Countdown

Home > Interviews > Bob Graham

Bob Graham

Bob Graham, a Democrat, was a U.S. senator from 1987 to 2005. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Previously, Graham was a two-term governor of Florida and spent 12 years in the Florida Legislature.

Sara Fritz interviewed Graham on July 6, 2007.

Tell me the story of your involvement in presidential politics, both as a candidate and as a person who is mentioned as a vice presidential possibility.

Let me first answer the question about my presidential campaign. There are a lot of qualities necessary for a person to have the ego to run for president of the United States. One of those is passion, that you have to feel that you have a reason for your candidacy that propels you beyond your own ego.

What gave me the passion was what occurred in the fall of 2002. I happened to be the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, deeply engaged with the inquiry into what had happened on 9/11, but also evaluating the president’s growing insistence that the United States shift its attention from the war against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to a new war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I became convinced that the president was purposely misleading the country with exaggerated, unsubstantiated, and misguided statements about what our national interest and vulnerabilities were.

I spoke out against the war in Iraq and voted against it when it came to the Senate in October of ’02. It was that series of events that flamed my passion that I had a message to tell the American people: Basically, you are going to be less safe, you will be more subject to terrorist attacks and disruptions in your life under this president than is necessary. And I believe I know what needs to be done in order to protect your security.

I announced my candidacy after Congress had concluded and after our joint inquiry had submitted its final report. In the course of that announcement, I indicated that I was going to undertake several steps before making a final decision to run. One of those was to have a thorough physical exam. In the course of that, it was determined that a heart condition that I had been aware of for several years, but which had been in remission, had started to go south. Doctors said I needed to have it dealt with as soon as possible. So I made one of the most difficult decisions of my life, which was, before our campaign had really got started, to suspend it.

It turned out to be two months for the surgery and the post-surgery rehabilitation. But that two-month interlude didn’t quench my passion. So the campaign started in early April of 2003. It was one of the great experiences of my life, although I was disappointed that I did not make the case as strongly as I felt it personally about how America had been drawn into a war under false pretenses, and the consequences [that brought].

When you say you didn’t make the case, I recall that you were quite persuasive. But are you saying you just didn’t reach enough people?

Yes. I didn’t reach enough people. I didn’t excite enough people who might be supporters of a campaign. It also happened that while I was lying in the hospital bed, an important event occurred, which was a convention of the California Democratic Party at which a not particularly well-known former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, gave a passionate speech about the war.

My frustration is that I felt I should have been the one at that podium. I hadn’t just spoken my opposition, I had used my political influence and vote to actively resist the president going to war. But by the time I recovered in April, the issue of the war had largely been captured by Governor Dean. He was a strong and eloquent opponent of the war. And, I am afraid, I became an echo rather than the initial voice.

That’s interesting, because had you been there to deliver that speech — the Democratic Party voters were looking for someone who would speak against the war — you had a lot of good credentials. You may have had a little more lasting power than Governor Dean, do you think?

Well, yes. If you look at the résumé, I had been governor for eight years of the fourth-largest state in the country — and, I believe, with a positive record of accomplishment. I had been in the United States Senate at that point for 16 years with a strong record, particularly in national security. So I think I was well-positioned, if the stars had aligned a little better.

When you say that you were inspired by this issue, you are not suggesting that you did this simply to highlight the issue.

The purpose of my candidacy was to get elected, not to be a billboard for a single issue. But it was that issue that caused me to decide, “This is the time that I have the passion to run.” I thought about running for president at some earlier times. Probably the first time I gave it some serious consideration was in 1988, when [future] President [George H. W.] Bush was running. Then I considered it in ’92. Then in ’96, of course, [Bill] Clinton was running for reelection. In 2000, Vice President [Al] Gore was running. So the opportunity was 2004.

So in each of those cases you decided not to do it because of what the competition looked like?

Well, in ’88 it was a little different. Although I had eight years of gubernatorial experience, and the candidate who would eventually get the nomination, Mike Dukakis, had about the same amount of gubernatorial experience, I only had two years in the Senate. I didn’t, frankly, feel that I was ready to be president of the United States in 1988 due to my lack of extensive experience in foreign policy and national security issues.

I interviewed Senator [Dick] Lugar yesterday on this same subject. We were talking about competence, and why it seems to be the last thing voters are drawn to. Both you and he are very much alike in that you waited until you felt you had the experience that you needed. But you can see that some people don’t wait and do very well. We have a senator running this time with only two years’ experience. Have you thought about why competence seems to be so devalued in this process?

It’s not only competence, but maybe it’s one of the things that tends to be associated with competence, and that is pragmatism. The presidential process tends to value a comet with bright light, as opposed to maybe the more craftsmanlike person who has demonstrated the ability to actually bring people together to get something accomplished — not a very sexy item in your résumé.

It concerns me, today, that the candidates seem to be putting themselves in the position on an issue, like health care, that unless you commit that you will go for the gold ring of total change, nothing less than that is a sign of lack of leadership. The reality is that the way America works tends to be on a step-by-step rather than one-big-bound basis. That happens to be the way in which I approach life and public service. But it’s not a very appealing position as a candidate. When was the last time that somebody wrote about a candidate who is being incremental?

Exactly. It’s often said, of course, that senators make lousy presidential candidates. One of the reasons may be the reason you just explained, which is a very good insight. Are there other reasons that senators have trouble running for president, outside of the pragmatism?

Well, there is a tendency, if you have been in Washington for a long time, to adopt almost a vocabulary kind of way of speaking, which is not very common for the rest of America and is a turnoff to the rest of America. I think another thing is that it’s hard for a senator to point to a record of accomplishment, because most of the things that you actually get are done in a way that doesn’t focus attention on you and your leadership abilities. When you are one of 100, maybe you aren’t taken as seriously as if you are one of one.

I believe that the American people consciously have given value to having had executive experience. I think four of the last five presidents were governors before they were president. I don’t think that’s an accident. It’s really quite logical. Would a university select somebody to be its president who had never been in a university before? People like to feel that this person in positions of lesser responsibility has shown their executive capabilities and, therefore, give people hope that they will able to effectively lead the most complicated executive office in the world.

Of course, some people who are senators, like yourself, were executives. But you get a person who has been an executive and somebody who doesn’t have experience with the issues of the presidency.

I still, in my soul, thought of myself as being more of a governor than a senator. But having been in the Senate for 16 years, that wasn’t the way the public [thought of me].

You mentioned that you had considered running several times before. And one of the points Senator Lugar made was that he realized when he did run, that he really hadn’t built the [national] network that he needed.

I fell into that same trap, too. Although I had been in positions, such as being chairman of the Democratic [Senatorial] Campaign Committee, that had put me in touch with a lot of the major figures in the Democratic Party across the country, I hadn’t made the investment of building and developing those relationships.

That’s one thing that I think Bill Clinton did an extremely good job of. While he was governor of Arkansas, he was active in a number of organizations, including the Democratic Leadership Council, which helped extend his reach well beyond Little Rock. So when he ran for president, and he went to Seattle, he already had at least the beginnings of an organization in Seattle from his contacts made over the years being governor of Arkansas. There have been four governor-presidents in recent history: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and now George W. Bush. Two of those came from big states, California and Texas. Georgia would be sort of a middle-size state. Arkansas would be a small state. In a way, it’s easier for a governor to build a national base if you are from a state that is not as demanding as a big state is on you.

I know I felt, as governor of Florida, that I couldn’t sublimate my responsibilities in a state with lots of challenges to be spending a lot of time developing a national base. In honesty, it just wasn’t something that appealed to me very much, either.

Once you decided to run, did you step away from the Senate, or did you continue to do your Senate duties?

I just about stepped away. I mean, I had a 98 percent or 99 percent voting record up until 2003. And then it plunged. I tried to make the votes that I thought were…

But you were still the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, weren’t you?

No. My Intelligence Committee service ended in January of ’03, but I tried to make the votes that I thought were important. But not to make the votes that are necessary to maintain a 98 percent voting record.

What about the search for money? How did you experience that?

Well, that was probably the area in which my surgery did the most damage to the campaign. First, I think having a heart condition is not something you’d like to put in your brochure running for president.

I think it hurt [Bill] Bradley that he had some heart problems. And it certainly hurt me, and I think particularly among significant donors. There is sort of somewhat of a questioning as to are you really able to do this, and will the public view you as someone who is physically capable of [being] president? But the fundraising is just…

But you had better fundraising contacts than most senators, I would imagine, across the country.

I think so.

Because you had your days at the campaign committee.

Well, and Florida is a major political fundraising state. Obviously, I had very strong contacts here.

The grind of the fundraising is the part of running for president that you have got to most steer yourself for. When I saw, recently, that John McCain did 35 events in 30 days or something, my heart went out to him, because I knew what that entailed.

Does it bother you to sit down and spend hours on the phone?

I don’t think most people who are on this side of sanity would find someone handing you list of a hundred names, 75 percent of which were new names to you, and then a telephone, [appealing]. And you start dialing those numbers and like a phonograph record repeating over and over the same basic pitch in hopes that at the end of that they’ll say, “I am with you, and I am putting a check for $2,000 in the mail today.” Those are the seconds that you live for.

Raising money to run in Florida is a job in itself. I mean you need a fair amount of money to run.

Whatever you think about political fundraising, the reality is, it is the oxygen of the political campaign. And if you are not going to inhale it, you aren’t going to go very far.

What do you think when you hear that this might be a billion-dollar campaign?

I am stunned. And the consequences of this are so egregious for the country in terms of turning more and more of the de facto control of the government over to interests that have gained their power by their ability and willingness to spend money on politics. If it hasn’t been written, somebody is going to write a story about that prescription-drug bill that passed in 2003, which would make Michael Moore’s SiCKO sound as if it were the end for the private insurance industry.

Were you ever approached by somebody who said, “Yeah, I am willing to help you with your campaign if . . .,” or somebody you felt was trying to buy your support for some piece of legislation?

Well, if they are smart enough to have made several tens of millions of dollars, they are smart enough not to blatantly come out and say, “If you’ll vote for my amendment, I’ll be sure that your fundraiser next Wednesday is well-attended.” I am afraid John McCain is being subjected to this. If you made a career in Washington of opposing the interests of powerful groups, you can’t expect that they are going to shower money on you when you run for reelection or run for president.

So you couldn’t turn around and then get the [pharmaceutical industry] to support your campaign, certainly.

Wouldn’t get much money from them, no.

You had some pretty good consultants, as I recall. And there has been a lot of criticism of the role of consultants, that they turn candidates into a kind of cookie cutter — they want them to say the things that work and not say the things that don’t work, and that they often transform candidates into people that they really aren’t. What was your experience with consultants?

Well, I have had, since 1977, a considerable experience with who I consider to be very good consultants, Bob Squier being one, Anita Dunn being another, Geoff Garin, et cetera. Unfortunately, Bob died in the before the 2004 campaign. And that was another thing that saddened me, because I think had he been as strong and forceful and creative as he had been in my campaigns in Florida, he would have been a great asset for the presidential campaign.

I remember once he told me that he did ads for you that never showed because you didn’t need them.

Well, I am sure that’s true. And we made ads before the presidential campaign that never got shown, either. I think part of the effect of the amount of time you spend on fundraising is that it’s time that you don’t have to spend thinking about policy positions on issues, etc. Therefore, there is the temptation to be drawn into doing what your consultants suggest you should do.

It’s a matter of time as much as anything.

You have hired these people, so obviously you have some confidence in them, and you are paying them a lot of money. So you want to get the benefit of what you are purchasing. And so there is an inclination, when they say, “This is what we ought to do,” in your foggy mind, which has just been rattled by 69 phone calls, to say, “OK.”

Right, and so you kind of go on automatic pilot. Have you seen where that’s been a real problem for a candidate?

Well, probably every candidate [has] this idea that running for president is going to be standing on the deck of this great ship demanding the direction of the ship and the activities of all the crew. And you find yourself that you are actually down in the lowest hold of the ship with a telephone attached to your ear and other people commanding the deck.

What a great image. I do want to talk about you being mentioned as a vice presidential choice. You were mentioned, can you remind me, how many times?

Well, the first time that I knew of it was in 1988. Mike Dukakis and I, as I indicated earlier, had been governor together. In fact, he was ahead of me. But we were both at the Harvard Law School at the same time. So we had a long friendship. And Mike’s office contacted me and said that they were going to be interviewing various people as possible running mates, and that he wanted to interview me. And so I went through that process. Do you have time for me to tell you what I think is both an amusing but also an insightful story?

Oh yes, of course.

One of my longtime friends and good supporters is a singer by the name of Jimmy Buffett. And while I was governor, one day I got a call, and Jimmy said: “I saw you are coming down to Key West to give a speech. I am doing an MTV video of a new song of mine called ‘Who’s That Blonde Stranger?’ And if you would like to come by the pier bar where we are filming this, we’d be glad to have you.” So I said, “Fine.”

So after my speech, I go over to this bar. And there is Jimmy, but he’s frantic because a lot of the extras for the shoot hadn’t shown up. So he said, “Would you like to be in the MTV [video]?” So I get on this garish Key West shirt, and I end up being the patron that this beautiful blonde barmaid is trying to pick up. And I meet this beautiful blonde who is going to play the role of the barmaid, and she is so excited because she thinks this is going to be her avenue to stardom, this MTV.

So what am I supposed to do? Should I be cold and aloof, or should I try to be taken by her beauties and seductive manner? Clearly, I do the latter. And so anyway, the MTV is done. My role in this ends up being extremely modest — maybe two or three seconds.

But when I sit down to meet with the Dukakis people, one of the early questions is: “What about this MTV that you did with Buffett? Don’t you think that showed bad judgment?” Well, the answer is, it probably did show a little bit of bad judgment. But I explained the circumstances, that it was a harmless interlude. And so I thought that was over. We met over a period of three or four weeks, and they kept coming up. In fact, at one point my wife had taken our girls on a cruise in the Baltic, and one of the guys from the Dukakis campaign called her in Bergen, Norway, to ask what she knew about the Jimmy Buffett MTV.

So anyway, I finally did what I don’t normally do, which is to get mad: “Damn it, I have told you everything I know about this. Why are you putting such importance on this? I have told you, I didn’t think it was the greatest act of judgment. But it was inconsequential.” They said: “Oh no, we are not worried about your judgment. What we are worried about is that we have researched your financial disclosure statements, and you did not disclose that Mr. Buffett paid you a performance fee to be in this MTV.” To which I said, “Goddamn, do you think Jimmy Buffett pays anybody?” So that should have given me an insight that maybe the Dukakis campaign was living on a planet other than the one that I was on.

That was my first vice presidential experience. Then, in ’92, I met with another former gubernatorial colleague, Bill Clinton, about that. And then I had a little, but not too serious of a discussion with Gore in 2000. And then I talked with John Kerry in 2004. So that’s my vice presidential record.

Did you find that in all of these instances that they had, as carefully as the Dukakis people, looked at your background?

Dukakis was in a class by himself [in terms of] the detail.

What do you think about the way in which vice presidential candidates are chosen?

Well, one thing that I don’t understand — Florida has a process for its lieutenant governor-governor relationship that’s very similar to the president and vice president. That is, gubernatorial candidates select their lieutenant governor, and they run together as a team. Now the law has changed since I ran for governor, but when I ran, you made that selection before the primaries so that people who voted for you in the primaries knew who your lieutenant governor would be. I thought that was a great opportunity, because instead of having one person down there at the bottom of the ship making phone calls, you have two people making phone calls — and two people who could be at the parades and the other obligatory events.

If I were going to be planning a presidential campaign in the future — I will assure you, I am not — one of the things I’d seriously consider is making the vice presidential selection well in advance of the convention, like before the Iowa caucus, and get that same benefit of having another voice on the campaign trail. Second, I believe that politics, in the final analysis, is mathematics. It’s whoever gets the most popular votes or the most electoral votes who wins. And I have been surprised that the standards for selecting the vice presidents have not been today, as they have been in the recent past, focused on the mathematics. My brother Phil [the late publisher of The Washington Post] was a close friend to both Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. And he had a lot to do with putting the two of them together at the 1960 convention.

I was a volunteer for Lyndon Johnson at that 1960 convention. If you want to read what happened, read the [Theodore H.] White book [The Making of the President 1964], where he published a memo that Phil wrote to him describing how Kennedy and Johnson got together. But it was absolutely based on the fact that the Kennedy people, many of whom couldn’t abide Johnson or his other Texas sidekicks, recognized that if Kennedy was going to get to a majority of electoral votes, they had to carry some southern states. And Texas appeared to be about the best shot they had.

Right.

And they weren’t going to carry Texas with anybody on the ticket other than Lyndon. So it was a very hard-nosed, unromantic marriage. And I have been surprised, recently, that that approach to vice presidential selection seems to have fallen out of favor, particularly for Democrats. And I don’t think that it has well served the Democrats not to be more arithmetic-oriented.

Well, I would think what you might be thinking about is that if Gore had chosen you in 2000, he might have been elected president.

I don’t think there is any question. He would have been. Why, I think he carried Florida under the circumstances that he ran. Frankly, without being totally immodest, I think had I been on the ticket, he would have carried Florida by several hundreds of thousands of votes. And there would have been no contest.

That’s a very good point. I am going to bring up the last subject now, and that has to do with the media. And I am going to combine it with the subject of the notebooks, because I have never quite understood why these notebooks have — I mean, I consider myself a reporter through and through, but I have never quite understood why the notebooks caused so much stir. And [so] I want to start out with the notebooks, and then tell me what you think about the way the media covers presidential campaigns.

Well, Sara, you and I are twins. It’s just incredible to me, that something which I have been doing most of my adult life, because my father did it most of his adult life, and has been a valuable way to keep records. For instance, I have in my notebook, which is in my hand as we speak and which carries the number 707a, which means it’s the first notebook that I used in July of ’07. And I have at 4:25 that we began this interview on presidential and vice presidential politics, so that forever this interview will be available for public review. But why this is seen as some kind of a psychic mystery is a mystery to me.

For instance, Time magazine wanted to do an interview during the period in 2000 when Gore was making his decision. And the only thing they wanted to talk about was the notebooks. They didn’t want to talk about what I felt about any issue, or what I thought my experience or preparation was. And then they ask for notebooks. And it’s been my practice, if a responsible journalist wants to look in a notebook, I give it to them. For some reason, the one they selected was the notebook that covered not a period when I was in Washington, not a period when I was doing anything senatorial, but it covered the day that our second daughter, who is married to [historian] David McCullough’s son, was having a baby.

I imagine it’s a pretty stressful period when you are about to have a baby, and so she said: “Daddy, would you come over and stay with me? And let’s watch a movie.” And I said: “Fine. What do you want to watch?” And there was a movie that happened to have a Miami venue called Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

That’s the movie we watched. Maybe if you are a pregnant woman within hours of delivery, that’s the kind of movie you’d want to watch. I am not going to judge that. But that became a big deal that that was the movie we watched. So, as I say, maybe my reaction to your question indicates my frustration at the way the notebooks have been treated and betrayed. But so be it.

Have you felt, on other occasions, that the press was out to diminish your accomplishments?

No. I have had a very good relationship with the press in Florida and in Washington.

I thought so.

This singular issue of my little spiral notebooks has been the only source of personal angst.

Well, if you could change any of this, how we choose a president, what would you do?

Well, I’ll tell you, I have written an op-ed, which I hope is going to run pretty soon. I am very concerned about what’s happening in states like Florida [that] back their primaries up right after Iowa and New Hampshire. And it’s for this reason: I think that the American people have been well-served, over history, by the fact that there were some quirky parts of the presidential selection process that have served to be the screen to identify and separate out people who weren’t presidential but maybe were able to . . .

As Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time . . . and all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.” Well, some of those people were being fooled. My prime example of this was in 1944, when it looked like Henry Wallace was going to be the vice president, and because of [Franklin] Roosevelt’s declining health would have been president. And the big bosses came together and they said: “Look, Roosevelt’s not going to make it through another four years. Whoever the vice president is, is going to be president and will serve as president after this war is over and is going to have to make some very tough decisions, including our relations with the Soviet Union.” And then they looked at Wallace. And they saw what they thought to be a good person, but a weak person, and particularly weak in his prospect that he would be overrun by the strong personality of Joseph Stalin. So they said, “We can’t stand by and let this happen.” They got Roosevelt to agree to let the contingent decide, rather than he deciding. And they found this rather obscure senator from Missouri, Harry Truman, and the rest is history. I think that since the big bosses went off the stage, the living rooms of Iowa and New Hampshire have, to a degree, taken their place.

To take the case of George W. Bush, McCain didn’t contest the Iowa caucuses, so he won that. But when they got to New Hampshire, where there was a very active campaign, the good Republicans of New Hampshire rejected Bush by 19 points. It was only because of the almost unparalleled viciousness of the campaign in South Carolina that followed New Hampshire that Bush was able to resurrect his campaign and ultimately his presidency. And I am worried that, that screen that those living rooms have provided, because the people get to know you so intimately, that they are able to make decision better than those Americans who only see the candidates on the tube. And I am afraid that that screening process is going to be substantially diminished. And therefore, what’s going to take its place?

The most colorful suggestion that I heard was that we ought to adopt the “American Idol” approach. Put all of the candidates on national television for two or three weeks. And then, in the fourth week, begin to have people vote. And each week they would eliminate one candidate. And then, finally, you would end up with the one standing [who] would be Democratic and the other one [the] Republican nominee. Now, I don’t think we are ready to go there yet. I have made a suggestion of how I think we might structure a series of regional primaries that would rotate every year so that the Northeast would be first in one election. And then it might be last to vote in the last election.

A very good idea.

But something better than the system that we are going to have in ’08.

In other words, something that gets them involved with real people.

That’s right. For instance, if you divided the country, let’s just arbitrarily say, into five regions, and every three weeks a region voted, that would mean that the candidates would spend three weeks in the Midwest or in the Far West or in the South. And at least it would be some opportunity for the people to feel that they got more than just a TV exposure. And it would almost, I think, give the candidates a chance to be more engaged, because they wouldn’t be constantly on an airplane flying from New York to Los Angeles.

So anyway, in January of ’09, we could well look back on ’08 as one of the most unsatisfactory presidential campaigns, in the selection processes, in the memory of Americans. I hope that, if that comes to pass, that it will be a sufficient impetus to figure out, we have got to do something better than this for ’12 and ’16 and 2020.