NPR’s Cokie Roberts talks women, Washington

Like many of National Public Radio’s famous voices, Cokie Roberts is happy to take hers around the country supporting local public radio affiliates.

She’s been to Spokane on a couple of occasions, on the stage of the Bing Crosby Theater. She’ll do it again next week to support Spokane Public Radio.

While here, she’ll talk about her work as a senior news analyst for NPR. She’ll also talk about her latest book, “Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868.”

In the book, released in April by HarperCollins, Roberts talks about women such as Varina Davis, journalist and wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis; Jesse Benton Frémont, whose father was the influential Sen. Thomas Hart Benton and who was married to the first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont; and Clara Barton, who worked as a nurse during the Civil War and was instrumental in founding the American Red Cross.

“They are amazing women,” she said in a telephone interview Monday. “I guess I’m amazed that most of them are not more well known. Even Clara Barton, whose name is known, the extent of her work is not really appreciated. Not only did she do all of that work during the war … but it took two decades of lobbying Congress to get the Geneva treaty ratified so the Red Cross could be a part of the International Red Cross.”

In researching the book, Roberts came to realize that there were some of these women you wanted to admire, and others you wanted to admire and have over for dinner.

“The fun ones are basically the Southern ones,” Roberts said. “Varina Davis was a delight. I just loved her. And Virginia Klay, who wrote a book about herself called ‘The Belle of the ’50s’ ” – meaning 1850s, of course – “she was funny and smart and clearly the center of attention every place she went. But then she became an important suffragist.”

The Civil War, it turns out, was in many ways good for women, she argues.

“These women had always been smart and they’d always been political, but they always had been behind the scenes,” Roberts added. “The way the war ended that and allowed them to stand on the stage themselves was something I had no expectations about and was delighted to find.”

Roberts, of course, knows politics. She was NPR’s congressional correspondent for a decade and has been a regular contributor at ABC News since the mid-1990s. Her parents, Lindy Boggs and Hale Boggs, both served in Congress, and her sister was mayor of Princeton, N.J. She’s written other books about women in politics, including “Ladies of Liberty” and “Founding Mothers.” The latter she just last year adapted into a children’s book, “Founding Mothers: Remembering the Ladies.”

Politics has gotten easier for women during the decades she’s been watching the capital, Roberts said, but it’s still not easy. She points to Washington state, which has two female U.S. senators and a congresswoman who is in the House leadership. “The fact is that wouldn’t have been close to being true 20 years ago,” Roberts said. “I mean for most of my life there were never more than two women in the Senate. Now there are 20. It’s still not enough, but it’s better.”

Just don’t ask her to make a prediction about the 2016 presidential race.

“We don’t have a clue who the Republican nominee is going to be, which is fun. It’s going to be a fun primary season,” she said, adding with a laugh, “By the time we get off the phone, five more are going to declare.”