Joking that ego launched his political career
Scott jokes that ego drove his political ambitions, also suggesting that his father's political career may have created a similar impulse, though latent, in himself. His sense of himself as a generalist, someone with wide interests, may have contributed to his interest in politics as well.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Robert W. (Bob) Scott, February 4, 1998. Interview C-0336-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
When you got these couple of telephone calls and this letter or two,
however it was, that you saw as a mandate, and you decided to go around
the state, there must have been in your mind at that time some idea that
at least politics and public service was a career, something that you
might enjoy and do. Is that a fair assessment of that statement,
or—what caused you to get in that car and go around the state
and talk to these people?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
-
Ego. [Laughter]
- JACK FLEER:
-
Ego?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
-
No doubt, ego. No, I don't know. I really—Again, we
come back to this business of was this a planned career or something
like that, and I can honestly say that it was not. I'm the
kind a person that's interested in a lot of things. Sometimes
I regret the fact that I'm a generalist. I wish sometimes I
could focus on one thing as a career. I had great admiration for a
scientist who can stay in the lab and try to find a gene or something
like that, spend their entire life doing that one thing. Or someone like
you who has got a career, and you stick with—you write books
about it and you're known in your field and respected and all
that. Yeah, I'm out here, you know, I can carry on a
conversation about a lot of things, but not in depth about very many
things. That's kind of worried me in the back of my mind.
So, going back to your question about—I guess it was the
challenge, and it was there. Why do you climb a mountain? Because
it's there. Why do you run for lieutenant governor? Well,
it's there, you know. And there might have been a feeling,
unconscious feeling, that this is family tradition again…