Arrogant SOB. It serves him right.
Have you been surprised by some of what’s been written about you?
I have always had good press, until more recently, when I remarried and I guess people thought I was fair game. That was the word used.
Why?
Because I married another politician. As a widow, I was untouchable. As the wife of John Heinz, my press was good. But now I don’t pay much attention to it anymore. I don’t take it seriously, you know? I just don’t.
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I’m surprised sometimes that in America, a liberated country, we expect the wife of a president of the United States to be, in essence, modern chattel. It’s not right.
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You are a good friend of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Have you talked with him since the controversial book about him has come out?
No. But I would like to talk him and say, ‘Did you really mean all the things you said in the book? Of course you did. So what are you going to do about it?’ Paul is a very honest man, and a brilliant man. He is, in the best sense of the word, a CEO: totally practical and non-ideological. He has done amazing things for Alcoa. He is a person of amazing integrity.
Everything that he is is the result of determination, honesty, principle. I am sorry he took the job that he took because I didn’t think that was the kind of work [that he would be best at]. If he had been secretary of Commerce that would have been more up his alley. And I would rather have seen him be a governor. He would have been a great governor, because he really believes in an early childhood and a great education. He really believes in efficiencies. He knows we have a global climate change problem. He would be dogged about finding ways to resolve it. No BS. As an executive he’s brilliant.
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A few years ago I nearly died in a plane crash. Well, the plane didn’t crash but it almost did. It was about seven years ago and I was taking off from Idaho in a Gulfstream. We took off and we were pretty high and two geese came through one of the engines and killed it right away. We were over the trees by then and I felt I could almost touch them. I looked out and I thought okay, and I just said what one says in trouble, ‘into thy hands oh lord, here I go.’ I was able to call one child and I said, ‘look this is what’s happening, we haven’t gone down yet but I just wanted to tell you I love you all and I will call you when I’m down.’ Then the pilots explained what had happened. We had to fly very low all the way along the mountains to Boise. Just the week before a good friend was going to Brussels and they were in a Lear jet. Pffft!
Flying in small planes is unavoidable in a campaign. Given what happened to your first husband and what almost happened to you, aren’t you afraid of what might happen again?
You have to check out the pilots very well, check out the outfit, the maintenance. It was pilot error that killed [Heinz]. As much as is humanly possible, we do what we can do to check these people out or to check certain airports out. But you know what? You can only do what you can do.