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Mike Murphy

Mike Murphy is a Republican media strategist and a founding principal of Navigators, a lobbying, political consulting, and public-relations firm. He was a senior strategist in John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign and handled strategy and media for governors Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, John Engler, Tommy Thompson, Christine Whitman, and Dirk Kempthorne.

Jules Witcover interviewed Murphy on March 8, 2007.

So the “Straight Talk Express” is all over, in more ways than one then?

Oh, I don’t know. You know how it works. At the beginning of every presidential campaign and primary campaign, I think the media collective puts a quick hook on somebody. And then it’s their job to work their way out from under that hook over the campaign. And so now McCain’s got to show his authenticity again and earn that back, because his early success with the Republican establishment, in the eyes of many, took some of his charm away. I think it’s the same McCain, and he’ll prove that over time. But he’s got to go prove it now.

I think you told me on the telephone that you are not with him, but you might be sometime.

No. I mean, I see him. We are pals. But I did Romney, too. And so I thought it was unethical to pick a side, because they both trust you with all of their stuff. Not that either one of them has a big secret past. But I couldn’t wait for every day to screw McCain. Impossible. I would never do it. I love the guy. And I don’t want to hurt Romney. So I am just pontificating now.

But the general [election] may free you to one, or the other, or nobody.

Yeah. And I kind of like this Hollywood stuff. So we’ll see. I am only here maybe one week out of every eight.

What are you doing out there?

I live there now, and I am writing TV pitches, trying to do a dark little comedy thing about politics, about what it’s really like behind the scenes.

Is this your first shot at that?

Yeah. I have written a little bit here and there, but never a big scripted thing. So it’s new to me. But I was always a creative guy in campaigns. I wrote the three-act play that was the public campaign. So I thought, “Well, why not try real show biz?” I am liking it. We’ll see. It’s a challenge.

Sounds fun.

And it’s fun.

Let’s start talking about the status of the public-financing plans, subsidy system, whether you think it’s dead for all time and whether some people may have to use it after all.

In the presidential, I think it’s dead in the primary now.

For everybody? The long-shot candidates might need that money, mightn’t they?

Yeah, I think long shots might need it, and they might use it. And I think with this compressed calendar, a long shot might do all right here. So this could be the first time a long shot might somehow get nominated if any of them can survive the early season because of the tight calendar. So that might bring back public financing, because it might work for somebody.

But do you think there is enough time for a long shot to — say he wins Iowa and/or New Hampshire — get enough money and move into the bigger states?

Well, it’s a big challenge. But my view is, I don’t buy that the big states are going to be money-driven, because I don’t think anybody’s going to have enough money to muscle beyond the bounce. In other words, if you bounce on a New Hampshire, and you are the big momentum guy, I don’t think you need money to win February 5. I think you just roll through it on free media. So I don’t think money will be that important in those later states. I don’t think if you are fourth — or even third probably — in New Hampshire, you can buy your way out of that trouble. Money will help. It always helps. Even though so many states are so early, this could be less important for money for February 5. Because I think the intermediate bounce would be more important.

Where they are all burning up the money is right now. It started so early, there is this kind of bull pre-primary going, where they are all running around like it counts. I don’t think it does, except to 5,000 insiders. But they all have huge burn rates way early. So I think the real money problems for these guys will be living until the voters wake up at the end of the year. The next three quarters of playing the inside game at a million bucks a week, which is kind of inside-out, but I think that could be the reality this time.

So if you are a candidate who is known but hasn’t been active, you are in better shape than somebody who is neither known, nor active, nor has any money.

Nothing beats being famous. Like Rudy Giuliani — he is famous now, so he is doing well in the polls. And he is kind of a fresh face. That’s bringing money people to him who want to bet on a winner, which is raising more money. It becomes a self-fulfilling loop. While guys like Mitt Romney, who aren’t as famous, have to go out and pound it out with fundraisers. Not that Romney’s going to be in that much trouble, because he’s got a pretty good fundraising base from everything he’s done. He’s got his own money, too. If Romney wins the nomination, he’ll probably have written a check along the way for $10 million or something; which will be the first time, not counting however the JFK campaigns were paid for, that a guy’s own personal wealth really made a difference. We have had guys like [Steve] Forbes who are not real. Romney could be the first guy that actually gets nominated, and also is a partial self-funder, which would be new.

But yeah, I think for most of them, they have all kind of decided — other than the real long-shot guys, maybe a [Sam] Brownback, somebody like that on the Republican side — that public financing is a limit, not a help now. There is enough money to run. And they upped the contribution limit, which helps.

I am feeling it. I used to write a $1,000 check to a couple of pals who are running. Now they are all asking me for $2,300. I have three former clients in the race. So it’s seven grand. I am hiding. That’s a lot of coin. Three grand I could have dealt with.

So what about the frontloading, how does that factor in?

Two theories: One theory is you have to have a lot of money, because you have a lot of states early; my theory is, based on my experience, that the bounce is bigger than the money. And so I think McCain would have won the schedule in 2000. We were ahead in South Carolina the first 10 days off.

On this schedule this time? 

The McCain 2000 campaign would have won if we had had this calendar, because we were ahead everywhere for 10 days after New Hampshire. We were ahead of Bush in South Carolina, significantly ahead. And actually, the biggest mistake we made was that [Mike] Weaver and I pushed our state representatives. We were like any number-two Republican candidate. Bush had the governor, and we had all of the pissed-off state representatives. So we got our pissed-off state representatives and others to move the South Carolina primary back to give us, I think it was, 18 or 19 days between New Hampshire and South Carolina. We thought we needed that time to regenerate.

Well, it turns out Bush needed that time to regenerate. He did. And he killed us. If the thing had been nine days later, or 10 days, I think we would have bounced right through it. And this is that calendar. It’s tight as a drum. So I think the bounce candidate could be Rudy this time. It could be Romney. It could be John; [he] will have some advantages, and that will be even more important than money.

Now that’s a contrarian point of view. Most consultants will say: “Oh, California. You need $100 million for TV. Blah, blah, blah.” But nobody’s going to have it. Most of these presidential campaigns are lucky to put 25 cents of every dollar they raise on television. And so you raise $100 million, which is like the golden number that I think a few of them might get to. You only have $23 million for TV, and you look at all of the states you have to cover. No way. Nobody is going to have enough money to do a statewide-type TV buy, like you’re running for governor. It’s all going to be earned-media bounce. A lot of TV in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, maybe Florida, very little else.

In 2000, the absence of crossover voting in the primaries after New Hampshire hurt McCain.

Yeah.

Has the calendar changed in that regard in any event that relates?

Well, a little bit, though looking at the Iowa caucus, of course, is caucus anybody. But there are going to be three of them now. New Hampshire, I think, will be a lot like 2000. There will be action on both sides, but some independents will definitely play in the primary, which could help McCain, help Giuliani. Florida is going to be a closed primary, I believe. So it won’t help there. South Carolina, I think, is still open. But a South Carolina independent still looks a lot like a pretty right-wing Republican. And most of those February 5 states, including California, are not open — Republican only.

So I think anybody who is trying to win this thing on independents helping, I don’t think there are enough of them. There is some hope to open California up, but the rules are pretty straight. And so I think the California Republican primary will be pretty conservative. People think it’s a moderate state, but the people who vote in that Republican primary are pretty conservative. So I don’t think that’s going to be any big moderate advantage.

So in the states where both parties have a contest, that should hurt McCain as a result.

Yeah, if McCain is trying to attract those votes. And Rudy too, I think.

I was going to say, is there any other candidate who would tap the independent vote?

I think Rudy thinks he can. I have heard that the Rudy people are very excited about California, because they think they really fit there. But I think as they look at the California primary, they are going to find out that it’s still primary voters. Now it’s winner by congressional district, so some of those coastal districts, like Santa Barbara and all that, are more moderate. But most of the Republican districts are desert districts, San Diego north through the Inland Empire coming in on the eastern side of the L.A. metroplex. And those places are going to be pretty rough sledding for a moderate, I think. And then often what happens is, in Democratic districts, it could be Willie Brown’s old district. You’ve still got three Republican delegates. I don’t know. I would have to look at some California data. But often the very few Republicans who live there are pretty right-wing. It’s like Fort Apache. 

So I would put California in the normal Republican primary voter, not the liberal primary voter, category. But right now, if Rudy were here he would say: “Yeah, I am winning everywhere. If I don’t sell Republicans, how come I am ahead in every state? How come right now I am ahead in the Iowa caucus?” Good point. So maybe he’s got more going than we think.

But his name is what’s doing that.

I think mostly.

It’s got to be.

I think there is a little whiff of fascism to him that they like. And I mean that in a nice way.
As Nixon would say, “I mean that only in the best sense.”

Exactly. Rudy is a strong man. And I think in this dangerous world, that has some appeal to some voters who may look the other way on other issues where they think he is on the other side of where they are.

Yeah. And with a war going on, those other issues may be down the list a little bit.

Right. It’s like, all right, Rudy swings a big, tough knife-stick. We could use a little bit of that. And he’s competent. He runs the trains on time. I mean, if you put McCain and Romney in a blender, you come up with McCain’s kind of balls, his toughness, and Romney’s competent manager, can turn things around. You kind of get Rudy, except you are left on all of the social issues. And he’s been married 500 times. And there are other problems. So I am not sure this Rudy thing will last all the way. But he is definitely cooking right now, and they are buying him. But, as you say, a lot of it is name, I think.

Do you think there is any way to put a lid on fundraising? Or should there be?

Well, it’s hard. I am conflicted about it, because on one hand I hear the old argument about, “Well, political spending is speech and donations are speech.” And that seems like a logical argument to me. On the other hand, I have done some publicly financed elections for governors. And it really helps. John Engler would never have become the governor of Michigan without public financing, because you get caught in this loop where the press covers polls. The other guy is ahead. You are the challenger. So nobody will give you any money. So you don’t have any campaign. So you never win. Engler was 20 points behind. We couldn’t raise much. We raised some in 1990, but not very much. But then we had public financing in Michigan, which gave the challenger a playing ground. And he won.

And the same thing with Christie Whitman. If it hadn’t been Jersey public financing, she never would have beaten [James] Florio. It overcomes the incumbent’s advantage, which is an unfair advantage in a lot of places. So practically, my experience with it has kind of made me a sympathizer to it. When I think about it, I tend to resonate more toward some sort of mild subsidy to challengers in public financing. They level the playing field, rather than try to limit donations. 

I think the practical effect of a lot of donation limits is that the money shows up at another place: 527s, independent groups. It’s hard to stop the money. It’s like water: It goes everywhere. As a campaign manager, I hear this complaint a lot. The independent groups sort of make it harder, because you can’t control them. And they are trying to help you. And sometimes they are. And sometimes they hurt you. And you lose control of your own campaign. Because you are spending $5 million, and some group you don’t control, which might be run by knuckleheads, is spending $10 million. So they have a bigger megaphone. Every mistake they have made, your guy is held accountable for. And you don’t control them.

So you’d rather not have them?

I think it would be better for the process and better for candidates if the independent groups were gone.

You are talking about 527s as well, right?

Yeah, if they were all gone. And basically each campaign got a big pile of money. And then they got to spend it with transparency. And people could rant and rave about too much money in politics, but all the money and all the use of it was controlled by the candidate. And the candidate was responsible. So you get two candidates big old bullhorns — either public financing or let them raise a ton of money. Either one. I like public financing for challengers. But fundamentally, you put the money back in control of the candidates. I don’t like the independent groups as a practical thing.

And money is speech; [it] is what keeps them going as well, right?

Yeah, that’s the argument. Money is speech. I am not a lawyer, so I am no expert in this. But there might be a way to say that political speech ought to be owned by the candidates. It ought to be their speech once they are on the ballot, rather than a labor union, or a corporation, or a rich crazy guy having the biggest microphone in town. So some of the state systems have these poison pills where [if] somebody comes in with a million bucks, you get a million to fight him back.

Yeah, but does that depend on whether the person with a million is the incumbent or not?

No. I think if anybody comes in or busts a cap, there is a catch-up clause on some of these state-based ones. The Jersey one wasn’t too bad. At least you got a matching fund based on what you raised. And there were limits on what you could raise. So it was basically a way to guarantee that each side had a pretty good hunk of money. The state parties, though, are where being the incumbent you had the advantage. You have a little more money there. I don’t think it ought to be some complete equality thing; I don’t mind if the incumbent has a little more. But the challenger ought to have some help to get close.

And I don’t have any perfect system, I could say, but I think it would all work better that way. And that’s a reform I could support. I don’t like some of these things like the Arizona deal where they decide all political money is bad, so we are going to hold the number way down. You could say: “I don’t like it, because I’m in the campaign business. I can’t make any money doing the campaign.” True. But I don’t like it because you can’t do much. If you don’t have any money, you can’t bust through on television. So the beat reporter for the big paper, the editorial board of the big paper, and the union or whoever has the membership have all the power.

I am generally for reforms that put a lot of power into the candidates’ hands and a lot of transparencies so the people know who they are taking money from. And they control the spending so they have responsibility for it. I don’t mind a guy having $10 million of TV to go make his case around the media or around the labor union if he has to. I like that better than the guy having no money on the theory that all money is bad. And so he has basically got to charm his way through the media to win.

I like people being able to do direct voter communication. I don’t like third parties doing it. Or I don’t like them being limited so much that they have no voice. So I don’t like these Colorado or Arizona systems where we take all of the money out of politics, which means you do kind of take speech away from a candidate, I believe, at least the ability in this culture to bust through. Because you have to have a lot of noise to go out and be an American Idol and everything people care about. I mean, if you can’t get your message out with some TV, nobody’s going to know you, for good or bad.

Is the rule that there can be no collusion between a campaign and an independent expenditure or a 527, is that for real?

It has pretty much worked, because everybody’s afraid of winding up like Scooter Libby. So the lawyers are very good at telling you how close you can go with kind of hand signals and stuff. And again, that’s why I don’t like the independent groups. I legally can’t talk to them. And they are running around with a chainsaw in my state. And people hold me and my candidate accountable for it. So they go run some dumb-ass ad. A good example of it is the Bob Corker race down in Tennessee. The Senate committee had their 527, or their independent group, whatever the legal structure was, and they ran that ad with the bimbo blonde giggling about Harold Ford. And a bunch of people called “racist” on it. Now, I think they might have overreacted to the ad. But Corker is sitting there, and that ad comes and jumps in the middle of his race. And he’s defending it. He didn’t approve it. He actually called for them to pull it off, and they did.

And if you ask Tom Ingram, who was running that campaign, it was like: “That was the biggest pain in the ass we had in the whole campaign. A bunch of guys in a basement in D.C. came up with an ad, dropped a few million, and we are wearing it.” And the Senate could say, “Oh, but it was a secret plan where they take the low road.” I can tell you. I do Lamar Alexander’s politics, or I did, and I was kind of in that loop a little bit. And we were all furious, like: “What are you doing screwing up the [campaign?] Let us run our campaign. Just give us money.”

Has it ever happened, though, that you leave a conspicuous hole in your campaign plan?

Yeah.

And somebody comes along, and can see that, and can fill it for you.

If you know those guys are out there, sometimes what you do is you kind of make it obvious that you are not going to go on in the summer. Save your money for the end, and hope they kind of — the way the TV time is bought, especially in federal races, it’s harder for those guys to run ads late than early, because they don’t have some of the same candidate protections and everything. So the kind of wink, blink, and nod theory is often, “Maybe they will do something in the summer, and we don’t have to spend money then.” But to my knowledge, there is very little direct coordination done. The lawyers tell you you can’t do it.

So is the other side of that coin more persuasive, that you don’t want them running your campaign and doing stupid things?

Yeah. I would rather have that money in my campaign, be responsible for it, and have control of it. If I am a candidate, I want to control the campaign for me, because I have to live with it. I know what I want to sell. I am responsible for it. When third parties come in, I have to defend them. I don’t control them. They might help me. But they might get me in trouble. Now some candidates like it. I know some politicians like it a lot. Some of the incumbent senators love to control this stuff. I mean, they get to be a campaign manager for somebody else. Because the Washington guys, at the committees and some of these senators or governors, always think they know better. So then they’ll all have a $3 million [independent expenditure] in that state, because “I don’t trust the dumb locals, so I have to go to campaign to know what to do,” which, I think, is a lot of arrogance.

I generally don’t like Washington independent expenditures. And the first job I had in politics was in independent expenditures. I was one of those guys. I was a 19-year-old kid spending a million bucks in the senate races. Looking back now, God, who gave me the chainsaw? That was a mistake. So I don’t like it. But I don’t know if there is anything you can do. I really don’t; [it’s] very hard to control money.

On that point you touched on before, about it’s good for you to spend a lot of money in the campaign, your whole business has really exploded in the time that I have started covering this thing. It used to be two or three guys I knew who ran campaigns. Or the campaign manager or consultant was brother-in-law to the candidate — I am talking about presidential politics — or is his best friend or someone from his law firm or something, the one-horse jockey. He was into politics for one guy, he liked that guy, he wanted him to be elected.

Right.

With the exception of some of the guys like Stu Spencer and Bill Robertson.

Sure. The originals.

There has been an explosion not only of people who run campaigns, consultants, but there are people now who do every aspect of it, like time-buying, all of the different aspects of it. What’s the impact of that whole monster now on the course of campaigns?

A great question. Well, I think about this a lot, because I am not doing campaigns anymore. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003 was the last major campaign I did, which was a great campaign. And I loved it. But I got a little tired of it. And I have seen the industry change since I started. Originally there were a couple of guys like that. Then there were four or five big consultants. And then it turned into about eight or nine. It was basically the big consultant model, with a few new, younger guys moving up, which is when I came in, early ’80s, and through the early ’90s.

And then in the late ’90s, all of a sudden there was an explosion at this. And part of the explosion was the independent expenditure. Because like a senate campaign now will have four campaign teams. Each candidate will have a team, and then the two big independent expenditures from the two parties will have a team because they can’t talk to each other, they have to have their own team. And so all of a sudden, every state senate campaign will have 10 consultants working at it, which has created a big demand for consults. I would say if somebody was a pretty successful consultant, that I started seeing a lot of people wearing white lab coats saying they were doctors. I mean, I was at it 20 years, and it took me 10 years to know what I was doing. And I think now it’s a lot easier for these guys to get in because there is a lot more work and a lot more money sloshing around.

And because they only have to do one piece of it?

Yeah. These independent-expenditure things are like assembly lines. We’ll do five states for the committees. They grind the money down. Contrary to popular belief, there is not always a lot of money in those campaigns. The committee will say: “All right, here is some research on [the] Wisconsin senate [race]. Go do $2 million of TV attacking the guy.” And they will give him a research book. And they knock out the spots. And there is a lot of money pressure on those guys whose committees want to squeeze the consultants pretty good.

So I think I was lucky to be in on it at kind of the golden age where there was a relatively few number of people doing it. It was a lot of fun. It was harder than it is now, because there were more rules to politics. Now you can say anything on TV. The media covers it like sports. Who is up? Who is down? Moral equivalence. There is no good or bad. Nothing is a lie. It’s more like, will they get away with it, in conflict?

When I was starting this stuff in the ’80s, you couldn’t do some of the stuff on TV you do now. The press would kill you. The voters wouldn’t reward it. So it was more complicated. You had to be a little more nuanced, which made it more fun. It was harder. So I think I got in at the tail of kind of the golden age where we got to modernize campaigns, but it didn’t get absurd. And there weren’t 5,000 independent committees that you can’t control, which I have talked about.

But even with the watchdog function of the newspapers now, where they run . . .

I think a lot of those are, along with the blogs where they are printing anything . . .

Yeah, they get lost.

I remember back in the early ’80s when digital production came out, computers to make images, we were always very big in the negative-ad business about newspaper headlines. A couple of the newspapers say he’s raised his pay. And you put up that headline, [it’s] very credible. Voters would believe it. We had beaten the voters to death with all of this stuff, by the way. They see through all of it now. But it was a big question: Do we ever modify a headline? No way. You would get killed. I never did it in my many hundreds of ads I made. Now it happens all of the time where they fake headlines. Just summarize the point. And they get away with it, because the media is . . .

It’s not a direct quote, but it’s in headline form?

They do their own paraphrase, and they make it look like a headline. What the media just say is, “Yeah, all ads lie — everybody does it.” It’s like debate coverage. How many times have you read a Senate debate where somebody, right in the straight-up news story, not the commentary guy, says: “He had a bad night. The other guy really whipped him in the debate.” Very rare. Normally, “Both sides got . . .” It’s always even.

And if you catch me running a dirty ad, it’s always, “Everybody runs dirty ads.” So I think the press doesn’t do a very good watchdog job anymore. I think they cover it like sports and conflict. So, to answer your question, I had lunch with one of the younger guys who worked for me and my firm when I was doing a lot of races, who is now out on his own doing it. And it’s “What’s going on in the business now?” I have been five years really out of it. And he said: “Stupider. Meaner. A lot more money sloshing around. A lot more guys.” That was his punch line. 

I normally defend the consultant business, but now that I am out of it and it’s kept moving, I think the problem is kind of like Wal-Mart coming to small towns. The most effective stuff survives. And that’s what the consultants tend to want to do: the most effective stuff to win. They simplify the election. So all of the little quirks that kind of make it interesting get sanded away, and then we have the big Wal-Mart that can get you a rake for $1.99 instead of $3.99 at the old hardware store. And the price of that is that campaigns have been dumbed down. The dialogue is dumber. They are more negative now because voters reward negative advertising more than positive. They believe negative charges because they are so cynical. They are much less quick to believe positive things. [Barack] Obama will be a test to see if a real positive message can work. And I think that’s kind of sad. I mean, I got out of it because it got boring. It started to get too predictable.

Does money in effect make campaigns more negative?

Well, I don’t think it’s that simple. I think money creates more messaging. And negative messaging is rewarded by the voters. So you get more negative messaging. If the campaigns didn’t have any money, what I think they would do instead is they would have what I call the Boston effect. I did Romney’s governor race. And I had never worked in Boston before, a very political town as you well know. I show up in Boston, and the culture in Boston was, suck up to The [Boston] Globe. The Globe picks the governor here. Which means you suck up to the editor, you suck up to the reporters, you call David Nyhan every day. You make sure you never get him mad. You let them run all of the debates. You can’t run that ad, it will offend the Globe. The Globe is like Stalin in that political culture, because they were used to not having the power to go around the Globe with television.

And I think it would be that kind of mentality in a lot of places, which is: “We have no money to talk to voters. So the people who have power are going to be the local TV commentator and the local newspaper. So suck up to them.” And I like candidates having their power to get the message out. So I don’t think money is the real problem. I think the professionalization of messaging and the fact that voters accept dumb messages have combined to kind of dumb things down. And bumper-sticker politics is what we got. And I blame the voters as much as anybody. If voters didn’t vote for dumb campaigns, there wouldn’t be any. We are in the service business in consulting. I just remember when I started, there were more rules. And we kind of had a better sense of stewardship to — kind of, it’s politics, of course you do the theatrical stuff, and then pull tricks, and are a little too cute with words, and everything. But now it’s like, Who has $3 million for a negative sledgehammer ad that’s 51 percent true? And it wasn’t that bad when I was around.

Some years ago I was talking to Joe Napolitan about the ’68 campaign when LBJ [Lyndon B. Johnson] had dumped onto [Hubert] Humphrey all of this information about the last weekend and the possible conniving by Nixon with the South Vietnamese in Saigon. I said, “Why didn’t Humphrey use it?” He said, “Well, in those days you didn’t do things like that.” And also, the other thing he said that was so interesting to me, he said, “People might not have believed it.” And I could not believe that people would not believe anything about Nixon in those days. But he said that was one of the main reasons that Humphrey passed up that information, which could have won the election for him.

Yeah, I think that’s true. I think now, in politics, we fight to kill as opposed to fight to wound in the old days. You know? And I don’t think that’s good. Because then the system becomes more ossified. And there is no flex anymore. I blame Watergate for the cynicism, where voters stopped believing. I blame Clinton for cynicism, for defending his own ass with the power of the presidency. I blame the liberal interest groups for starting to run Supreme Court campaigns that way, like opposing and teaching everybody that Robert Bork’s video[-rental] records are a real issue, and just dumbing them down, and running them like a campaign.

Well, wasn’t Watergate running to kill? They didn’t need to do any of that stuff. That was 35 years ago.

Right. I think that started it. And then we have been pounding them ever since. Impeachments. We taught voters that everybody is a schmuck. So no wonder they reward campaigns that say, “Don’t vote for the schmuck.” And it’s tough.

Who that you know, a candidate, likes to raise money?

That’s a good question. I think [Robert] Torricelli used to like to raise money. Some of them like it for scorekeeping.

I know a couple; Alan Cranston was one.

Yeah. They just like to kill, like closing the deal.

Yeah, and Rudy Boschwitz was one that I know of.

Yeah, I’ll bet he did.

But do most like to raise money?

No. Most hate it because they hate asking. Not all, but most think the way it ought to work is a committee of distinguished citizens ought to get together in their state and tell everybody that Senator Mugwump is doing such a terrific job. And it’s a tragedy he has not been awarded the Nobel Prize for his great work here for West Virginia or whatever. So you all owe him money for the great job. And the senator believes he should show up at the banquet [and] accept the $5 million and the standing ovation. And they owe it. The idea that you have to call people up and bang them for money all the time, they hate. They hate. Some are better at it than others. But I have known very few who like it.

Do you know any who have really given access or anything else for money?

You hear all that all of the time?

Yeah.

And I have heard stories about the Senate leadership occasionally talking about these [being] big contributors and stuff like that. But never really the kind of Nader formula of you give a check, you get something back. I really haven’t.

But before Watergate and before the laws that were passed after Watergate, there was a lot of that.

I think there was.

The [John F.] Kennedy campaign did a lot of that.

Right. Bags of cash. Clem Stone flying it out to Nixon.

Clem Stone for Nixon?

Yeah. So I think the post-Watergate stuff, with the exception of there should have been a [cost-of-living adjustment], I think, on the individual contribution limit. And the transparency has been pretty good. What I think most senators would say is: If you really want to clean up politics and make me spend less time worrying about money, raise the contribution limit, and people can give me $25,000 that’s all out there, rather than force me to pound away, like a salesman, to hit 100 people with $2,000. I know very few, though. I mean, I am sure there is a little of it out there.

I have worked around the world, though. And by democracy’s standards, I think we run pretty clean politics. I think our political corruption is more official in that your interest group supports me, and you economically benefit in a huge way from big policies that you openly support. Not winning a road contract, but making sure that the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] employees are all AFSCME [American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees] or whatever.

Would you give to a guy who you know is going to be on your side?

Well, I’ll tell you what the corporate world does, which is where I have more experience. They give to everybody because they are afraid. That’s why business gives so much to Democrats when they are in the majority. And you get some Tony Coelho types who are pretty good at going to businesses and saying: “Hey, it could be worse. We understand. But hey, I have these union guys yelling at me to take the minimum wage to $300 an hour. Hey, what are you going to do?”

So I think most business gives out of defensiveness and protection. I think some groups do give to back legislation that makes them money. I think the trial lawyers are a good example. They’ve got a business where they make pretty good money. Now you can argue social justice and [that it’s] important to have a tort bar, a lot of good arguments for it. Some of my best friends are tort lawyers. But fundamentally, there is some excess in that system that those guys fight like tigers to defend them.

The burglar-alarm people used to, in state capitals — they were organized and tough — fight to protect certain laws in certain states that made it hard for the phone companies to be in the burglar-alarm business. Because what a lot of burglar alarms are, boxes that call up on the telephone lines, they cost more than a phone. So you do see people defending their economic interests with political donations all of the time. That is part of it. But if they didn’t do it with donations, they would do it another way to the extent that they could use their political money and speech to affect policymaking. And I don’t think it’s a crisis. I just don’t believe that.

What else besides television really drives campaign costs up?

Let me add just one more thing on this point: In California, the public-employee unions are something else. I mean, they run Sacramento. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was negotiating his budget with the speaker of the House in the first year — and the speaker was a pretty good guy, a Democrat trying in California, a big budget crisis — the speaker had to leave the negotiation and go down the hallway and call the head of the teachers’ union for approval. I felt like I was watching the [Tom] Pendergast machine in operation. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Because in California, it’s the gerrymander; there are no swing seats. It’s Russian: Nobody ever changes seats. So if you are an assembly member, you don’t care about the general election at all. You are safe, both sides. But you care about that primary where 7,500 people vote. So the teachers’ union will go kill you with an independent expenditure if you don’t toe the line. And they do it all of the time. So you essentially have a constituency, if you are a Democrat, of like three: the SEIU [Service Employees International Union], teachers’ union, and the trial lawyers.

And if you are Republican, you care about the Chamber of Commerce, Right to Life, maybe the gun guys or the auto dealers, who are powerful in California. But it’s not nearly as big a hammer as they have on the Democrats’ side, because they are majority. And they have all of the dough. And so that was an interesting experience. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to watching real machine politics. And I have worked New York, Jersey, Michigan, everywhere. But the teachers’ union in California makes the UAW [United Auto Workers] look like Mary Poppins. It’s amazing.

I was asking about what else, besides television, runs up the cost of campaigns?

Well, increasingly the Internet, which is turning into free television, YouTube and all that. Remember when campaigns used to be about buying 100 stamps? Well, the Internet is free stamps. So e-mail, television, everything can travel for free really quickly. And I think that’s becoming a bigger and bigger thing. TV news, print news less, but print news often controls TV news because TV news will follow the print. And so like The New York Times pretty much sets the agenda every day for the national newscast. [Washington] Post to some extent, L.A. Times. So the earned media is still powerful, but I think its TV cousin has the most immediate voter impact, and direct mail.

So the Internet has more impact than just a fundraising instrument?

Yeah, I think so. With [John] McCain, we got lucky on the Internet. The Internet really was a way for money to get to you really quickly. Somebody [would] wake up and say, “How do I get John McCain a check?” In the old days, you had to call up, get an address, stamp. [Now] you just go on the Internet. “Oh, here it is, bing” — credit card, eight minutes later $500 shows up. So the Internet is really an enabler of information and money to flow really quickly. And the first place that it was felt in politics, I think, was money. But now we look at these YouTube videos going everywhere; it’s a way information goes really fast for free, everywhere.

But doesn’t that also get away from you, too, when a lot of stuff is thrown out there?

Yeah, a lot of junk.

Because bloggers are not neutral journalists; they are usually blogging for somebody.

And that’s part of the dumbing-down of it all. Now, the blog-hypers will say, “Well, it’s the great libertarian experiment — people have to decide for themselves what to believe.” But I know enough about people that [expletive] can travel pretty far before it’s un-believed. And the Internet is really the Wild West that way, which, I think, is a bit of a danger, particularly as voters increasingly are cynical. So they believe the bad stuff. And a lot of the blogs are pretty negative. Blogs are generally about bitching and carping. I look at these like Ruffini — ever look at that guy’s page, Mike Ruffini?

No.

He has a little thing called like Ruffini 2008, which is like a minute-to-minute 100 links of what’s going on in the blogs for all of the candidates. And a lot of it, I can tell, is planted. I think the campaigns can manipulate the blogosphere a little bit. So I don’t know where that’s going to turn up, but there is no putting that back in the bottle. That’s now with us.

Well, does a campaign manager or consultant have to have a special operation to monitor all that?

Yeah. All of them now have a couple of kids in the basement who are knocking stuff down and watching it. 

And is that expensive?

Not that expensive, because it’s Joe, cola, and a couple of computers, but not more staff. Staff has always been expensive. I think you can overreact to it. I am watching it now from the sidelines. And I have a theory that a lot of these campaigns are slipping these bloggers a lot of information, [and] that the bloggers who were taking sides instantly put it up. And then the mainstream media, which is a little intimidated by the blogosphere, sees that stuff and says, “We are missing a story here — the blogs are going crazy about Giuliani is this, or Romney is a pagan, or whatever it is.” And then it gets into the real media, because they are following the bloggers who are very manipulated by the campaigns. So I am smelling a rat.

Well, the blogosphere is not unlike the impact that the supermarket gossip papers had not that long [ago].

Yeah. They break it through, and then you got to cover it.

They go on something that the so-called mainstream media, particularly The New York Times, won’t touch. And suddenly they are obliged to have it come in through the back door because it’s there.

Right. And it’s the most sensational, putrid stuff often, or at least it’s negative. Because nobody edits the blogosphere. There is no old pro who says: “Wait a minute. We are not going to ruin some guy because somebody dropped an envelope under the paper’s front door last night” — which is how half the blogosphere works. So the good news about the blogosphere is there is so much of it, and it’s so noisy, I think average voters are not going to tune in all the time. And I think the media will get a little more ringwise about it. I think they will get burned on a couple of things this season, and then I think controls will start to come in. And so I think it may self-correct. But it’s definitely an area where there could be some abuse. It’s free stamps for anybody, including lunatics.

Do you think that voters care about how much money goes into a campaign?

Not much.

But so much is made about you have to get it out there so people know.

Right. I think what voters do is they say, “Yeah, it’s all bad. But what’s it going to do about my health-care problem?” It’s like complaining about the weather. It’s not the central thing. We may not like it, but I’ll go buy my umbrella and on to other things. So very, very seldom have I seen it really move an election unless voters are convinced that a particular piece of money was dirty, and it becomes personal corruption and ethics about a candidate. The guy takes money from the strip-club owner in the local mayor’s race kind of stuff. But generally, I think voters think everybody does it. It’s the condition of it. And it’s not that big a deal. They rant about it as a big thing, but not a candidate’s specific shortcoming.

So what purpose is served by keeping track of how much money a campaign gets and where it comes from?

I think the candidates are still afraid because they know the voters bitch about money.

So it’s a governing thing for the campaign?

Yeah, it’s an honesty test for the candidates. In other words, voters may not care now, but the transparency and the reporting forced me to monitor my own behavior and not take chances. Because I know maybe the voters will get enraged. I know the voters don’t like all of the money. And all of that may crystallize in direct anger at me if I really step outside the bounds. So it’s kind of a policing mechanism on the candidates.

Have you ever worked for a self-financed candidate like Steve Forbes?

Yeah. Well, I did Romney’s governor’s race where probably a third of the money we spent was his. I think he put about $6 million in, and we spent $14 [million], so 40 percent of it [was his]. Who else? Schwarzenegger. He wasn’t self-financed, but he put a lot of money in.

Did you find that voters cared about that?

No. I think voters think if they put in their own money, they care. And it funds them. And I find the candidates are sheepish about it, and they are cheap. They don’t like it. Arnold a little less so than most. But no, I think it was very low in voter priorities.

But the voter attitude, “Well, he must . . .”

His money, he earned it.

And he must be honest, because he’s using his own money.

I don’t think it ever helps them that much. I mean, a lot of them try that: “I am going to pay for my campaign instead of the special interests.” I think voters kind of have a “Bah, humbug” [reaction]. They all need money; let them get money. If they take really bad money, they get caught, like terrorist money or something. But for the most part, I think voters complain about it, but they don’t vote on it. And I have never seen a self-funder really be hurt. Some self-funders are lousy candidates, and they lose because of that. And then the self-funding gets kind of blamed as part of it, but [it’s] never the driver in my experience.

How do you feel about the way debates are run, the way they are financed, and what kind of impact they have?

I think debates are important. I think the prep over-covers them a little. They make a spectacle by culture. And a lot of it is little more than joint appearances. So the whole calling it “debate” is kind of a stretch.

But in the general election, you have one on one, or sometimes two or three.

Yeah. Or you have rules that are two minutes, two minutes, two minutes. I have had good and bad experiences with debates in the campaign limelight. I have never found that campaign sponsoring is that big a deal as far as money. I never worry that the debate is going to be tilted because it is sponsored by the whatever, because normally it’s sponsored by the broadcasters, or it’s sponsored by a media outlet. I am much more worried about who is asking the questions. Do I have a smart, prim reporter who is going to try to scalp my candidate on TV? Or do I have the dumb TV news guy that I am kind of hoping for, who normally does the 6 p.m. news in Kokomo, who I know is going to ask the five obvious questions?

And protecting my candidate, I am always for the TV news guy, not the statehouse AP [Associated Press] guy who is bitter, pissed off, and goes down to page 828 in the budget to ask a trick question. But no, I never find the funding of the debate is a big deal. We Republicans are always suspicious of the League of Women Voters, because they tend to have a big liberal tilt. But they play themselves like the only honest game in town. So there is a lot of kind of behind the scenes “Plague of Women Vipers,” as they are often called in our [circles]. They are trouble.

In Boston, we are notable. Romney, we broke the Globe thing. Here is how it used to work: The Globe would call you up and say: “There are going to be three debates. We are sponsoring all of them. We are picking the format. We are picking everything. Show up.” No negotiation at all. And “We are the Globe; we run the town.” And then they would pick Cornel West [a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University]. That would be the kind of people they would have asking questions, which they thought was perfectly moderate and balanced. I mean, Cornel was a guy, which was a problem. If they could find all women, they would have done it that way.

And we broke them. We went to the [Boston] Herald and NBC and got [Tim] Russert in. Because we had a big star, big enough to kind of balance the Globe. And that was the debate that Shannon [O’Brien] screwed up and lost. And we were the first campaign to break the Globe monopoly. They called it the consortium, which was their good old name. In the Globe the consortium was, “We do all of the debates, and everybody joins under us.” And all of the media hated it too, because they hate the Globe. So we actually had a strategy of fighting back to break it.

So in some places you find kind of a sponsorship arrogance that is pretty hard to deal with as a campaign. Because you are, of course, trying to control it as much as you want. And there is a lot of tension there. And you divide and conquer. TV will always want to fight print, because the TV station managers want to put their guys up asking questions, not the statehouse reporter from the AP. But generally, I have never seen a debate tilted by the sponsor’s money. It’s normally just good-government stuff.

One thing that we were just talking about, television stations, they make a bundle of money every election year.

They do. It’s incredible.

Is that a problem? And can anything be done about it?

Yeah. I have never had a solution. But it bugged me. Because I am like, we give these guys a license, a monopoly of a frequency to broadcast in Omaha. And they go mint money. And sure, they run a couple of anti-smoking commercials. But it’s basically [expletive] the public-service stuff, other than running a newscast. And then they come and they charge us bloody murder for all of this TV. And they get rich, because we need the TV; it’s like the crack cocaine. And the thing that’s always appealed to me is the voucher for free media system. If I ever were presented with a plan for public financing, a part that would appeal to me, instead of raiding the tax bin for $1 million, you go to the broadcasters. And they have to provide vouchers worth $500,000 for free time or something. Now the broadcasters would go nuts: “It’s a tax. Blah, blah, blah.” But they are fundamentally a business that operates by publicly granted license. So I think that’s a little different category.

Well, if you wanted to put some kind of a lid on the cost of campaigns, wouldn’t that be one of the best places to do it?

Yeah. It could be, because especially in statewide [elections], it’s the main thing.

And you have an argument because of all of those airwaves. But why do you think that hasn’t really been done?

Because NAB [National Association of Broadcasters] lobbies really well. And I have never seen a real push in that direction. One thing that’s kind of interesting [is that] radio stations often limit how many spots you can buy as an operational thing. There are too many candidates trying to buy radio. So everybody can buy 24 a week or whatever. So I assume the stations limit us. I have never seen us take a piece out of the stations, us being the candidates.

And even as a right-wing Republican, that, to me, is the most attractive way to interject some public money or value for free to the candidates, speech aside, to do something about either the cost or a voucher system. Like in an election year, 10 percent of your revenue you’ve got to give away to the candidates for free or whatever. And with some in a primary, there might be some ways that kind of curb the excesses. But yeah, why not? I mean, I am sympathetic to that, because these guys make a damn fortune.

Finally, talk just a little bit about my business and the impact that it has on campaigns and how it has changed over the years, and whether the role of the press has anything to do with the cost of campaigns.

Now that’s a good question. I think it has. I like the press. Most of my pals are reporters. But what’s happened is, in the old days, when I was just coming up as a pup, there were professional political reporters who covered a lot of campaigns. They were shoe-leather guys who were all over your world. You know these guys. Now they rotate the general-assignment reporter into the senate campaign. And then they are going to go cover the gardening. And so they are less professional in most places.

And most papers have a smaller staff. So you are dealing with younger people with less experience who have not decided to make a career out of covering politics and campaigning. And they tend to come in with more ignorance, which means they are easier to manipulate, particularly by the liberal side. While I don’t believe the axiom that the press all sits around in secret [wearing] Howard Dean buttons and everything, I do believe culturally most of them are more liberal. They don’t hang around with a lot of Oklahoma Republican primary voters. So it’s a little easier to spin these young kids. Because they are all kind of young and lefty, and Republicans are square and they are evil. And Jerry Falwell wants my best friend, who happens to be gay, to go to jail, to not be able to get married. You feel it all over them culturally. And they just haven’t been trained. They don’t know. So they are pretty dumb about how they cover stuff.

And the problem I have with the press overall — if I were an editor I would be rioting about this all of the time — is press polling. One, most publishers are cheap, so they buy cheap, lousy polls. They bid it out like they are buying plumbing or something. So you get bad polls. Secondly, polls are one of the few stories where the media goes out and creates a story — “Henderson up 28” — and then covers it. I don’t mind polls about what voters care about. I don’t mind polls about whether or not they trust politicians, polls about the biggest issues here in Barneyville.

I don’t like early horse-race media polling, because I think it distorts everything. And all of your questions are processed. The average newbie political reporter without a lot of training will ask the candidate: “Where are you in the polls? How much money have you raised? And are you pro-choice or pro-life?” Those are like the first three questions all of the time. And that gets you in kind of an ossified kind of coverage.

I think increasingly it is covered like sports. As I say, it’s all conflict. Who is up? Who is down? Horse race and process, and everything is postmodern. It’s never “Henderson is for this program for this reason.” It’s “Henderson [is] trying to appeal to soccer moms, the key voter demographic according to his focus groups by his high-priced consultant [and] is therefore doing ‘X.’” It’s all inside-out, what it’s all about. And I don’t mind process coverage, but I don’t think it should own politics.

And finally, I would say the media has added cost. And this presidential race is a great example. The media is covering this thing like it’s going full-bore right now. I think this race is full-bore for about 5,000 people.

Because of the early start or because the early start had enough people involved in the early start?

The early start’s feeding the press, asking what’s going on. It’s like an arms race. You read a big New York Times story about Iowa looking at Romney. And then McCain says, “[Expletive], I’d better get to Iowa, because I want the Newsweek story next week that I am ahead in Iowa.” So it all starts. And we’ve got all of this cable news crap going on, which nobody is watching, by the way. These things do 200,000 viewers. But it’s all of this chasing thing. And to feed all of that, I mean, we have already had the rise and fall of Mitt Romney, and the primaries are 11 months away. We have already had the rise and fall of McCain. Now we are having the rise of Rudy. We will have the fall of Rudy. And then we are going to Huckabee or somebody will get a month.

And this is all six, eight, nine months before [what] is supposed to be the beginning of the beginning primary season. But we have this political class of 10,000 people on the Internet and on cable TV that are playing this big game for themselves. And the campaign’s got 128 press secretaries. I mean, it all feeds on itself. And it’s hugely expensive throwing a party for a whole bunch of reporters, some political donors, and 1,000 county chairmen. Most voters are young.

Why can’t a campaign just let that happen and not back it up with television advertising until later?

Well, actually, the smarter campaign, save your money. But Rudy is a good example. So Rudy probably wants to get in really late. But then we started getting stories about how Rudy was getting left behind in the early organizing. The New York Times got into that. I think The [Washington] Post ran the story, too, that Rudy is falling away from his grasp because the others are getting organized early. Because they are e-mailing the Post blog every day of some dentist who supports him in Cedar Rapids. So Rudy got in. Because none of them are very tough about taking elite press coverage about they’re being left behind. Now, I think no train was leaving the station. Nobody wants to be reading stories about they’re “weaker now” because they are not playing the early dumb game. The reporters love the early game. I can’t believe all of the press calls I get about, “Well, it’s over for Romney.”

Well, he’s been able to get out of the office.

Well, exactly. [Robert] Shogan — I was very fond of Bob. I like the old blue-collar reporters, [who] used to always say: “Look, I don’t care what you say. Just give me something, I have to earn a living here. So I got an editor.” And so there are a lot of reporters who have to earn a living. So now we’ve got to put on this circus to feed them. And the old up-down thing used to take a year. It’s now taking 90 days, a year before it even starts. It’s crazy. But it’s expensive. McCain’s burning through $1 million a week over there.

There was a time when candidates didn’t announce until the election year started.

Right. And I actually think you are going to run the campaign and win. Look at right now. You have McCain, who was a huge campaign. You’ve got Romney with a huge campaign. And they are both having some problems that I think they will recover from. You have Rudy, who right now who doesn’t really have a campaign yet. And he’s doing great. Now what’s he doing? He’s hiring people so he can get as screwed up as the other guys. I am being facetious, but it’s very funny, really, how early becomes an expensive hobby.

But all of this free media ought to make it cheaper. Wouldn’t it?

You would think, if anybody is listening now.

You would be able to lay back and say, “Well, I don’t need to spend this money; I get all I need now.” It used to be if you had advertised early it was because you weren’t getting anything, right?

I’d love to be running a campaign right now, with a famous guy and three press secretaries. We’d say, “Yeah, we’ll get around to that later.” I think you’d do just as well. That’s my highly contrarian view. But I think because only 10 percent are listening, we are bombing the 10 percent to death. I mean, I had been listening to this chatterbox here. And I’ve heard the word McCain 48 times all afternoon. But I don’t think more than 10 percent of the country is listening anyways. But feeding that press animal is part of the cost. And it’s not like it’s hard to make these guys want to go campaign. Because they think, “If I do more earlier, I’ll win.” So they are all chasing themselves into a tizzy.

It takes a certain amount of discipline not to do that.

Yeah.

In ’68 Hubert Humphrey famously was predawn to after-dark, every day, all of the time, as many events as they can do. Nixon got smart and did three or four things — did them very, very well, did them where he could get a lot of ink or television time.

Right. Like Nixon’s famous thing about the biggest mistake he made in ’60 going to every state. Do a couple; and that’s still the rule. But you are right. It’s discipline. And most of these guys don’t have discipline. They think more hustle, more motion for motion’s sake means victory. I remember Lamar [Alexander], when we were in Iowa, [had] 1 percent for the first couple of months. We were running around. And I finally convinced him, “Lamar, three good events a day and some rest.” And we started, actually, putting all of our effort into three great events a day. And we started to go up. And before, we were doing 28 events a day. Discipline — it’s hard.

But it’s hard if all of the other guys are not doing that.

Right. Because, three quarters of the members, what they all have in common with the exception of John McCain in this election, they have never done this before. They have run locally, where the car tops and their little secrets. They have never been to one of these, so they are a little insecure about it. So they try to do more. And that’s the big advantage [Al] Gore, if he gets in, will have. It’s an advantage Hillary [Clinton] has. It’s an advantage McCain has. They have been in a prizefight. They have been through it once. 

You see any possibility of Gore?

I thought, pre-Obama, there was a huge hole for him to get in. I think there is still a hole, but it’s not as big.

Maybe that clash between Obama and Hillary might generate something.

Yeah. If I were Gore, I would be thinking about it.

Do you think Hillary is being hurt by her refusing to apologize for her position on the [war]?

Yeah, I do. I think it’s bringing back all of the arrogance stuff.

It just goes on and on and on, doesn’t it?

Yeah. Look, she has two big weights around her. One is Bill, who is a great plus in the primary, but also makes her talk backwards. And the media will keep saying, “Well, name a mistake he made.” I mean, that’s just a big quirk.

She still says, “Bill and I do this, do that, do the other thing.”

Well, she wants the Bill upside. But wait until they start asking her about the downside. And how will she handle it? So that clogs it up for her. And then she’s got the war. And her other problem is that she talks like a polling questionnaire. And I think this isn’t the year. You watch her video next to Obama’s. Just listen to the words: Obama is speaking English, she is speaking polling questionnaire. “That’s why working families need relief and education for their children who” — you can just tell it came right off a printout. It makes her like a robot.

Half of her is trying to show that she is a very nice, sweet person. The other half is trying to be a ball-buster.

Right. Well, it’s one of these things where she’s talking about how her feelings were hurt. Well, seven gorillas are beating the shit out of her. It’s like Tony Soprano with a deer. I think she’s going to lose the primary. I think it could be Edwards. It could be Obama. It could be Gore. I just think they are going to choke her right off. But I don’t vote in Democratic primaries. But like my mother — EMILY’s List, union Democrat her whole life — was all for Hillary for about a month. And I had breakfast with her today. And she said: “I just can’t. I don’t know about these others, but I can’t. None of my friends can either, at the garden club. We have all decided. We’re all Democrats.” My mom was out marching in force. She was a hippie liberal, McGovern all the way, and just can’t do it for Hillary. And if they can’t get my mom, they are never going to get my dad, who is the only guy I know who voted for McGovern and [Barry] Goldwater. His voting theory is: Always vote against the Texan. Never vote for a Texan.

So how do you feel about all of this action and everything? Doesn’t it make you want to get out there again?

I talk to Romney and McCain as buddies once in a while, so I can bloviate to them a little bit. And I get to watch it. But I don’t have to put up with all of the feuding county chairmen, and the South Carolina guy is mad because New Hampshire is getting an extra 50 grand for radio or whatever. I don’t miss all of that. And I don’t think I have the temperament now to take press questions about, “Well, isn’t it over now for Romney?” Because I just think that the quality of the reporter is diminishing. And this blog [expletive]. So I don’t know if I have the temperament for it anymore. I am kind of enjoying writing fictional politics right now.

Well, I got a feeling that when the general comes around, you’ll flip.

Maybe. That’s what Romney and McCain think.

Take a leave from whatever you are doing.

Well, 30 days might be fun at the end. I think I can stay in the witness relocation program until then.

Sixty days, too. Or going to the convention then at 60 days.

Yeah. The later the better. If I were doing a campaign now, it would be so different; I would really have the staff. I would be running the anti-campaign. And the media are going to be so hungry for something to happen at the end of the year because they are going to be so tired. They get tired of these guys, now, a year out. What the hell are they going to be writing about in July?