<Begin Segment 7>

CK: You said that happened during your Harvard years, that you made this turn around from liberal to conservative?

GU: No, I was pretty liberal in college. I was never, I was never, I would never regard myself, even during the height of the Vietnam War protest, as a radical. But I was pretty far left of center, I think, if you wanted to put me on any kind of spectrum. I suppose the thing that made me go back a little bit, to my Wyoming roots, was an experience, were experiences in New York book publishing. The people in New York book publishing -- and I don't want to generalize, this is just my personal experience -- are for the most part, very liberal and often radical, and I thought, "Gee, you know, they have the right idea about life." And then, I saw them in action day-to-day, with the knives out, the brutality, the bureaucratic viciousness. And I said, "Now, wait a minute, these people are my heroes. These were the liberals, and the liberals are this ruthless or this immoral?" Pinch, in a pinch, I just as soon be with my white conservative rancher. If I were to be on a desert island and it was a really tough situation, give me Grandpa, and give me a couple of these Wyoming ranchers. Who may not be correct in a lot of ways, but they're not gonna, their, their whole lives and their outlook on life is not what I saw inside New York book publishing. And I suppose, therefore, the answer is no, it wasn't until I moved to New York and I got involved in rock em', sock em', big-time book publishing, that I decided that I was somebody other than I thought I was politically. But that didn't change my personal views.

CK: I believe you said that Min Yasui was a hero, Mike Masaoka.

GU: Yes.

CK: Aren't they, wouldn't they both be considered liberal?

GU: Correct, correct.

CK: And yet, how do you...

GU: Well that's a good question, I've never thought of it. I... the answer I think is that the way people are, and the way people live, and their personal values, are the basics. All right? What's on top of that are the politics. And so, if I love Mike and I love Min, and I respected them as people and their politics were liberal, it's okay. There are some conservatives whom I know, politically conservative, who are just as equally vicious and ruthless as some of the liberals in, in the book publishing business that I was part of. So, the answer is personal beliefs and how one really lives. And you can sort of tell from people. It, it doesn't matter. So you're a Democrat, you're a Republican, you're a liberal, you're conservative, you're black, you're Jewish. Come on.

CK: So, you separate the personal from the political?

GU: Yes, to a certain extent. Although, as a manner of social policy, (public) policy, I believed in the '60s that the Vietnam War, as a matter of public policy, was wrong. As a matter of public policy today or as a matter of public policy during the, let's say the '80s; I felt that the defense build-up was correct, all right? As a matter of public policy, in the case of, what, across the board tax reduction, I think, I think everyone, rich, poor and in between, are paying too many taxes. So, so I feel that, I feel that lower taxes are better. Now, the, the nice fall-out from this -- and Bob Matsui and I had an arrangement -- was, okay, this is what I believe, Bob believed something else. Bob believes, I think, that big government often provides solutions for people. I think they probably create more problems. I get along really well with Bob, okay? He's a, he's a buddy of mine. We just happen to disagree on this. But pragmatically and practically what happened is, Bob said, "Okay, I work the liberals, not too many conservatives among Japanese Americans. You work, you can work the conservatives without being a hypocrite, correct?" "Yes." "Okay, that's the division of labor, let's go after Newt."

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.