a senator is not a lot of fun. She hated the long, boring dinners. She missed her friends. Elizabeth Taylor has a great, slightly ribald sense of humor, and there were not a lot of people who appreciated it, including, I think, her husband.
I remember going to their farm for a rather bizarre interview with them—my second prime-time Special for ABC—just before John was elected to the Senate. Here was my former boyfriend, with a pipe in his mouth, talking about his partner, Elizabeth, and how they were in all this, day in and day out, together. But later, talking with them both in the kitchen I remembered so well, it seemed that what Elizabeth was doing most, day in and day out, was eating. John said she should eat more vegetables. “I do eat vegetables,” Elizabeth replied. “Potatoes.”
Although she claimed that she was very happy, the marriage was obviously doomed, and they were divorced six years later, in 1982. Sometime later, in yet another interview with me, she confessed that she had been unhappy in the marriage and that is why she ate. But her respect and affection for John remained.
So did mine. I hate to keep using the word “kind” to describe this man or that, but John Warner was one of the kindest people you could find. He was a gentleman, honest and caring. I watched with pride as he became more and more effective in the Senate. I myself, in spite of my earlier vow never to marry, had another marriage, and after that divorce in 1990, John and I began to see each other again, this time quite seriously. That was when I really got to know him. I admired his complete devotion to his job. He was a staunch Republican, but he didn’t just follow the party line. He became a maverick in 1993 when he refused to support Mike Farris, the Republicans’ nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, because he felt he was too controlled by the Christian Right. (Farris lost.) John took on the Republican hierarchy again in 1994 when he actively campaigned against Oliver North, another born-again and controversial figure, who was the Republican nominee for Virginia’s other Senate seat. John disliked North so much that he supported a popular state politician who was running against him as an independent. The result of John’s political maneuverings was that the Republicans lost the Senate seat. It was won by the Democratic incumbent, Senator Chuck Robb.
John’s stature was not diminished. He became chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1999 and served in that capacity, with a short break, until the Democrats gained control of the Senate in 2006.
John and I saw each other for about five years in the 1990s. He spent many weekends with me during summers in Southampton. My friends became his friends, and they enjoyed him thoroughly. He loves to play tennis and golf and had many spirited games with Pete Peterson and Roone
Arledge, both of whom had homes in the Hamptons. Most of all, John loved to paint. I can still picture him sitting in the shade of a tree in my backyard, doing his oil paintings of flowers. Flowers are John’s specialty. They are the cover of his Christmas card each year.
Again, however, it has to be said that a relationship that doesn’t grow begins to diminish. I could never imagine myself as the wife of a senator living in Washington. And New York life was never really for John. We talked all the time but saw each other less and less. Eventually he met a nice woman, Jeanne Vander Myde, who lived in Washington and shared his interests. They were married in 2003, and when I talk with John I can tell how happy he is.
It is especially important for John to have the companionship and satisfactions he now has. In August 2007, at the age of eighty, John announced that he would not seek reelection to the Senate. He would leave at the height of his power, admired and respected. John continually proved himself a true leader. He was among the first in his party to call on President Bush to reduce the troops in Iraq. He did this although he respects the president and would not want to hurt his own party. He has come such a long way from the man who had originally been known primarily as the husband of Elizabeth Taylor. I think he will be truly missed in the Senate.
Shortly after John announced his resignation, he telephoned me and we had a long, happy conversation. He had always phoned me on the nights when he was reelected to the Senate. This now was a phone call of affection between two dear friends. I told John that I would miss that call on election night, but I thought he had done the right thing. He will leave at the top.
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