17/02/2026 10:25

---

s to avoid publicity about his personal life, Friday faced an even worse political curse—being ignored. We had invited more than 2,500 people to the event, which George Stephanopoulos and Rahm Emanuel had labored over. I wanted a Republican in the cabinet, liked and respected Cohen, and thought he could fill Bill Perry’s very big shoes. Helen Thomas of United Press International, the senior White House correspondent, asked me: “If you had it to do over again, wou

with a sense of hope and optimism about what we could do, and a sober sense of what the new forces of destruction could do to us. In the face of all the character attacks, I responded as I always did when my back was against the wall—I plowed on. President Carter called me on June 1 and said he would like to go to North Korea to try to resolve the problem. On June 30, the House Ways and Means Committee voted out a universal coverage bill without a single Republican vote.