Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

eporter back in 1980 framed the question like “Don’t you think the courts have gone too
far …” and I nodded or something and it became a quote.”
Hughes: Reporters are tricky, aren’t they!? (laughing)
Barry Goldwater’s landmark book in the 1960s was called The Conscience of
a Conservative. How would you characterize yourself? Is it accurate to call you a
conservative?
Dimmick: I would say I used to be a lot more than I am now.
Hughes: Tell me about that.
Dimmick: Well, I mean I was a strict constructionist. I just felt that if it’s not in the
Constitution we shouldn’t be mucking around with it, or Congress should do it. Let them
make the law. Let us interrupt the law. That’s always been my view. I can now say I’m less
doctrinaire … having had lots of law clerks, I always pick somebody who was really opposite
from me so we could have this repartee going on. We always had that going.
Hughes: You really like that, don’t you? You don’t suffer fools gladly, and you don’t want a
bunch of yes men or women around?
Dimmick: Right.
Hughes: So these bright young people you get right out of law school, what have you
learned from having them around?
Dimmick: Well, I believe the philosophies they’re now teaching a lot more than the ones
they taught in my day, with a lot more social conscience going around. And a lot more
“let’s help everybody out” kind of a thing going. It’s just that in my day the professors had
never actually practiced law. They were intellectuals. Now, look at them. We have adjunct
professors who have been out in the trenches, and that’s good. I guess I always listened,
but I didn’t always track what others were intimating in their own philosophy. … I think a
bit different now.
Hughes: You just turned 79?
Dimmick: Yes, but do we have to put that on the tape? Erase that! (laughs)
Hughes: You don’t have to tell me how you voted, but what did you think of the rise of
young Mr. Obama in this landmark election?
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