{"id":5779,"date":"2016-12-13T10:47:20","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T16:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/?p=5779"},"modified":"2017-06-22T08:54:11","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T13:54:11","slug":"alan-j-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/oral-history-project\/alan-j-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan J. Stone\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Interviewee<\/strong>: Alan J. Stone<br \/>\n<strong>Interviewer<\/strong>: Jeffrey Boyce<br \/>\n<strong>Date<\/strong>: October 16, 2016<\/p>\n<p><strong>Description<\/strong>: Alan J. Stone has been a legislative director for a senator, and was staff director for congressional committees specializing in child nutrition.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-shortcode\"><iframe title=\"Alan Stone\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/222678697?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Jeffrey Boyce<\/strong>: I\u2019m Jeffrey Boyce and it is October 16, 2016. I\u2019m here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Alan J. Stone. Welcome Mr. Stone and thanks for taking the time to talk with me this evening.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alan J. Stone<\/strong>: I\u2019m glad to be with you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Could we begin by you telling me a little bit about yourself, where you were born, where you grew up?<a href=\"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-5780\" src=\"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"363\" height=\"242\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone-300x200@2x.jpg 600w, https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Alan_Stone-768x513@2x.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 363px) 100vw, 363px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I grew up in Chicago. I was born on what they call the Near North in the city, and in third grade moved to the suburbs and was raised in Skokie, a near suburb. I went to college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and then went to law school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: OK. What did you do your undergraduate in?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I was a dual major in government \u2013 now of course we call it political science \u2013 and American literature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: And was there a break between that and law school?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: No, in those days people had the money to go straight ahead, and it was quite common to. Looking back, it might have served me to take a break, but I went straight ahead.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: What was law school like? What did you enjoy most about it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: You know, it was not a slam dunk success for me. I missed college. I missed my friends. I was enormously active and had a variety of friends, and it just ended too quickly for me. I wasn\u2019t one of those people who wanted to get out quickly to their career. I wanted to read more and write more and think more. So it took me a while to get into the spirit of law school, but I found my niche when I found a core of students interested in activism that were prepared to do civil rights law, anti-poverty law, and of course in those years, the late 60s in Washington, there was an enormous amount of anti-war activity and The New Mobilization, and the Poor People\u2019s March. It was just a wild time to be in D.C. going to law school and to be an activist, so I\u2019d say I had an uncharacteristic law school career, and I didn\u2019t get deeply interested in corporate law and then clerk and then go on to a firm, but I found a niche that turned out to be enormously important to me and powerful, and actually launched me on my lifetime career.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Elaborate a little bit on the late \u201860s in D.C. That would have been toward the end of the \u2013 well actually it was several years before the end of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: It was an unbelievably transitional time, culturally transitional. When I started law school, in my section of two hundred guys there was one woman. Five years later a third of the class were women. Ten years later half or more were women. So things changed. When I started we had to agitate to get a clinical program \u2013 one. Now clinical programs are de rigueur at almost every law school. The city was a magnet for everyone seeking change on huge issues. So the first Poor Peoples March, which I worked on with somebody I was working on it with as part of an internship in law school, all the anti-war activity, everyone trying to levitate the Pentagon, everyone trying to stop the war, and it just was \u2013 you never knew who was going to be sleeping on your couch and your floor in law school, from what town, a friend of whose. You never knew when some place near your apartment was going to be teargassed and teargas would come into your window. And of course all the ancillary things were going on at the same time, the women\u2019s movement, the beginning of the environmental movement, introduction of recreational drugs, the ascendency of rock-and-roll in everyone\u2019s life. It was just a wild time that is very much still on my mind and in my heart in many ways, notwithstanding the fact that there isn\u2019t one of those activities I could physically withstand any longer. [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: You mentioned the Poor People\u2019s March.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: That went on for several months, right? Wasn\u2019t there an encampment along the Mall?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yes, there was a big encampment. My first internship I was a co-chair of something called the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council with a fellow named Tom Tureen, who went out to do Native American law in Maine. And through Law Students Civil Rights Research Council I got an internship with a group that went on to become the National Welfare Rights Organization. And they were, along with Dr. King and along with many others, organizers of that march. So I spent many weeks that summer in a seminary with activist members of the Catholic Church, and Quakers, and various members of the clergy that were devoted to change, plus a lot of activist students, managing what would be the arrival of hundreds of buses full of poor people, mostly but not entirely black, from the South for the Poor People\u2019s March. I have mementos from those days and photos and personal memories, and it was a good precursor for me to learn a little bit about what would become my professional life, because it was working for a cause. It was teamwork. It was mostly for poor people\u2019s issues. And it was people from all over, with complete un-empowered people who were able to make a statement that is still a matter of news around the world when people think about it. But the lift that it took for people who had only sweat equity, and sharp minds, but no capital, to pull off was pretty extraordinary. I\u2019m glad I played a small role in it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: What year did you start law school?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: \u201966.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: \u201966. So you were there for the \u201968 election. What was that like?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: The \u201968 election was in Chicago, and I\u2019m from Chicago, so I went home thinking I would join \u2013 some of my friends I knew were going to protest it because it sort of was the lightening rod of anti-war activity, and many of us had been for Gene McCarthy, and Bobby Kennedy was shot. And I thought I would live with my parents in the suburbs and I\u2019d go at night to Lincoln Park and participate. And it turned out that at the first night I went it was \u2013 Mayor Daily sent his fire trucks in with guys with big sticks and no nameplates, and I could see what was coming was going to be fruitless, and part of me wanted to stay, but part of me wanted to leave. And I left to go to a very, very close friend\u2019s wedding in Hawaii. It was about as far away as you could get. So I wasn\u2019t in Chicago for the actual, terrible denouement of the election. I was there for the 1972 nomination of George McGovern. I did work in Chicago for George McGovern, who lost badly, but not my precincts in Chicago in \u201972. I had been a delegate from Colorado, because I was with legal services then. I went to the Miami convention. I helped nominate him, and then I had sort of a choice of jobs, and I didn\u2019t want to go to Washington, and I didn\u2019t want to go to headquarters. I wanted to go to the precinct I was born in in Chicago and work it. And I did, and we lost the overall election terribly, but then I went back to Washington and got a job with Senator McGovern as the junior counsel on his anti-hunger committee, and that\u2019s what really launched my career.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Was that the official name of the committee?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: No. That\u2019s what the newspapers called it, because the actual name was too long for the newspapers to always say, which was the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, and it had been created to examine hunger in America, and to make recommendations to get rid of it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Who were some of the other major members of that committee?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>:It was led by many legendary Senators. . George McGovern was the Chair, and Hubert Humphrey, when he stopped being Vice-President came back to the Senate, was ranking but, Ted Kennedy was junior on the committee. Phil Hart was a giant of a man and a liberal, died young, from Michigan. He was on the committee. On the Republican side it was Bob Dole, who ended up, of course, coauthoring with George McGovern a lot of anti-hunger legislation. Henry Bellmon from Oklahoma, Chuck Percy from Illinois. I don\u2019t think there was a non-famous, non-powerful person that didn\u2019t come through that committee. Senator McGovern chaired it but Hubert Humphrey of course treated it like he chaired it, because that was his wont, and we did a lot for him, as well as for George McGovern. There would be times when we would have a junior senator interested in something. I remember, I think just before Summer Food Service became a permanent program, I think a year before, so it must have been 1974, a junior senator from Iowa named Dick Clark, who was on the committee, who loved our issues, and said to me, \u201cLook, if there\u2019s an amendment that I can do for poor kids that one of the senior senators doesn\u2019t take, let me know. I\u2019d love to introduce it.\u201d So he ended up owning the Summer Food and Childcare Programs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: How well did the parties work across the aisle during that time?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Much better then. There was a lot of division, but again, it was mostly around budget concerns \u2013 didn\u2019t want to spend on poor kids \u2013 and on philosophy. There were still people that thought people that got these programs didn\u2019t deserve them. But there wasn\u2019t the rancor and the demonizing there is today. And a lot of things got done. On the Agriculture Committee, which was the authorizing and appropriating committees that these child nutrition bills went through, there was a ready alliance between the conservatives and the liberals. The farmers and people that were interested in price supports and those kinds of things needed alliances with the cities; the cities wanted the social programs; and they worked together. Democrats and Democrats; Republicans \u2013 Republicans; and Republicans and Democrats. The most major to this day reform in the Food Stamp Bill, which was the late \u201870s, \u201976 I think, \u201877 maybe, was done because McGovern and Dole got together. And Dole got what he wanted, which was a ceiling on some people that were on strike, using Food Stamps, who he thought it was an abuse of the labor unions, and the others, McGovern and Humphrey, Ted Kennedy, got what they wanted, which was an elimination of the entry price to get into Food Stamps. The poorest of the poor couldn\u2019t get into Food Stamps before that because you needed some money to enter, which of course was keeping out those who needed it the most.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: So that big amendment, which let a lot of really poor people into Food Stamps was possible only because McGovern and Dole made alliances. And you wouldn\u2019t see that today. Of course there was regular order then. You had appropriations committees. The authorizing committees did their stuff on time. Appropriations committees had a huge amount of turf, loyalty, they met their marks. The budget committee came in later, and it was taken seriously, including sometimes cutting programs I liked, but now you know, we\u2019ve gone almost ten years without a budget, without regular appropriations bills or a budget, and there aren\u2019t any opportunities for horse trading now, not that there would be, because there\u2019s been a breakdown in regular order in the committee system in Congress, so there\u2019s no opportunity for people to say, \u201cI\u2019ll give you this. You give me that.\u201d And plus, they don\u2019t communicate the same way. They were around more. They didn\u2019t have to spend so much time raising the money they have to raise now. They weren\u2019t busy demonizing each other. We didn\u2019t have cable, and everybody making an industry out of creating bad guys all around. It was just a different era. And it was also a different era in another way, although to an extent I think it\u2019s this way now, which is senior staff, if they won the respect of their bosses, really had proxies to do a lot of things on their own. So I had proxies. I mean I always sent a memo to the Senator. I always said, \u201cHere are our plans for the next hearings. Here are what I think should be the next range of amendments when the Child Nutrition Act comes up. Here\u2019s what I think is a hearing we should have that the press and the public will like, that would help you and help everyone on the committee.\u201d And he almost always signed off on it. He trusted me. I earned his trust. But you were in effect then enormously empowered to do your best work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: And this was Senator McGovern?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yes, and I worked feverishly those years. I was young and I loved it and I would have paid them to write legislation to feed tens of millions of low-income kids, but they paid me very modestly. But it was fine. And I remember \u2013 I had a great group of friends and a social life, and as I said it was wild times there \u2013 but I remember once in \u201974 or 5 on a winter day I drove into my office, which they gave the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs offices in the worst falling down building. It was called Senate Annex II. It leaned a little. And it\u2019s since been knocked down. But I loved it. And one winter day I went there and it was cold and there were snowflakes and I remember working away on something and walked outside and there was a police officer, one of the guards, out in front. It seemed kind of slow. I didn\u2019t really pay any attention to it. And he was having a smoke break and just went out to get some air. And he looked at me and he said, \u201cThey\u2019re making you work in Christmas too?\u201d I completely lost, I completely lost track of the days. You know, I\u2019m Jewish, I don\u2019t observe Christmas, so I \u2013 but I still should have known. But that\u2019s how much fun work was and how important it was to us.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Tell me about the day to day of it as you were writing legislation and working on the bills.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: You know, it was always \u2013 we had a sense from our bosses that the more we gave them that was important and fun and interesting, the better. And we were time limited we knew, because we were a select committee, which meant we were authorized only for a year, and we were supposed to get our work done. I guess they thought we\u2019d solve the problems with hunger in a year, but we kept getting re-upped and then finally in the late \u201870s they stopped us. It was a great run, and I was thrilled to be staff director at the end. But it could be anything. It could be planning a hearing, having a hearing, putting the witnesses together, doing the statements. It could be writing a big bill. It could be writing a floor amendment. It could be writing the speeches around those, having the hearings around those. It could be writing an op-ed. It could be spending time on a big committee report or a little amount of that. It could be sitting down and thinking \u2018What will make the point that we want to make today that won\u2019t cost as much money to do, that will be fun?\u2019 And we\u2019d think about \u2013 I remember one day we decided to call a number of inner-city emergency rooms and ask the doctors what percent of infants or toddlers they thought came in malnourished. And the number turned out to be very high, and that was a report. So having the imagination to be creative about ways, because you\u2019re not an authorized committee, you\u2019re not an appropriating committee. You have to be creative. On the other hand, our chairs sat on the Agriculture Committee, and they sat on the Appropriations Committee, so they took what we did right over across the hall, but it made us have to be very nimble. And I look back at what we did, it was just an extraordinary \u2013 my colleagues were just so productive. The numbers of bills and amendments that we wrote, the numbers of hearings and reports that we did, the amount of attention we got for this little bitty staff, probably the smallest in the Senate, with no press person, and this office out in the suburbs far away from power, is pretty remarkable. We were just motivated and we had enormously brave bosses who liked the idea of us giving them a new idea. And that gave us enormous incentive. We were incentivized every day. Now we had a lot of just big lifting on the routinized work, you know, Child Nutrition will get reauthorized, Food Stamps will get reauthorized. We were always fighting until they became permanently authorized. We were always fighting to save or broaden Summer or Child Care or Breakfast. If I did one report on how the poorer schools with the greatest need weren\u2019t participating in a breakfast program, I wrote ten. I see some now because I\u2019m on the board of Food Research Action Center, which is a big anti-hunger group, and I\u2019m very proud to be part of them &#8211;<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Is Jim Weill still the director?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Jim Weill is still the CEO, a very close friend and colleague, and they\u2019re still writing reports about breakfast, so some things take a lot of time. So we had our normal lift, which was the day to day, bills expiring, bills on the floor, etc., and all the hearings and the floor speeches, and reports on that, and then there was another agenda that we always had going in a parallel fashion, which was new things. It wasn\u2019t on our agenda to make sure that the food package for WIC was dealt with in X way from USDA, but in the course of the early years of WIC you saw, well there\u2019s lots of waste on a minor program, and one of them is on the regs, and so something would come up that we hadn\u2019t planned, like the food package, so it was an endless stream of the stuff that was regular order and then the new stuff to push the envelope, or the other category of new stuff, which was to protect things. So the first two years of WIC when Nixon didn\u2019t spend the money we just had to maximize attention to how wrong that was and illegal and how many people were on waiting lists, etc. So it was just like constant activity in pursuit of big goals. Sometimes the task was small but the goal was always big.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: What was your proudest moment during that time?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I had a lot of proud moments. Going to work my first day with my first adult job, and it was writing anti-hunger legislation for George McGovern, and I don\u2019t think pride is necessarily an attractive human attribute, but I was really proud of myself, and I still feel that day, although it was now forty-five years ago. I think in terms of legislation and the work of the committee my role in making WIC a permanent program, because it so expansively services America\u2019s low-income children, pregnant and nursing low-income mothers, is the proudest thing in terms of my work there, although there are many things I did that I look back on with humility and pride that I was given a chance to be part of this.<\/p>\n<p>Someone pointed out to me recently that in 1975 I wrote the legislation that made School Breakfast, WIC, and Summer Food Service and Child Care Food Program all permanent programs in America. I hadn\u2019t ever put this together quite like that and obviously I am very grateful to have played this role.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Well share some of those with me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: As I said to you, we often thought of things that if the senators liked them we ran with them. Well, our mandate the first four of five years had been mostly anti-poverty, hunger related things, as it should have been. But as we were getting more and more involved in those that work, we began to hear more and more about how low-income people had bad diets and how it affected their health, and then how all of America had bad diets, so it kind of was on our radar. And then I talked to my friends from the dietitians\u2019 association and people from Harvard School of Nutrition, and other people I knew. And with the senators\u2019 OK we launched a series of hearings on the connections between diet and health. And we had a continued full load on all the lunch, breakfast, WIC, Food Stamps. All of those were continuing to be legislated, hearings, reports, floor amendments, etc., fights over appropriations. We kept those, and added this thing. And we ended up under my leadership and the leadership of my co-counsel Marshall Matz hiring some very good writers and thinkers in diet and health, and getting some great consultants from Rockefeller and Harvard and other places, and we wrote \u201cDietary Goals for the United States,\u201d which was the first government-related agency to ever say eat less salt, fat, sugar, and eat lean meat. And of course now every knowledgeable well off person in the world has as a mantra there\u2019s a link between diet and health and that these things are at the core of it, and USDA and HHS now get together every few years and do a dietary guideline for the US. But the first one was under my direction with my colleagues and signed off by the senators. And George McGovern led the fight, and he was from a state that was ninety percent Ag \u2013 the economy was agriculture and most of that was meat, and he was enormously brave to do this, and I\u2019m enormously proud of that. So when you ask me to list some other things I\u2019m proud of \u2013 I was called a socialist by the Grocery Manufacturers of America. I got an angry letter from the AMA because I wasn\u2019t a nutritionist or a scientist, and I led this. The senators all got beat up and it was very hard in that chair, because we had to have a round of hearing apologizing and writing another one, which we didn\u2019t move very far back from our original. But in the course of it I made the case to the Senator that \u2013 he said, \u201cAlan, this is making me nervous. I\u2019m going to do it, but it\u2019s making me nervous.\u201d And he said, \u201cYou tell me what the biggest upside of this is and what biggest downside of it is.\u201d I said, \u201cThe biggest downside is that we get so beat up by the industry and by the cattlemen and by everyone that you don\u2019t recover at home.\u201d He said, \u201cWell that\u2019s a pretty terrible downside.\u201d He said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the upside?\u201d I said, \u201cThe upside is that you start the next big consumer movement in the western world \u2013 diet and health.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: That\u2019s a pretty big upside.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: He said, \u201cI\u2019ll take it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: And he represented South Dakota, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yea, which was a huge agriculture, still is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: You mentioned Nixon not funding for a couple of years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: What was it like in those last days of his administration?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: So weird, because McGovern\u2019s staff \u2013 he had just creamed us in the election, and then less than a year later I was sitting there in the Senate Annex, oftentimes walking over to the main buildings, and we didn\u2019t have cellphones and we didn\u2019t have social media, and they weren\u2019t televising the House and the Senate then, and you have a black and white TV in your office, and try and figure out what was going on. Or you watched the AP wire, that\u2019s what we did. And it was gossip, but we weren\u2019t exactly close to Nixon\u2019s staff. Later on I met some of Nixon\u2019s speechwriters. I later on became a presidential speechwriter. We\u2019d have meetings with other speechwriters and I met them. But I didn\u2019t know any Nixon people then. I knew plenty of the staff on the committee to impeach him, but I didn\u2019t know him. But it was kind of surreal because McGovern was going about his business. He was thinking about running in \u201974 and could he win his Senate seat, retain it after losing so badly. We were doing our job, which was trying to grow the anti-hunger programs. And in the midst of it we watched the fall on this man, who at the end was a little whacked out. And his cronies, who had been so smug about what a weakling McGovern was and how they had to smash him, well we watched this guy crash and burn into flames, the flames of history. And McGovern lived into his nineties, wrote five more books, and was revered by many, and wrote enough anti-hunger legislation that\u2019s now fed hundreds of millions of people, not just in America, but around the world. And I knew that McGovern was a plodding guy, but very smart and knew what he wanted to do with his power, would survive and thrive, get done what he wanted to get done. His life was not without tragedy, but it\u2019s kind of a morality play that he ended up doing as much good as he did and having as full a life as he did. And Nixon went out in a blaze of ignominy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: And so how long did you stay with McGovern?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I stayed until the committee was unfunded. You asked me what I liked and what I was proud of. I think the saddest moment I had was when we \u2013 as I said, there wasn\u2019t communication between the floor and your committees, so I had to come back to my staff after we lost our vote to be extended for that last year and tell them we were done. And that was really terrible, because we were all so engaged. But you know what, you don\u2019t get to do just what you like in life all the time. So my co-counsel Marshall Matz went out to the Agriculture Committee, which continued to do some of the issues, and he remained in Washington. He\u2019s still doing them in private law practice. And I went to work on international hunger. I wasn\u2019t quite done with my hunger life. I went to work at AID and worked on international hunger.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: USAID?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yea, worked on international hunger, and then I continued working on and I was counsel to the Senate Democratic Caucus when Senator Byrd was leader, and then I went the House side and began and ran for several years a committee that George Miller had called the Select Committee on Children and Families. I\u2019m kind of a select committee expert it turns out. And that ended for me in the late \u201880s. I stayed on the Hill quite a long time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Tell me about your work there with that committee.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: That was enormous fun. George Miller just retired last year. He came in in the Class of \u201974 and is from East Bay. He and I met because he was an anti-hunger guy in California before he was elected. So I knew him before he was elected. That committee was enormous fun. It dealt with many of the same issues of poverty and children and stresses on working families \u00a0that I was familiar with and that no one in Congress had really ever dealt with before. And we were powerful. Again, we had great leadership. In addition to George we had Lindy Boggs. We had Pat Schroeder. We had Barbara Mikulski. Barbara Boxer. But we highlighted several things \u2013 how families were changing and how much child care was a need and people weren\u2019t getting it. We had an enormous bucket or cluster on family violence. People weren\u2019t talking about family violence in Congress. So that was drug and alcohol, runaway, etc. And we dealt a lot with foster care and that system, which is eternally broken. So it was basically about the modern family and the stresses it\u2019s under, and we always did three thingsat every hearing. We brought some real person, some family that was involved in the problem. We always brought some researcher with the best data on the problem. And we always brought someone from a program that could tell a positive story \u2013 \u2018Yes, we know how to address this. Kids and alcohol, we know how to address this. Spousal abuse \u2013 we know how to run the best centers. Child care \u2013 here\u2019s the best example of a big corporation doing child care right.\u2019 So it was always positive. You alwaysdescribed the problem , you made the issues more clearclear, you had the best data. And it was again, the same thing, bright staff working hard on a million things. The difference was on the nutrition committee what we did we almost always led to legislation. On the \u2018Kiddies Committee\u2019 as it was called on the outside, we were already entering the era where there was less legislation, less movement, less agreement, so while we helped impact some legislation, we mostly influenced things through use of the bully pulpit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: On both committees who were your allied partners? Did you work with the School Nutrition Association?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Well, yea, the truth is, especially when I first started I got \u2013 my portfolio was all the child nutrition legislation and WIC. And Marshall and other people had Food Stamps and diet and health, although I did diet and health too. So when I first got there especially, the people that were the Washington representatives of the School Food Service Association as it was called then &#8211;<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: American School Food Service Association.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yea, were in my office every day. It took me a week to understand Josephine [Martin] because of her accent. But we got along great and they were enormously helpful, and they had lobbyists that were helpful, and I don\u2019t think the first time or two I wrote a bill or wrote an amendment I didn\u2019t really know what I was doing, but they got me through it. And the Senator trusted them and the members trusted them, and Republican senators trusted them too because people would come from their district and tell them the truth, and tell them, \u201cHere\u2019s what\u2019s going on. Here\u2019s what we need.\u201d And so it was basically bipartisan. But they were enormously technically smart too about amendments and bills and appropriations. You know the school food service ladies came in with, \u201cOh, we\u2019re just little old ladies.\u201d They were the smartest. There was no one smarter than them lobbying. And if I gave one talk to a school food service association in those years I gave thirty. I was always going. I went to New Mexico. I went to North Dakota. I went to all the Southern states. They\u2019d have an annual meeting and they\u2019d call the committee and say, \u201cHey Alan. Would you come and tell us about the legislation?\u201d And I loved doing that because I got to meet them. And then long after I was no longer on the Hill I got invited to come back and give the keynote at their annual meeting in Washington, which was a lot of fun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: And so when did you leave this?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I left &#8211; the end of the \u201880s I left the George Miller committee. I had a really skilled deputy who was long ready to do it. She could have done it from the beginning, and I was getting anxious to do other things. All my friends had gone to practice law, and other things. I was late. I just loved the Hill so much I couldn\u2019t leave. And then I did the one other thing I really loved as much as being a legislative activist and that was I went to be a writer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: OK.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I went to try writing in Los Angeles, screenplays and teleplays and things. I was old to do it at forty-five. I should have done it at twenty-five. But I thought I\u2019d try it and I did that for a while, and then, and I thought I was done with Washington. I\u2019d spent twenty-plus years there counting law school. And when I was in LA Tom Harkin, who was a senator from Iowa and a great champion of child nutrition programs, and authored the Disabilities Act and many other things, I\u2019d been friends with him in Washington, and he ran in that \u201992 primary with Clinton and lost. But he came out to LA and said, \u201cWould you work for me, be my speechwriter and my policy guy?\u201d And I\u2019d always, of all the things I hadn\u2019t done in politics I\u2019d always heard that being in a presidential primary was the most fun. Little plane, Unitarian meetings, union hall meetings, retail politics, it turns out it\u2019s true. I had enormous fun. And Harkin lost on Super Tuesday, and a couple of months later, I think, Clinton asked him, \u201cWho were your top people?\u201d Clinton had just won the nomination in July and was putting together his senior team for Little Rock, to be a speechwriter, and I went to Little Rock to write speeches for Bill Clinton. He won. You know everyone I had ever supported for president up \u2018til then had won one or two states. But I knew he was going to win the first ten minutes I was with him. And then I went to the White House and worked for him for a few years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: What made you think that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: The first day I went to Little Rock he did an uplink &#8211; in those days you did an uplink \u2013 on tax reform, and he was interviewed by a bunch of people. And from the waist up he had a nice coat and tie, jacket on. From the waist down he had old Bermuda shorts and flip-flops. And I had only seen him against Harkin, and he was very talented. And I knew he was talented, but I watched him look at the notes, and sort of talk to Jim Carville about Arkansas football, and sort of ask his wife if the laundry was done. And then he does this uplink for an hour on tax reform and it\u2019s perfect, perfect. Policy mixed with politics mixed with charm and storytelling, and I thought \u2018This is an unusual, once in a lifetime talent.\u2019 That was early in the campaign and I stayed another two or three months. He won. Then I went back to LA. And then they asked me to try out for a position of speechwriting at the White House. And the tryout was you had twenty-four hours to write your version of what his inaugural address should be.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Wow, twenty-four hours.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Twenty-four hours, pretty intense.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Well, you must have done well, because I understand you got the job.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I got the job, yea, and then I did that for another two or three years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Did you have any interaction with Secretary Clinton during that time?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Yes, but mostly her staff. It turns out her staff I knew better than his staff, because Maggie Williams, her chief of staff, had come from the Children\u2019s Defense Fund. So I knew her from my old life, and Melanne Verveer had been active in women\u2019s issues and anti-poverty issues, so I knew her top staff, so I was always in the office. And Lissa Muscatine, who wrote a lot of her speeches, was probably my closest friend at the White House. So I was always around The First Lady, but I never really interacted with her. I was in a few prep sessions with her. She\u2019s impressive. She\u2019s all business. And I loved her staff, but I wouldn\u2019t \u2013 I was in fifteen meetings with the President where we exchanged something like, \u201cWhy did you write this?\u201d or \u201cCan you rewrite this?\u201d I can say I had a working relationship with him, but I didn\u2019t with her.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: How was that? Was he pretty open to suggestions?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Well, you know, the truth is it was kind of ridiculous being his speechwriter because he changed so much of every draft. We used to have a joke among the speechwriters not counting the articles like a, an, and the, how much of what you wrote did he keep, and often it was zero. On big speeches you\u2019d interact with him, but most speeches you\u2019d have a day at most to write and the President gives five or six, seven speeches sometimes in a day that don\u2019t get any attention, like the thirtieth anniversary of the Children\u2019s Immunization Act, an uplink to the Wheat Growers Association because he can\u2019t make their meeting, you just do these part of being President. The Saturday morning radio address is another example, So after a while you kind of know what he wants, and you have his voice if you\u2019re good. And everyone\u2019s good at that level. And even still he would immediately take the best phrase or the best data point and keep it, and the spine if he liked it, to follow the story, he\u2019d keep that. Everything else he\u2019d make his own. And except for the Joint Sessions, the State of the Union speeches, and the big healthcare speech and a few big speeches every year, and also a lot of stuff that has to do with international relations, because a lot of those words are code and you have to be careful. Otherwise \u00a0basically everything was just him using what he saw that you gave him as a memo to help him get going.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Was he as notoriously tardy as the press made him out to be?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I don\u2019t think the press knew the half of it. He was one of those brilliant guys who could catch up no matter how behind he was. Luckily there were a lot of brilliant people running things that were on time, so the other stuff, the outreach to governors, understanding which radio buys to make for your program, the people doing advance, scoping out the rooms for the next visit, the inner workings of the White House, they all can do what they have to do without him being on time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: And so you said you stayed with him about two more years?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I left in early Fall 1995 from the White House \u2013 two and a half or two and a quarter years there and another three or four months in Little Rock, so maybe three years altogether.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: And then Columbia?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Then I became Vice-President of Public Affairs at Columbia, which combined government relations, PR, media relations, communications, and community relations. The idea being that the message to the outside world should all be coordinated in one place, and so if your lobbyist is talking to members they should know what you\u2019re saying to the press and what you\u2019re saying to the community. It\u2019s a good theory and it can work and it worked for me at Columbia. And I had never worked for higher ed before, but I was quite in love with the notion of Columbia, which I had enormous affection for historically, and I needed a change, and there\u2019s nothing like New York. And I did that for six or seven years and then I got hired to do the same thing at Harvard, which is why we\u2019re sitting here in Cambridge right now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: What were some of the biggest challenges at Harvard?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: Harvard is just a big challenge period, because it\u2019s got one of the two or three most well-known brands in the world. And it\u2019s a target. You could have a faculty member have some kind of mistake at a small school in Iowa, some kind of a sexual conduct or a plagiarism or something, and it\u2019s not going to make the front page of the New York Times. If it\u2019s Harvard it will. So you\u2019re playing defense at an enormous level, plus it\u2019s huge and sprawling. The faculty of Arts and Science alone at Harvard has an endowment that would make it a top ten university in the world. So the big, powerful parts of Harvard are so big and powerful that it\u2019s like in the early days of the nation and trying to manage what was going on in the states from Washington. I remember one day driving somewhere with the president when we first started and reading in the Boston Globe that one of the schools was breaking ground for a new building and neither one of us knew about it. So anyway, it\u2019s difficult to manage message. It\u2019s quite open to attack, so you\u2019re playing defense a lot. On the other hand the virtues are so overwhelming. They\u2019re always getting the best students, the best faculty. They do great things. They get great gifts. They build wonderful buildings. Their reach in the world is enormous. They\u2019re essentially a well-meaning, almost always do goody place that is held in such high regard that when it isn\u2019t perfect it\u2019s come down on more harshly than almost any place else. But you know what? My colleagues would often say to me, \u201cI can\u2019t believe they want us to be perfect here, and we made them a small mistake. We\u2019re still doing something good.\u201d And I said, \u201cLook. It\u2019s the price of admissions. If you want to work for a place that\u2019s this good you\u2019ve got to take the downside with it.\u201d But it was not easy. The truth is that maybe twenty, thirty, forty years ago the great universities and their presidents and leaders were put on a pedestal, and they weren\u2019t criticized, they didn\u2019t have people investigating them, they didn\u2019t have Congress questioning their endowment. That\u2019s all gone. They\u2019re targets now. At any given moment there\u2019s a blog or two going that exists only to find dirt on the faculty and the president. It\u2019s just a different world that we live in. It\u2019s a sad thing but it\u2019s the way it is. \u00a0But still I look back at where I came from and think where I\u2019ve been and I realize how lucky I am.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Were there skills or experiences that you learned in the Washington days that carried over to the Columbia or the Harvard days?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: All of them. All of them. Take everyone seriously. Be a good listener. Know what you want. And work like a dog. Here\u2019s one of the huge lessons I had. I didn\u2019t realize until I was in the middle of my university life \u2013 this may be the biggest thing. When you\u2019re on Capitol Hill you learn to have complete devotion to your boss. You have their back no matter what. You do anything to prevent you being the cause of them not looking good. Your job is to make them look good and to do good deeds on their behalf. And once they know that you\u2019re given a lot of license and maybe even their proxy. I internalized that early on. I loved my bosses. They were powerful, sympathetic people. They allowed me to write legislation that helped countless people. And I learned when I got to university life that the presidents and the trustees and the chairs of the universities I was doing the same thing for. And they got it. They saw it. So you thrive in one environment knowing who you work for, always protecting them, making their goals your goals, and it\u2019s the same in universities as it was in the House, and in the Senate, and in the White House.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Sounds like an amazing career.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: It\u2019s been a great ride. Thank you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Anything else you\u2019d like to add today?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: I don\u2019t think so. I\u2019ve enjoyed it and I appreciate you taking the time. I\u2019m aware of the fact that the battles to feed the people that need to be fed in America are never over. As I said, I\u2019m on the board of FRAC, that is I think the best advocacy group in Washington to solve hunger. So I\u2019m still doing what I can, but I think in part why I do it is I want to make sure that just like I was given an opportunity to protect and serve the people who don\u2019t have a voice, that the next generation is empowered to make the same fights, because they\u2019re always going to be necessary. The people that will get in line first in this country for things are not going to be low-income children. They\u2019re not going to be really poor elderly adults. They\u2019re not going to be pregnant and nursing low-income mothers. That\u2019s not the way our system works. We\u2019ve shown that through advocacy and organization and nimbleness of foot we can get them in the line, but it takes constant vigilance. And if I can leave one final word it would be how much I wish well to those who when I\u2019m gone will pick up this fight as they have already and continue to do well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JB<\/strong>: Thank you so much for sharing with me tonight.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AS<\/strong>: It\u2019s been my pleasure. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interviewee: Alan J. Stone Interviewer: Jeffrey Boyce Date: October 16, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5779"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7343,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779\/revisions\/7343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}