The Grumpy Legend of American Journalism sounds off on JFK, Watergate, Iraq, Hillary Clinton, and Carl Bernstein's strange choice in women

BIG BEN Bradlee speaks at the question-and-answer portion of a New York screening of All the President's Men

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According to the calendar, legendary Washington Post editor Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee turned 86 this year, but he talks and moves like a man 25 years younger. A compulsive overachiever with unquenchable appetites, he has had five knees, four children, and three wives. He also had two very long affairs—with newspaper heiress Katharine Graham and her newspaper, the Washington Post—but those were only consummated in ink.

Bradlee lives in a huge house in Georgetown with the writer Sally Quinn. Their son, Quinn Bradlee, a filmmaker, lives next door. I met with Bradlee on the seventh floor of the Washington Post headquarters, a few feet from the office of Boisfeuillet (Bo) Jones, Jr.—the publisher of the Post and one of Bradlee's closest friends. Kay Graham beamed out at me from a big photograph behind Bradlee's desk; next to her, quite a bit smaller, was a picture of Ben's present wife, the redoubtable Ms. Quinn. Graham named Bradlee deputy managing editor of the Post in 1965. Three months later, Bradlee's boss, Al Friendly, succumbed to constant pressure and told Graham he would vacate his job to make way for his deputy.

Ben never looked back, seducing many of America's finest reporters (men loved him just as much as women did), crushing the New York Times during Watergate, and gradually transforming the Post into America's second most important general-interest newspaper. Over the next 26 years, as managing and then executive editor, Bradlee molded the Post into the principal competition of Times. Although he retired as executive editor in 1991, he still goes to the office every day as a "vice president at large." We sat down the day before Thanksgiving to talk about presidents, wars, Washington lobbyists, and newspapering in the 21st century. Excerpts follow.

CHARLES KAISER: What's the biggest difference in the Washington culture between now and the first time you were a reporter?
BEN BRADLEE: I just think that the quality of newspapers now is way better than it was when I started, certainly. So there are fewer of them—there were 11 newspapers in New York at one time. It's not written anywhere why that's the optimum number.

What about the lobbying culture of Washington? Certainly there are 35 times more of them. Has it gotten worse?
It hasn't gotten better. And I have a feeling that it's so unsubtle and so unskilled. You know in the way old days, you really couldn't call the lobbyists "lobbyists." They were just friends—they were friends of the people in the White House, friends of the people who had friends in the press. There was a handful. You know Franklin Roosevelt could hold a press conference with everybody on the White House press corps and have 10 people [in the Oval Office]. Ten guys and Mae Craig with that big round hat from the Portland paper [the Portland Press-Herald]. So there are many more of them—and of course television and of course radio.

And something called the Internet.
[Hillary Clinton] is monolithically devoted to policy—she's a wonk. I'm not terribly impressed with the people around her, though. Some of them I'm actively unimpressed withAnd the Internet. So I think there is measurably more information out there. What use is being made of it, I just can't follow. I don't know, what do you think?

I think we're interested in all kinds of things that I'm not particularly happy we're interested in. I think the fact that we never knew about Jack's [John F. Kennedy] girlfriends at the time was not really a bad thing. Does it help us to know so much about the sex lives of public officials?
I always have to spend a little time explaining my own.

You always say you didn't know about Jack.
No, no, I'm not saying I didn't know. I'd heard the rumors. You know, everybody—I can remember my old man saying, "What about this Jack Kennedy being such a fearful girler?" ... I just loved that.

So the rumors were around in Boston.
Yeah. That he screwed around.

But why should we care?
Yeah, that's the point. I wanted to be sure I got my explanation of why I didn't know. [Bradlee's second wife] Toni Bradlee and I saw a lot of the Kennedys—we saw them almost all the time as a foursome. And fucking around doesn't come up a lot [with the wives present]. So I really didn't know much. But I remember having to leave the White House once at 9:30 after dinner. And I said, what the hell? He's not going to bed. I knew goddamn well he wasn't going to bed!

MOURNING GLORY Bradlee, pictured next to his current wife, Sally Quinn, at the funeral of former Washington Post CEO and executive editor Katharine Graham

Do you think that newspapers will still be printed on paper 20 years from now?
Of course. Think of all the industries that depend on newspapers—television being one.

Do you think we'll have a Democratic president a year from now?
I should think. You know, you must stop treating me as if I knew what the hell is going on around here. I still get around a lot. That's mostly thanks to Sally. But it's not essential that everybody tell me everything.

Do you know any of the presidential candidates?
I don't know them that well—I know "how do you do." I know Romney—"how do you do." I know Hillary.

What do you think of Hillary?
Well, I'm not as against her as some other people under my roof. Sally [Quinn, his wife]—I find the women are really very, very strongly against her.

What's that about?
I don't know. I don't think Hillary is a completely sympathetic person. But she is hard-working, she is monolithically devoted to policy—she's a wonk. I'm not terribly impressed with the people around her, though. Some of them I'm actively unimpressed with. You know, you can say about [Bill] Clinton, he had a hell of a good team. And Jimmy Carter had a hell of a good team. And you don't see those around now.