Hi. Thanks for joining My Alumni Website.  This is Molly, and I know you're going to love this interview with Michael Smerconish. He is one of the top syndicated radio hosts on AM radio, a Philadelphia native, who shares some of his experiences with college, particularly that one moment that defined his life.  As a freshman in college at Lehigh University, it changed his world when he started working on a campaign. You'll learn all about that as well as hearing him reminisce about his 25th Year Anniversary and what he thinks makes a great radio program. He also discusses some of his brushes with fame from Colin Powell to President Obama.  Enjoy.

 

Michael Smerconish
Radio host, columnist, author

 

Molly
My Alumni Website

Michael Smerconish
Hello.

 

Molly
Hi, Michael.  This is Molly from My Alumni Website. 

 

Michael Smerconish
Hi

 

Molly

How are you?

 

Michael Smerconish
Good.

 

Molly
Great. Thanks for agreeing to join us today.

 

Molly
You advertised once that your show will make your listeners mad.  How do you do that?

 

Michael Smerconish
Actually it was a billboard that by now is 15 years old and the slogan really was: He'll make you think, and it was a play on that that they were trying to convey.

 

Molly
And how do make your listeners think?

 

Michael Smerconish
By going through the news of the day and hopefully providing them with enough information to render an opinion on something that's often in controversy.

 

Molly
Sure.  And in your book, Morning Drive, you write about several brushes with fame, and you interview people like Fidel Castro and Colin Powell.  Tell us one of their stories.

Michael Smerconish
Tell you one of those stories, I mean…

 

Molly
Yeah, tell us one of your favorite stories about your brushes with fame.

 

Michael Smerconish
It's funny, I don't think that those interviews are the ones for which I’m best known. They're good for my ego. I'm proud of the fact that I've had five different American presidents on the program.  But what I find is often most compelling are the everyday stories about life that Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives can all feel a piece of or a stake in.  In fact, if you say to me, "Tell me about a brush with fame," now President Obama was on my radio program three times last year as Senator or Candidate Obama and what I remember most about the first of those interviews is not so much what was said, but the fact that I was doing the interview from home and I was nervous that my wife, who was out getting a pizza with our three sons, was going to come home prematurely and that the boys would start fighting and that it would ruin the sound quality of the interview.  So you know I'm speaking to the man who's about to become President, but really I'm worried about the pizza.

 

Molly
And he could probably identify with that because he's got two little girls who probably interfere occasionally with his interviews.

 

Michael Smerconish
You know that's true, and the best way of handling that would have been to say, "Mr. President," or " Senator," at the time, "sorry about the noise in the background, it's my kids fighting over a pizza."

 

Molly
Who haven't you met yet or interviewed that you think that would tell a great story?

 

Michael Smerconish
I have an extraordinary producer and she's been terrific in going after newsmakers and individuals that I've wanted on the program with one exception, the one individual that I've said, "Please book that person" and she hasn't been able to pull it off, but some day she will, is Larry David.  Larry David is the creative genius behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I actually draw a great deal of inspiration from the type of program that he has done for my own radio show, and I would love to him.  But it's been the subject of so much discussion that probably if she were to get him I'd blow it if she were to provide him to me. Who the hell knows what I would ask?

 

Molly
It's almost like built up too much now to be everything it's supposed to be, right?

 

Michael Smerconish
Be careful what you wish for.

 

Molly
I think our listeners would love to hear a funny story from your college years. I know you went to Lehigh University and then you went to Pennsylvania Law School.  Did you get into a lot of trouble when you were in school?

 

Michael Smerconish
I didn't get in so much trouble because I was a political geek and I got my political start while I was an undergraduate at Lehigh.  I have a very strong affinity for Lehigh.  As a matter of fact, my 25-year college reunion was last Saturday night and it was a real pleasure for me to return to the campus.  I had a wonderful experience both at Lehigh and at Penn for law school; but it's kind of funny because if I were to pinpoint the start of what is I'm doing now 25 years ago, I would go back to a particular incident on the Lehigh campus in the fall of 1980.  And what happened is that I had turned 18, I had registered to vote, and I very quickly got caught up in the Reagan Bush Campaign, and I arrived on campus mistakenly thinking that everybody else was interested in politics and that they too would be interested in Reagan and Bush.  And I quickly came to recognize that nobody else was interested in politics, in particular Reagan and Bush, and I was the only one.  I formed a club and I called it Lehigh University Youth for Regan Bush, and I then tried to encourage students to get active in the campaign or at least to register to vote, and to say that it was a slow going would be an understatement.  But one day about 10 days in advance of the 1980 general election, I got a telephone call in my freshman dorm, Taylor Hall, which was 150 guys and one hall phone, no cell phones, no computers, no Internet. It would take an act of divine intervention for you to get a competent phone message, but I did.  Somebody told me that I had a telephone call and it was a representative of the Reagan Bush Campaign.  And the funny thing is they were calling to inquire as to whether my club members would be interested in assisting with an upcoming visit of George Bush to the Bethlehem Steel plant.  His title at the time was Ambassador Bush. He was not yet vice president much less president, or (inaudible) for president.

 

Molly
Right.

 

Michael Smerconish
So I hung up the telephone and the reality was I had no club. My club was a disaster.

 

Molly
It was you.

 

Michael Smerconish
So I ran down the hall - - I ran down the hall and I knocked on the doors of all of my hallmates and I recruited them to play a role in this one-time visit of George Bush to the old Bethlehem Steel plant, and about a half dozen of us did.  We took off class for a couple of days, we then walked through his schedule with him and then lined up on the tarmac at the local airport and shook his hand, and it was a tremendous experience.  But when Bush was elected vice president, the person who coordinated that trip recruited me to now become an advance man for Vice President Bush and to plan the logistics of his personal appearances across the country and around the globe; and it was this extraordinary experience, which led to more responsibility in the Republican Party for me and ultimately led to my being a talking head on election night for a TV station and then for a radio station, so that was my start. I mean it all began for me on a freshman hall when I became active for Reagan and Bush and then caught a lucky break.

 

Molly
And then that…

 

Michael Smerconish
That's a long story for you, huh?

 

Molly
No, I love it though, and that story reminds of:  There was a lot of grassroots organizing on campuses for the recent election when Obama won, and how did that make you feel when suddenly all of these students did care and here in 1980 you're knocking on strangers' doors trying to get somebody to care?

 

Michael Smerconish
It's funny for you to say that because it's true. I think the Democrats have always had an easier time in terms of recruiting young people to get involved.  That's one of the reasons why I always was so fortunate. I was handed so much responsibility because there weren't many young people involved in Republican politics, so I would be the youngest person in the room; they would want to showcase whoever was young and in the room and it led to my being handed a lot of responsibility that frankly if I had been on the Democratic side of the aisle, I would never have been given.

 

Molly
So it was a little bit of luck, some charisma, and the fact that Republicans were trying to show a diversity that you show.

 

Michael Smerconish
I've been very fortunate, right place, right time, and I have worked it, so a combination of all of those.

 

Molly
You're a father, an author, you're a columnist, you're a radio host. You wear a lot of hats, but how would you say you define yourself?

 

Michael Smerconish
Content provider. 

 

Molly
Okay.

 

Michael Smerconish
I was thinking about listing that on my tax return this year because of all these different things that I have going, the one common denominator is that I provide content.  People often say to me, "Well are worried about satellite radio and HD radio and all these different means of communication lessening or watering down the value of AM radio?"  And my answer is no because everyone of these communication advances just creates an outlet that's got to be filled by somebody like me, so I love it all.

 

Molly
And also you write for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News in a column.  What about the Internet?  Is that yet another hole for you to fill with your content?

 

Michael Smerconish
No, I have a website that I try and keep updated; although, I'm spread a little bit thin and often times that's the weak link for me, but I enjoy writing. I was a journalism major in college and it comes naturally, at least I hope it comes naturally to me, and I like writing the columns because the columns give me the opportunity to catch my breath and assemble my thoughts in a way that radio doesn't.  I never know what the person at the other end of that telephone line is going to say.  Consequently, I don't know in what direction we're about to head, but the writing opportunities for the Daily News and the Inquirer give me the chance to sort of sit back and put my thoughts in some semblance of order. 

 

Molly
So your columns are cathartic for you to put it all on a page when you control the content?

 

Michael Smerconish
Yeah, I mean you know some are easier to write than others and frankly those that I struggle with never turn out to be the better ones. 

 

Molly
Really?

 

Michael Smerconish
The best columns for me seem to be the ones that almost write themselves because I guess in those instances I know what I want to do and I get it done.

 

Molly
Is that how your books evolved that you just kind of knew what you wanted to (inaudible)?

 

Michael Smerconish
No, I never set out to write book number one.  Book number one, Flying Blind, evolved from a Daily News story that I wrote, which frankly began with a radio interview. It was radio interview, Daily News' story, and then the subject that I was pursuing, which was whether political correctness was playing a role in the post 9/11 world as we screened out our airports, it just took on a life of its one and one interview led to another interview and before I knew it, a publisher came to me and said, "If you can bring this to some kind of a conclusion, you actually have a book here."  I had not been thinking book.  And then when I had that experience, I enjoyed it immensely and I went looking for opportunity number two.

 

Molly
Which that sort of leads me to another question is that a lot the subjects on My Alumni Website talk about being goal oriented and knowing what they were going to do from their youth and setting out and kind of taking off all the lists of what they had to do to get there.  It sounds to me like you sort of have taken a different approach. 

 

Michael Smerconish
Well because of my 25-year college reunion, literally last Saturday night, I've thought about what you've just asked me.  I've thought about it in the context of: Okay, 25 years ago when I left, where did I think I was going?  If you said to me 25 years ago, where you will be in 25 years?  I would probably have said: I hope in an elective office.  Well, I didn't wait long to pursue that goal.  When I got to law school, a seat opened in the state legislature.  I was in my second year at Penn and I ran for it and I lost by 419 votes…

 

Molly
Okay.

 

Michael Smerconish
…and I never looked back. It was a great experience. I would do it all over tomorrow, even knowing that I would lose because I think I benefited from it.  But I've never again had the desire to run for elective office and yet when I was leaving that Lehigh campus, that was the goal. The goal was run and win and be an elected official and a public servant.

 

Molly
So what's next?

 

Michael Smerconish
I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing for a while. I like for the most part what I do. The radio program at the first part of this year went into national syndication, which is something that had been a goal of mine for a long time. I'm in 35 markets as of today between two different shows and I'm enjoying this challenge. It is a challenge, but this is what I want to do at least for the foreseeable future. I want to grow the radio program.

 

Molly
Do you hope to be in the satellite radio and to jump off the AM wave?

 

Michael Smerconish
No. I like being anywhere where they can hear me.  It doesn't matter.

 

Molly
Anybody that'll listen, right?

 

Michael Smerconish
It could be a CB radio, I could be doing like Breaker 19, you know, call me at this number.  Who the hell knows?

 

Molly
10-4 Good Buddy.

 

Michael Smerconish
Right. There you go. 

 

Molly
Well listen, I appreciate your time today and best of luck to you. Thanks for everything.

 

Michael Smerconish
Yeah, I hoped that worked and you got what you needed.

 

Molly
Michael, it was beautiful. Thanks so much.

 

Michael Smerconish
Good. Thank you.

 

Molly
Take care. Bye.