Richard Norton Smith wants to give Kansans a behind-the-scenes look at their state’s politics during the past 100 years.

Smith, director of the Dole Institute of Politics at Kansas University, has started an oral history project that, when finished, will use hundreds of interviews to paint a picture of Kansas politics not found in newspaper accounts.

“Wouldn’t it be great to be inside the smoke-filled room?” he asked. “That’s what we’re trying to do  get people in the smoke-filled room to tell us with absolute candor what went on there, why it went on, how it impacted Kansas and the country at the time and what, looking back, is its historical significance.”

Smith had his first major interview for the project last week, when he sat down for four hours with Gov. Bill Graves to discuss the Republican’s two terms in office. He has another four hours with Graves scheduled Thursday.

But Graves and other former governors won’t be the only targets of questions posed by Smith and retired journalists he’s enlisted to help with the project. They also plan to interview current and former legislators, lobbyists, policymakers, spin doctors, journalists and others involved in 20th-century Kansas politics.

Smith also is planning a second oral history project on the life and politics of Bob Dole, the longtime Kansas senator and presidential candidate.

View of reality

The Dole Institute has collected $500,000 in donations for the projects, including $300,000 from Dwayne Andreas and the Andreas Family Foundation of Mankato, Minn. Andreas, chairman emeritus of Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., is a longtime friend of Dole and a political contributor.

Smith said he hoped to complete the Dole project in five years. The Kansas project will take longer. When completed, transcripts of the interviews will be available at the Dole Institute building under construction on West Campus and may be available online.

“It will illustrate how politics and government have functioned over the last half-century,” Smith said. “It’ll be the contemporary sense of how they truly function, which isn’t always how we’re taught in Civics 101.”

Smith has contacted the four living former Kansas governors  John Anderson Jr., William Avery, John Carlin and Mike Hayden  about the project and said he’s confident all will participate.

Carlin, who served from 1979 to 1987, is now U.S. archivist. He said he’s seen the value of oral histories in his new job.

“We have the records of administration, what the three branches of the government have done,” he said. “This gives another aspect of what happened during the period.”

‘Critically important’

But Carlin said he thought interest in the transcripts would be among researchers, not the general public.

“The potential is there,” he said, “but I’m not saying people are waiting in line (to read the interviews).”

Another former governor, Mike Hayden, said he has had many discussions with former Kansas political players such as Alf Landon and Robert Docking who since have died.

“Governor Avery’s 91, and Gov. Anderson’s in his ’80s,” he said. “I think it’s critically important for them to participate. A lot of that oral history is not recorded.”

Hayden, who was governor from 1987 to 1991 and now is Kansas secretary of wildlife and parks, said he wasn’t sure what he would focus on when interviewed for the project.

“The beauty of this is you get to … do it without the filter of the press and that kind of thing,” Hayden said. “It can be a lot more candid, a lot more personal. You’re going to get more of an insight into people’s private lives than you would reading newspaper accounts.”