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Mike Gravel

Mike Gravel was a 2008 candidate for the Democratic and, later, the Libertarian presidential nominations. Prior, he was a Democratic U.S. senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 and the speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives from 1965 to 1966.

Josh Israel interviewed Gravel on May 9, 2008.

[Editor’s note: Gravel ended his candidacy on May 25, 2008, after Bob Barr won the Libertarian Party nomination.]

You served two terms in the Senate from 1969 to 1981 and the Alaskan Legislature before that. Is that right?

Correct. I was speaker of the house in the legislature and was also a member; so all told, 16 elective years to office.

As I understand it, you were a fairly strong backer of campaign and election reform even back then?

Very much so. In fact, I sort of brought about a total redoing of the Alaska Legislature. When I was speaker, the speaker didn’t even have an office. Never mind the other members. I used the closet and had a telephone installed in it. The speaker before me, whenever the chamber adjourned, it was understood that he had first dibs on the payphone just outside the door. We had a lot of growing up to do at the time.

As a U.S. senator, what sort of measures did you support to change the campaign finance election system?

As I recall, and now I’m really searching back, I went through probably two or three reforms and became very disgusted because reforms didn’t work. Of course, the most recent reform that we’ve seen, with McCain-Feingold, that doesn’t work either. What it’s become is an incumbents’ protection act. It gives the edge to the incumbents. That’s really the way all reforms have worked. They just really don’t work.

The reason is it’s just human nature. You’re asking the foxes to redesign the chicken coop. As they say, money is the mother’s milk of politics. If we think that we can deny that to the people who control representative government, I think it’s wishful thinking. I’m not being cynical about it because I do think that there are some answers.

You were in the Senate when the original Federal Election Campaign Act became law and post-Watergate reforms as well, correct?

Correct. It was taken to the court. I think Buckley v. Valeo was a result of that.

Were you a supporter of those?

Yes, I was. I’m sure I voted for it. It was easy to be a supporter because here we are all of a mind. We were groping in the dark trying to figure out how we could improve things. We haven’t. That’s the truth of the matter; we haven’t. I came to that realization when I left office in 1981. We haven’t.

I was in Alaska and I was on the finance committee, so it was easy for me to raise money because I was on the finance committee. We raised a million dollars. I deflected half of that to an effort I was trying to undertake, an initiative in Alaska to make Alaskans capitalists and shareholders in the general stock corporation where the people of Alaska would buy a piece of the Alaskan pipeline. I’ve always been a cause person. So I know enough about the process, since I’ve used the process, to know it doesn’t work.

Let’s talk a bit about the 2008 race in your experience so far. You began as a Democratic hopeful and, at least according to the FEC records I saw, you raised more than $447,000.

Is it $447,000 now?

At least.

Good. That’s about right. I’ve been saying $380,000, but I like $400,000. It keeps trickling in, which is great. As you can tell by my comment, I don’t look over my shoulder as to who’s giving. I really don’t. When I panic and don’t have any money, “Who do I know who could max out?” Well, I don’t know that many people who could max out.

A mixed blessing, I’m sure.

Well, it is in a sense. In another sense, that’s the reason why the media marginalized me. When I say I’ve got a chance at winning, they look at me like I’m nuts. How can I think that I’ve got a chance of winning when I’m facing [Barack] Obama who raised $240 million in the primary? He makes George [W.] Bush look like a piker in 2004 and [2000]. Of course, George Bush, we know, sold out to corporate America. Who do you think Obama is selling out to? I don’t even think he knows.

What was your experience trying to raise money in this race?

Presently?

Yes.

First off, I’m not very good at it.

Obviously not as good as people raising $200 million.

No, I’m not good at it. First off, I feel like a beggar when I’m asking. I really do. I have no net worth to speak of. I’ve impoverished myself with my dedication to the national initiative to empower Americans to be able to vote on all the issues that affect our lives. That’s really what motivates me. I’ll be at that for the rest of my life regardless of what happens in ’08. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not in office, so people aren’t going to give me any money in hopes of getting something in return because I don’t have any position.

With the other candidates, like with [Joe] Biden and [Chris] Dodd and [Dennis] Kucinich and Ron Paul and the others, these guys, they don’t win but they’re in office. So you may want to curry a little favor with them, maybe get your kid appointed at West Point or something like that. That’s the way the system works. I understand that. Of course, in my main undertaking, which is to empower the people, that’s so far out of the box that we’ve been at that for 15 years. We’ve raised a considerable amount of money through nonprofit corporations, but as far as politically, that hasn’t been what I would call a winner yet. It may be and it will be at some point. I don’t have any suction.

Then I’ve got another liability. People would look at me and say: “Just do the math. He was a great leader, courageous leader of old, but now look at him. He’s older than [John] McCain. You think we’re going to invest in him?” It compounds itself and gets really interesting. In fact, they should invest in me. When you look around and say, “I’m probably the only hope they have.” On May 25, the Libertarians are going to make a decision, because that’s what I am. I’ve always been a Libertarian. I was a Libertarian before the Libertarian Party was formed in 1971.

I was a classic liberal. I was stuck in the traces and wanting power. Then when I left the Senate, I was just disgusted with government, disgusted with politics and stayed out of it for a generation. I developed this whole concept of the national initiative wherein, with a piece of legislation, we could empower the people to become lawmakers so they could be in partnership with their elected officials and they could make laws, repeal laws, amend the Constitution. All of that legislation is right there for the taking.

People want to be empowered; it’s right there. It goes entirely around government. Congress will never enact legislation. It would dilute their power and empower the people, really empower the people. That’s, as I said earlier, out of the box and it has no suction for raising money. When this becomes the law of the land, now you’re going to see some real reform with respect to stopping the practices of what’s going on in money-raising.

Let me point out one thing. It’s interesting. The media measures the success of a politician by how much money they raise. Yet the media is the first, along with the academics, to point out that the corrupting influence in our society is money. It must mean that those who raise the most money must be the most corruptive. That’s just clear Aristotelian logic. It’s just that simple.

Would it then follow that the people who are the most corrupt are the most electable?

Under our present corrupt system, yes. Isn’t that the truth? We have a corrupt system and we won’t own up to it. We’re owned by the forces of Wall Street and the military industrial complex. They own us lock, stock, and barrel. They have since the get-go. Eisenhower pointed out, this is going to be the demise of our democracy. It’s come to pass. Our democracy is in very, very serious trouble. I think the only hope is going to be the Libertarian Party. It’s the third-largest party, but it’s a one, two percent party. This is what I hope, if I could be the standard bearer, I hope to turn that into a majority party.

They’re talking about freedom and liberty. That’s what Americans are all about. That is not what the Republicans and Democrats are all about. They’re about power and money. It shows in the public policies we have. Whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans, they’re both owned by the same interests, which is a minority interest which controls our society and our government.

You mentioned $200-and-some million for Senator Obama. Senator [Hillary] Clinton is not too far behind that.

$140 million was the last I saw of hers.

Senator McCain escaped through the nomination process relatively cheaply. It was still tens and tens of millions. What kind of financial requirements are there for someone to win the Libertarian nomination?

Ron Paul apparently has reported he raised $30 million. I think if we raised that kind of money between now and let’s say September, and then raised more after that, it gives us a chance to get a message across.

That would be for the general?

Yes, everything is for the general. Forget the primaries. As far as I’m concerned, the primary is a dead letter.

But for the Libertarian nomination, is there a heavy ticket to [run]?

No, I got a heavy ticket, my God. I’m just a poor boy in this race. We’re talking about people that I’m running against in the Libertarian race. Some of them have spent $200,000, $300,000. I probably am the one who spent the least amount of money in the Libertarian race for president and I am a viable candidate.

Bob Barr has raised over $30,000, $40,000, and he’s announcing on Monday. I haven’t seen that kind of money for this race. I got an advance for one of my books. I may be using that. I’ll be selling books, so I can use that to sell books and have a presence. We’ve got money trickling in. Like I say, we probably get maybe $100, $150 a day coming in. We just make do. My staff, I don’t have a paid staff. I’ve got just volunteers, young kids who are not as experienced as I would like, but they’re dedicated and they are of good heart.

If I could get the Libertarian nomination, things will change because I’ll have the third-largest party and then we’ll be able to get suited up properly to wage what would be a very, very interesting campaign. If you just stop and notice, you just quoted the amount of money I have raised and spent. I spent it all with being of sound mind, I’ll tell you. If you will just notice, I was shut out of the race by the corporate media, General Electric primarily started it, and the Democratic Party. They’re afraid of me. It’s very clear that the message I have frightens them to death. What I hear around the country is I’m a breath of fresh air. I want to expose that. I’ll do it as the Libertarian president.

When you look at some of the polls, you will see that Americans are fed up with the monopoly the Republicans and Democrats have on the politics and on government. They’re talking about change. Of course, this whole concept of Obama and change is really so ridiculous. In fact, ludicrous is probably a better word. If you really want to see some change, you’re going to have to go to the Libertarian Party. It’s really going to turn this country in the exact opposite direction from where we’re going.

Both the Democrat and Republican parties are war parties. James Madison really had it right on. That is, war is the worst of all evils because war is the source of debt and taxes and the empowerment of government permitting the elites to control the masses. Boy, if that’s not what’s happened in our society of late, I don’t know what has.

I spoke with Michael Badnarik several months ago and he mentioned that the Libertarian Party, based on philosophical reasons, does not believe in the idea of a public financing system. Do you think the public financing system, which is certainly in trouble now, is a good thing? Do you think there’s a better alternative?

Well first off, I thought it was a good thing until I found out what Obama and the Democrats and Republicans are doing this year. I’ve applied for matching funds. We’re not getting them. If you have not observed, the FEC has been neutered. That’s the kindest word I can use. It has been neutered so that the public has no service from the Federal Election Commission this year, in this very crucial election year. Who’s at fault? Well, it’s the Democrats, first off, because they would not appoint or permit the appointment of the four members to make a quorum for the FEC. I heard from FEC insiders that the senator who had a hold on that was Barack Obama.

That made a lot of sense because he was boasting about the fact that he and [Senator Russ] Feingold had passed this legislation where they would have to reveal who their bundlers are. I read in The New York Times, exactly what I’m telling you, that he was the one who had the hold. He came out with a statement that he doesn’t have a hold on it or he took the hold off or whatever. The hold is still on. Then I also read in the papers a few days ago, that now the president has backed down, or the Republicans have backed down, and they can have seriatim votes, vote one at a time on these people rather than on block, which is the way it customarily has been. But there’s still nothing happening.

What a charade this is that the Democrats, with the conspiracy of the Republicans, have fixed it so that the American people really don’t know what’s going on other than the blank reporting of numbers that you quote and that’s all you know, what infractions are taking place. One of the reasons why the Republicans are very careful of this, you’ll notice, when the president backed away, he did not appoint [FEC Chairman David M.] Mason, the Republican chairman of one of the two members there, because he was the one that objected to what McCain did with respect to primary-raising funds when he supposedly withdrew his application for matching funds. It gets so bizarre, so convoluted. The public can’t understand this.

One thing an objective observer has to come away with, these people are lying in their teeth. They are conspiring to hoodwink the American public. Remember in one of the Democratic debates, everybody raised their hand, including myself, “We’re for public financing.” Nobody there did anything about it. They could have done something right then and there. They didn’t do anything about it.

Here you’ve got Biden, Dodd, and Kucinich. I think they’re all in there right now with me trying to get money for matching funds. Of course, they had raised several million dollars. They’re not hurting. I’m the one that’s hurting right now and could use the matching funds.

Now looking at this de novo, I look back at what I have in legislation as a solution. That’s with the National Initiative. I have an amendment to the Constitution, part of the National Initiative, that says that only a natural person can donate for or against an initiative. I don’t touch representative government. Only a natural person can give to an initiative. That means no corporate moneys of any kind can go. Since only human beings can vote, therefore only human beings should be able to contribute to a campaign for initiative, for a political campaign, so to speak.

I have this backed up by a year in jail and heavy fines if you violate this. I have no cap on it. The minute you start putting caps on this stuff, you’re into free speech. What do you do? Do you turn around and say it’s a $100,000 cap, $1,000 cap? Can you permit a person to have a bullhorn? How do you treat the newspapers? Freedom of the press: If you own a press, that’s free. These are the dilemmas we have in human governance that are difficult to do. I don’t have a magic answer. In legislation, I’m prepared to put my career on the line for. I said no caps and everybody has to be reported so we know where the money is coming from. It has to come from a natural person, end of story. That’s how I would approach it.

So when you ask the question, “Am I for the government taxing and people to go ahead and put it into the system?” I’ve seen that and it doesn’t work. It’s mischievous. Guess who’s playing the game? Right now it’s the Democrat-Republican Party. I’ve said this to Libertarians: “If they had the power of the Democrat or Republican Party, they would be just as corrupt.” Does that make my position clear?

The Federal Election Commission, even when it’s not lacking the quorum, because it’s debatable whether it’s working, is made up by its design of equal number of Democrats and Republicans, which lends itself, at least according to a number of people we’ve talked to, sort of being designed not to do anything.

Of course. It’s strengthening the monopoly of the Republicans and Democrats who control politics and the government. Isn’t it interesting that in this country, you cannot become president unless you are Democrat or Republican? You can’t get on the Supreme Court unless you’re a Democrat or a Republican. You can’t get any viable position in Congress unless you are a Democrat or Republican. Yet, the Democrats and Republicans are not mentioned in the Constitution, at all. Boy, if that doesn’t say where we’re at in being messed up, then I don’t think anything else does.

What sort of arbiter do you think could work?

What I think would work is to empower the American people. That’s the arbiter. If you had what would be a fourth arm — we have three checks and balances right now. When one party controls all departments of government, then we have no checks and balances, which is what we’ve gone through for the last six years before ’06.

Bring the people into the operation of government as lawmakers, like they are in Switzerland, like they are in a number of states, very imperfectly, but they are. These are the only two places on earth that have that: in 24 states, very imperfectly, and in Switzerland. There, too, it’s not perfect.

I’ve been able to write this legislation using those experiences to write what would be an ideal piece of legislation. It’s not perfect. I don’t claim that I’m changing human nature. But you empower the people in this country and they’ll do 1,000 times better job of governance. The people are smarter than their leaders. The leaders would never own up to that. It’s the wisdom of crowds. Then we say, “We’ve got to be fearful of the mob.” I don’t know where the mob is with the people, but I know the mob was in Congress on the day they voted for the Patriot Act.

Let me take you in a slightly different direction, if I could. With all the costs of the campaign, your efforts made waves, quite literally, with your YouTube videos, with “The Rock” and now the recent “Obama Girl” spot. You’ve been able to generate a fair amount of interest, I suspect without spending a whole lot of money on these ads.

None, none. None of this was made by me. I just made myself available. I was even solicited. These are people who volunteered, contacted me and asked if I would do this, do that. I said: “Fine. I’m traveling. I’ll be there and I’ll make myself available to you.”

We were in New York and they brought, for “Obama Girl,” people up from Los Angeles. They spent the better part of the day doing this. I think I was doing something at Columbia that day. Same thing with “The Rock.” I was in San Francisco. They came up from Los Angeles to do it. It’s been a miracle from that point of view. Isn’t it interesting? They’re essentially all young people doing this. I’m the oldest guy running. Obama thinks he’s got the youth. All I can say about — well, I won’t even say it.

But you had these ads, and rather than spending several hundred thousand dollars . . .

I don’t have the money to spend it.

You don’t need it with this. You can just put it up on YouTube. People are e-mailing it to their friends.

I don’t put it up on YouTube; they put it up on YouTube.

They put it up for you.

It’s their product. When I was being interviewed about “The Rock” video, I started giving out Gus and Matt’s names and phone numbers. Give these people the credit. Don’t give me the credit. They were using me as a metaphor for human life. That’s what they were doing.

But as a candidate, without having to have you or them spend much money at all, you’ve been able to get a message out to people and generate interest. Do you think this may, over time, with creativity, with the Internet, mean that the cost of being a viable, national candidate goes down?

Yes and no. First off, if I’m waiting for that to mature, I may not live. So the problem is that it hasn’t translated into votes because of the power of the mainstream media, which has really dumbed down the American public. What it’s done, too, is dumbed down the information to the American public, more accurately. What’s happened is a very interesting phenomenon. They sort of over-exposed Hillary, Obama, and McCain. If I’m fortunate enough to get the Libertarian nomination, they’re going to need some new, fresh stuff. That means they’re going to have to turn to me whether they like it or not. They don’t like it.

I’ve got a book coming out where I hit them right between the eyes with a meat cleaver. That is: “These people are horrible, horrible. They’re responsible.” You’ve got to understand, the fourth estate, which is primarily the network media and the major newspapers, in any democracy is just as important as Congress, as representative government itself. They are the intermediaries for what the people learn about what their government is doing to them or for them or in their name.

When they do a bad job, which they did with the initiation of Vietnam, with the initiation of Iraq, with the initiation of what’s going on in our foreign policy and our whole military industrial complex, the fear that’s engendered and now building up the cause for war with Iran, which is an unbelievable hoax and nobody is really doing their homework to vet this phony information that’s put out about Iran. Who’s done any investigation? We learned after the fact that we were lied to with respect to Iraq. What do you think these same people who lied to us are doing about Iran? Is the media doing anything? Man, they’re falling into line like a bunch of ducks.

In this book, which David Eisenbach, a professor at Columbia, and I put together, the White House takes a position, and American media just are an echo chamber to that position. Nobody does their homework anymore. All they want to do is get out there and shout and shout and get their advertisers. The American people are uninformed. Somebody puts a microphone in front of them and says: “What do you feel? What’s your view?” It’s an abomination. Our democracy will not survive this kind of situation.

That’s the reason why the Libertarian Party, if it can mature to its responsibility — and I qualify that; it has to mature to its responsibility. We’ve got our rough edges, like all parties have. We’ve got our crazies on both sides. They’ve got to realize when we’re talking freedom, we mean freedom. Freedom means freedom, freedom to be economically successful, freedom to have health care, freedom to have a proper education, freedom to be able to use government when we need it and to put that weapon down when we don’t need it.

For someone to go out and say, “We shouldn’t have any government,” that’s irresponsible. We do have some people who take that position. I think there are enough Libertarians who are responsible that will rise to this occasion and get that message across to the American people that they are the answer, not the Democratic or Republican Party, which are parties of war and parties of special influence.

Let me ask you two more questions, if you don’t mind. With the rise of 527 committees, 501(c)(4) organizations that seek to influence the election with unlimited and sometimes undisclosed donors, you sued the American Leadership Project over its so-called independent expenditure ads.

It didn’t get very far, did it?

They do continue to run ads and raise a fairly sizeable amount of money and spent a sizeable amount. What can be done about this?

I don’t think anything. I think what needs to be done was the point I was making in National Initiative. Disclosure is the most important thing. I think the least amount of regulation you have in this is the most important thing of all. Here, again, it’s freedom but disclosure. As long as the American people know who’s doing this, then they’ll be informed.

I’ll give you an example. It’s what I call the Philip Morris law. There was an initiative done in California several years back that was financed by Philip Morris. It was an initiative that was written in the lobbyists’ heaven where they were lowering the standards for the San Francisco area and Los Angeles, but raising the standards statewide. The net effect of it was to lower the standards for smoking, a benefit to Philip Morris. They spent $40 million on this.

I was back east. I lived in California for almost a decade. I was back east and I saw a little piece in the paper where Philip Morris was doing this. I called a few friends of mine in California and got the inside of what was going on. Low and behold, they only had one person down in L.A. raising about a million dollars to fight this behemoth. What happened? It was close to 60 percent of the people who voted against this initiative, which was cleverly fashioned. What happened was all the people had to know who was behind this, and they knew that there’s no way that Philip Morris was going to be trying to make it tougher for smoking in California.

This is the beauty of it. And that’s the basis of my informing the people with the National Initiative. When people can truly identify their self-interests, they can’t be bribed; they can’t be bought. You can buy the Congress, you can buy state legislatures by the pound.

And the presidency?

Oh, by the ounce.

With Watergate, there was some impetus to try to enact massive reforms, which ultimately was proven to have been problematic. What do you think it would take to sort of spur the people to really reform the way we do things in the way you’re talking about?

A crisis, and I hope that’s this year. The biggest problem with crises is that they get so severe. It can go two ways. It can really have an improvement or things can get worse. Charlatans and tyrants rise up. What happens is they can make promises that they can’t deliver on. They give you airy-fairy blue sky. They can offer you all kinds of hope. Then again, they can’t deliver. What that does, that makes a new generation of cynics. That’s the most damaging thing you could do to a democracy.

A change will have to come from the people. There is no way that the representative government can self-correct from within. There is no way. It’s not structured that way. Our system of government is designed to maintain the citizens in civic adolescence. That’s the way we are. We want this, but we don’t want to pay any taxes. That’s the adolescence.

For us to become adults, we have to take responsibility. That’s how we grow up, by taking responsibility for our actions. By making people lawmakers, letting them have the power to decide on policy issues that affect their lives, they will make mistakes and that is how they will mature and grow up and become responsible adult citizens.

That is the great benefit of this legislation that I have written and put forward to the American people. It’s called the National Initiative for Democracy. People can go find it by getting a hold of my book, Citizens-Power.us. It is explained there in detail, or they can go to my website, Gravel2008.us and it will lead you to where you can go vote for this initiative.

It may take my getting to be president and then pushing the American people. I say this, and it surprises people. If I were to become president and the people — and I doubt that they would have because this is so new on the scene — have not yet empowered themselves as lawmakers, I would spend the first six months of my presidency to bully the American people, a la Teddy Roosevelt, to empower themselves, to share power with me as lawmakers. If they chose not to take that responsibility, I would resign. What I want to accomplish cannot be accomplished under the present structure of representative government with a gridlock we have in Congress and what we will have in Congress, even if the Democrats get more control.

And you’re optimistic?

People wonder why I’m so humorous in some of these spots. I have a lot of humor. The reason why I have a lot of humor is things are so bad. I could spend all of my time crying. We are in serious, serious difficulty. I think the average person intuitively knows this. They may not know the details of why. I spent a major part of my life informing myself as to why and wherefores. I don’t know it all. My God, I don’t know it all. That’s the reason why I want to empower the people. They can do a better job than I can do. Believe it. That is the only answer. We don’t have any choice.

There are only two venues for change: representative government, where the problems lie, or the people. That’s it. You don’t have any options. That’s it. The only vehicle in the entire history of the nation to bring about the empowerment of the people is what I proffer through the National Initiative of Democracy. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in putting this forward. What it really is is an effort to change the paradigm of human government. That is change.