← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
How to Win: Morton Blackwell on Building Leaders, Movements, and a Life of Going Big!
00:52:40
Loading summary
Transcript90 lines
- [00:00]
Morton Blackwell
You have to build a foundation. One of my 45 laws, which was one of the shorter ones which wasn't mentioned, is I said, read to lead. You need to build up a solid understanding of the political philosophy that you already reasonably believe in. So read to lead, and then after that, the next step that's most important, once you've really got a sound grip on your political philosophy and your position on public policy issues, then study how to win. Study how to win. You don't have time in your life to make every mistake and learn from every mistake on your personal experience. You need to observe activity around yourself. You need to read books and things that relate to political technology. And you have to spend time in training where people are trying to teach you how to win, try to give you the skills how to organize, how to communicate, how to raise money. All of those things are skills, and they tend to be philosophically neutral.
- [01:06]
Kevin Gentry
Welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week, I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs, and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to light. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube, or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great treat for me to be with Morton Blackwell today. Morton Blackwell is the president of the Leadership Institute. And in many ways, in this conversation, we're going to give you lots of inspiring examples about how Morton has thought big and truly gone big in a consequential way. So I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Morton, it's so great to be with you. We've known each other for a long time. I realized this morning that it was 41 years ago today that I went through your youth leadership school with a group of my fellow College Republicans from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and we've known each other through so many different things. I work for you, and you've been such an extraordinarily important mentor to me as well as a great friend. And it's just a treat to be able to have this conversation, and I'm just hoping that this message will be able to inspire a lot of people around the world to think big and go big as you have.
- [02:55]
Morton Blackwell
Well, Kevin, you've had great success yourself, and I'm proud to have had some role in developing you into the extraordinary conservative leader that you are.
- [03:06]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that's very nice. And you have had quite an extraordinary role in my own personal development. So thank you. Well, let's start off with. In 1979, you founded the Leadership Institute. And since that time, you have activated hundreds of thousands of conservatives around the world to become more effectively engaged in the public policy process. Over 300,000 have graduated from your Leadership Institute programs. And so it's quite extraordinary.
- [03:39]
Morton Blackwell
320,000 plus.
- [03:41]
Kevin Gentry
Okay, 320,000 plus. Well, a lot to talk about with respect to that. But what exactly is the mission and objective of the Leadership Institute? What are you trying to accomplish with it?
- [03:54]
Morton Blackwell
Well, you hit on the right first question. Any group active and trying to achieve things should develop a mission statement that encompasses what they want to do in an understandable way. And that helps recruit people for your programs. It helps recruit donors. It's very effective. The mission statement for the Leadership Institute is to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in government, politics, and the news media, which can be combined to the public policy process. That's what we do, increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders. And we do that by finding people who already have their heads screwed on, cite pretty well philosophically, and then we teach them. And what is often very difficult to teach somebody who's deep into the political philosophy, you teach them that you owe it to your philosophy to study how to win. And just being right in the sense of being correct does not mean that you win. The winner in a political contest over time is, tends to be, and almost always is the side that has the the greatest number of effective activists and leaders, not just being right. I call that the Sir Galahad theory. I will win because my heart is pure. That's a legend. It is not true that you win because your heart is queer. You can be exactly honorable and understand a wide range of important public policy questions. But if you don't study how to win, you're going to make foolish mistakes that other conservatives have made before. And without knowledge of their experience, you're going to do the same stupid mistakes that your predecessors did.
- [05:49]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thank you for creating that as the foundation for this conversation. And it is not only, and has been so consequential in its mission and in its work, the Leadership Institute, but how you thought about it in a very strategic way and you know, just as you said that, it makes me think of, you know, 250 years ago this week, Patrick Henry gave his famous liberty or death speech. And I didn't appreciate until recently that it wasn't just a speech, that he moved the audience with his speech. He was highly strategic and he realized he needed to move one group within the body in order to get to a majority. And he used particular language, references, biblical references, allusions to plays, all sorts of things to move that one group to win. And you're right. So many of us think, well, I know my position, I stand for this.
- [06:49]
Morton Blackwell
So I can prove it's right. Therefore, what more do I need to do? I can prove it's right.
- [06:54]
Kevin Gentry
Exactly. And obviously, when I prove it's right, everybody will come to my side.
- [07:00]
Morton Blackwell
Good luck.
- [07:01]
Kevin Gentry
Well, the world doesn't work that way, as you've pointed out. Well, again, a lot to talk about, but I want to set the stage a little bit more. So those of us who've gone through your programs, those of the many hundreds of thousands of people who've supported your efforts over the years, know because you've told us many times that you were the youngest Goldwater delegate, which is extraordinary. And Barry Goldwater has such an important part in the development of the conservative movement in the United States. But then after the Goldwater defeat in 1964, not only were you politically active in a number of ways, but especially for Ronald Reagan and ultimately, when he first ran in 1968, not everybody knows he first ran in 1968. You were a delegate?
- [07:48]
Morton Blackwell
I was an alternate delegate from Louisiana in 64. I had been Goldwater's youngest delegate. In 68. I still lived in Louisiana and. But I was in Washington as executive director of the National College Republicans for five and a half years. So I figured that it wouldn't work since I was not all time present in Louisiana for me to run as a delegate again. So I made commitments with mutual commitments with lots of people who were running and got a lot of people to say that they and their friends would vote for me for alternate delegate. And even though I was living up here in D.C. area at the time, I won. But. And so I was a Reagan alternate delegate in 68, 72, I got married, moved up here, didn't live in Louisiana, so couldn't be on their delegation, just arrived in Virginia, so I couldn't be in their delegation. But I went to the convention nevertheless in 72 and played a very, very active role in liberal versus conservative battle over the allocation of Delegates among the states. In 76, I was a Reagan alternate from Virginia, and in 80, I was a Reagan delegate.
- [09:06]
Kevin Gentry
Well, let's talk about that. So you were very active in the Reagan campaign. Of course, you put together, led the Youth for Reagan effort, which was a big contributor to his win. In 1980, you were tapped to join his White House staff. Yep, three years and a very important and influential role as the liaison to conservatives, veterans and religious organizations, so important in the continued development and maturation of the conservative movement. However, you decided to really go big, to leave that post at the White House, to go to the Leadership Institute full time with a certain amount of uncertainty about what would happen as a result of that, certainly maybe personal financial uncertainty. You were married. Tell us about the thought process of taking that kind of plunge to do this full time, because I think now, as we can say, the rest is history.
- [10:11]
Morton Blackwell
During the campaign, I had no thought of working for the coming Reagan administration. I was on the Senate staff. My, my boss was Senator Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire, who was a big Reagan supporter. After the election, he detailed me from his staff to work in the personnel office of the President Elect. I still had no desire, I didn't know of a single job in the government that I wanted. And my plan was to leave the Senate staff and go build the Leadership Institute. And it was a joyous time to have Reagan finally elected and vindicated what so many of my friends and I had fought for for decades. Well, then I learned that there was going to be a position in the Reagan White House to be liaison to the conservative groups. And I found out who was the person most frequently mentioned for that position. I knew this person well and knew that there was a serious danger at the time because I'd been in the personnel office. We'd staffed up most of the administration by the time of the inauguration. And I realized that the administration was not composed just of solid conservatives. There were a lot of people who had served in the Ford administration or maybe in the Nixon administration, and they had wonderful resumes.
- [11:38]
Kevin Gentry
The Reaganites were the outsiders.
- [11:40]
Morton Blackwell
They came from Reaganites were the outsiders, we call these people from previous Republican administration's retreads, and they had beautiful resumes. But the people who had worked their hearts out and nominated and elected Reagan, there were very, very few of who had any position in any previous Republican administration. And I realized that there was a serious problem, that there was going to be terrible friction between the Reaganites and the non Reaganites in the Reagan administration. And I had been participating in building the conservative movement for a long time. And I said, there needs to be somebody from the White House who's known and trusted in the conservative movement. So I talked to a guy who just got a job and he told me who was in line perhaps for the job. And I said, that person will not do. This is going to be a delicate matter because there are a lot of conservatives who will be quite disappointed to contact people in the Reagan administration who were not conservative. And then there was a pause of about 20 seconds and I looked in my friend's eyes and I said, what about me for that position on the White House staff? He said, you'd be great. Give me your resume. I'll take it over to Elizabeth Newell, who was the head of the Office of Public Liaison in the Reagan White House at the outset and said, you'll get the job for sure. I said, I don't have a resume. I haven't had a typed up resume for many years. I haven't needed one type up one. I did and he took it over and I got the job offer. And I was there for three years as special assistant to the President.
- [13:25]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that in and of itself.
- [13:26]
Morton Blackwell
And I left when I figured I had done the job. By then there was all manner of interrelationship between movement conservatives and people within the Reagan administration. And I didn't think there was any danger that there would be any serious disputes between conservative movement people in the Reagan administration.
- [13:47]
Kevin Gentry
And so it turned out well, good for you. We can look back now 45 years it arrears and say those kind of decisions remain so consequential because you look at the conservative movement of the United States and what has happened over that period of time and the extraordinary consequential leadership of Ronald Reagan. But that had to be cemented in certain ways by the actions that people like you took. So that's a going big episode in and of itself. But your decision to then go to a nonprofit organization, that was not much there. That was a lot of risk taking. I'm sure there was a temptation that we know a lot of people would leave a presidential administration and cash out, as we say, in a cynical manner and become a lobbyist or something like that. But you chose instead to serve the conservative movement in a different way and to lead the Leadership Institute, but really starting almost from ground zero. Tell us about that decision. I know you had it in place and Peter Kaiser was running.
- [14:56]
Morton Blackwell
Perhaps the most important thing I can tell you about this is that when I told my wife I was leaving this position as special assistants of the President, which gave me lifelong the honor of being called the Honorable Morton Blackwell. And I was leaving a group which annual revenue wasn't as big as my salary at the White House.
- [15:19]
Kevin Gentry
Right.
- [15:20]
Morton Blackwell
It was a risk. The important thing was that my wife shared my principles. She shared my desire to win. She was extremely active in conservative and Republican politics herself. And she says, morton, I support you entirely. We'll take the risk.
- [15:38]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that is great. And Helen Blackwell, and of herself would be a whole episode on going big as well. Just extraordinary. Morton. So, all right, so you did that. And now here we are. Today, the Leadership institute is a $50 million year organization. But much more importantly, let's not exaggerate.
- [15:59]
Morton Blackwell
Last year our revenue set a record, but it was only 49.9 million.
- [16:03]
Kevin Gentry
Okay, all right, well, we'll round up. But the point is, it's a significant organization, but much more importantly is that you're turning out many more graduates than ever before. Many more different programs, efforts even around the world. You have so many different ways of helping in terms of job placement and internships and campus reform effort. Just so on and on and on and on and on. So a couple of questions about strategy, because again, this is again, the going big concept. First of all, I want to revisit your point where you referenced, as you call it, the Sir Galahad theory, your decision to focus not on political philosophy.
- [16:45]
Morton Blackwell
And I think I'm as hard a core conservative as anybody.
- [16:49]
Kevin Gentry
I think people would agree with that.
- [16:50]
Morton Blackwell
Down the street in Virginia.
- [16:53]
Kevin Gentry
So you agreed. You decided not to focus on political philosophy because others were doing that, many other organizations. But you grabbed a hole in the marketplace, which was necessary, and that was to teach effectiveness, teach political technique, touch leadership skills to those who are already philosophically sound.
- [17:12]
Morton Blackwell
Right.
- [17:12]
Kevin Gentry
Tell me a little bit. How did you come to that point of view? Was that a product of all of your political activity up to that point?
- [17:19]
Morton Blackwell
It came to me that to be really effective leaders for building conservative activism, to develop conservative policies, the combination that was ideal would be somebody who was philosophically sound, technologically proficient, learning those philosophically neutral skills, and movement oriented, working to build a movement, not trying to build an empire, cooperate with others. And so I said what I can do to increase the number of people who are philosophically sound, technologically proficient, movement oriented. I've already established myself as somebody effective in teaching technology. I had been in the latter half of the 60s and through the 70s when training youth organizers and the reputation was there. Lots of my trainees had run excellent youth efforts for candidates for house senator and governor. And so I knew that I had a reputation already, and I thought I could do it. And I had had the wonderful experience of working from 72 to 79 for Richard Viggory, who was the pioneer of conservative political direct mail. And I worked for him for seven years, and after that worked for the Senate for a while and then at the White House. But you have to take risks, indeed, if you're going to advance things and make things happen. But you need to be prudent. You have to place bets, but you should never bet the ranch, and you should take bets that you could afford to keep going if, in fact, that particular bet didn't win.
- [18:59]
Kevin Gentry
All right. Well, you famously talk about betting your nickel, but no more than a nickel on occasion. I want to touch on that in a moment. But first, the next question is why the focus overwhelmingly on young people? So Leadership Institute programs are not exclusively for young people, but overwhelmingly they are. And I think we now know, looking back, that your focus there, your investment has been, again, quite extraordinary in terms of its consequences. But what was your thinking on why that was the. The focus area?
- [19:32]
Morton Blackwell
It's prudent to think about how you can maximize your effect. Now, let's suppose that somehow I had great expertise organizing people who were in their 80s, and I spent a lot of time, talented, money training people in the 80s. I'm in my middle 80s right now, and I'm still kicking. But, you know, it's not.
- [19:54]
Kevin Gentry
But you may not be doing it 50 years from now.
- [19:56]
Morton Blackwell
That is correct. So you train people now when they're young, and you have benefits that continue for a long time in an educational program. It is very difficult to measure the effectiveness of your program immediately after you've done it, because the effectiveness that you have is the cause of effectiveness in people all their lives. Years ago, the interns at the Leadership Institute got together and got a cartoonist to draw a caricature of me. And it was a caricature of me dressed up like Johnny Appleseed, whose legend says went around planting apple seeds. He's a real guy, but he did more than plant apple seeds. But that's what he did. And I thanked my interns for it. I said, it's nice. I. You won't see many pictures of me in our. In our headquarters, but this is good. But I want to tell you there is a significant difference between what Johnny Appleseed was reputed to have done and what I'm doing. Johnny Appleseed, as the story goes, planted the seeds and went on to other places and planted more seeds.
- [21:12]
Kevin Gentry
But he never came back. He didn't go back to the seeds.
- [21:15]
Morton Blackwell
Right. And so the big difference is that unlike Johnny Appleseed, I stick around to tend to the seedlings.
- [21:22]
Kevin Gentry
Indeed. Well, I think that in my judgment the two greatest strengths that you've had is, number one is the identification of talent. But then the mentoring of that talent over the long term and the training in and of itself was not sufficient unless you did some kind of mentoring and coaching over time. Morten, how do you identify talent? That's the first question. How do you identify talent? How do you identify talent? And how do you think we should consider identifying talent?
- [21:53]
Morton Blackwell
I don't claim to be infallible in the matter of choosing people. I seek people who are already philosophically sound to some extent, like Ronald Reagan, committed to limited government, free enterprise, the strong national defense and traditional values. And that was what Reagan's coalition was built on. And I, I thought that was extraordinarily helpful. So what I could do that would contribute to it would be to find as many people as possible, preferably identified in their youth, who had a reasonably solid handle on the public policy principles and then do my best to recruit them to come to my training so that in addition to being philosophically sound, they could greatly increase how politically effective that they were. So that's what I did. And I can't look at a classroom of people and say this one is a future US Senator and this one may make it as high as school board member or whatever. But you train a lot of people. First off, we screen people, try to, although we have an open admissions policy, we particularly try to recruit people who already have their head screwed on right. And then we train them and then we stick around and help them, help them get jobs of various sorts. And currently there are as active member active in office now there are 38 US Congress members, House of Representative members who are graduates of the Leadership Institute, four United States Senators, over 250 state legislators, and an unknown uncounted number of people who are local officials. And to the extent I can, I keep in touch with those people. I suggest to them that they look for suitable people for me to recruit for our training. I take them in to come and get new trainings and then we offer the political techniques change over time, but human nature doesn't. And so you develop a good sense for human nature. I find people and I try to.
- [24:13]
Kevin Gentry
Help them, you bet your nickel, many times. And it's paid off. Well, Morten, I've told you many times, I think one of your great gifts is how you do have a good understanding of human nature and how people make decisions, how they react to things. And you've just been a good judge over time. You're right. Nobody's perfect. Nobody can perfectly judge it. But the overall premise, the overall strategy has proven to be really effective and we'll see the benefits of this for decades to come. It's not like it just stops. And by the way, you mentioned a number of elected officials. In my assessment, that's important. But what's really important are the tens of thousands of people who maybe are in key positions of influence in government, but even more importantly in key positions of influence in organizations within the movement in some way. And that is one of the other enduring values of this. Well, Morgan, we're going to switch gears. You famously have your laws of the public policy process. I love these whenever I share them with people. These are great. How do I get a copy? Well, you can easily get a copy off the Leadership Institute website. I know they're available.
- [25:27]
Morton Blackwell
Leadershipinstitute.org all of our schools are described and opportunities to enroll 55 different types of schools. And we've had interns and others who have translated these 45 laws of the public policy which I have collected, some of which I thought up, others of which I was happy to add to my list. But we now have hanging on the wall outside my Office translations into 16 different languages.
- [25:55]
Kevin Gentry
That's quite extraordinary. I remember I think the first was Spanish, but it just went on from there and even seeing it in Arabic or Korean or whatever it might be. So I'm going to touch on some of these and we'll try to go through them quickly and just if you would maybe either comment on the definition, the meaning if it's not immediately clear in your judgment or its importance. So I think we'll start with importance because you have number one. Obviously the number one law must have some reason for being number one. And your number one is never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no.
- [26:34]
Morton Blackwell
Yep. My experience in the congressional staff and the Reagan White House staff in a long period of being active at the local and state level in Republican Party activities. I've learned a lot about that. And one of the problems is the fewer bureaucrats that you have, the more that the purpose of the legislature in passing the law or authorizing the expenditure. You can get more bang out of your book if you don't hire huge numbers of self satisfied bureaucrats who think they are entitled for a lifelong of employment, whether they really achieve anything that anybody else will say is worthwhile or not.
- [27:18]
Kevin Gentry
Yeah, well, you know, it's. And you could take the literal definition of bureaucrat, but it's also those who were just a risk averse and it's easier to say no than it is to say yes. Because while if I say yes, I may be held accountable for the consequences if they go wrong. So I'll be in a better position.
- [27:37]
Morton Blackwell
To say no, say no, or just try not to make a decision and don't. It's the same thing as saying no if you don't make a decision.
- [27:46]
Kevin Gentry
Well, maybe this should be the sort of tagline for the Going Big podcast is never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no. Well, the next one is don't fire all your ammunition at once. What does that mean?
- [27:59]
Morton Blackwell
Well, if you're a candidate for public office, if you're an advocate for a particular piece of legislation, politics is often exciting. There's a lot of scandal in it. There are people who have concealed real flaws in their past behavior and it doesn't make any sense if you are leading a battle on one side. For you to use everything that you have negative about your opponent at once, and as a practical matter, you need to use enough of the negative information that you have that's absolutely solid, you go out and fire that out against your opposition and reveal these things and then let your opponent respond to that. And only after you cut the round of publicity, once you've got the thing out there, and only after it's had its maximum impact for that amount of legitimate information that you share at once, then and only then do you fire more ammunition. It would not make sense for you to stand up in one speech or in one position paper to make all of the negative points that you want to make because that lessens the effectiveness of it. You want it. Each one of you don't want to exhaust all of your ammunition. You want to do it bit by bit. And that's a big mistake. Politics is not like a case in a court. In a case, in a court, you, whether it's a civil case or a criminal case, you've got two sides that are each arguing a different side of the facts. And each side has to bring all of the information to bear at once. And that isn't the most effective way to do that. But nevertheless, they're compelled by the legal system to fire everything in the case. And when the case is over, you got to have fired all the useful ammunition Politics is not like that. Politics is more like marketing than it is by proof. In the course of law, the decision is made by a jury or the judge, depending upon the type of case that it is. And the jury and the judge are sworn to carefully study everything that is presented legitimate to legitimate to them by both sides, and they take it seriously. But Kevin, you've been registered to vote for a long time. Do you remember an oath that you had to take when you registered, promising to study every campaign, study every candidate, study all their position papers and make a well thought out decision? After you've learned all that, you remember that oath you have to take?
- [30:59]
Kevin Gentry
Of course.
- [30:59]
Morton Blackwell
Yeah.
- [30:59]
Kevin Gentry
Right. So I think that's a great illustration. All right, so let's move on to a couple more. But you're right, I think that's another example of your understanding of human nature and how people behave. So related to that. Another law. Don't get mad except on purpose.
- [31:17]
Morton Blackwell
Generally speaking, getting mad weakens your position in a discussion. If you look like you've lost your temper, then your side is not going to benefit from your losing your temper. However, there are cases where moral indignation is helpful to you because moral indignation, while it isn't frequently involved in the public policy process, it often is. And you, if you show moral indignation as something rotten that you're the other side has done, or some stupid argument, a false argument that they made, if you work yourself up about it. Moral indignation is a contagious human emotion. And if people see somebody genuinely upset and arguing about it, like a parent whose child has disappeared or whatever, others seeing this will reflect back something of this moral indignation themselves.
- [32:22]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that's another good example, Morten, I think of how you have this understanding of human nature. That's very good. All right, continuing along, I'm going to put two of them together and then we're going to go speed through a bunch more. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. And then you have a follow up law which is, remember the other side has troubles too.
- [32:47]
Morton Blackwell
The ideas that we've talked about earlier are reflected in, in both of these things. You, you can't let yourself self get depressed when things are going bad on your side. And one of the things which is almost always true, probably always is true, that keeps your spirits up. Things seem to be going wrong. But then you need to think the other side probably has troubles too. What are their problems? And so that's important to take into consideration and keeps you from becoming depressed when things don't look good.
- [33:23]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you have a lot of other good laws, and I would recommend that people check them out. If they're not familiar with them at.
- [33:29]
Morton Blackwell
Your website, you can Google for laws of the public policy process. Indeed.
- [33:35]
Kevin Gentry
And it will pop up. And certainly if you add Morton Blackwell, it will pop up. Remember, it's a long ball game. You can't beat somebody with nobody. Better a snake in the grass than a viper in your bosom. That's a complicated one.
- [33:49]
Morton Blackwell
That's true. But better snake in the grass than a viper in the bosom, which means that you want to keep your distance from the venomous folks. Snake in the grass is not going to hurt you unless you allow it to. But if you do like Cleopatra was supposed to have done, she got an Aspen and had it bite her in her bosom. And that's where I came up with that one.
- [34:17]
Kevin Gentry
There you go. Well, choose your enemies as carefully as you choose your friends.
- [34:21]
Morton Blackwell
Absolutely.
- [34:22]
Kevin Gentry
And then you cannot make friends of your enemies by making enemies of your friends.
- [34:28]
Morton Blackwell
Well, that's not original with me, but it is certainly true. And the temptation, particularly if you tend to be an opportunist, is to think that you can get more people supporting you and people on the other side support you. If you betray some of your friends. Wrong. That's a disastrous state in the long run. You need to be loyal to your friends, loyal to your principals. It means you're losing one battle. It doesn't mean you lose the war.
- [34:56]
Kevin Gentry
Well, this I'm going to ask a couple more and then I'm going to ask you some closing questions. You have some others. In politics, nothing moves unless it's pushed. Don't rely on being given anything you don't ask for. Promptly report your action to the one who requested it. Some of these come together in a story that you told me about a particular mentor of yours who helped you think about ways to act. And that was Senator Carl Curtis from Nebraska. And you have a particular story that you witnessed something that he did and how it influenced you. Could you share that?
- [35:36]
Morton Blackwell
Well, in the five and a half years that I was executive director off and on for the College Republican National Committee, that was summer of 65 through November 1970, I was learning a lot. I got the job because I had been active in the National College Republican Organization. And when I was state chairman of College Republicans in Louisiana, I brought the State Federation from three small clubs to 15 clubs, some of them with Hundreds of members. And I'd also been Goldwater's youngest selected delegate.
- [36:06]
Kevin Gentry
Indeed, she got that into the conversation yet again. Very good. Well done.
- [36:11]
Morton Blackwell
Well, I decided that I was going to learn all that I could, and I would go and get help on political matters, sometimes help in fundraising for people who were conservative. And I had known Senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska, who'd been elected to the Congress for the first time in 1938.
- [36:36]
Kevin Gentry
Wow.
- [36:37]
Morton Blackwell
And after some years in the House, he served in the Senate. And just a wonderful man. And he really loved to work with young people to do anything he reasonably could to advance and train and prepare young people for political success. And one of the startling things about him which was so endearing is when he went, I saw him several times asking him to do this or that that would help the National College Republicans. And he would say, yes, I'll do it. And then he would pick up the phone and. And initiate what he had just committed to do. It was like that. You didn't have to worry about it. It was an extraordinary thing. And I couldn't have to be stunned by it and realize how effective that person was under Carl Curtis. And he served till in the Senate until 1978.
- [37:33]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Well, I know you've cited a number of other people and you have the other law about. You have your word and your friends. You go back on either and you're dead. And you talk about the enormous political clout that Jesse Helms amassed in the United States Senate because his word was his bond.
- [37:49]
Morton Blackwell
Absolutely.
- [37:50]
Kevin Gentry
Morton, who I'm going to force you to think of the one, maybe two most influential mentors in your life. And why?
- [37:59]
Morton Blackwell
Well, obviously, essential to my professional success is that In May of 1972, my friend Lee Edwards introduced me to Richard Fee. Two weeks. And we had lunch at the Mayflower Hotel. Ten days. Two weeks later, Richard calls me again. He wants to now have lunch just between the two of us. And while I was there, he told me that he wanted to leave my current employment, go work for him, found out how much the current employer was paying me, and offered me on an annual basis, only $500 raise. And he said, morton, I want you to come help me build a conservative movement. I was working for a free market oriented organization and they did a lot of good. But years later, I told Richard Vigory that if he had offered me a salary cut with a job description that he offered me, that is come help me build a conservative movement, I'd have taken a substantial cut because that's what I really wanted to do in life.
- [39:04]
Kevin Gentry
And you did. Well, I think we can pronounce that you did, not only then, but subsequently.
- [39:12]
Morton Blackwell
All's well that ends well. You know, I'm not gone yet. I could screw up somewhere. Let me know. I can avoid that. I would say back home in Louisiana, the man who had the greatest impact on me was Mr. Charlton Lyons, an elderly independent oil man from Shreveport who ran for governor of Louisiana in March of 1964. And I ran the youth effort for him and I traveled around a lot with him. Now, my father was a geological engineer and I knew a whole lot of people who were independent oil producers. And most of them were rough as a cob, sneaky. They weren't ideal people. Charlton Lyons was a very successful independent oil man, but he always kept his word, treated people well, he articulated his positions extraordinarily well. And we wound up carrying most of the major cities in New Orleans in Louisiana, including New Orleans, where we lacked only 500 votes of carrying New Orleans, a Democrat stronghold. And we carried Baton Rouge and Shreveport and Alexandria and Lake Charles and Monroe, Lafayette. We carried them, the cities, in part because I organized strong youth efforts in those cities. They had colleges there. But in the rural areas, we still got clobbered. We carried virtually every major city except New Orleans, which we lost by only 500 votes. But the man was a paragon of culture, dignity, strong commitment. He put a lot of money into politics. Charlton Lyons was a terrific mentor for me at home.
- [41:03]
Kevin Gentry
Well, Morton, I don't think this was purposeful in your efforts to go big, but I think it was purposeful in your efforts to live a life in a manner that you just described as Charlton Lyons. I think that your reputation for keeping your word, your consistency, has served you very well and has served the conservative movement, served America very well. But I've shared the story many times with people that at the 2016 Virginia Republican Convention, the convention delegates were trying to choose between Donald Trump or a ticket of a slate of delegates opposed to Donald Trump for the nomination. It had not been secured at this point and it was extremely acrimonious. And people were yelling at each other and there were shoving of people. It was just crazy. Never seen anything like it. And it was so bad that the convention chairman called a recess and hoping things would calm down. And as the people were breaking and still arguing, he asked you who? The long serving Republican National Committee man. You've been in that role for now more than 40 years, elected 37.
- [42:15]
Morton Blackwell
This is my 30th year.
- [42:17]
Kevin Gentry
This is your Time to serve it to the 40th. Got it, got it. All right. But these multiple terms, long standing, and he asked you to speak, and when you went to the podium, the entire convention stood in a standing ovation to honor you, despite the fact that they had been fighting bitterly just seconds before. And they probably went back to fighting after you were done. But I think that's a testament to the manner in which you have lived your life. And so it's been a great. You've been a great role model to so many of us in so many ways. So, Morten, I want to conclude with three questions. The first one is thinking back now on yourself. What would you tell a younger version of yourself in any way to have done differently, maybe in your 20s?
- [43:03]
Morton Blackwell
My major at Luxembourg University was chemical engineering. I went to a small rural public high school, 28 in my graduating class. And I didn't feel any pull into one career or another. My father was a geological engineer, but I got straight A's in English. I loved history. I read more books than immodestly, probably the other 27 people in my high school class altogether still have thousands of books and enjoy it. So I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And we took tests. They had a test called Cooter Preference test, where you punched holes in answering questions and you unfolded it at the end and it created a bar graph. And my classmates, some of them had high marks on certain things and low marks on other things, which tended to guide you into what you wanted to do. And it's a series of questions like, which would you rather be a commercial fisherman, a lumberman, a dentist, or a medical doctor? And you had to choose one of those. My bar graph, you could have put a ruler across the top. They were all the same height. And my teacher says, morton, you were not taking this seriously. You just picked it randomly. I'm going to force you to take the exam again. And I did, and it came out the same way. And so not having a real determination of what I wanted to do for a career, I had been activated in. In the run up a couple of years before the 64 election, I saw a column in Newsweek by Raymond Moley, an interesting man who had been part of Franklin Roosevelt's brain trust in the early 30s, but he had become a conservative. And he said that the most interesting Senate race coming up was the effort of labor unions to defeat this freshman center from Arizona named Barry Goldwater. Well, I'd seen the name but didn't pay attention until then. After that I paid attention and I got attracted by his principal position and I started supporting him. That was a long time ago that, that was in the year 58. That's when it was the water was elected in the eisenhower landsliders of 52. And so I got active and I had read a lot of stuff but I started reading Human Events and National Review and Foundation for Economic Education and I got on the mailing list for Intercollegiate Studies Institute and I read more deeply. Before long I had started reading books by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and Russell Kirk and went from there. And after years in 65 I was still in school lacking at the time of course for my degree in chemical engineering. And I'd been State College Republican chairman. They offered me this job, come to DC and be executive director of the College Republican National Committee. I had never been able before to think of any single way I might be able to earn a living doing what I'd love to do most, which was fighting for conservative principles. And then I came up here and in 65 and there were lots of people here like me who had shown up in 65 to the D.C. area. And over time I got to know people like Paul Weirich and Lee Edwards and Howard Phillips and Richard Figuery and. And others who were veterans of the Goldwater campaign. Most of us had never met each other but we were credentialed to each other because it was very obvious there were very few opportunists in the Goldwater campaign.
- [47:19]
Kevin Gentry
He wasn't expecting have high prospects for.
- [47:21]
Morton Blackwell
Victory, not much prospects for victory. And so even though we came in different ways, Vigory and Lee Edwards had both been acted nationally in the Reagan's, in the Goldwater campaign but the rest of us didn't know each other. And when we found that people were unrepentant about their support of Goldwater in 64 and still believed that it was the right thing to do, that credentialed us to each other and we suddenly get called together. Richard Vigory, with me as his assistant for this purpose began to hold meetings. Multiple meetings, usually meals, multiple meetings in a week. And we got to know each other and we got to thinking about what can we do to start winning. Because we'd been losing a lot and we figured out a lot of things. And the result was a dramatic increase in the number and effectiveness of conservative and libertarian groups. A lot of them got founded particularly in the 1970s and many of us were heading groups that were then called the New Right. And so we set about with an intention of building a movement.
- [48:32]
Kevin Gentry
Well, this is my final two questions. The first of them is, are you hopeful for the future of the country?
- [48:42]
Morton Blackwell
I've always been hopeful. I've never been certain about it. I'm not certain today about it. When Obama was president, it appeared to me that we might not be able to succeed. And the election just passed. I don't know anybody who would say Trump is going to win the popular vote. He's going to win the electoral vote, and there'll be seven targeted battleground states, and Trump will win every one of them. I mean, that's better than the most blindly optimistic Trump supporter would have imagined. The country was at risk. Another four years of a continuation of the policies and personnel of Joe Biden, I think, could have done us in.
- [49:27]
Kevin Gentry
All right, my final question to you, Morton. What advice would you give to anyone listening to this podcast anywhere in the world, but especially if they're younger, about how they should think about going big in their life?
- [49:43]
Morton Blackwell
Well, you have to build a foundation. One of my 45 laws, which was one of the shorter ones which wasn't mentioned, is I said, read to lead. You need to build up a solid understanding of the political philosophy that you already reasonably believe in. So read to lead. And then after that, the next step that's most important, once you really got a sound grip on your political philosophy and your position on public policy issues, then study how to win. Study how to win. You don't have time in your life to make every mistake and learn from every mistake from your personal experience. You need to observe activity around yourself. You need to read books and things that relate to political technology. And you have to spend time in training where people are trying to teach you how to win, try to give you the skills, how to organize, how to communicate, how to raise money. All of those things are skills and they're tend to be philosophically neutral. The vigory started political direct mail and for a number of years dominated. And he thought it would be 20 years before the left could figure out how to raise money through direct mail. The left weren't stupid and they saw what he and others were doing and imitated it. And to the point is that today direct mail is more productive for the left than it is for the right. But it's still, I'm happy to say, quite productive for some of us on the right.
- [51:19]
Kevin Gentry
Well, Morton, thank you not only for this opportunity to be together, it's always good to be with you, but for all that you've done. And I say not just for the conservative movement, but really for the United States, for the whole dream that the founders had. And continuing, we're about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country. I think we can be more hopeful about the future, and I think you played a pretty important role in putting us to where we are today. So thank you.
- [51:45]
Morton Blackwell
And if you say that, I have to say that it hasn't been a great sacrifice. I've been doing virtually every day exactly what I want to do.
- [51:52]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that must be another important ingredient of really going big.
- [51:56]
Morton Blackwell
Thanks.
- [51:57]
Kevin Gentry
Thank you. Morton, thanks for tuning in to the Going Big Podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep going big. See you next time on the Going Big Podcast.