This Is George Skelton’s Happy Face

EEveryone here knows the Bee’s political columnist Dan Walters, but who is speaking truth to power for a Southern California readership? That would be the inimitable George Skelton, who has doggedly covered the Golden State’s political scene from Sacramento for 43 of his 51 years as a journalist. During his tenure, he’s known seven governors—including two Browns, two actors-turned-politicians (the Gipper and the Governator)—as well as countless other legislators and apparatchiks, and he’s done his damnedest to hold them all accountable for their actions and inconsistencies. His Los Angeles Times column “Capitol Journal,” which will celebrate its 20th anniversary on Jan. 4, has long been a first-cup-of-coffee companion for politicos, policy wonks and Angelenos alike, offering not just informed (and often inflammatory) opinion, but also an acute understanding of how business is done—or not done—in the state’s halls of power and beyond.

Much to the dismay of those who live or die by the popular vote, the 75-year-old Skelton, who was born in Santa Barbara, educated in San Jose and lives in Greenhaven, has no plans of logging off of his computer any time soon. However, he did take a break from working the phones to open the door at his office in the Esquire building on K Street to let Sactown ask about his long and celebrated career, getting his from-the-trenches take on Reagan’s bedroom policy, Schwarzenegger’s ideology (or lack thereof) and Jerry Brown’s chance of building a legacy that matches up to that of his esteemed father.

You’ve been called a curmudgeon, a liberal mouthpiece and a traitor to progressives. You’ve also been called the most influential columnist in California. Which ones of those are accurate? 

Maybe none of them. I guess I’m a curmudgeon. Why am I a traitor to progressives? I never considered myself a progressive. I don’t even know what a progressive is. I don’t like the term “progressive.” Progressives are people who don’t like the word liberal so they changed liberal to progressive. They think it makes them different but it doesn’t. They’re still liberals.

Are you just independently minded?

Yeah, I’m liberal on some things and I’m conservative on other things. Mainly I’m pragmatic, I guess. I like to see government work. That’s what it’s elected to do. That’s where I am. I’ve seen good Republican governors and presidents and good Democratic presidents and governors and vice versa. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with a party.

You covered both Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, two actors turned politicians. What are some similarities and differences between them?

The big difference in the big picture of things was that Ronald Reagan grew up in the United States and went to American schools, understood American politics from the time he drew his first breath and understood the American culture. Schwarzenegger grew up in Austria right after World War II. He didn’t really understand American culture or politics, at least before he became governor. I don’t care if he was married to Maria or not. It wasn’t part of his blood. It wasn’t part of his bringing up. That’s one difference. The other was, Schwarzenegger was just full of himself, the big Mr. Olympia muscle man, the guy who could do anything on screen. Reagan had a greater sense of who he was. He stood for things. He stood for certain goals and policies and causes. Schwarzenegger basically stood for himself. The only comparison at all between the two is that both were actors.

Skelton in his downtown Sacramento office

Schwarzenegger is famously seductive with journalists. He’s known for his head games. He shadowboxes with them. Did you have those kinds of exchanges with him?

No. Most of these guys know better than to try to bullsh-t me. Arnold would repeat his spiels to me and maybe he even believed some of them. No, I didn’t have that problem with him because I would just talk back to him. We’d have just a regular conversation.

Did you ever smoke a cigar with the guy?

I don’t smoke cigars. I wouldn’t smoke his stupid cigars. I went into his tent [at the Capitol] and watched him smoke a cigar.

He called me one day in 2001, I believe it was. I’d written a column about Pete Wilson that he liked, so he called me from his trailer on the set of some movie. He said he really liked it, blah, blah, blah. Even then, people would say maybe someday he’d run for governor. So I started asking him about that. I got a column out of it. Then I went down to his trailer on another movie and interviewed him the next year. We had that background before he even got up here. I got on his case real quick, so he was a little leery. He was a pleasant enough person to talk to, quite frankly. He was interesting.

He didn’t seem to have a whole lot of ideology behind what he wanted to do.

He didn’t have a clue what was going on [at the Capitol]. The businesspeople tried to clue him in and he wouldn’t listen because he thought he knew it all. By the time he left, he was finally coming around. He had a much better idea about how the place worked.

Have you read Total Recall, his autobiography?

I read quite a bit of the governor part. I saw a lot of things missing in there. He didn’t even try to explain what he was trying to do as governor. It was all about him, very little of substance in it. I read the chapter about the maid, like everybody else.

Skelton with Gov. Pat Brown (left) in L.A. 1966 (Photo courtesy of George Skelton)

Of all the politicians that you’ve written about, who’s the person who moved the needle the most on California politics in a positive direction?

Pat Brown. No question about it.

Because of his work with aqueducts, with freeways and with infrastructure, is that what you’re referring to?

Right. And higher education, the university system. He wasn’t afraid of anything. He would take on anything. He had a way about him with charming people and pulling the right strings. He wasn’t afraid of politics, making deals, paying off people. We’ll never know what he did to get the water project done.

How is Jerry Brown going to rank against his father?

He’s not going to stack up as well no matter what happens. We’ll see. If he can get Sacramento’s books in order, he’ll stack up fairly well.

How do you think Jerry Brown now compares to Jerry Brown in the first incarnation?

He’s been around the track, so he knows some pitfalls and he’s more subdued. He’s not running for president. He’s not a rock star anymore. He doesn’t command quite the attention he did—far from it. He’s more willing to think about the long-range repercussions of what he does. He’s still basically the same person in that he could be charming but also rude. It remains to be seen whether he’s a better governor or not.

Were you in town when Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to shoot Gerald Ford back in ’75?

Yeah. I was traveling with Ford for the L.A. Times. My assignment was to hop on the airplane with Ford and come up here. He was in L.A. first and I flew up here with him. When Squeaky Fromme tried to shoot him, I was in the Capitol cafeteria having a cup of coffee with the L.A. Times bureau chief. I came downstairs and my daughter [Karen], who was in high school here, came running up to me and said, “Dad, Dad! I was standing next to this girl and she tried to kill the President. She pulled out a gun and tried to kill the President.” I’m like, “What?” She said, “Yeah.” I said, “Come here a minute.” She took off running and said, “No. I’ve got to go see Carl Ingram. He’s going to interview me.” Carl Ingram’s a UPI guy. I was working at the L.A. Times. I yelled at her and said, “No, you’re my daughter. Don’t forget it.” I interviewed her. I think she got called in a trial or something. She had to give testimony. She’s a political consultant in town now. She went on to work in the White House for Clinton, actually.

Speaking of presidents on planes, there’s a story that you once asked Reagan about his sex life when the two of you were flying on Air Force One. Is that true?

That’s true. Probably his closest aide was Mike Deaver, who was a fraternity brother of mine in college who lived right across the hall from me. I was a good friend of his. The story is, we were in Houston with the president. He spoke at a drug rehabilitation clinic. He told the kids, “If you take care of your bodies, when you get to be my age, you’ll be able to stand up and tie your shoe-strings, and do a lot of other things that are much more enjoyable,” and he had a big smile on his face. We all thought he was talking about sex.

I saw Deaver a couple of days later. I said, “Hey, was he talking about sex? Because we all thought he was.” He said, “That’s what we thought, too.” That’s his staff. I said, “Was he?” He said. “Why don’t you ask him?” I said, “Well, in fact, I want to interview him anyway about aging because we’re doing a series on aging at the paper. I’ll ask him then.” That’s how it came about. I [asked Reagan], “Is there anything today that you can’t do that you could do 20 years ago?” He said, “Nope.” He had a big grin on his face the whole time. He said, “I can do everything today that I could 20 years ago, if not even better.” I guess that was the answer. The stenographers in the White House all saw it and they giggled and spread the word real fast.

Skelton with Ronald Reagan on Air Force One in 1983 during the famous interview in which he asked the then-president about his sex life (Photo courtesy of George Skelton)

Did you like Reagan?

I liked him. I didn’t agree with his politics all the time, but yeah, I greatly admired him as a politician. He was a very decent guy. 

You mentioned Pat Brown doing deals, getting things done. Where are deals done now in Sacramento?

Deals aren’t done. That’s the problem. Some deals, yeah, they’re done but they’re done in the governor’s office maybe or on the phone or something like that. Legislators, because of term limits, don’t have as much power as they used to. It used to be a person would be a committee chairman for several years and would become a power in their own right in that field, like water, healthcare, education. They could make deals along with the leaders. We don’t have that anymore. The only people who make deals now are the Speaker and the President Pro Tem and the Senate and the Governor. Where a deal’s made, it’s not made in bars anymore. People don’t like to hang around in bars that much anymore because maybe they’d get picked up on the way home. In the old days, highway patrolmen and sheriffs would even help people who were picked up to make sure they got home instead of taking them to jail. That would happen.

Was Frank Fat’s really the spot back in the day?

Yeah. There was a circuit. It depends on the day. In the ’70s, [there was] a place called David’s Brass Rail, which was in a little strip across [the street] from the Senator Hotel, where the Hyatt is now. People would start there and then go up to a place called Ellis’ which was at the corner of 10th and L. A lot of press in there. There was a restaurant there. Or they might start over at Posey’s or the El Mirador. If you go back to the ’60s, the El Mirador, it used to be a hotel with a pimp.

Did you say a pimp?

With a pimp. [Laughs] A pimp who played the ukulele. Maureen Reagan [Ronald Reagan’s daughter] would often come in and sing at the piano bar. People might start there. That was before David’s became a spot. No matter what, you’d end up at Frank Fat’s for dinner. In the ’70s, they [also went] to a place called The Torch Club. That was basically the circuit.

Has there ever been a governor who didn’t want to talk to you because he felt slighted? I think you called Gray Davis boring at one point?

He always talked to me. Jerry Brown’s kind of scared of me because I know him too well. I go way back to when he first ran for Secretary of State. I’ve known this guy for 42 years now. No politician likes to be known that well by a journalist because they can’t pull the wool over your eyes so easily. Schwarzenegger got a little scared of me. But I could talk to him just about anytime I wanted to.

At the Senator Hotel, Skelton, in his role as debate moderator, tosses a coin in the air during a 1974 California gubernatorial debate between Jerry Brown (middle) and Houston Flournoy (right) to determine who speaks first (Photo courtesy of George Skelton)

Last December, you were honored by the Sacramento Press Club and there was a video tribute that featured Davis, George Deukmejian and others talking about your remarkable career. Tom Brokaw also gave you a shout-out and said that you guys came up in the business together. How do you know Brokaw?

We were both covering Reagan at the same time when he ran for governor. Shortly after Reagan got elected, Tom was working for the NBC outlet in L.A. He covered a lot of party stuff that I covered. He’s smart. He hung around newspaper reporters a lot to find out what was going on, so I got to know him. I wasn’t working for the Times then. I was working for UPI or The Sacramento Union, one of the two. Anyway, I got to know him. When I covered the White House when Reagan was president, Tom came around. I’ve just been around him quite a bit.

In the 51 years you’ve been covering this business, how have politics changed? Are we really living in a more partisan era here in Sacramento?

The whole country’s more partisan than it used to be. I don’t know the total reasons for that. I suspect a lot has to do with radio talk shows and elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in the FCC. Now you can have Fox News, it doesn’t make any pretense about [how it] covers the left. You can have MSNBC, which doesn’t make any pretense about being fair to the right. People tune in to what they want to hear. It just makes them all the more polarized. The voters are polarized and that makes the politicians seem more polarized.

Skelton interviewing President Nixon in the Oval Office in 1969 (Photo courtesy of George Skelton)

When you started your career, the legislature was a part-time body. A lot has changed since then. Now it’s full-time but it often gets less done. Do you think the new term limits are going to make a difference?

Term limits are a big thing in the legislature. You don’t have the quality of legislators anymore. These legislators are just as intelligent and capable as the previous legislators, but they don’t have the experience, therefore, the knowledge either on legislating or in making public policy that previous legislators did. That’s one of the reasons things don’t get done today like they used to get done. In fact, back 20, 30 years ago, legislators came to Sacramento with the idea of making government work. Too many of these legislators come here having no idea about how to make government work, and what’s more, wanting to tear government down.

It seems like lobbyists became the only firmament in the Capitol when term limits became shorter.

Yeah, the lobbyists know much more than legislators do. Much, much more as far as public policy. They also know how to make things work.

You’ve written more than 1,600 columns in the past two decades. When you think back to all of those columns, which one of them got you the angriest phone calls?

I got a lot of them. A column I wrote recently about how I think [wild] bears [in California] ought to be smashed—sic dogs after them and sic drones after them—caused a lot of outrage. By the way, the most vicious people in the world are animal rights activists, more so than immigrant bashers, more so than gun nuts, more so than anti-abortion zealots. They love animals more than they love humans, I think, quite frankly. I wrote a column criticizing people for trying to protect red-, or is it yellow-, I forget, legged frogs in the Sierras. I got all kinds of heat about that.

What column do you think back on that you have the most regret about?

I can’t think of one. I can’t think of one column. I really can’t.

You write for a Southern California paper. What do SoCal people think of the state Capitol?

A dominant feeling is that it’s a cesspool of corruption. It’s a place where they waste tax money and spend money on themselves. That’s what most people think.

You’ve written columns that presented a counter narrative to that, though.

Yeah. I try to keep these people as honest as you can and report on what they’re doing. If they’re doing bad stuff, you try to report that. But my overall thesis on this whole subject is that it’s a representative government and the people who get elected are pretty representative of the people who elect them. What more do they expect? You look at any business. You think advertising on television is truthful? No. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. These people elect their representatives. They come up here. You’d like to think they’re a cut above everyone else, but they’re really not. There’s some very good ones and some kind of bad ones.

Skelton with Gov. Pete Wilson at the Capitol in the 1990s (Photo courtesy of George Skelton)

What’s the next couple of years going to be about for you?

I have no idea. I may wake up some morning and feel like not going to work and just retire, or some editor may look cross-eyed at me and I’ll quit. At some point I’ll quit. I don’t know when that is. I don’t look two years ahead. Seriously, the most I look ahead is two columns.

What’s the secret for staying relevant for this long?

The only secret is that you’re reporting. Don’t figure you know it all just because you wrote about something five years ago. It doesn’t mean that it’s still the same situation. You’ve got to keep up with the changing events. It’s pretty simple. I can’t write off the top of my head. I just don’t want to do that. You make too many mistakes that way.

Were you ever tempted to leave journalism and get into politics yourself?

No.

So many political journalists make that move and get into creating policy themselves.

Not me.

Never once contemplated it? 

No. I like the freedom to be able to write what I want, to cut through the bullsh-t and write the truth about what’s going on. I like all that. I certainly couldn’t run for anything. I couldn’t get elected.

How come?

I’ve got a lousy personality. I can’t take the bullsh-t.