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James Carville

James Carville, a Democratic strategist, actor, writer, and pundit, managed Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign. He starred in the political documentary The War Room, in the motion picture The People vs. Larry Flint, and on the television series K Street. He is the author of several books about American politics, including We’re Right, They’re Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives, and was a host of CNN’s Crossfire. He is married to Mary Matalin.

Jules Witcover interviewed Carville on April 23, 2007.

What do you think is the possibility of keeping the federal subsidy program alive? And should it be kept alive, if only for the so-called second- and third-tier candidates?

Well, are you talking about the subsidy program in the primaries? Or are you talking about . . .

The presidential primaries, yeah.

I mean, look, what they are concluding is they can raise more money outside of the system. I think it ought to be kept in, because there are people that can’t presumably make a calculation, and it keeps them in the race. And the more the merrier.

Well, is there enough money there, in light of what people are raising?

No, they raised the limit from $1,000 to $2,300.

Yeah. But that’s not going to . . .

I know. So they ought to raise the match concurrent with raising the limit, because if you raise the limit [and] you don’t raise the match, then obviously fewer people will take the match and more will go outside the system.

So do you think even with that, there would be enough money for some of these candidates to hang in for the first couple of contests?

But if you look at the disparity between the top and, say on our side, the disparity between [Hillary] Clinton and [Barack] Obama and like [Chris] Dodd, [Joe] Biden, and, to some extent, [Bill] Richardson there. What happens is somebody does better than expected in Iowa or New Hampshire, and they get a lot of money. But you can’t process it, even over a period of time. Even if you get a hot hand, you do unexpectedly well. Money coming in is not as good as money in the bank.

But it would at least be a way to get into the ball game.

Yeah. I am for it. I am for the match, or the subsidy, or whatever we want to call it.

Well, on the other end, how do you feel about eliminating the ability to raise the millions that are being raised by these front-running candidates?

I don’t know how you limit it. I just think that the country is paying, and it’s going to continue to pay, an incredible price for the way that we finance our campaigns. I mean, it’s more of a problem congressionally than it is presidentially.

But James, if you can, sum up for me the high points you’re about here in this piece.

My basic approach is that no member of Congress shall be able to solicit anything of value from anyone. And so if you say it’s a campaign contribution, a thing of value, it most assuredly is. Now remember, I said no member of Congress. I did not say candidate for Congress. A candidate for Congress who is not an incumbent, who is not a member, can raise all of the money that they want to, because they have no power. The only requirement is they have to deposit the money immediately and disclose everything. Upon deposit of that money, the federal government cuts the incumbent a check for 85 percent of that amount. The reason I say 85 percent is because they probably have fundraising costs and other things, associated with raising that money. So, if Jim Moran is a member of Congress and I don’t like him and I want to run against him, I can get you to give me a check for whatever I want for $5,000. As soon as I deposit that money, Jim Moran gets 80 percent of that amount from the federal treasury.

Well, is that prohibitive from raising more?

No. You can’t raise anything. He can’t accept anything of value from anybody. He can’t take a lunch or anything. Nothing. He can’t accept anything of value from anybody outside his immediate family. No, he can’t raise money for the Red Cross, or the March of Dimes, or nothing. He is out of the fundraising business.

Well, what about presidential?

I would start at the congressional level. If I did that, then it would have to say that anybody that ran for president would have to resign from the Congress, which would seem to be pretty stern. And I think the problem, honestly, is more congressional than it is presidential. But the solution would be, if you are Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, Senator [John] McCain — what would you say if you had a governor? The law wouldn’t apply to them. So it would be complex. I wouldn’t bring the presidential into it. I would probably make, if you can, make the check. You get the general election mandatory. You get the $85 million. That’s enough to run a presidential race.

But this time around you are seeing some candidates talking about paying for the general themselves.

They are going to do it. Well, maybe the answer is to up the contribution. Most Americans understand that up until [George W.] Bush in 2000, we paid for the general election, by and large.

Well, what is really the point of that? I don’t quite understand. You are only talking for about two months’ time. And the subsidy is up around something like $80 million.

It’s got to be.

Is it wise? Is it imperative for candidates to take that on themselves?

You know, apparently they are doing it.

The more money the better?

Yes. They’re not gonna turn it down.

Well, what about the things that drive up the campaign costs? Do you have any ideas on what can be done about pulling down the amount of money you need on that end? Like dealing with the television stations that are making a fortune on these campaigns?

Well, I really don’t, because everything would end up in court. You know what I mean?

Where I think we need to attack the problem is on the supply side, not the demand side, if you will. If you just make it very simple: If you are a member of Congress, you just can’t take any money. Solved. Nothing. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Not a penny for anything. Now this would kill it. It’s not going to pass anyway. But it’s a theory. But I think they ought to pay up to $300,000 a year. And then let them buy their own watch. And if they want to go take a trip somewhere, pay for it yourself.

You are talking, again, about members of Congress.

Yes. Members of Congress.

Well, what about presidential?

I don’t have an answer to it, because in order to apply my [standard], I would have to make a presidential exception. If you apply my standard, then members of Congress wouldn’t run for president. They would have to resign. Then you would keep people out.

Well, why wouldn’t it be a good idea for that to happen? Look at Bob Dole. He voluntarily stepped down from the leadership post.

That’s great. He did.

It these guys want to be president that much.

But he didn’t step off the Senate.

Yeah, but if they want to be president enough . . .

But then they are saying a governor doesn’t have to resign, but a senator does.

Couldn’t you say anybody who runs for president and holds a public office ought to resign, whatever office he has?

Fine. I’d be for that. You can’t run for president. And now what the counterargument would be is, you can have some people that are not going to run. But this will make them want it more. You have to make it mandatory. But you couldn’t have just people in Congress. Just anybody — you are resigning to run.

But constitutionally, could that be done? Anybody who holds any public office at any level running for president has to resign before he runs?

The Constitution says you have to be born here and 35 years old.

So it would be no prohibition against it?

I don’t think. I don’t know if it would be a prohibition to say no person currently holding public office can run for president of the United States or can raise money. I guess you can run. You just couldn’t raise money. Or you could say any officeholder, in lieu of raising money, gets a $15 million or $20 million check for primaries. And they just have complete public funding for officeholders.

But that’s basically the same situation as now.

No. Now you have matching funds.

Oh, without any matching money.

Without any matching money, I would say if you are a member of Congress and you are declaring for president, you get $20 million. That’s all. Now you [could] have a lot of people just saying they are going to run for president and take $20 million. Well sure, they would have a hard time getting reelected by the voters back home if they just did it for a lark. It’s a possibility.

You see any possibility that the [Buckley v. ] Valeo decision could ever be turned around?

Oh, that was the Supreme Court about the amount of limited finance. You hear some lawyers say if you have the right to limit something, you have the right to ban it. A court here, if anything, is going to be sympathetic to big money.

Why is that?

Because it’s a corporate court. Do you really think Exxon wants to get the money out of politics? I don’t think so. Do you think PhRMA [Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America] wants to get the money out of politics? I don’t think so.

What about the impact of your industry, which has grown immensely in the last 20 years?

Well, first of all, I was a campaign manager. I never made a penny off of a single television spot, a single poll, a single piece of direct mail.

Well, there are a lot of others who aren’t like you.

I understand. But having said that, every candidate chose to pay them. So if the political consultants got — and by the way, nobody gets the 15 percent anymore, as I understand, on the television side. It’s really sort of changed, if you will. And they force some efficiencies in the system.

But there was a time when people who ran campaigns, or consultants, did most of the things that are now split off into the army of people who now do various things from buying time, to doing the commercials and doing the ads, doing everything — direct mail, organizing bell-ringing. There is a whole army of people, now, who work for the candidates. And that’s got to raise the cost of the campaign by a good amount of money.

But how are you going to stop people? If you limit the amount of money, then you limit the amount of people he can hire. And they have to make more decisions how to do it.

Well, I am just talking more in terms of the quality of the campaign. Do you think it’s better to have it all done by one guy? I can remember, and you can probably remember, when the guy who was running a campaign was a brother-in-law of the candidate, or his son, or his uncle, or a law partner.

He just didn’t know what he was doing, either. But why is that system better? If the law partner runs the campaign, OK. Been knowing him all of his life, his best friend. And the campaign is over. And then you have the political consultant, the hired gun, the guy from out of state who comes in, doesn’t know the traditions of the state, doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t have a relationship with the family, comes in and runs a professional rack-’em, stack-’em, hit-’em, knock-’em-out kind of campaign. After the campaign is over, the political consultant goes back. He goes to the next campaign.

The law partner hangs around Harrisburg and becomes a lobbyist. And then he starts, and everybody in the world who wants something from the governor goes to this nice idyllic law partner who is sitting there raking in millions of dollars hustling state government. Now which system is better? I submit the system where you have hard political professionals that come in has got some merit.

Yeah, but it wasn’t always that way. Paul Brountas, remember that name?

Yes.

I think he went back to doing whatever he did before.

Maybe some do; most don’t. And you want to talk about problems, you go look at all of the consultants who are working in a presidential campaign who have other clients. When I worked for a candidate, I had one loyalty. That was it. I basically didn’t even do two campaigns at the same time. So, if you are a consultant to a presidential campaign, you are also a consultant to PhRMA, or you are a consultant to the AFL-CIO, whatever it is. Your loyalty is mixed between the campaign and your other client.

Well, isn’t that, in itself, another way that money pollutes the politics?

Well, sure, I know right now if I went to PhRMA and said I am on Hillary’s policy board, put me on retainer. “[Expletive] yeah, take a hundred grand a month.” So I go to the Hillary people, I say: “You know what? I am not going to charge you anything. I am just such a good guy. I’ll just go to the meeting for nothing.” That’s the way it works.

And so then I go to labor, whatever, go to Enron, I mean, or Exxon. I go to green people. I can work, and I can volunteer my services to help them craft how to sell your health care. Now you can’t have this, because I can’t sell that. But the press, if they looked into the cross connections of all of these campaigns, there is no telling what they would come up with. But there are plenty of people who volunteer for presidential races. They don’t want anything. Somebody from Patton Boggs [a Washington law and lobbying firm], you don’t have to pay them a thing. No problem. They’ll do it.

Will do it for what — access later?

There was a great guy who always pontificated here in Washington, Ted Van Dyke.

I remember Ted, yeah.

And Ted represented PhRMA. And he tried to get somebody into one of our health-care meetings at the beginning of the campaign. And it’s very anti-consultant. Throw the polls, and the focus groups, and everything else. Then he would try to bring his clients to brief the campaign on their issues. And the world is full of those kind of people.

But be careful what all of these [people] are saying. Well, this is the way I chose to do it. It’s my way. I was laughing at somebody this morning. I said: “Well, I have to go to the Ukraine. I have to stop in Iceland. But I am still doing what I do.” Right. And I do my speeches and CNN. And if I didn’t do that, then I would have to be hustling. I am not saying there is anything wrong with it. I have plenty of friends who lobby. That’s the price that I paid not to do it.

Well, are you concerned about this trend to have people in politics wearing two, or three, or four hats?

If the candidate asks my counsel, I would say that there are two things that I think you should do. First is, anybody that works with me, I am your only employer, because there is but one God here. There is no God but God. You know what I mean? But there is no candidate but the candidate.

Secondly, if you think that it’s too harsh, that they have to disclose to the campaign where all of the sources of income are so we can adjust their advice accordingly.

Well sure, I mean, you otherwise leave yourself open to all kinds of accusations.

But I want to know what’s the advice I am getting. If I am a campaign manager and somebody calls me and is part of the team where they brought in to work on this: “Tell me, now where you are earning your money while you are here? If you are getting any money other than from me, because I am a man who can’t resist temptation myself, I assume others are similar. So I want to know where the temptation is.” So, he who gives our bread, I sing his song. Well, I want to know who is singing. I think there is a connection between the bread and the song. I have always kind of thought that.

Wouldn’t any sensible manager want to know that anyway?

No.

No? Why not?

Because the intersection of money, politics, government affairs, public relations, crisis management, whatever they call all of this [expletive], is all completely blurred now. It’s just kind of one thing. And actually, I like the guys that just call themselves lobbyists. They work for General Electric, they are paid by General Electric, they represent General Electric’s interests. Well, there is nothing wrong with that. As long as you know they are. “That’s old so-and-so, he’s the GE guy.” That’s great. “How you doing?”

Well, how about when such people get involved in . . .

If you notice in my book, I actually praise Wal-Mart. And I just read a good book about Wal-Mart. If you are a buyer for Wal-Mart, you can’t take a nickel from anybody for anything. And if they find out that you are working for Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble, how fast do you think you would be out on your ass? And I think that the government should adopt the Wal-Mart standard, if you will. I just finished this book, The Wal-Mart Effect, which is a hell of a book. You ought to read it. It’s worth reading. It’s by a guy by the name of Charles Fishman. It’s a very, very good book. Because we got one out in the Shenandoah Valley, and all of the things that you think are true about Wal-Mart — yes, they are a lot cheaper than everybody else, but it comes at a price.

It’s not a screed. But one thing Wal-Mart is — and when you read this book you understand it — they really preach the low price. Everything they do is a price point. It used be you go, and you come in to a buyer. And you go, and you take him out to lunch. You play 18 holes of golf. You give him some tickets to the game. And he gives you a price. And at Wal-Mart, you sit in a cubicle. And you can’t go to lunch. You can’t do anything. You just sit there and negotiate the price. Well, what happens in government is they’ll take you on the plane. You have the pro-am golf tournament. And this is Louisiana. And anytime there is a poker game, you know what that’s about. I mean, there are camps at Grand Isle, and the public works director would go down there and play poker with the contractors. Guess who won?

[Senate Banking Committee chairman] Al D’Amato used to play poker with all of the banking lobbyists. “Damn it, Al, if you don’t win all the time. Isn’t that something? I don’t need any of these three ones, Al. They ain’t worth a damn. Give me three more cards.”

It’s an excellent book. Fishman, I don’t know him from Adam. I called him — I teach a class out of the community college — on the off-chance I could get him to come and talk about Wal-Mart. But I read the book and like I said, it’s not anti-anything. The company is just what it is. But the thing that they do is they get the low price at any cost. But if the government got just a simple policy — and I am not saying take the fun out of politics. I am not saying you can’t have lobbyists. I am saying you can’t organize a campaign to get things done. I am just saying take the money away from the interest group and the politician. Build a wall between the two. And they can come in your office. They can lobby you. They can make a point. They can say, “If you don’t do this, we are going to have a letter-writing campaign against you,” or “We are going to do this.” But you can’t take any money from them — no lunch, no nothing. You can eat lunch with them, just pay for it.

Do you notice, in your experience, politicians who have actually taken money over the table, or offers made to politicians for anything specific? I’ll give you $10,000 if you . . .

Well no, it doesn’t work that way. But this is the way it works: There is a piece of legislation. You have a politician who might be in a committee. And something comes up, and it’s a billboard, let’s say. He votes for the conservation side, to limit billboards. And then somebody calls him, “What are you doing? We just had a fundraiser scheduled. We have a funder for the billboard people. They are down for $50,000. Now we are zilch. You people better check before somebody makes a vote as to what’s going on. But you just don’t go free-lancing the vote like that.”

Well, what’s the difference between that and just going in and saying, “This is what I want?”

I just said — that happens every day.

That’s the practical way it happens?

Yeah. That’s the way. Or, “Senator, you need to know that this provision is coming up in the committee, and they were at our annual dinner.” All right. Obviously, whatever the group is, they are not going to hold a fundraiser for you. A lot of times they will come up and say, “Look, if you vote against this measure, we can raise $250,000 in insurance-industry [money]; if you vote for it, we can raise $250,000 from trial lawyers.”

You know what’s a great movie? Did you see that Eddie Murphy [movie], The Distinguished Gentleman? You ought to rent that movie. Get that and watch that. It’s actually pretty damn funny. It’s really funny. It came out in the ’80s, probably. But it’s one of our favorite political movies ever. And it’s funny as [expletive]. Who is the guy that was — I think he was married to Susan Estrich — Marty Kaplan or something?

Marty Kaplan, yeah.

I think he wrote it, or was part of it. I ought to see Marty and tell him that. I actually think it’s one of the five best political movies I have ever seen.

And the point it makes is just right on target with you. I don’t refer to it as corruption. I refer to it as corrosion. It’s like a pipe. Over a period of time it just gets corroded. And there is a huge provision coming in a bill. Sit there. Lobbyists come in; they talk to you. The health care, the hospital association: “Senator, this is just going to really hurt; you have 10 hospitals in your district. And the way this is reimbursed, it’s going to really hurt them. And so let’s say to legislate makes complete sense.” You vote for that. The chief of staff calls a fundraiser and says, “Give it a week and then call so-and-so at the hospital association and set something up.” But that doesn’t happen every day. That happens five times a day. And you say: “Look, I would have voted this way anyway. I have 10 hospitals in my district.”

So suppose that’s not the case. Is it commonplace that when a politician is confronted with the financial facts of the situation, they don’t vote the other?

Well, what happens is a little less insidious than that. They usually come from a direction. There is always a kind of mixture.

But they know you are on their side. They are going to try to keep you in there. I mean, if you don’t overplay. Ninety percent of it is you pick and choose when you got in. But there are plenty of things that don’t apply to that. And there are plenty of things that happen in committees and where it’s just not evident. Look at all of the places where lobbyists write legislation.

And this administration has taken it where you can’t even imagine. I mean, it’s one thing to say they all did it before. If you took everything that was done before, and you added it all up, you wouldn’t be at half of what was done in the last seven years. All you have to do is the research. They were telling the lobbyists: “Don’t be too greedy too soon. We can get you everything you want.” Look at the number of lobbyists when Bush took office. Look at where they are now. Look at the growth of lobbyists from 1980 – 2000. Then look at the growth in lobbyists from 2000 – 2007. Look at everything that you want. And the argument is always a matter of degrees; this has gone off the freakin’ chart.

But isn’t your part of this sort of thing with the energy bill at the very beginning, where [Vice President Dick] Cheney wouldn’t say who had met the . . .

Right. Well, I don’t know, with Cheney, but if you look at what happened in [Pete] Domenici’s committee [the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources], you would be stunned, I bet. And what got in, and what didn’t, and where they were. Just go back and look at all of the stories. Just look at the growth in lobbyists. Look at the growth in everything that’s happened.

In that vein, talk a little bit about my business and what kind of a job you think the press does. I am talking narrowly, in terms of the application of money in one way or the other.

When you say the press, I am not sure even what the press is. All I knew was the political press, because I don’t really work the other side. So if I do a campaign, and you would come up and see me, and a couple of other political reporters would come by, Adam Clymer would, [and ask,] “What’s going on here?”

There was a smaller universe than that on our side as well.

Right. But now it’s not like that. Or [Bob] Novak would come in doing a column, or George Will [would] call you, take you to lunch, and do a column on the Pennsylvania race and the New Jersey senate race. But I mean, that all is sort of changed now. And I don’t know if it’s better, or worse, or what it is.

Well, what’s the difference? It’s just fewer reporters who are less informed.

You know what? At least from my vantage point, I started in 1982 going outside of Louisiana. And people that work in politics or cover politics, they actually like it. They like to go to New Hampshire and hang out. You know what I mean? At the Wayfarer [Inn] bar, watch [Jack] Germond sit there and wolf down martinis, and cigarettes, and prime ribs, and everything you could find. Everybody was bantering back and forth. I mean, everybody was petered; you know what I mean? I think that people said all of these guys are a damn club up there. They all talk to each other. So then you have the alternative people coming in, the bloggers. The newspapers started shifting people around. And even the cable-TV people were putting people out that were just shifting around. They didn’t love politics.

They didn’t love candidates. They didn’t love politicians, either.

Right, yes. People used to kind of like some of them. “I kind of like that guy. I remember [Ronald] Reagan when he was up here.” You know what I mean? So-and-so was running and the whole story.

It used to be a lot of criticism of the newer generation, the criticism of my generation: You got too close to these people. You know what I mean?

And maybe it’s true. If I’d say, “[Expletive] you — I didn’t like what you wrote in the paper,” or something like that, 20 people would hear it. Nobody would print it because they knew that we were hitting that talking back and forth. Now, it would be on some YouTube. And you would be on the thing and be, “[Expletive] you, Jules.” And it’s like, what kind of language is that? That wouldn’t have happened. Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe it’s a bad thing, but it’s a thing. I have become increasingly convinced that some things are neither good nor bad, they are just things.

Well, in that regard, I don’t think that’s good. Because in the days that you are talking about, there weren’t that many reporters who did politics year-round. A lot of them would pop in for a campaign.

Right.

You didn’t look at politicians as good guys or bad guys, or Republicans or Democrats. You knew them all. You tried to give them all a fair shake. And you had a good relationship. And they trusted you because you didn’t burn them, you weren’t looking for the cheap shot. And you are seeing a lot of that.

But now everything is a cheap shot.

So believe it or not, the effect of it is it makes it more reserved, because they are going to say, “Why doesn’t Hillary Clinton show us who she really is?” Because if she came up in the Wayfarer and five of you all were there and sat down and had a glass of wine or drink with you, somebody would have a telephone, click on a tape recorder. And she kind of went: “Jules, you good-looking devil, you. What have you been up to, man? I haven’t seen you in a while.” And that would be all over everything. So it’s going to produce a stilted result. And I am not going to tell some guy that I don’t know. And they come and they sit down and they take you to lunch. “And how do you see [Harris] Wofford?” “How are you going to see this thing evolving?” Or “How’s Pete Dawkins? How do you think you can beat Pete Dawkins?” “Well, Lautenberg is kind of old and washed up, and we are going to rip his ass up early.” You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Then you wouldn’t go and write a column that says “Lautenberg: We are going to rip his ass up early.” You’d say the Lautenberg people are planning an aggressive campaign, or question Dawkins’s motivation or something. But now it’s different. So you don’t get that kind of information.

You were talking about how things have changed. There is a reluctance by politicians and candidates to be candid because they are afraid they are going to get burned. And they are getting burned.

But look, the new media would say it was all a nice little inside game they all had. They all talked to each other. And they had their little club. And they would hang out. And they would all go to lunch at The Palm. And nobody got into it. And they knew things about these candidates, but they didn’t want to trade, because information was the coin of the realm. Well, what we have done is, the bloggers, the cable-TV people, the talk-radio people, the YouTube, we have popularized. We have opened politics up to the masses. It’s no longer the little cabal of everybody having their little lunch.

This Politico operation that . . .

Right, right. So that’s their thing. Now if you weren’t part of their little game, well, you didn’t count. So we busted up this party.

But I have been at a number of places, the press type of thing where they talk about this relationship. And the younger people say, for instance: “John Kennedy, you all knew about what was going on, but you protected him. You never wrote about it.” Well, I was very thick with people at The Boston Globe who knew Kennedy like nobody else knew Kennedy. They didn’t know anything about this. They didn’t know all the womanizing going on. But the point is, if you did know about it, you wouldn’t write about it. Because that was not considered in the realm of something pertinent to what you thought the guy was doing.

But today, if two people on a campaign, if you knew that the campaign manager was having sex with the press secretary, you wouldn’t print it in the column, right?

You wouldn’t?

In 1988, if you knew that I was Lautenberg’s campaign manager, and the press secretary was living with me, you wouldn’t put that in a column.

No.

It doesn’t matter.

Not then.

Now, it would be all over. Somebody would have a tape of you or something.

My point is that has a tremendous impact on the flow of information between a good reporter and a politician.

But people just didn’t do it, like people do. Ann Devroy is the reason — Mary [Matalin] and I used to talk to her, as a conduit, during the ’92 race. Well, Ann Devroy never put in The Washington Post, “When James Carville and Mary Matalin got in a fight, I had to put them back together.” But now, that would be all over the thing.

Well, because the yardstick then was, if it didn’t affect the performance of a politician or a candidate, it wasn’t relevant.

I am saying it’s all gone now.

It is all gone. I personally regret that.

And my point is, is that a good thing, a bad thing, you can have an opinion, but it’s definitely a thing. And this is an elevator that never goes down. It only goes up. And everybody right now is sort of gaming in on it. But it was [Matt] Drudge; now it’s YouTube.

With the news business in the trouble that it’s in now, isn’t it inevitable that we are going to have more and more of this?

Yeah, I don’t know how you stop it. The only thing that I know is that I was so lucky. I came in at the end in the golden age. I was lucky that I got in at the right time. And I got out at the right time. Now, Drudge has become irrelevant, now YouTube is everything. And who knows what the next one is going to be.

Well, how does that affect your job?

You’ve just got to be aware of it. You’ve just got to be so aware of everything and everything that you say and do. I mean, these campaign managers are strategists, or consultants, or whatever. They have to be so guarded in what they tell reporters and what they say. I know one thing; I have never seen any of these campaigns laughing much anymore. None of them look like they are having very much fun. But that’s me.

Isn’t it also a usually increased universe that you have to monitor, to be aware?

Well, we started that in ’92. Remember, we had all-night monitors. We had everything they wrote come in. We were sort of naïve, but we did know that the news cycles were compressed in the media. That was what the whole “war room” was about. Political people, as I say, we are not rule makers; we are game players, OK? You tell us what the rules are and we play the game. And the rules are everything is instantaneous and everything is for public dissemination. That is the rule right now. It’s instantaneous and disseminated. Anything. OK? Thank you. So if you are the campaign manager, you are not going to flirt with some bundling in the campaign, because they will put it on the [news]. You know what I mean? They’ll call somebody and tell you that you are sexually harassing somebody. Or you are not going to, like, go to lunch and have a kind of — that doesn’t go any more. You are not going to do that. If you go out, and you get drunk, it’s going to be in the paper the next day. This is just part of the general the way it is. I don’t care how rude people are to me, I just bite my tongue. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” Because what happens is, they’ll call page, look at the paper today.

I mean, it’s the Larry King thing. Somebody came up to me and said, “What do you think that this thing means about gun control at Virginia Tech?” I said, “We ought to just give it a little time before we think about that.” They said, “Do you own guns?” I said, “Yeah, I own guns.” And he said, “Well, do you have a semiautomatic?” I said: “Yeah, I live out in rural Virginia. Surely.” He said, “Well, do you hunt?” I said, “No, my kids don’t want me to.” And the guy said, “Well, you can’t get a straight answer out of him.” No, it’s a straight answer. I got guns. I don’t hunt. My kids [would] kill me. That’s as straight as you can be.

That’s not what he wanted to hear.

No, I know. But I am furious. So somebody comes up. He said [reading from Ben Widdivombe’s gossip column in the April 23, 2007, edition of the New York Daily News]:

Democratic strategist James Carville! You must have a suitably liberal viewpoint on the gun-control lesson from the Virginia Tech tragedy.

“You know, I don’t know if there is a lesson.”

Excuse me?

“I mean, it’s something that we ought to think about,” Carville told me at the Four Seasons party to mark Larry King’s 50 years in broadcasting. “[But] I think we ought to try to let this thing go on before we jump into the middle of a political debate.”

Do you own a gun?

“I have more than one gun.”

Any semiautomatic weapons?

“Well, yeah, they’re semiautomatic.”

Are you a hunter, sir?

“Not really.”

Then why do you need semiautomatic weapons?

“I was [a hunter], but my children won’t let me hunt.”

I’m not sure that really answered the question, but I was so flummoxed, I let it go.

Well no, there’s nothing flummoxing about that. My kids would kill me if I shot an animal.

You just mentioned bundling. How do you feel about bundling in terms of campaign money? Anything wrong with that?

It’s legal. No. It’s legal. I mean, EMILY’s List bundled gazillions of dollars.

Does it affect a guy who is running a campaign?

It probably is better, in some sense. I am not sure, but probably, depending on how you bundle, who you bundle from. There is some bundling in these women’s groups; they send them out. And they got all of these people that contribute to them and trust them. And they send in. And they say, “Look, so-and-so is right on our issues, pro-choice.” You know what I mean?

But wouldn’t it be better if the candidate doesn’t know where the money is coming from?

Well, I don’t know.

[They are] not going to react to it.

You know what? If it’s for you, the bundling is good. If it’s for the other side, the bundling is no good. I mean, that’s the kind of rule I play.