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Jim Margolis

Jim Margolis, a Democrat, is a senior partner at GMMB, a Washington-based political consulting, advertising, and communications firm. He was a key strategist in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and has worked for the campaigns of Democratic senators Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Barbara Boxer, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Robert Menendez, and Ron Wyden. Currently, Margolis is a senior strategist for the Barack Obama presidential campaign.

Jules Witcover interviewed Margolis on March 5, 2007.

What we want to focus on here, but not solely, is the whole campaign-finance situation: the raising of money, the abandoning of the system by candidates, and the impact that has all had on all aspects of the business. So if you would just start by giving me your ideas about whether you think this subsidy system is salvageable at all and, if not, what prospects are there for a candidate who doesn’t have a lot of money to hang in?

Well, I think the system, in terms of presidential politics, is pretty much done for, at least for the foreseeable future. The system may provide the capacity for second- and third-tier candidates to play, to be involved in some way, and to be a participant in the debates, to be a participant in the dialogue. But for top-tier candidates, at least in the current environment, there really is no choice but to leave the system. If that wasn’t clear before 2004, I think it became clear in 2004. And now you see the result, which is virtually everyone in the top-tier, I think, will be out of the system. One of the interesting things to me is that [there was] a wrenching conversation just three years ago about whether a candidate, particularly a Democratic candidate, could afford not to be in the system as reformers. As people who sort of believe that there ought to be a better way that doesn’t allow moneyed interests to have an undue influence in the process, and consequently those committed to both the reform agenda and for giving people the opportunity to participate through public financing, those are really hard conversations.

You know, within the Kerry campaign — which, as you know, I was involved in through the primaries — that conversation was an ongoing and a difficult one. And it continued not into February or March of 2003, it carried through, really, November of 2003, just a month before the voting began, of how could you do it, when could you do it, under what circumstances. And obviously Dean really then opened the door to give other candidates, and particularly Kerry, the permission to go. So the system changed. And it changed in a way that if you are going to compete in these early states, particularly with the frontloading of the system the way it is, the sort of imperative nature of being in this year, probably the Californias and the Floridas, as well as the New Hampshires, and Iowas, and South Carolinas, and Nevadas. You are going to have to raise an awful lot of money, be up simultaneously in a lot of places. And where you play, you don’t want to have a whole lot of restrictions on you.

Well, what about the second- and third-tier candidates? Do you think that they can even get to the first primaries under this system?

I do. I mean, it depends. Again, there are different kinds of candidates, as you have taught me over the years. And the rationale for a [Dennis] Kucinich candidacy is different than the rationale for a Joe Biden or a Chris Dodd candidacy, in terms of why they are there, or [Al] Sharpton or some of the other candidates who may have been active in the past. I do think that there will be an inclusion of a lot of the candidates in the public dialogue and in debates. And if they have a base from which to raise money, they can actually be involved in the process. And again, it’s not clear to me who all will, even among the second tier.

Do you think that it’s still possible, then, for candidates to raise enough money to get into the act?

I guess what I am saying is that there will have to be hard decisions, which even the second-tier candidates will have to make on this tradeoff between having some level of public support, which increases total dollars in, versus capacity to go play hard, where you’ve got to play in order to, at least in theory, or as history would teach us, be able to win.

So they may be driven out to second and third tier, [or even] be driven out before the campaign year starts?

Could. Or, conversely, they just may not be able to see how they can be part of the dialogue without having some level of public financing. In which case, they are in.

So they would take it as start-up money to just see if they could survive for a few weeks.

That’s right. The problem is, from a strategic perspective, if everybody else is up full-force in those early states with no limits, both organizationally in terms of media, all of the kinds of things that take dollars, and you are still operating under a cap but you have enough money to hit a cap in those states, you have a pretty tough road. And I think that was, again, pretty well demonstrated by what happened in 2004.

But, you know, the preelection-year events seem to be more intense this time around. There are debates that have already been, a so-called forum or debate. And there are likely to be more of those in that preelection-year period and more press attention. Do you think it’s conceivable that there would be enough free media attention to keep second- and third-tier candidates afloat until Iowa and New Hampshire?

You are exactly right. Everything’s on speed this year. My recollection last time was the first time there was real engagement was the South Carolina debate, which I am going to say was the first week of May of 2003. I believe that was the first major candidate forum last time. And we are certainly going to have one of those big ones by April. We have already been looking at Nevada and seeing all of the candidates there. The problem is an oxygen problem, which is, if you have two, three, even four candidates who really are dominating the free media on any given day, it is still very difficult for those “credible” but second-tier folks to poke through.

So Obama is sucking up that oxygen now?

Well, turn on the news and what you saw tonight, last night, and this morning, through the day today until you got to Walter Reed, was two people in Selma, Alabama. That’s it. And if you look at what happened yesterday in terms of the news, that was the lead-up, and what happened last night. If you just examine it, there isn’t that much space to begin with in terms of free press attention. And you have a couple of very interesting candidates who may be more interesting than any we’ve seen in a while that are, on both sides, able to dominate most of the news. So it’s very, very difficult to begin with for those second-tier folks to just poke through.

Now, Edwards, I think, is in a category that is sort of special, because he comes with 2004. But more importantly, organizationally, [he has] 100 and some nights in Iowa already, outreach to culinary workers in Nevada, and proximity to South Carolina from North Carolina. He has a lot of things. Money, one would think. So he’s kind of in a different category as an alternate. But when you get to the Bidens and the Dodds and so on, I think it shifts a little bit and makes it very difficult.

Suppose you have a 2008 version of Jimmy Carter; there was no Obama in the picture. He wasn’t very big himself. But the rest of the field provided a lot of space for what happened to happen. And I think what you are saying is that’s not the case this time.

It’s very hard to say, both for financial reasons, but also because, in fact, you do have a Hillary Clinton and you do have a Barack Obama. And you put those two dimensions together on our side, and there is a lot of attention going there. Now, I am one who thinks times change over the course of the campaign; things happen. And that doesn’t mean that the emergence of another candidate is impossible. I think it is possible; there could be an alternative that sort of comes through. But those probabilities get pretty hard as you move very quickly into the second tier. And just take a look at [Tom] Vilsack, who one would have, if you were writing it, “Gee, is there a rationale for a candidate who is a governor from a first-round state?”

At least to go that far.

Exactly. Who has been viewed for years as an articulate, thoughtful comer — young. And even being the governor of Iowa, his comment is, “I couldn’t do the money.”

Well, if we go through this first year, this preelection year, with nobody else in the picture, is it possible you could have — Hillary Clinton, for example — a Howard Dean experience? She is hung up on this question about apologizing for a vote. She is in cement on it, it looks like. Couldn’t this be a really serious problem for her, to arrest what she’s got going, especially when there is another guy coming on?

Sure. And that’s how you develop a scenario where someone else comes up.

Because it’s always been the scenario for the people who think that Hillary can be beaten; she’s got to slip on a banana peel somehow.

Well, I think there is a lot of fluidity out there. I think among Democrats and Democratic activists there is goodwill toward Hillary Clinton. There is goodwill toward Barack Obama. And there is probably goodwill toward three or four more, as they look at this. Again, let’s go back to look to the future. In 2004 we saw with Kerry that he always was well-regarded in New Hampshire. But we could never break through in the early days, summer and the fall. Dean had captured the imagination of voters. But Kerry was still liked. They knew him. He was next door, [with the] Boston media market feeding into southern New Hampshire. This was somebody that felt pretty good, that wore pretty well to them. But Dean was dominant and also a next-door neighbor. And somebody who they thought was speaking to them in a meaningful way.

I mean, every once in a while, maybe it’s a mistake, but your strategy actually works. Or maybe we think it worked, it just was coincidence. But in any case, the belief then was that Iowa was the gateway to New Hampshire, that we were never going to break through in New Hampshire. They knew everybody. They were pretty locked in. But you could shake it up and create an event in Iowa, which in those days was having a good second-place finish and not winning it. That, then, was your gateway to opening it up. And that’s what happened. I mean, it’s just, boom, overnight and it shifts. Well, similarly, it’s not like people have a bad feeling toward Hillary Clinton. But if something happens, there is not a sense of lockdown on her, that at the end of the day you go, “Wow, I just don’t know how we are going to break through 80-percent-strong support.” That’s just not happening.

Is it because as a woman and the [Bill] Clinton connection, people hang back on her?

From what I see, in terms of the research that’s out there, there is this fundamentally good feeling about her. People understand sort of the historic nature and opportunity that exists with her. But they are open. And they are open in a lot of different levels in terms of interest in other candidates. It’s early. Is she going to be able to sort of stand up to the test? Their perceptions of how others are going to react to a woman as the nominee, so there is the whole electability question, issues about the past and whether those things sort of re-emerge. You take all of those things together. And all candidates have some level of those same questions.

But it’s early for people. And they are looking hard, so that when you listen to people, particularly in these grouchy activist early places that we all go, and they all provide a pretty good testing ground for candidates. That’s some of the good stuff. They want to take your measure over a period of time. And that’s true of her. And that’s true of a lot of other candidates as well. But it is not like they start with any candidate saying: “We are there. We plan on sticking there.” That provides an opportunity for other people to move through and potentially have an impact.

Jim, getting back to the process: What do you make of this idea that Obama put out to start raising money for the general — I believe the FEC [Federal Election Commission] has now approved — to still take the federal money for the general election, and if he’s a nominee, persuade the Republican nominee to do the same. Does that make any sense? If a guy is able to raise more money than the opposition, why in the world would he agree to that?

Again, I think a lot of Democrats have historically believed in having reform of the campaign-finance system and how we do our elections, and how you limit money and influence. All of those things are pretty worthy goals. And to the extent that the realities of the world, what the opposition will be like, how much money will be potentially raised against you if we are just going to operate in a politically realistic world here, requires going out and being capable of competing with all of that, while at the same time, at least leaving open the possibility that you can get everybody back in the box, I think, makes sense.

Well, is there any evidence that voters care about that?

Not usually is [it] a voting decision issue; that is, it’s campaign finance itself. The influence of money, corruption, all of the things about who is getting taken care of, whose agenda is being pursued, those are things that people care about. And sometimes money, and sometimes that influence of money, are things that people do care about. And I think we saw that in this last midterm. That can be Tom DeLay. It can be [Jack] Abramoff. It can be money in the system. It can be oil-company profits as opposed to tax breaks for oil companies, which is, to me, a marker for a system that’s paying attention to those with power and influence. Those things work, I think, at play, and actually at play in terms of how people voted. Whether we have public financing or not, whether we limit to some specific dollar amount campaign contributions or campaign expenditures, I don’t think voters are lining up to go cast their ballot on the basis of that.

Do you think, for a nominee, the choice is realistically being a reformer or being a winner? I mean, if you take that reform route, and you know the other guy is going to be outraising you by millions and millions of dollars, how can you be a reformer?

To use an overworn phrase, I certainly don’t believe in unilateral disarmament. I certainly don’t believe that any of our candidates ought to go out there and have somebody with a two-, or three-, or four-to-one advantage and pretend like you are on some mission and tilt at windmills. I mean, we have 3,025 dead Americans in Iraq and 24,000 wounded in Iraq. These are real issues. One guy wanted to privatize Social Security and another guy who didn’t last time around; one guy was very happy with continuing the subsidies to oil companies. I mean, these are real issues. And at the end of the day, this is important. We ought to be continuing to try to figure out what’s the way to get reform done. But I am not for being on some jihad here and watch, in the interim, people dying or policies that make just no sense for most people.

In your experience, do people give money overtly for return? Do you know of a lot of cases where, say, I am ready to give you ‘X’ dollars, but this is what I want?

No, I have never seen it. But I have been doing this a long time. I mean, that’s illegal. What you just described is against the law. And most people are at least smart enough to not do that.

So how does it work, then?

I think people operate at a lot of different levels. I think there is a group of donors who care about what they perceive as access, who care about and who have a specific set of business or policy issues which they want to be able to engage on. And they feel this is a way that puts them at the center of the discussion. And I think that’s true.

I think there are others who, quite honestly, look at the world around them, either on the Republican side or on our side, and have money, and do it, for what I would say, on each end, ideologically or altruistic sort of reasons — [i.e.,] “I have the capacity to influence or play in the political process, and I believe that you either need change or that the president’s the greatest guy in the world. And you support [him] when he is being kicked.” There is a good deal of that. But fundamentally, there are an awful lot of special interests who see this as a door-opener, as a conversation-opener, as a way to engage in the process and be active in the process. And it sure helps if you have money to contribute along the way.

But quid pro quos are not commonplace anymore in politics?

I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s that direct. I really don’t, on either side. I mean, there are plenty of examples of individuals, I guess. Even there, I don’t think there are plenty of examples for the number of people who are out there. I honestly don’t believe most people are walking in and saying, “Look, I am ready to give you $10,000 here but I really need a couple of things done.” I think that doesn’t happen. That’s different. People want to make sure that whoever is elected recognize that they are a donor and that they want to have access, and the ability to have the conversation helps. But I think that’s different than quid pro quo.

What besides the cost of television drives up a campaign’s budget? I am talking about the growth of your side of the business now, how it has developed. I mean, when I started out as a reporter, there were two or three people who did your work. They were well-known, they worked by themselves, and they did everything. Now, you have this kind of explosion of services that are provided either through consultants or other ways. How much of that, do you think, is a cause for the explosion in money in campaigns?

Well, the big driver continues to be advertising. That is where so much of the expenditures occur, to be quite honest. And you look at some places, I mean, it is ridiculous. You all ought to be doing some reporting on these stations that are unbelievably greedy, I think. I mean, forget about the political consultants. The people who make out like bandits each year are stations that are operating in competitive states or competitive districts.

Like go to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and pick any of the stations in Green Bay — I am just picking at random from the last election. You had a hot governor’s race, a bunch of independent expenditures as a result; a hot attorney general’s race, and a bunch of independent expenditures as a result. You had a hot congressional race in that district with a bunch of independent expenditures, and the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and the Republican Congressional Campaign [Committee]. These guys are awash in money. And they just continued every week to jack up the prices further, and further, and further, and further for the same exact spot. Now, I don’t know whether they tripled it or not from the beginning to the end. But it’s amazing what they were able to do. And that was repeated in Ohio. And that was repeated in Pennsylvania. And that was repeated in Missouri. It’s pretty common.

Well, don’t time buyers benefit from that as well as the stations?

Increasingly less, because while you may work off of a percentage, there are 50 ways that things are being restricted from the levels that people pay today for the time buying. If we were sitting here when you were having your conversation a few minutes ago, the old days with those couple of guys, they were getting what was “the standard agency commission of 15 percent.” That’s nowhere to be found, these days, in a high-spending campaign.

You mean the percentage has gone down because of the volume?

Yeah, for sure, and so those numbers are very different. And there are all sorts of ways that it gets done. But the big point is that a large part of the dollars that are spent continue to be done in advertising. There are new ways; it does happen. Obviously there is some online experience that is getting developed. It hasn’t moved over into a lot of persuasion yet. Do you follow me? In other words, online activities are great currently. Let me rephrase that. Certain candidates can do a very good job of raising money online and even using advertising and other mechanisms to help drive that. It has not kicked over to be a really great source generically for moving persuadable voters. You might get some viral stuff going, where people are e-mailing others. That’s different than advertising placements.

But just the idea that banner ads, or interesting stuff that starts at a site on video and moves you to a site that’s candidate-oriented, aimed at persuasion, it’s not been particularly successful yet in its infant stages. You are starting to see it more on the consumer side, where you are using it to really generate connections to people and move them across to your products. But that’s probably coming. But it’s not like there are huge, huge sums being spent today on advertising. There is a building-out capability online. There is, with a lot of campaigns, some of the micro-targeting mail, door-knocking and outreach, phones, some of the things Republicans have been pretty successful with. But all of those expenses are significant. But it’s not the same as going and buying California if you are going to go play in the primary there.

What are the raps that you hear about your business collectively, all of the things that you do?

Except for me.

Except for you. The guy who runs the campaign benefits by the more things that are done in various ways, not only advertising, but other aspects of the work that you do. There is an industry that, by its own growth, greatly expands the campaigns. And maybe more money is spent than is necessary to elect a given candidate.

Look, I can’t speak for a lot of other people, but I have some pretty strong feelings. The best thing that I can do from a business perspective is get Jules Witcover elected, if he is my candidate. I am thinking virtually every morning about where is the best expenditure here in order to have the best chance of electing you. And if you are in a tough race, and you get elected, that’s going to help me more than anything else I can possibly do. The incremental amount that I can squeeze out of you as the candidate, versus the benefit I will get from being able to have helped elect you, to me, at least, is a pretty motivating factor.

So, going back to Wisconsin, I argued successfully to pull money out of media at the end, because I felt like our field operation wasn’t where it needed to be to turn out the vote in Milwaukee. I argued to pull out not just TV, but radio and from a whole series of places in order to build a ground operation, because I felt like we were at a level of communication that was sufficient to be talking to people. Would I have liked to have more, given four tracks of incoming? Yes. But at least we were in the mix, and up, and talking with people every day, where, if we didn’t have a pullout program, GOTV [get out the vote] in Milwaukee, we were going to be in big trouble. So let’s pull it out. And I’ve got to believe that other people do some of that. I mean, I would think so.

So the bottom line is that your track record is more important to you than trying to pick up a few bucks here and there.

Yeah, I think so. It certainly is to me. And also because it’s personal. You are attached to that candidate. You care about them. And I don’t want anybody thinking that I am looking to squeeze another few bucks out of that campaign for me, personally. Just personally, I don’t want people thinking that about me. So, yeah, I think generally speaking, none of us can complain that we aren’t compensated for what we do. But I think that from a strategic perspective, at least as far as I am concerned, you are much better off trying to figure out what advances the campaign and what sort of makes sense versus one more way to make a couple of bucks.

Some people who are in this game early on the candidate’s side have said — but you are really contradicting this — that the personal relationship with a candidate is not as important anymore, because there are so many other things, not only that you have more to do than just advise the candidate, but also that there is so much that has to be subcontracted.

Well, I am not a campaign manager, so maybe that’s true with a campaign manager. I don’t know. For me, that relationship is really fundamental, and these people end up being my close friends. These are people who I care about who call me when there is trouble at home. That’s really important to me. Going back, Kent Conrad 1986, he’s one of my best friends. And I end up producing spots for nothing for Marketplace, which is where they bring in all of these people to try to help sell North Dakota, just because you can’t not do it. And that ought to be how it is, because these people are trusting you with pretty important decisions, how they are going to be viewed at the end of the day. And I don’t think that’s true with everybody and every consultant, but a lot of the people who are out there that I have a respect for: I think it’s true with David Axelrod, Bill Knapp. I go through a bunch of these folks who are my competitors, who I think have the same kind of relationships with those candidates as I do.

Historically, going way back now, somebody who ran a campaign or was a consultant for a campaign was either a personal friend, a relative, or in business with him.

Yeah. That’s changed. 

And so it is what I like to call a one-horse jockey: They weren’t in the business, they were in the campaign because this guy was his brother-in-law or they really think the guy was a great and should be president. And they got into it, and they worked for that candidate. Steve Smith in the Kennedy campaign was an example of that. He wasn’t going to become a political campaign manager as a career, or a political consultant as a career. But over the years, this whole business has grown. And that’s why I want to talk about that.

OK, I am going to take your point and I am going to back off a little bit where I was, because I do think there is a professionalization of the process that has occurred, in some respects, probably for the better in many ways. Because the brother-in-law wasn’t necessarily the clearest-headed thinker about how the campaign ought to go together.

So the husband, the wife, the whatever, this wasn’t necessarily the way to do it. But there was a close, deep, personal relationship that drove a lot of that. Now today, you still have those people involved. And they are called the kitchen cabinet. Or they are called your inner circle of advisers. But you probably have a more professional [relationship], if you are in a top-line race. The same is true in the city council. The same is true as it used to be in the state representative and all of those.

But if you are in an ‘A’ race in a significant state or campaign, as a result, people move in and move out. They go from state to state, or they operate at that level. I think if you are doing many of the congressionals, or governors, or senators, in these more competitive, bigger races, presidential, that’s a little bit different in terms if the top tier of campaign people who are going to be working night and day. You are in a presidential, and you start with your six a.m. call everyday. There is a different kind of connectedness that happens through that top tier. But then you have, literally, many, many people that fall in underneath who may be more looking for one race or another, more professional in their approach rather than the personal dimension.

Well, what about a switch-hitter in your business like Dick Morris?

They just don’t exist.

Dick Morris doesn’t exist anymore?

Doesn’t exist. I mean, it is the exception.

Where candidates say, “I can teach you it, I can work for a Republican or a Democrat,” or “I don’t even know my candidate but I am hired to elect him.” There is not a lot of that anymore?

No, Dick Morris doesn’t exist. You are either working for one side or you are working for the other. And you are going to go find an exception. And have a nice day. But that is so the exception that, look, I got into this years and years ago because I believed certain things ought to change in the country. And I have no interest in being involved with people who are an anathema to everything that I stand for. Now I don’t have a litmus test, so I have [Senate Majority] Leader [Harry] Reid, who I disagree with on choice, as a client. And I have Barbara Boxer, who couldn’t be more adamant in her support for choice. But that’s one issue. The orientation in terms of what you are about and what you are fighting for is why I’m in this. And that’s why we do the Gates Foundation. And that’s why we do Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; [we’re] at 46 million people in this country without health care. And we are doing bed nets in Africa, and malaria, and I mean, that’s what it’s about to me.

Is this the conscience side your job?

It’s great stuff. I mean, I wake up every single day able to come in. And, at least here, we work on stuff that we care about every day. We have 200 people here.

You ever work for anybody you don’t like?

As a candidate?

Either as a candidate or as a person.

Yes, I have. But I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know when I signed up. I ended up there. But not many. And that’s pretty good after all of these years.

So you might work for somebody on one side of the issue and somebody else that is on the other side of the issue. But generally, they are Democrats.

All are Democrats or nonaligned.

Is there anybody in the business anymore who works for both sides?

Virtually not. International is different. I mean, for those of us who go international, the continuum probably is a little more flexible.

Why is that? Because you are not into those issues as much?

No, because often you are interested in doing something very different, because it’s not your own domestic situation. I am not going to go work for some crazy right-wing nut. But if there is a center-business and a center-left on that continuum, where if it was in the United States, this would be a soft Republican and this would be a soft [Democrat], I might work here instead of for the person who is maybe more aligned. But now we are way off. Now we are into foreign parts of the world.

A few more questions. Do you do any fundraising?

Zero. I am really good at spending it. I hate to raise it. I hate to ask friends for it. I don’t mind giving it if I am asked. But I can’t stand doing it.

Who are the best fundraisers that you have experienced?

[Chuck] Schumer, Rahm [Emanuel], that I’ve seen, that I just saw this cycle. There are other people who are great.

How about earlier?

[Tony] Coelho in the old days. And people like that. But it is discipline. It is a willingness. Well, we saw Rahm together in the Clinton days. I mean, he was a machine. And both Chuck and Rahm, I have tremendous respect for just being able to do it, stick through it.

How do you feel about the 527s?

Mixed. I can’t figure it out. I can’t figure out where I am on that. I go back and forth.

Aren’t they somewhat, in terms of you having to deal with them, like the independent-expenditure groups, where they may be doing things the way you don’t want them to be done? You know what I mean?

Well, we work with 527s too. We do both. We can’t do both in the same place. So we will work for 527s and [501](c)4s and all sorts of different entities. And they can do very good, important stuff. And they can have a very important impact on a race. I don’t want to be at a disadvantage to the Republicans in terms of one side. I mean, this is where I get mixed up. I can’t figure out whether we are at an advantage or a disadvantage in the 527 world. And I have people who will convince me that we are dead if we give up the 527s, sort of collectively, we as progressives. And then I have others who convince me that we are at a disadvantage already in a 527 world, or the capacity to make 527s work for us, so we should just wipe them out. And we’d be better off for it.

Well, it’s just a matter of time before the Republicans can match what the Democrats have done.

I don’t know. But that’s tactical. I guess the sort of reformer part of me believes that you would like to limit the incoming that’s just sort of random and takes over campaigns, or can, and is outside the purview of the candidates.

Well, that’s what I was talking about. Particularly with the independent-expenditure groups like the ones that did the Willie Horton ads, which allegedly were on their own.

Right. So there is sort of that, and then there is the question of if you were at such a disadvantage financially in the candidate column and somebody’s shaping how people are perceiving your race through just the candidate mechanism. If you take that, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. And again, I am completely confused and happy to take whatever direction you give me and I’ll make that my position.

What do you think about the financing arrangement for the presidential debates? Is that giving you any problem?

Which part?

Well, the very fact that they are privately financed and that they are run by people who ran the two parties. Is that an inside baseball kind of a thing?

Yeah, because for most people they are watching, and sponsors, and all the rules, and everything else, they got a pretty good look at Bush. And they got a pretty good look at Kerry. Who should be there? Who shouldn’t be there? At the end of the day, to my mind, that’s where the action primarily was, as you went to the general. Having some threshold so they don’t become ridiculous makes some sense; [there are] harder questions in primaries and during the nomination process. But that fundamentally, you all cover them. People watch, particularly the general-election ones. It’s good information. It actually has an impact. It’s the one moment that collectively a lot of people pay attention to something other than what we do here. It’s good. You probably can’t do too much more, because people won’t pay much more attention than getting through three or four. So I don’t have a big problem.

But what about the job that the press is doing in campaigns now, not only the written press, but everything that’s come in — the blogging, the Internet, all of that. Is this too much clamor out there for you? Does it make it harder for you to get your message across or does it make it easier?

I don’t think that’s quite the right construction, because that’s one piece of message. How are we are communicating through the earned media, and particularly through the presidential? What happens out there is at least as important as what happens with paid [media]. That’s not true with Senate races. That’s not true in congressional. It’s not true in governors’ races. But in presidential, what happens day to day in the ether of free media, earned media, whatever you want to call it, is at least as important as what we drive. Now what we drive may help determine what is covered.

Well, why is that more important in the presidential?

Because there is a higher level of attention to it.

More intensity on side of the press?

Right. So the people are actually getting information. If you go out into a Senate contest today, you are not going to get any coverage at all. This week there will be six stories on the evening news on the presidential race, and it’s actually communicating something. And in Iowa, and in New Hampshire, and in those states, you are getting coverage every time you are showing up. So it is an important part of the discourse that impacts how people are going to judge a candidate and the race. Thus, it is important. That is not the case when you get to even Senate and gubernatorial elections, where still the preponderance of information is going to come from what we buy or what happens in the last few weeks of the campaign.

But there was a question in here somewhere about how I feel about the media. Again, it’s a little bit like 527s. I am not quite sure what I expect. I expect the media to always be much more interested in what was the tension in Selma this weekend than in what was said in Selma this weekend. And the fact that Obama’s line was three times longer to get into the church than Hillary’s line was, but that Bill was with Hillary — you know what I am saying? I mean, that is sort of the nature of the dialogue. And that then getting reflected two-for-one, take a look, this is why I am making my point right now as we are sitting here for all of you podcasters, we are watching the Clinton story [on TV, in the background] about the weekend in Selma. So that’s not really giving people a whole lot of information, nor do I expect that we are going to get into great detailed issue debates in the media. It is too much of the atmospherics rather than giving people any window into what people are about.

Well, is that a function of the discipline of the people who are putting the information out? In other words, is journalism becoming less professional and more amateurish as the opportunity for anybody to get into the conversation has increased?

I think it’s going a couple of different directions. One, I think there isn’t as much hard coverage with papers, news outlets, putting in the resources, and the money, and the people on the road.

That’s for sure.

And there are more professional folks to pay for it. And when you talk to reporters who are traveling, they are talking about, “I am getting this number of trips.” Or, “We are trying to figure out how we cover this with two people and splitting four races versus one on each.” So you have that. And there was a familiarity that would begin to really happen with reporters, particularly in presidentials. I think a lot of that happens in these early days, because you are kind of hanging out with folks, and that changes rapidly as you move down the road. But I think that’s a piece of it. Then I think it’s easiest and safest for news outlets to report horserace, crowd size, energy, and conflict, which is interesting. I guess people perceive conflict as interesting.

Hasn’t that always been true?

Yeah. And so that drives, naturally, a lot of the stories. Because all of those things are easier than sort of going two steps down. I don’t know what I should expect; this goes to the confused part, because I understand all of those things. That’s the way it’s always been. It is the easiest. It is the safest.

You aren’t going to get in trouble coming back to your producer or your editor and saying, “I got this great little dustup between these two candidates. And there is this new poll that shows somebody moved four points.” You are not going to get into any trouble with that. And that’s probably what you can do in 13 seconds, if you are lucky. Where it bothers me is when I get reporters who, on the other hand, moan and groan about a 30-second ad. And, “Oh, how can you guys deal in this 30-second, bite-size world of yours?” And I have to watch three and a half weeks of helicopter shots of the hearse moving Anna Nicole Smith’s body to the Bahamas. I mean, wall-to-wall. So I just don’t want to hear about that.