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John McCain (2003 Interview)

John McCain is a Republican U.S. senator from Arizona and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee-apparent. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination.

Charles Lewis interviewed McCain on February 10, 2003.

I am wondering what your sense of the state of democracy is. I mean, I look at some stats: the 100 million who don’t vote; the 40 state legislative races where there was no challenger; only 30 or 40 real contested races in the Congress; 96 percent not contributing to any candidate; a check of a $1,000 coming from one tenth of one percent; 30 million required to even be regarded as a “serious” challenger for president, a year before the election, which we can talk about later. But, in a general way, where are you about the state of democracy? And, obviously, you have come to represent, more than any other person, you’re a symbol of the concern. I think a lot of folks have, in both parties. I’m just wondering where you are these days on that question.

Well, I remain very concerned. I am hopeful that most of the provisions of the campaign finance reform act will be upheld by the United States Supreme Court. We’ll probably lose a lower court decision, but we all know that the real decisions are made in the Supreme Court, and I think that could have some beneficial influence. But, having said that, the trends are clear: fewer and fewer competitive races; more and more money; huge amounts of special interest money, which manifests itself not so much in the progress of legislation in the Congress, but the blocking of legislation. Whether it be on generic drugs so that seniors can buy drugs that are more affordable, or whether it’s tort reform, or whether it’s a patient’s bill of rights, I could go down a long list of issues that you would think, my God, why didn’t Congress act?

We passed — if I may just give you one example — a vote of 90-8, a bill that allowed generic drugs to be more available to all of our citizens, but particularly senior citizens, [who] are the ones having to cope with this more than anybody else. It closed some obvious loopholes in a previous law. The Untied States House of Representatives not only didn’t vote on it, they never had a hearing on it and they never considered it. I mean, it was never considered, and meanwhile the pharmaceutical industry spent $30 million. I’ve heard of higher estimates, and you probably have better estimates than I do, in the last campaign. Some of it was done in a very clever fashion: Thank Congressman ‘X’ because he got you a prescription drug bill which make your drugs cheaper — he didn’t, he and she didn’t, I mean. It’s remarkable.

So, I am deeply concerned. I’m worried about the state of elections and its impact on the legislative process. So, may I just in summary say, when I came to the House in 1983, we didn’t have soft money. We had to have volunteers. We were required to go out and knock on doors. We were not influenced. There’s always an influence of special interest, which is healthy because we’re all special interests, but I can guarantee you in 20 years, the entire climate is dramatically shifted for the worse.

I thought it was a little bit of a metaphor that after the first bill to regulate our political process in terms of campaigns and elections in 25 years is signed into law, the president is on his way to a fundraising event and there is no signing ceremony. And a lot of people thought it was, as you may have recalled, it was characterized as some sort of personal snub to you. But, it was remarkable nonetheless. It was clearly not a priority; that’s putting it charitably. But do you have any other thoughts on that? I’m just observing. I thought that was the icing on the cake for the last several years.

I really didn’t care and I was glad that the president signed the bill. But what’s distressing is the appointment of FEC commissioners who publicly stated their belief that campaign finance reform was unconstitutional; one of them was even over in the majority leader’s office the night that the bill was being considered in the House, lobbying against it. I mean, it’s mind-boggling, the opposition of these individuals and the subsequent actions they’ve taken.

So, my beef with President Bush and the administration is not that he didn’t have a bill signing; I could care less. But I am deeply disturbed about the appointments of Mr. [Michael] Toner, Mr. [David] Mason, and Mr. [Bradley] Smith who are outspoken opponents to any kind of reform and have therefore issued regulations which contradict both the intent and the letter of the law in the most corrupt fashion that I’ve ever observed. That’s what concerns me. If the president signed the bill, then he should have at least appointed people that were unbiased, if not favored, toward reform or more.

I know this sounds like a Jimmy Stewart question, but the average American outside the beltway would think, you have a Federal Election Commission created in the aftermath of Watergate to regulate campaigns. Shouldn’t they, on their face, be concerned about keeping politics clean? How in the world could they have become the “enemy”? Is their legislation formally introduced now, or is it evolving about doing away, potentially, with this piece of legislation?

We’ll be introducing legislation to drastically restructure the FEC, but there really is one fundamental problem, and that is the 3-to-3 tie. You’ve got to have a way of breaking the 3-to-3 tie. If we can do that, then you will see an efficient bureaucracy. If you don’t, then whatever difficulties come along, they have a 3-to-3 tie.

I was entertained about two or three months ago — you probably know exactly when it was — we got around to fining the Clinton ’96 campaign for some transgression, six years after they came in with a big fine. With somebody they ruled that they deserved a big fine and punishment, but since those who had committed the violation didn’t have the money, well then so, they just wouldn’t fine them. That’s an interesting precedent to set. Remarkable. It’s just staggering.

Yeah, it is exactly. I don’t know how you keep the blood pressure in check there.

Oh yeah, one of my favorites was when they made a ruling on — I can’t remember which one it was right now. Mr. Toner said, “Well, we split it down the middle between supporters and opponents of campaign finance reform.” Mr. Toner, we passed a law that was for campaign finance reform; what’s this about splitting something down the middle? It was staggering. Do you remember that seeing that?

Yeah, I do remember that. A lot of the give-and-take was remarkable. The 3-to-3, I actually talk about all the time when I’m around the country — the hundreds of cases, potential illegality that they can’t even investigate because they can’t get a subpoena.

The Wyly brothers got together with $3 million in their hands and ran ads all over the country, attacking me on my environmental record on behalf of Bush.

Republicans for Clean Air.

Yeah, the vote was a 3-to-3 tie, not even to conduct an investigation.

One of the classics from the ’96 campaign was you had both presidential campaigns using tens of millions of dollars in soft money to run ads for the presidential candidates — first time since Watergate that anyone did that. Both sides did it, and the FBI thought there was a criminal violation of those laws. The FEC staff thought that there was a violation. I think the FEC voted 6 to nothing, to do nothing, which to me also is a metaphor.

But, anyway, I guess we’ve hit that horse. I was talking to your colleague Senator [Russ] Feingold last week or the week before about this. We did a report about state stuff, and we looked at money to the state parties, the 2000 election for baseline data, because we knew this would become an important issue later. And, we’re doing it again this year, by the way. We pulled 400,000 records, 15-foot high stack of paper, and entered it into computers: all the expenditures and contributions to and from 225 major state parties in the 50 states. We found that $57 million was sloshing around to and from these committees.

But what was most remarkable to me was that 18 months after the 2000 election, we were learning about donors — one fellow gave $3 million altogether. If you looked at the national committees, you would have thought he gave $500,000 or $600,000 to the Democrats. But when you went into all these state parties, he had given $2.1 million in the last 10 days of the 2000 elections. He was directed by the DNC and no one saw this until 18 months later, only because a private group decided to track it.

The reason I mention it is we noticed there were “Caymen Island states,” we call them, where there’s unlimited contributions, no disclosure, then they’ll transfer it to other states. I know there’s the Levin Amendment that limits money. But I also wonder if there’s a limit on state party committees, because it seems to me that they are going to start proliferating just because that will be another way for these folks to get around it. I am just wondering what your state thoughts are.

Well, you know, it’s with the utmost reluctance that we agreed to the Levin Amendment. He did have a legitimate point that state parties have to have some degree of relevancy. We hope that there is a firewall between that and federal election campaigns, but now that the FEC has decided that a federal elected official can suggest that it has to be
“explicit,” I think we’re going to run into problems there. I think probably it’s the greatest problem area.

It’s at least one of them, I think. I agree. The other one, the 527s have — we’ve noticed in the last 12 months — I think they’ve gone from something like 14,000 to 19,000 or 20,000. We’re actually going to do a database on our website that will be the first searchable database that will go much further than the government is doing now. But there seems to be a proliferation of those groups, and of course you know now we have the (c)(4)s starting to crop up for these presidential candidates. So Bush will raise probably $200 [million], $250 million of his own money, and then he’ll do these unlimited and undisclosed donor entities. And he’s not the only one. The Democrats will say, well, they have to because he’s doing it, and I think they’ve all started.

Depending on what happens on the campaign finance reform law, we may have to just keep fighting that for a while, and trying to close those loopholes. But it’s clearly the next step, the presidential campaign financing. That has to be the next area of examination.

Some states like my own have adopted clean election laws. They have been flawed because it’s a new experiment. The overall result has been more candidates, and more candidates saying, “Now I get to spend my time talking with the voters and not raising money.” So, I have a ray of optimism, particularly in those states where you can do ballot initiatives. Some states it’s harder than others, as we know. And some states it’s impossible. But, particularly in a lot of Western states, I think you’re going to see increases in those. And that could interface to a degree with the federal election laws.

But you’re the last person that I have to tell. This is a long and ongoing struggle. You referred to a comment that I made about people underlying it. I’m sorry to tell you that I think in 20 to 25 years, and that’s a very optimistic statement, it’ll be undermined, and have to be reformed again. I mean, as I mentioned, in 1982, when I first ran, there was no soft money — zero, zilch. And now, of course, we’ve seen what happened over the 20 years. Twenty years from now, I’ve always said there will be another McCain and Feingold that’ll finally succeed in enacting reform. Because the history of America has been reform, corruption, reform, corruption. 

Right, I agree. That’s sad to think about. There are two other questions I have.  One is your epiphany about this whole thing. I mean, it’s been a courageous and lonely crusade for you, particularly inside your party. I came to Washington and worked for Senator [William] Roth, right during Watergate, and I know the Republican Party has always not been keenly interested in this subject. That’s putting it mildly, probably.

The party of Theodore Roosevelt.

Exactly right. Something really got to you, and I know that there was the whole Keating thing. And I always thought it was interesting about what happened and how you — it appeared to me at least — stared into the abyss and came back. But I don’t know if that’s a popular version. What exactly happened to tick you off to the extent that it must have?

All my life I have been a seeker of justice. In the military, in public life, you know, I’ve always had this kind of, not always laudable, streak of independence and anger at injustice. Whether it be the treatment of the first year students at the Naval Academy or whether it be the abuse of power by the Appropriations Committee. I had talked with and discussed for a long time with David Boren, campaign finance reform, when I first came to the Senate. We didn’t agree because he was in favor of public financing, and I’ve always believed that you got to try everything before that.

But there’s no doubt that the Keating Five, which you know brought home to me the importance of the appearance, as well as the reality of corruption — and, to this day, I can tell you that I did absolutely nothing wrong associated with Charlie Keating. But I can also tell you that the appearance of what I did caused the citizens that I represent to become disillusioned with me. And that to me was the worst thing I could do to them, because they had placed their confidence in me.

I’d like to add one other point. If the situation, as it regards to campaigns, was at the level it was in ’91 and ’92 when I was undergoing it, I wouldn’t have nearly the zeal that I’ve had recently. Because you’ve seen, isn’t it offensive when the vice president of the United States goes to a Buddhist temple? Isn’t it offensive when the president of the United States throws his arms around Johnny, my Johnny? Isn’t it offensive when we see legislation for the good of the nation having not a snowball’s chance because of the influence of special interest? They didn’t have that influence in ’91. With the increase in money, increase in the average citizen has been deprived. So my zeal has increased along with what I perceived as the egregious, and outrageous influences of all this big money. As the money has grown, the system has at least achieved the appearance of corruption.

Popular legend — it’s more than legend — after you defeated Bush in New Hampshire by whatever, 19 points, and then you go into South Carolina, I seem to recall the numbers were something like being outspent 5-to-1 or something like that. It was a remarkable amount of money that was dumped there in ads. And not to mention ads that portrayed Bush as a reformer . . .

With results. Not just a reformer.

I know, not just a reformer, a reformer with results. I don’t know what results he’s talking about, but it used to be that every child would grow up in this country thinking that they had a chance someday they might be president of the United States. And, if there’s one thing that I have seen with these books is you’ve got to raise tens of millions of dollars the year before the election, sort of a private referendum before there are any votes cast. And increasingly there are a lot of millionaires, both in Congress and other parts of the country, and running for president, who can just write checks themselves.

Not always, but frequently, when you win New Hampshire, you win the nomination. Here is a case where there was an avalanche of money in ads, and you are actually a case study almost of what happens when you’re challenging something like this. It must have been enormously frustrating then, and I’m just wondering where you are today about it, and has that changed since 2000 as we look at the next election cycle.

Let me answer your last question. I don’t know how much it’s changed. I’m not sure any Democrat, which would be the contested party, will have the support of the entire Democrat establishment, so I’m not sure you’ll see the same thing that happened with me and Bush. True story: The day after I won New Hampshire, Julie Finley, who is the head of Team 100, the biggest donors to the Republican Party, got on the conference call with members of Team 100 and said, “If McCain wins, we’re out of business; get to work.”

That’s unbelievable.

Henry McMaster, who was the chairman of the Republican Party in South Carolina and is now the attorney general of the state, will tell you that it was far more than $13 million that was spent in South Carolina. He thinks it’s up around $20 [million]. And then there was the under-the-radar campaign which we just saw a repetition of in Georgia, run by the same people, Ralph Reed. The thousands of phone calls: “Do you know the McCains have a black baby? Do you know that Cindy McCain is a drug addict?” It was hundreds of thousands of calls. I knew people who got four or five calls that said that.

So, you know, it was an unprecedented amount of money, and we, I could feel in the last four or five days of the campaign the air going out of the balloon — the enthusiasm of the crowds, the size of the crowds, particularly when you got inland. I carried the coast of South Carolina. It was interesting, I carried the coast, and the further you got inland, the larger the percentages were for Bush. Having said all those things, history will make the judgment.

Number two is: Americans do not like sore losers. And for me to look back, anger, bitterness, and complaints, it is neither appropriate, nor frankly in keeping with the incredible experience. A handful of Americans get the chance to run for president of the United States. I think I stood fifth from the bottom of my class as the Naval Academy, so for me to even complain, much less get angry or bitter about it. I’ll never forget, and I’m sure you remember, I believe it was ’88 after [George H.W.] Bush beat Bob Dole in New Hampshire. Bob Dole’s on and says, “What would you say to Bush? Stop lying about my record.” That hurt Bob Dole very much, and I mean, they were lying about his record, but you deservedly get the label of poor loser. I just am not going to do that.

That’s a fair point.

If there’s one guy that I would suggest you talk to on this that would give you some facts and figures would be Henry McMaster. As I say, he was the chairman of the Republican Party in South Carolina, and not the attorney general. I think he saw it all because of his position. I think he’d give you some pretty good information. And by the way, life’s little paradox is that Lindsey Graham is now that senator and was one of two co-chairmen; Mark Sanford who’s now the governor; Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, who was a supporter of mine; and Henry McMaster is the attorney general. So the McCain team at least [didn’t lose out] out on that.

Wow, four out of five. That’s great.

But, you know, what they did to Max Cleland in Georgia was exactly the same group of people, the same outfit, the same organizations. And I will never, ever get over them running a picture of Max Cleland, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden. A man who left three limbs on the battlefield in Vietnam. That’s just something I will never get over. They didn’t do anything to me, the same people, but what they did to him was just . . .

I agree, but I didn’t serve in two different ways the way you did.

It’s on record, CNN goes to Bob Jones University to interview a professor. You probably remember this story: “Professor, you are sending out, at Bob Jones University, e-mails saying that John McCain has fathered illegitimate children.” “Yes.” “Well, what proof do you have that Senator John McCain fathered illegitimate children?” Answer: “It’s up to John McCain to prove that he didn’t father illegitimate children.” That was on CNN. That was a CNN interview.

Oh my god. That is just the worst.

I mean that one makes you laugh, you know?

Well, I’m glad you can laugh about it. One truly last question: We’re doing a big Telecom project for three years, a million-dollar project funded by the Ford Foundation and others to look at the Telecom industry and its power, and all the things that have happened to it in the last 10 years and its influence. So you’re going be hearing from some reports we’ll be doing in the next three years. We also looked at the power of the media companies in a report called Off The Record, back in 2000, and the extraordinary power of the media; the 14,000 trips they took; FCC employees and commissioners all around the world; the 315 trips by members of Congress who were taken by the same people that were putting them on the air. And, of course, the power to put people in the air is enormous. I know that you have jousted and dealt with many issues, but there is a popular conception that the only way McCain-Feingold could have passed was removing the free airtime part. I just wanted to hear you talk about that for just a little bit.

No doubt, no doubt. 

I mean are they the most powerful special interest? They seem to me, because of the power of putting someone’s face on the [screen.]

They are the most powerful influence in the legislative process. The first iteration of McCain-Feingold had free television and radio, free broadcast time. We found out quickly that you couldn’t get a co-sponsor with that on there. They got $7 billion free of Spectrum on the promise that they would make the transition to HGTV, that they haven’t done. And, their favorite ploy, they don’t do this to me anymore, but they get the station managers of all of the television stations in a guy’s state, and bring them in for a meeting and say, “You know, we really feel strongly about these issues.” They’re the ones that carry the message, you know. They don’t have to say anything.

I can also tell you that my record is unblemished; I have never won a single battle with the National Association of Broadcasters, not a single one, ever, under any circumstances. They’re remarkable. We had this hearing on Clear Channel last week, you know, and Eddie Fritz was right there backing them up all the way. Do you know that there are 400,000 owners of radio stations in America? Do you know that one company controls 27 percent of the revenue?

I knew that they radically, what they’d go from like 50 . . .?

Two-hundred and forty to 12,000. It’s unbelievable. I don’t want to bore you, but Byron Dorgan is one smart guy. In Minot, North Dakota, there were seven stations, one of them a religious station. Clear Channel bought them all. Now, that was in violation of the rules, but because Bismarck’s market goes up into Minot, Clear Channel could buy them all. And, apparently, and I’m not sure, they denied it, but apparently the news now comes out of Bismarck, including the local news. Byron said there was some kind of emergency, a flood or something like that, and they couldn’t get a hold of anybody at the radio station. You know? Now, Mr. Lowry Mays in questioning from Byron said, well we’ve fixed that now and that wouldn’t happen again.

But, you know, my wife is a wonderful person and she’s really smart in a lot of things, not so smart in some other things. We listen to, up Sedona, [Arizona,] a 50s and 60s rock ‘n’ roll station, Ron Barbecue, giving commentary on the level of cultural advancement. About a year ago, she was down in Destin, Florida, with the kids. And, I was going to go down, and she calls me. She goes, “You know I just heard our station up in Sedona!” I said, “Really?” She said, “Yeah, Same guy!” I said, “That’s really amazing, the range of that transmitter.” I think that one station owns something like 60 of these stations that they just pipe it in.

Well, good luck being chairman again, you know.

It’s like being a mosquito in a nudist colony. It’s the most fun thing. We’re going to have Olympics this week. We’re going to have shuttle hearings this week. You talk about a screwed up outfit, this Olympic committee. And we’ll stay on all these Telecom issues. The problem with the Telecom issues, as you know, is that they’re so complicated, and they’re so changing the technology that only a handful of senators and staffers understand the issues and the incredible influence that they have.