After 10 months of reporting and analyzing the White House sex scandal, Cokie Roberts says she feels "imprisoned by the story, both literally and figuratively."
The sordid saga of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky "has kept me here and forced me to cancel all kinds of appearances," Roberts said from Washington, D.C. "I've been letting people down right and left because I couldn't leave town."Even though she is pinned down inside the Beltway, Roberts' reach has extended nationwide with the publication of "We Are Our Mothers' Daughters" (William Morrow & Co., 197 pages, $19.95.), her reflection on and celebration of women, now in its 23rd week on the New York Times best-seller list. She is the chief congressional correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of "This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts."
Roberts' book has 13 essays. Many are intensely personal - on the death of her beloved elder sister, her boundless admiration for her mother, friendship, sisterhood, child-rearing, marriage, parenting, her career in journalism; others celebrate women of unusual pluck and accomplishment, such as civil rights activist Dorothy Height and consumer advocate Esther Peterson, both alert, active octogenarians.
The success of the book, her first, was "terribly surprising - I had no expectations." It is also "the most exciting thing that's ever happened professionally to me (because) it's all yours. It's not committee work."
A byproduct of the book has been "the wonderful communication I've had with women all over the country. It's been absolutely touching, inspiring - it's hard to describe how meaningful it's been. Women my age and older essentially say, `there it is, that's my life,' and younger women say `that's possible' - and that's a great feeling. One woman told me that she hadn't talked to her sister in five years, and then `I read your book and picked up the phone and called her.' That's gratifying," Roberts said.
She is contemplating a second book, on marriage and relationships, written with her husband Steven Roberts, a former New York Times reporter who is now a professor at George Washington University in Washington. They have been married for 31 years.
Roberts, who first won recognition for perceptive enterprise reporting for National Public Radio, was born with a list of political sources that most reporters take an entire career to acquire. Her father Hale Boggs, a New Orleans Democrat, was House majority leader when he died in a 1972 Alaska plane crash; her mother Lindy succeeded him and served until her retirement in 1990. She is now, at age 81, U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford, Vice President Hubert Humphrey and House Speaker Sam Rayburn were "family friends who would come by for a casual dinner," she writes.
Her family connections and celebrity "have made it easier, if truth be told," to report on national politics, Roberts acknowledged. But as a practical matter, "it's more being around for a long time. Now congressmen will call me back. Twenty years ago I'd have to go and hunt 'em down."
The presidential scandal, with impeachment hearings looming, remains Washington's compelling story, and Roberts said the endgame scenario is murky.
"In August and September, Democrats were in a total panic thinking they were going to lose massively" in the November elections, she said. "Now Republicans are in a bit of a stew thinking they're not going to do very well. . . . I've never been in a period when people were calibrating polls more carefully and trying to respond to those polls."
The election "will make a big difference" in how the scandal plays out, Roberts said. If there's a real Republican sweep - "which at the moment I don't see" - congressional Democrats would deliver the message to Clinton that he's got to go, Roberts said. "They lose no love for him (Clinton) anyway. If they could demonstrate that he was being harmful to the party, you'd see a huge move. But if the Democrats do better than expected, I think they'll come back and do an instant deal," such as censure. And "if it's status quo, this could drag on for a while," she said.
What with reporting and anchor work for ABC, doing political analysis for National Public Radio and writing a weekly newspaper column with her husband and zipping around the country for book signings and speaking engagements, Roberts' life would seem almost impossibly busy. Not so, she said.
"I'm not filing (news stories) all the time the way I used to," and besides, "for the first time in my life I have a full-time assistant at ABC and then a person who helps me at home with bills and stuff. When I was younger and poorer and had children at home, that's when I could've used the help," she said.