INT: How did Hoover benefit from the flood?

JB: I don't think there's any doubt but that the '27 flood made Herbert Hoover President of the United States. Before the flood there was an astute political magazine handicapping the 1928 race, listed eight to ten to twelve candidates -- I don't remember exactly. Even listed three people it called dark horses. And Hoover's name was not even on the list. He simply had no natural constituency. He had lived outside the United States his entire life from the time he graduated from Stanford until the time he came back in the middle of World War I. So he had not even voted in an election during that period. So there was no state behind him. There was no political group behind him. What did he have was the media. In fact, he, during one period of his life, owned two newspapers, one in Washington, D.C. and one in Sacramento, California, because he wanted to, as he said, "get in the big game somehow." And he said, "The world lives by phrases." He believed in the media and he had a tremendous press operation, not that he didn't do a great job in the flood, but he made sure that his name was on the front pages every day and the flood news, you can imagine. I mean we have a little flood today and it makes the network news. And this flood was a tremendous, extraordinary story that went on not just for days or weeks, but for months. And there was always a new level of suspense. "Is this levee going to break?" Yes. "Is the next levee going to break?" Yes. And Hoover made several national radio addresses when, in itself, a national broadcast in the '20s, was news. I don't think there's any doubt, and he knew it himself. In the middle of the flood he turned to a friend and said, "I shall be the nominee. It's nearly inevitable." I mean the media definitely created his candidacy.

INT: Were a lot of people using radio at this time like he was?

JB: Remember, he was Secretary of Commerce, and that actually gave him control over radio. Radio was so new that it was only in the early '20s that they first began to advertise on it. People believed initially that you couldn't make money with radio. Of course, that was obviously mistaken. But it was a brand-new medium. I guess the Jack Dempsey fight had been broadcast by them but national radio hook-ups, by themselves, were news. And for him to make two national broadcasts about the flood, in addition to which, again, his name is on the front pages day after day after day, and he's always portrayed heroically, justifiably so but he made sure that if there was ever the slightest hint of criticism, he responded to it. One major political consultant today, James Carville, grew up on the river and he read the book and called me afterwards and he told me afterward that Hoover had a better operation than any politician he knows today.

INT: Talk about the physical ramifications of the flood.

JB: Sure. Let's say you had situations up and down the river. You've got 335,000-340,000 people living in tents, many of them for months. In some cases the only dry land is the levee itself. The river's on one side, flooded territory's on the other side. The levee has got a crown eight feet wide, a little bit more than that is out of water, and these refugee camps stretch for miles up the levee. In many places it's very difficult to supply. In several places dogs were being shot for fear of rabies. There was fear of epidemics. There's livestock being penned up next to these refugee camps. The whole scene really looks like the devastation of a war. And when the river went through towns, again, it's not high water generally, but when this river went through, there was just tremendous devastation left everywhere.

INT: Comment on the '92 flood.

JB: I don't pretend to be an expert on the '93 flood, but while it was occurring I had already started working on this book. And I was amazed. I had started my book reading about the levees-only theory and whether levees were good or levees were bad. And this was material that was written in the 1830s and the exact same debate was going on after the '93 flood in almost the exact same language. If you change the grammar a little bit, you could simply interchange the arguments, which I found more than just amusing. "Amusing" is not the right word. But the issues are political issues largely at this point, much more than technical issues any you know, what are you going to do with the flood plain? A lot of that flood plain is awfully valuable and I personally think it's right to take much of that and use it. Some of the flood plain may not be so valuable or protecting it is too expensive. But that's really the debate, the political issues. You know, there are, obviously, some technical problems, particularly in the upper river, and lack of coordination and things like that which contributed greatly to the disaster in '93. But ultimately the society has to make a political decision on what it's going to do with that river's flood.

INT: Give a specific argument.

JB: Well, I mean the basic argument is what impact levees have. And, of course, they will protect, -- when they work -- some land, but then they pass the problem both up and down the river. They pass the problem along to neighbors. There was, when I started work, I started researching this book, I spoke to a gentleman named Michael Robinson. And one of the things he said to me was, "All water is local." And, of course, he was playing on Tip O' Neil's line that "All politics is local." But I quickly learned there's nothing as local as water, because what one person does directly affects his or her neighbor.

INT: Did the Jadwin plan actually make the Achapalaya problem worse?

JB: No. The flood made the Achapalaya problem worse.

INT: Looking at the work that's been done on the Mississippi, what's been accomplished?

JB: I'd say the work done on the Mississippi, obviously. Historically it's been chiefly to protect people living along the river and to allow them to develop the river. And to a significant extent, it's achieved that goal. Now the question is whether or not the society wants to continue to pay the price to protect all that land, whether the river, for reasons of beauty or environmental health or flood control, should be allowed to reclaim some of that land, whether in natural reservoirs and other wetlands. I think it should, you know, and probably most people would agree with that. The question is--and here's where the fight is--where you draw the line, over how much you allow to river to reclaim and how much you continue to protect and at what cost.

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