Big Think

Question: What surprised you in researching your book?

Jeff Toobin: Well, I guess, the… I think the remarkable personal and ideological journey of Sandra Day O’Connor was to me the core of the book and the most interesting part of it. I guess, what you saw was a traditional [Goldwater], moderate Republican confronted by the Bush administration which she, of course, helped bring into office and Bush [IB]. And you watched her saying, “Wait a second, this is not my Republican Party. This is too extreme.” And then, you have the Terri Schiavo case where O’Connor sees her Republican Party sort of starting to invade the most personal parts of medical decision making at a time when her own husband is slipping into the grip of a similar condition, Alzheimer’s disease, that personal political drama was really the biggest surprise and the most interesting thing to me in the book.