Kramer: Well, he was sort of a typical graduate student in a southern university in those days. Not terribly cool. Not terribly witty. But quite powerful in intellectual interests and that's what I thought was interesting. A place like Tulane in the 1960s was not exactly an intellectual Mecca. Many of the people who went to Tulane were there to basically party. Newt was not there to party. He was there to read books. He was there to have discussions. He was there to do political experimentation and he did all of this in terribly outmoded clothes and thick horn-rimmed glasses.

Q: What were his relations like with his fellow graduate students?

Kramer: Well, I would say socially awkward. He was very eager to improve his social skills and I viewed one of my roles as informing him that he was on the verge of becoming obnoxious when he would talk too much, and he accepted that. Newt is a learner. He's very clever. He has obviously become very smooth. He no longer wears his horn-rimmed glasses.

Q: 1958. Rockefeller, why not Nixon? Tell me about this Rockefeller campaign.

Kramer: Well, I think that one of the things that gives me confidence in Newt is that he is willing to take risks. There are people who consider him an opportunist. I believe that they're wrong. I think that Newt actually tries very hard to understand what is right and if he's convinced that it's right, in that it can also lead to political success, he's willing to take great risks to do what- ever that is --and that's not the same thing as opportunism. It was extremely audacious for a young man who was trying to establish his roots in the Republican Party in Georgia to basically take on the Republican establishment in Louisiana and we got a great deal of pressure. I can tell you that, in particular, the Nixon forces were extremely unhappy with what we were trying to do in Louisiana. Newt did not flinch at all. I think that's typical. He thought at the time that it made a lot of sense to try to elect a moderate Republican and he thought it made a lot of sense to try to attract black people to the Republican Party in Louisiana, particularly in Orleans Parish.

Q: Were they [Jackie and Newt] a partnership then? We've interviewed many people who have said that in the early campaigns in Georgia, she was very, very involved. Did you get that feeling then?

Kramer: Well, I think in those days, Newt had married a woman who had been something of an authority figure in his life and I think that one of the difficult things that happened was, as he began to find his own adult and professional life, there were conflicts there and unfortunately they were not able to solve them. It was clearly a marriage that reflected the fact that he was very young when he went into it and as I say, I don't want to speculate on it. Many of his friends from those days were very unhappy about what happened. And I think it was a great strain on Newt, of course, not to mention Jackie, and I certainly would not want to get publicly into it any more deeply than that.

Q: I have read that you had to introduce Newt to some of the basic elements of popular culture in the '60s. Were you a little more advanced, coming from California?

Kramer: That's right. And well, it's all silly stuff. Newt at that point had heard vaguely that there was a rock group called the Beatles. I remember one afternoon taking the 'White Album' over there and playing it through and explaining to him what was significant about this whole experience. I'm not sure he ever figured it out. One night we went to a Jefferson Airplane concert in New Orleans and he found that very interesting --there were a lot of people there who were very excited and of course, his question was, 'Is there any political value in this?'