Never Invite Sally Quinn: The Illustrious Washington Hostess on Ben Bradlee, Jill Biden and the Sexiness of Silence

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. Yesterday, we had the Yale historian, Samuel Moyn, on the show. He has a new book out called Gerontocracy In America, in which he rails against what he calls the old guard in America. They're controlling the money and the power still. They're not handing it down to the younger generation. I wonder whether he's particularly fair about that old guard. At the weekend, I saw the great Bob Dylan in Berkeley.
He's just 85 years old. He was born on May 24th, 1941 I couldn't find Dylan for this show. He's a hard man to track down. So I got the next best thing. Sally Quinn is a very distinguished American hostess. One of the powerhouses, if not the powerhouse of Washington DC. She was born about five weeks after Dylan on July the 1st, 1941 So she's still only 84 and I'm thrilled that she's joining us from her little office in Washington DC. Sally, welcome to Keen On America.

**Sally Quinn** (1:34)
Well, thank you so much. And I'm sorry you had to mention my age, but there it is. I'm celebrating my 85th in a couple of weeks, and I'm having a big birthday party.

**Andrew Keen** (1:45)
Lovely. Did you ever meet Bob Dylan? Have you met him?

**Sally Quinn** (1:49)
I don't think so, actually, no.

**Andrew Keen** (1:51)
Do you think he would have accepted one of your dinner party invitations?

**Sally Quinn** (1:57)
Yes, he would have.

**Andrew Keen** (1:59)
But you didn't invite him?

**Sally Quinn** (2:02)
No, we didn't run in the same crowds. Yeah. I had a few friends in the music business. Chris Christopherson was a great friend of mine.
But I just never ran into Dylan. But I think he would have been happier to have an invitation for me while I was still married to Ben Bradlee, who was my late husband, who was the editor of the Washington Post.

**Andrew Keen** (2:30)
Although I suspect he would have enjoyed meeting you two. Well, there's still time. In all seriousness, you probably haven't seen Moyn's new book on gerontocracy in America. But do you think he's right? Is his argument that the old god has too much power in America, that your generation, so to speak, hasn't handed down its political power and wealth to younger generation?

**Sally Quinn** (2:52)
I do. I think that's right.
I mean, it doesn't mean that people who are older shouldn't have a role.
I mean, I work full time and so do most of my friends my age. And I think we contribute a lot. But I think that having people who are older, I mean, I see what happens to a lot of my colleagues who get to be a certain age and they lose it. And nobody can know who's going to lose it and who's not going to lose it. But it's not a pretty thing when it happens. When people start losing their memory and they repeat themselves and they can't hear anything and they're feeble. You can't, you can't run an organization, run a country, certainly not run a country with those kind of problems and issues. And, you know, I surround myself with a lot of younger people, particularly younger journalists, because I just, I feel so energized by them and I love their excitement and their idealism and their optimism and their energy. It's just so much fun to be around them and I just, I think it's a mistake for this country to sort of rely on people who are too old. And that is particularly in Congress. And now we have the White House, we've got two elderly presidents, neither one of them was able, is able to really function properly.

**Andrew Keen** (4:20)
What did you make of the Biden presidency and certainly the post presidency and this latest issue with his wife and some people believe her misrepresentation of what really happened?

**Sally Quinn** (4:35)
Well, I liked Joe Biden very much. I always liked him. I met him when, a couple of weeks after he was elected, we were both kids and I've covered him over the years.
I was very happy when he beat Donald Trump, but it became clear at least halfway through his administration that he was really losing it. Since my husband had dementia, I knew all the signs and I got to the point where I was with Ben, where I'd listen to him speak publicly, I get a knot in my stomach. I couldn't watch it because it just made me so, I would just cringe thinking he was going to say something wrong or forget something or make a mistake. Of course, the debate was my worst nightmare.