Countdown

Home > Interviews > Charles R. Black, Jr.

Charles R. Black, Jr.

Charles R. Black, Jr., a Republican political strategist, was a senior adviser to presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and principal public spokesman for Bush in the 1992 presidential campaign. In 1990 Black was chief spokesman for the Republican National Committee. He was a volunteer adviser and surrogate spokesman in President George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Black is now the chairman of BKSH & Associates, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

Jules Witcover interviewed Black on February 21, 2007.

Let’s start by asking you to give your assessment of where the public financing system stands right now — whether you think it’s got another cycle in it or whether it’s finished now.

Well, I think the public finance system is basically finished. There will be some of the underdog, less-well-funded candidates who use it and take the matching money in the primaries, but for the general election, nobody’s going to take it. The costs have just gone way beyond the amount of money that’s provided by the government and it’s a question of competition; if one side’s not going to do it, then the other is pretty much obligated to try to raise their own money to keep up.

Do you see any way that these so-called second- or third-tier candidates can survive long enough to stay in the race?

I think it’s very hard. It’s harder than it used to be — a combination of the fact that the front-runners are spending more every time and the frontloading of the process now, that everything happens so quickly, once you start the first event in Iowa, that you don’t have time to raise money and turn it around. So, I think unless somebody can raise a lot of money before the contests start, they’re not going to have a chance.

Jimmy Carter was able to do that. Why was he able to do that then and not now?

Well, back in 1976, even in 1980, the events were spaced out. In those days, it was five weeks between Iowa and New Hampshire, so somebody could come on strong and finish well in Iowa and they had time to raise money, turn around, and spend it in New Hampshire. Then, in those days, there were a couple of events a week after New Hampshire, but Super Tuesday, the next big day, was three weeks out. You don’t have that anymore. This time, we don’t know exactly when it’s going to start, but it’s going to go Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina, all inside of two weeks, then immediate, on February 5th, you’re probably going to have 15 primaries, including a bunch of large states.

I understand the Democrats are making a rather feeble attempt to get some of the bigger states to go later, with the promise of more delegates. I think the Republicans tried that a couple of times and it didn’t get anywhere.

We tried that and it didn’t work. There’s active discussion, like in the Florida legislature right now, they’re talking about moving to January 29th, in order to go earlier than any of the other big states, and they’d give up half their delegates to do that and they’re actively considering.

Why would they give up the delegates? I think I know but let me hear you say it.

They want to be first and get attention, get the candidates campaigning down there and spending money down there . . . and then be known as the kingmakers. They want to be the big-state version of New Hampshire.

I remember when Iowa and New Hampshire were being pressed to do that, to be bribed by giving additional delegates, but it didn’t mean anything to them because they didn’t have enough delegates to be a factor anyway. But a state like Florida has got to have a pretty healthy chunk of delegates.

Well, it should mean something to them, but again implicit in what I said is that delegate votes at the convention don’t mean anything. The nomination’s settled well before you get to the convention, so the delegate spots are just ceremonial these days, to reward the party faithful. It’s not like they’re actually going to decide the nomination based on how many delegates they have.

Do you see any way, anymore, for the nomination to go into the convention undecided?

I don’t. It’s just that the system’s changed so much, with all the frontloading. In my experience, what causes candidates to drop out of the race is usually [that] they run out of money. Well, heck, the losing candidate’s going to run out of money in February — they’re not going to have a chance to make it to the summer, where the conventions are.

Do you see any way to put some kind of lid of fundraising? This business about public disclosure is something that is going to affect people’s conduct. Do you think voters care about who gives how much?

Well, I think the voters appreciate the fact that you do have limits on what you can give to a candidate. And, I think full disclosure of what you receive and how you spend every penny is the most important element of the system, because the press is very active and the press will cover. If somebody gets money from an unusual source, the voters will know about it through the news media. Or, if they spend it in an unusual way, voters will hear about it from the news media. But the problem with the current system is the unregulated 527 campaigns, where an individual can give unlimited amounts and then a 527 group can go run its own campaign, independent of the candidates, so George Soros can give $20 million to a liberal group or, to use an example in the other party, Bob Perry can give $7 million or $8 million to a conservative group and they can go run their own campaign.

Well, on that point, aside from the money aspect of it, as somebody on your side of the business, are you concerned about, when that happens, losing control of the campaign, the direction of the campaign?

Absolutely. That’s the biggest thing — in some states, a lot more money’s being spent by independent groups than by the candidates or the party and so the candidates can’t control their own campaigns and there’s no accountability. I think Congress ought to regulate — if the 527 groups are going to be allowed to exist, they ought to have the same contribution limits and the same full reporting that campaigns and party committees do. I just don’t see how it’s fair. And it’s out of whack: The notion of getting the influence of money out of politics has been completely turned on its head by the 527s.

When the independent expenditures groups first came in, that was one of the concerns that raised by people running campaigns — that they lose control and that this whole idea of non-collusion was practice in the breach. Isn’t that correct?

Well, sometimes I think there was more coordination than was appropriate, but I was in campaigns where you wanted desperately to stop people from doing independent ads. They weren’t helping, they were hurting you, but you couldn’t talk to them. You could have your lawyer fire off a letter to the other guy’s lawyer, but they could ignore that. Now, we have a First Amendment in this country, and the Supreme Court has held that if somebody wants to go out and advertise about a candidate or issues they can do it, but Congress can regulate how much money you can put against this. The original independent expenditures, in the ’70s and ’80s, independent expenditure groups had the form a political action committee and they could accept only limited amounts of funds. They might then go run something that was irresponsible, but George Soros couldn’t give them $20 million to do it — he could only give them $5,000.

Can you think of a campaign that you were involved in or one that you know about, where the activities of an independent expenditure or, more recently, a 527, has gummed up the works for the campaign?

Well, the best example of all is the famous Willie Horton ad in 1988, which President Bush and our campaign sort of took the blame for. We didn’t run the ad and we asked the people that were running it not to run it, but they kept running it. And it hurt us rather than helped us.

You think it hurt you rather than helped?

Yeah.

Why do you say that?

Because we got terrible press for running a so-called racist ad, when we didn’t do it.

What about 527s in the last campaign? Can you think of a case where they did something that took the campaign off the track?

There was a lot of misinformation and disinformation put out by different 527s and the official campaigns couldn’t really keep up with it and respond to it. I’d have to go back and dig up some examples, but the kind of ads that were run by both sides — if a candidate had run them, the press would have held them accountable and they’re not held accountable because there’s nobody there to obligate an answer to the question.

Is the other side to that coin though, for an independent expenditure group or 527. Isn’t it possible and doesn’t it happen that campaigns may leave something undone so another outside group will come in and fill that need? And there’s doesn’t have to be any collusion or any conversation at all.

Oh, no. I think people ought to have the right to do independent expenditures, I do think that’s a First Amendment issue. But I think there have got to be limits. Tgroups that do it ought to have the same contribution limits as the candidates or the party committees because you just get at a huge financial disadvantage and there are more ads being run by independent groups than there are by the official campaigns or the political parties. There was even a Senate race in 2000,in Michigan, when Debbie Stabenow defeated Spence Abraham, who was the incumbent, and the big issue was immigration. These independent groups on both sides were running ads on immigration. In that campaign, two-thirds of all of the advertising was done by the independent groups and only one-third by the candidates. My friend Abraham’s the one who lost, so I think his campaign got all bucked up by not being able to respond to all these independent ads. I guess either candidate could have said that, but obviously they didn’t control the campaign or the debates because they didn’t spend the majority of the money.

Do you think that taking the lid off candidate spending, as appears is going to happen this time, do you think that will diminish the role of the 527s and the independent expenditure groups? Will there just be more on both sides?

I think there will just be more. I think candidates will raise and spend more money than they ever have but, that said, they’re still limited on the contribution amount, so there’s not an unlimited amount of money they can raise and the millionaires can still put in seven-figure donations to the 527s.

Do you think that the speculation that this is going to be the first billion-dollar campaign is excessive or not?

Well, it probably will be, based on what was spent before. If you count candidate committees, party committees, and the 527s last time, it was $700 million or $800 million, I think. I’d have to look it up.

Have you taken note of Barack Obama’s idea about taking money and then, later on, if it’s approved by the FEC [Federal Election Commission], take the federal money for the general election? What do you think he’s got in mind there?

Well, I think he’s looking for a way to preserve the public financing for the general election. I just don’t think anybody’s going to do it.

Why would he want to do that, if he’s able to raise so much money?

I don’t know how much he can raise. Maybe he doesn’t know. It’s the first time he’s ever done it.

I checked with the FEC yesterday to find out how much they estimate will be in the kitty for the general in 2008. They say it will be about $83 million for each candidate. Isn’t it kind of hard to spend $83 million in two months?

No, it’s not hard at all. A good week of TV in California or New York can cost you $2.5 million or $3 million, almost that much in Florida or Pennsylvania or Illinois. And, you know, the staffs and overhead you have these days are pretty big.

So maybe he thinks he could get along with the $83 [million] if the other guy is forced to get along with the $83 [million].

Exactly.

Why was it that when John Connally ran in [19]80, he raised a million dollars and he wasn’t taking any federal money?

He raised $10 million.

He raised $10 million?

Connally raised $10 million.

So he only raised $10 million. Was it because of who he was?

Yeah, he had all these business connections, plus Texas has always been a great fundraising base for both parties. He had friends there and he raised a lot of business money all over the country.

So he had no trouble getting the money. It was getting the delegates.

He just didn’t have much support at the grassroots.

As I recall, he got one delegate for his money.

He got one delegate in Arkansas because we, in the Reagan campaign, cut a deal with him, to give him the one. We had to get a coalition together to stop Bush in Arkansas, so we gave Connally one delegate. Her name was Ada Mills.

Ada Mills.

See, I do remember some trivia.

The trivia I remember with that is that when John Connally was making this big speech, maybe it was in Arkansas, a guy dropped dead. It was considered kind of a metaphor for his campaign.

Well, that’s right. That’s right. He had the misfortune . . . in one of your books, and this wasn’t about Connally, but you told the famous story about the dog food.

That was Scoop Jackson, yeah.

Everybody sitting around trying to figure out “What’s wrong with our advertising and our marketing? We’re not selling.” And finally some guy piped up and said, “Well, dogs don’t like it.” That’s what Connally’s problem was.

If you were running a campaign for, say, Chris Dodd or, on the other side, Duncan Hunter, what would the strategy be, given what the money situation is?

I think what you’d have to do if you’re one of those long-shot candidates is I’d have to do a budget. I don’t know what it would be — it’d probably be at least 40 million bucks. You’d have to figure out a budget where you could run a completely lean, mean campaign. Just do on-the-ground operations in Iowa and New Hampshire and squirrel away about $10 million or $15 million, so just in case you scored well in Iowa and New Hampshire, you at least could go for another week or two and hope you could raise money. I still think, probably the calendar — events move too fast to allow you to succeed that way. Chris Dodd, for example, he can probably raise $40 million. I don’t think he can raise $100 [million]. And Hillary Clinton — Terry McAuliffe’s openly telling people they’re going to raise $200 million by New Hampshire. And if he says that, he can probably do it. So, Dodd can’t compete with that but he might be able to get together $40 million for a two-state strategy with a little bit of money in savings.

He’s probably not the best example, because he’s got the Banking Committee.

Yeah. He could raise more. A Duncan Hunter or a Sam Brownback and all, they’re just not going to be able to compete.

Charlie, what about all the technological developments, particularly the Internet and what’s going on there, with the blogging phenomenon and so on? Can’t that, theoretically at least, replace the need for money? Look at what Howard Dean did in his brief little spillage.

What it does is, you can raise money on the Internet. The Internet is the new direct-mail fundraising device. People still raise money through direct mail, but the Internet is a great source of small contributions now. [John] McCain was the first one to do it effectively in 2000. Dean perfected the art and raised a ton of money. And you can communicate with a lot of people on the Internet, with ads and messages and things, but that only reaches one segment of the population. It reaches young people and a few baby boomers, but the majority of middle-aged people and almost all of the old people don’t spend time on the Internet. They still get their news and watch ads on TV.

So you don’t think the existence of all that makes much difference in terms of the race for money.

No. It’s a new way to raise money, but you’re still going to raise less than half of your budget on the Internet, even if you’re real good at it like Dean was, if you’re going to be a competitive candidate.

Charlie, in your experience, can you think of outlandish cases where contributors have made demands on candidates?

Well, I’ve seen it happen. The kind I have seen, though, didn’t tend to be quid pro quos for “help my company with a federal rule” or something. They tended to be “I can raise you a hundred thousand bucks, but you have to speak at my daughter’s junior high school graduation,” “My son needs a job in the campaign,” or “I want to be your foreign policy adviser and ride in the airplane with you, but I can raise you a couple of hundred thousand dollars.” Those kinds of things [happen] more, in my experience. I have seen cases though where — and this is legitimate — individuals or political action committees or executives with companies say, “I want to know where you stand on a certain issue before we commit and raise money.” And that’s fine. I think, in Washington and in politics generally, that money follows issue positions, rather than the other way around . . . that over 95 percent of the time, people give to somebody because the person represents their views, rather than the person’s views represent whoever gave them money. Most people in both parties are sincere, honest people who do take positions on issues.

Charlie, talk for a few minutes about Phil Gramm’s pursuit of money. I remember he said, “The best friend you could have is ready money.”

Very interesting, Phil was the only candidate I ever worked with who actually enjoyed raising money. It was like a competitive sport to him. If he had an hour of telephone time he’d say, “All right, how much do you think I could raise in the next hour?” “Well, you can’t possibly line up over $50,000.” “Yes I can, I’ll do 65 [thousand dollars] in the next hour.” And he’d get on the phone and go. Phil, of course, had three expensive Senate races in Texas that he raised a lot of money for, in addition to his presidential race, and raised money for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, so he did it a lot, he was good at it, he had a great base in Texas of donors. He was good at it, plus he had some appeal, so he raised a lot of money. But that was another presidential campaign where Phil raised a lot — he didn’t raise record amounts or anything — but his candidacy was submarined by Pat Buchanan, who didn’t raise hardly anything, but he just undercut Gramm among the conservatives.

I went down to Louisiana for that . . .

He sandbagged him in Louisiana and that took the wind out of Phil’s sails in Iowa and it was over.

Two other guys that I’ve encountered, covering them by sitting out in their outside office for hours while they were on the telephone, were Alan Cranston and Rudy Boschwitz.

Rudy liked to raise money too. That’s another one. I should have thought of him. Yeah, Rudy too, he prided himself on being the best fundraiser. Al D’Amato, I should say too, I guess. But the ones I worked directly with, you almost had to drag them to get them to raise money, except for Gramm.

Who in the current batch qualifies as someone who likes to raise money?

I don’t know. I don’t know him real well, but they tell me Romney kind of enjoys going out, raising money. McCain doesn’t — he’ll show up at fundraisers and all that, but he hates to get on the phone and ask people for money. I don’t know about Giuliani; he’s never had to do it before, really. I guess in New York he had to. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would enjoy getting on the phone and asking people for two grand.

What impact do you think this avalanche of money is going to have, in terms of negative campaigning? Do you think that the more money goes into a campaign, the more likely that the campaign will go negative?

I think you get more of both negative and positive, and you advertise in more different media and all that. But I’m a little unusual, in the sense that the more money in the campaigns doesn’t bother me. I actually think the more advertising you have, the more exposure the candidates get, the more people focus on the candidates and the campaigns and the issues, the better . . . because a lot of people vote without being fully informed. This is probably not true anymore but I used to quote this, seven or eight years ago: McDonald’s spent more money advertising in this country, in one year, than all the political campaigns put together. I suspect the campaigns have overtaken McDonald’s now, but you think about that . . . well, what’s the more important decision? Who’s going to be president or which hamburger chain you’re doing to eat at?

It’s also the same with money spent on pets. It’s much, much more.

Yeah. To me, people say you get tired of political ads and you get tired of negative advertising, you don’t like it. Well, it needs to be fair but that’s part of the process.

People don’t give money to McDonald’s to get anything besides a Big Mac and they don’t contribute to the pet food industry.

No, but again, nobody — except in the 527s — can give big money to campaigns anymore. Most people are giving it because of supporting candidates on the issues or supporting a party, they believe in that party. And to a lot of people, they give a little bit of money to charities every year, and some people give it to a church, and some people give a few political contributions. It’s just part of our tradition. I don’t mind more money in it, the problem I have with the current system is the unfairness of the 527s accepting unlimited donations and then not being accountable to anybody for how they spend it. But I’m old-fashioned. I believe in the two parties. I wouldn’t mind if the parties had no limits, and long as they reported what they got every day and how they spent it. They’d be more accountable than a 527, so if George Soros wanted to give $27 million to the DNC, I don’t have as much a problem with that as giving it to some shadowy group where you can’t even find out who runs it. But, in real fairness, there ought to be limits.

What about bringing the parties back, as entities, into the process, as they used to be? Is that time past, do you think, with the development of all of the aspects of your business?

I hope not. I’d be happy to see the parties more strengthened. Their ability to do more for candidates, up and down the ballot, would strengthen the parties and accountability to the parties. Making the parties stronger at the local and state level would go a long way on that. I would like to see it, I think the two-party system has served the country well for a long time and we ought to invest in it.

Charlie, what about the debates? Do you have any problems with how they’re financed? I’m talking about the general election.

No, I don’t think that influences anybody, because it’s too indirect. If a corporation or a union gives money to the host of a debate it either benefits both candidates equally or doesn’t benefit the candidate directly. I wouldn’t want to show up at the White House and say: “I’m here representing Wal-Mart. We gave $1 million to one of your debates, you ought to help us.” I would say, “Well, hell, that was a debate I did badly, I lost that debate. Get out of here.”

One of the gripes about the debates is that so many of these so-called second-string candidates get in the way. I remember in the last campaign, there was a debate, in the primary, in which Ted Koppel got up and asked Dennis Kucinich when he was going to get out of the race and why wasn’t he? And to Kucinich’s credit, he came back and really pinned his ears back. But that attitude of having these extra candidates does disturb a lot of voters.

It’s a very hard question because we have a free country, we want an open system, but when you get seven or eight guys up on the stage and three or four of them can’t win anyhow so they have nothing to lose, it distracts. I don’t think the voters get a lot of good exposure to the real serious candidates in those early primary debates. I remember, this was ’96, the first big debate in New Hampshire, WMUR. This was early, it was like May of ’95, which was the earliest anybody had ever done a debate. I remember this vividly: I was standing beside Bob Novak in the viewing room where the press and hangers-on were watching the debate on TV. And so this debate starts out and, by the luck of the draw, the first question goes to Bob Dornan, who had no business being in the race or the debate, either way. The question goes to Dornan and he gets a question about health care or the military or some serious policy question. He looks in the camera and he says, “Bill Clinton is a liar and a serial adulterer and blah blah,” and just savages Clinton personally. Of course we’re all laughing about it, but the point is, that got that whole debate off track, every time it came around to Dornan, he’d make some vicious personal attack on Bill Clinton. And the Doles and Gramms and people who were trying to get attention and have serious debate on the issues just never got much of it that night. That said, where do you draw the line? And I don’t know, do you let Pat Buchanan in but not Alan Keyes?

Are you asking me?

It’s a rhetorical question.

I wouldn’t have any problem with that one.

I’ve thought about it before and I’m not sure how you fairly draw the line to exclude people.

Remember the famous debate in New Hampshire where the mike was cut off on Reagan, remember that? How that played out, when Reagan invited all the candidates — who were you with in that?

I was with Reagan. I was with [John] Sears, helping to orchestrate all that.

Getting all those other guys in there and Bush, standing there like a dummy. He lost that primary anyway, but I think it would have really hurt him a lot. And it hurt him with the other candidates.

Yeah, that was it. Bush looked mean and selfish to the other candidates. That was a Sears classic; he set that thing up so no matter what happened that night, Reagan was going to be the winner. Even if Bush had handled it gracefully, Reagan was still going to look like the winner.

Finally, Charlie, let me ask you about the job that the press is doing, not only on covering the candidates and the horserace, but the whole business of money and covering the money aspect of the campaign.

I think the press could do a better job of it, but I also think that if you get into a lot of detail, it bores the readers to death. I don’t like it if there’s a story that just says Phil Gramm raised $700,000 from the pharmaceutical industry. What does that mean? He didn’t get any money from the pharmaceutical industry. It means that 700 individuals around the country who work for different kinds of pharmaceutical companies — or their spouses — wrote him checks.

Well, what about bundling by category?

You know what, there’s a proposal now that you have to disclose bundling. I think that’s fine, I’d be happy to see us do that. I’m not much of a fundraiser. My wife went out and raised a hundred thousand bucks or something for George Bush and she ought to be listed — Judy Black raised money for the following people, this is it. When you’ve got a system where there are no corporate contributions, the reporting tends to get into, “Well, he got this from this industry and this from . . .” Or even lawyers, “John Edwards got sixty percent of his money from lawyers.” Well, there’s a lot of different lawyers in America, it wasn’t like they all got together and said, “Let’s buy this guy off,” or something. It would be nice to see more analysis of how people spend their money, too, but again, except for a few of us inside the Beltway, it would bore the public to death, I’m afraid.

Overall, are you optimistic about the way the process is evolving for 2008 or are you concerned about it?

I’m not too concerned about it. The 527s give me heartburn but I don’t know what to do about it. The Congress should pass a law but they’re not going to, to put them under the contribution limits that campaigns are under. McCain thought the FEC should have done that, but they didn’t, so maybe Congress ought to do it. I think you’ve got a pretty open system with full disclosure. It would be nice if you didn’t have to raise so much money to be a serious candidate, but in the end, financial support follows political support, and the people who end up with the money have some political support. Occasionally, there’s a John Connally that comes along who is able to raise money and doesn’t have political support. Duncan Hunter will not have lost because he didn’t have money. He’ll lose because nobody ever heard of him and, when they do, they still won’t be for him.