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Stuart Stevens

Stuart Stevens is a Republican strategist and media consultant. He is a partner in The Stevens & Schriefer Group, a Washington-based strategic communications firm. Stevens has worked for the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and John McCain. He has also written for several network television shows, including Northern Exposure, I’ll Fly Away, and Commander in Chief.

Jules Witcover interviewed Stevens on March 7, 2007.

Well, for openers, we’d like to have you give us your assessment of the fate of the federal [campaign-]finance system. Do you think it’s any way salvageable in light of numerous candidates saying they are going to opt out?

I think for the general [election] everybody will buy into it.

Think so?

Yeah, I do.

Because [Barack] Obama has now made that proposal to the FEC [Federal Election Commission]. Basically he is saying, “I want to go ahead and raise money for the general election on the possibility that I will need it.”

And he asked for a ruling on this, right?

And they said OK on the condition that he could then turn the money back and take the federal money. And the idea is, obviously, to try to get the Republican nominee to do the same. And it would be on the condition that the other candidate would do the same. But that’s interesting that you say that. Why do you think somebody who can raise huge amounts of money would be willing to settle for the federal money in the general election?

Because it’s so short a period of time.

There is only so much money that you can spend in that two months?

There is so much money you can spend and so much time you can raise it. I mean, he can exist in one of two . . .

Under this proposal, you could start raising now. You can raise for both the primary and the general.

But if you exist in a world until the conventions or whenever the conventions are, you can still raise primary dollars until you get the nomination, right?

Right.

Plus you get all of that money for the convention, which is always kind of fungible. So it will be very interesting. I mean, I think if you are just in a world in which it’s like ’76, for the Republicans or the Democrats, where you are down to the wire, you don’t want to raise that money for the primary. And if where, say it’s over after the first week in February, then you still can raise a bunch of money and spend it. I think what everybody’s haunted by is what happened to [Bob] Dole in ’92. And I was doing Dole, where we took the limits, bought into the system, and were broke. And then [Bill] Clinton killed us, because he had bought into the system, but he didn’t have a primary. So he could spend his money.

But he couldn’t spend it in the general.

He couldn’t spend it in the general, but he waited until Dole got the nomination. I mean, Dole had won that nomination, where we finally were triumphant over Pat Buchanan. And he spent all of his money then. We were broke, I mean, so broke like he couldn’t travel. And we’d have to concoct all of these ways to use RNC [Republican National Committee] money to do stuff, just to move him around the country. So what are you going to get if you take federal next year? You get $80 million?

$83 million. Well, I posed this to somebody else. They said: “Hey, we can always spend any amount of money we can raise. We can always find a way to do it.”

You could, you could.

But is there any danger then that it would be so obvious there would be a voter backlash, by raising money for the general on your own and pouring so much into a two-month period?

I think if it’s [John] McCain he won’t do it. I mean, I guess, it just — you know this whole weird 527 thing.

Well, couldn’t that be a factor to do that, because you have a lot of 527 money pouring in outside the system?

No.

Wouldn’t that be an incentive for a nominee to start raising his own money for the general?

Well, more money is always better. My sense is that candidates hate to raise money. And my gut is, it won’t happen. Everybody’s going to raise a lot of money for the primary. I don’t know. What’s Obama doing on the federal for the primaries?

I don’t think he’s said yet.

I always thought when [Howard] Dean was raising all that money on the Internet that the biggest mistake he made was kind of get drunk on that and say, “OK, I am going to abandon federal limits,” because that then gave [John] Kerry permission. Which is like if you just wake me up in the middle of the night and say, “OK, I am a doctor from Vermont, and I am going to not use funding,” and then for a billionaire not to use federal funding. I’ll bet on the billionaire.

I don’t know whether Kerry would have jumped if it hadn’t been for Dean.

I don’t think he would have, no. And I think that you look at that critical period of where Kerry put his own money in, and it made a big difference. I forget how much, but he did the same thing. I did [William] Weld against Kerry. And he did the same thing in [1994]. Both those critical moments he did it.

What about the so-called second- and third-tier candidates who don’t have a huge fundraising prospect?

They should take federal.

They will. There will be several who probably take it to get to Iowa and New Hampshire. At least it gets them on the way.

Well, McCain took it in 2000, right? And we didn’t. And then McCain ended up raising his $40 million or whatever the cap was. I don’t know. As one of the architects of Bush’s victory in New Hampshire in 2000, I mean, we spent more money than God and it didn’t seem to matter, because we didn’t have a good message.

And you also have crossover vote in New Hampshire, right?

Yeah. I always say that McCain beat [Bill] Bradley. And if I had been Bradley, I would have attacked McCain. And I think he would have beaten [Al] Gore. I was writing spots, literally, for Bradley to use to attack McCain and like sliding them under the door trying to get it to him. Like, don’t you get it? This guy’s killing you. He’s killing us, but he’s killing you because he’s taken all of your independent votes.

Once McCain got into all-Republican primaries, it was the end of him.

It was also, I think, he was able to spin. He had kind of a Faustian bargain they had to make in New Hampshire. During New Hampshire they were spending so much time that we always said whoever wins South Carolina will win Michigan. And everything we said was wrong. We won South Carolina and lost Michigan. So I don’t know.

Michigan is again a state where Democrats can vote.

Yeah, it was. But I think at the end of the day he beat us with Republicans in New Hampshire. We lost Republicans. But only by like four or five, not by the 19 that we lost. And probably the independents gave him the momentum to win the Republicans. In other words, had it only been Republicans, I think it would have been a very different dynamic. But I predict in 2008 it’s going to be very different because of Obama. He is going to appeal to a lot of the independents, I would think.

Well, that would help the Republican [establishment] candidate in New Hampshire, whoever he is.

I think it will change it.

Talking about those who might take the federal subsidy in 2008, is it impossible for a Jimmy Carter to happen?

Oh, no. I don’t think so.

Where if you could build enough momentum in the first two tests and the money starts coming in. I don’t think Carter ever had a huge influx of money.

Right. But neither did Mo Udall.

So I was going to say about that kind of a campaign.

Right, I think with the Internet that makes it much more possible, because you don’t have, just for the obvious reasons. And look, how many votes is it going to take to win Iowa? Crowded field — 37,000? How many votes would it take to win New Hampshire — 45,000? So for under the cost of admission of the congressional seats, you can get your ass elected president. I mean, if you win Iowa and New Hampshire, you ain’t going to lose. You’d have to really wake up in the morning hard to screw that up. So you still have that same dynamic of it being a big student-body election.

In what ways other than fundraising do you see the Internet impacting presidential elections?

I think it makes it easier to raise money.

Beyond that, beyond raising money. Do these voices that are being heard now in what’s called the blogosphere, do they have a serious impact on this?

Yeah, I think they have a serious impact. 

For good or evil?

Good.

Really?

I think so. Yeah, I think anything that gets more people involved is good.

But do you think that the unfiltered nature of what comes up over the blogosphere is good or evil?

In the news front?

Yeah. Is it good?

I don’t know. I just think it “is.”

The same way that negative campaigning is good?

No. I just think it “is.” It is just the reality. Is he good or is he evil? It’s both.

It’s getting stuff out. But the question is, what is the stuff that gets out? Is it honest stuff? Is it good stuff?

I just did this thing with this forum up at the JFK School [of Government at Harvard University]. And one of the interesting questions is, how much should The New York Times, The [Washington] Post, the Baltimore Sun, how much should they cover the blogosphere? That, to me, is more of a question for mainstream media than candidates.

Well, you have to deal with what’s there, right?

Yeah, we have to deal with what’s there.

Do you think a candidate should allow a blogger to have press credentials and be part of the press corps?

Yeah.

You do?

I do. But look — I mean, you know this far better than I, that the whole system of getting elected for president, nominations, is designed to be humiliating and brutal. And I think that the whole blogosphere only makes it more so. So I only think it makes it more of a crucible, because you have to respond to all of this stuff. But I tend to think it’s good. 

Do you do any fundraising yourself?

I occasionally am brought out to do dog-and-ponies, which mainly involves a moment when the fundraising world has doubts whether or not we can win, and concoct some scenario where we can win.

But you don’t get on the telephone and call people?

Never in my life.

Do you ever have anybody come up to you and say, “I really want to give to this candidate, but I am really worried about his position and such, and I’d really feel better if I knew he was going to be voting for ‘X.’”

No, nothing substantive. Only like, “Are you guys going to screw this up?” Or, “Are you guys going to be afraid to attack?” Or, “Are you guys going to attack too much and screw it up?” But only tactics.

But not, “Gee, I’d love for my Uncle Charlie to get a job in the Interior Department.” Nothing like that?

No. Probably only because people would know if we ever suggested that to anybody, they would laugh at us.

Well, it’s pretty much understood by everybody in a campaign now, you don’t play in that game at all. What about access to the candidate? How much do contributions affect access, in your opinion?

I don’t know. I have contradictory views on this. On the one hand, I have never in my life been in a room where a candidate brought up a position he was going to take based upon financial support. I literally have never seen that. Now, is it sort of unspoken and a sort of assumption that if you are a Republican, and you came out for a tax increase, it would hurt your fundraising? Yeah. But it would hurt your voting base, too. I have never been like, “Well, I can’t take this position on pharmaceuticals, because we got money.” I just never heard it.  I’ve heard it when they say, “If I took this position, it would hurt me politically.”

I can remember in the ’94 gubernatorial primary in Pennsylvania, when I was doing Tom Ridge and Ridge was pro-choice, in that kind of Pennsylvania way. And there was a vote to ban assault weapons four days before the Republican primary, and he was in Congress. And I remember Bill McInturff, with Public Opinion Strategies, his pollster, had been on this conference call. Bill said, “If you vote for this, you are going to lose the primary,” and that he has every reason to believe we are going to lose the primary. And Ridge is just like, “I’ll lose.” He goes, “Really?” But Tom’s like: “You know what I really think about this? Can we maybe not vote if that’s it?” And he said, “No, I want to do it.” He has all of these things because he had been a prosecutor; it was like a big deal to him. And he had all of this stuff, he had been in Vietnam, and he voted for it. And as he constantly reminds us, he still gives a [expletive] — he won.

How do you feel about both the independent-expenditure committees and 527s, in terms of losing control of your own campaign?

I hate it.

Talk a little about that.

Like the Swift Boats. I remember when the whole Swift Boat thing, everybody in the [George W.] Bush world was furious, and sort of stunned. People don’t believe this, but it’s true.

So it’s not enough to be able to say, “Hey, that wasn’t ours, and we had nothing to do with it — we didn’t talk to anybody.” You are getting nailed with it anyway? Is that the problem?

Oh, yeah. People do nail you with it. And most of the time they screw it up, in the sense that they don’t do what you want to do. And I remember in the Swift Boat thing, I had been working on this ad, just kind of noodling on my own, where it was very straightforward. “John Kerry came back from Vietnam and he said this.” And then I had just a clip of it. It said, “What do you think?” That was it. And then the Swift Boat people came in.

But it didn’t go after the element of his service in Vietnam?

No. And they entered the argument on the medals issue, which I always felt was the worst way to argue that. Like should he have gotten two medals instead of three? It’s just insane. And so I felt that by entering the argument at that point, they had discredited the argument. And the one thing you could say about someone like Karl [Rove], Karl likes to control things. Not in a bad way, but in a “we don’t like stuff just to happen.” And all of us, I think, were like, “What?” I certainly didn’t know anything. I don’t think anybody knew anything about it. It’s just kind of you wake up one morning, and it’s like, “What?” I remember the phone ringing, one of the 6 a.m. phone calls, you know whatever it’s going to be it’s not going to be good. It’s like, “Have you seen this?” And so, I mean, people say the Swift Boat thing hurt Kerry. Maybe. Maybe the way they handled it hurt him. But I thought the “Ashley” ad that was done mainly in Ohio by the 527s, you see that where Bush is embracing this girl whose mother had died in 9/11. He did the Willie Horton ads, Larry [McCarthy]; he did it. I thought it was a very good ad, fabulous ad.

Well, talking about the Willie Horton, there is a case where it helped [George H.W.] Bush.

I think it hurt Bush.

You think it hurt him?

I think the Willie Horton ad hurt Bush.

Do you think it hurt [Michael] Dukakis? 

No. I think the issue hurt Dukakis. I think the Bush revolving-door spot was a stone-cold brilliant spot, utterly great. Sig Rogich did it; I think [Philip] Dusenberry was involved in it. Brilliant spot, and it hit the tone right.

But Willie Horton was not in that ad. But that was the difference between doing it yourself and having these freelancers doing it.

Yeah. But then it forever became that the Bush campaign did a Willie Horton ad. They didn’t do a Willie Horton ad. This drives Roger Ailes [crazy].

Roger spent hours on the telephone trying to knock that down.

Yeah. And it’s not like they couldn’t have done it. They had that choice. They decided not to. And it’s a classic. You see that revolving-door spot, it’s just unbelievably good.

Yeah. I don’t remember whether there was even a black guy in the ad.

No. It was a shot of this abandoned prison in Utah.

See them coming through the gate, yeah.

Revolve, yeah. And they had white people, black people, brown people, yellow people coming through the gate. And it got to the substance, because I think that there was a substantive difference on the criminal-justice system between Dukakis and Bush. I think Dukakis’s mistake was not defending his position, why he was right.

The same question about somebody raping his wife, the way he responded to that.

So most of the time I think that the 527s, the way the Democrats in 2004 relied on 527s for their grass-roots organizations, I think really hurt them. Have you seen this documentary, As Goes the Nation, about Ohio? It’s just been released.

No, I haven’t seen that yet.

It’s a good documentary. It’s about basically the ground game in Ohio, and Republicans and Democrats. And the Democrats had all of this MoveOn.org and all of this, plus they were trying to bring in all of these Hollywood people in Ohio. And I think it really hurt them. They didn’t have control over it. And I think if you look at the ground game in 2000 that Donna Brazile put together for Gore, unbelievably good. Much better than our ground game. Much better. And we tried to study that and learn from it. But I think that was a case where they couldn’t talk to the [John] Kerry people. They couldn’t exchange information just on a precinct level. And I think it hurt them.

Do you think there is a lot of winking and nodding that goes on between independent expenditures and the 527s?

I’d ban them all. I don’t. I really don’t. My experience has been not.

And, of course, isn’t it possible to drive cooperation and not collusion? In other words, in a particular campaign in a state, the formal campaign decides not to do media, and then a 527 or an independent-expenditure group sees that and fills that hole. Theoretically, that’s very possible.

Yeah, I know. And I have always hoped it would work that way.

Practically, does that happen? It doesn’t work that way?

My experiences are, like in Mel Martinez’s race in Florida in 2004, a 527 came in and did a big tax ad attacking the Democrat on taxes. Which, I guess, I just don’t think the race was about taxes.

I was going to say, even if it worked that way, if they didn’t do it the way you wanted it done, then it was a negative for your campaign anyway.

I think in that case, the Democrats’ 527 was much better, more on target than ours, the one on behalf of Martinez. So it created this imbalance. And so you would see markets where, say, we were running 1,000 points, and she was running 1,000 points, and then the 527s are each running 1,000 points. And they were winning in those markets, and you couldn’t call them up. I mean, it’s maddening.

Right. Would you like to see those two pieces taken out of the system? Or do you see any way that could be done?

Yeah, I’d ban all the 527s. Oh, in the real world, you get legislation passed. I don’t know enough about it.

But nobody seems to be trying to do that.

I think it would be good to do it. You get a guy like George Soros who says he’s going to spend whatever it takes to make sure [George W.] Bush isn’t elected president. I think that’s a bad thing.

What do you think about bundling? Do you see anything wrong with that?

No. Bundling, to me, is you are asking friends to give money and get credit for that. But it seems to me it’s kind of like Girl Scout Cookies.

But it seems to work, doesn’t it?

Yeah. It doesn’t strike me as evil. I mean, because you still can only give $2,000 —what is it now, $2,500? Bundling doesn’t strike me as . . .

You don’t find anything wrong with it, in other words.

Yeah. To me it’s just giving people incentives to go out and raise money so they get credit for it. I mean, to me, bundling has happened for a million years.

So do you think a bundler gets more access to the candidate or not? Isn’t that the gripe about it?

My experience has been that the access is pretty superficial. Get my picture taken here, get invited here; it’s not like you’re negotiating like this North Korean nuclear thing and [you] say you are bringing in a fundraiser to help. It’s more like petty stuff. I don’t really buy off on the argument that serious stuff is done. I mean, I think lobbyists have impact, obviously. But I don’t think that lobbyists have impact because they represent the money as much as lobbyists have impact because they represent voter constituencies. So now the two are intertwined, but they have always been intertwined.

Talk a little bit about the growth of your industry. I am talking about everybody who works for a campaign — in terms of the demands it puts on fundraising, how much money you need, and whether it affects the quality of the service. By that I mean having so many different pieces. Some other people in your business have said to me in the past that they don’t really know some of the people who are doing some of the pieces. They don’t know the person who is buying time, and that person doesn’t know the candidate, has no feeling about the candidate, has no commitment to the candidate.

Right.

In earlier years people got involved in the process because they were committed to the candidate, either because he was his brother-in-law, friend, business partner, or thought he should be president, even if he didn’t know him. Do you think that the application of that kind of thinking has been diminished by the growth of your business and all of the pieces that are in it now?

I think campaigns have become a huge industry. I think what’s happened is that the economics of the business have driven general consultants sort of out of the business. Because media consulting has a mechanism for this massive, largely hidden fee, that you take a piece of the buy. And campaign managers — like the [James] Carvilles of the world, or the [Lee] Atwaters of the world, which Rich Bond used to do — those guys never got a piece of the buy. Though campaign managers at the top levels are now asking for a piece of the buy.

Oh, are they?

Yeah. It’s interesting, [we’re] beginning to see that. But what happened was that everybody [who] was a direct-mail guy or a general consultant then became a media guy.

Well, there is a financial interest in seeing the campaign get bigger.

Oh, yeah. But I think it’s just simple economics that people are going to raise more money because there is no reason not to. And so campaigns are longer. And we spend more money. And ultimately, the 300-pound gorillas are television stations. I mean, this whole debate about public finance, all of this could be ended by one meeting of the networks. If they agree to give free time, and a certain amount of limited free time, I think candidates would snap at it in a heartbeat, like the English or some of these foreign systems do. But look at WMUR up in New Hampshire, the one television station. In 1990, they were in a building like a typical [station], and then because they made all of this money in the primaries, they built this like palace. So the television stations love it. And you get all of these newspapers that own television stations. It’s a huge source of income for them. So the powers that be that own television stations could end all of that. But they don’t, because there has never been a move to do that. So every year television gets more expensive. I don’t see where it stops.

Don’t the airwaves belong to the people? Why can’t Congress do something about that?

Well, I think one of the big dynamics that affects people is self-funding, which to me is the biggest corruption in politics. The greatest unfairness comes from self-funding. [Michael] Bloomberg [versus] Mark Green: Bloomberg spent $72 million.

The Steve Forbeses of the world.

Well, Forbes was running a presidential [campaign] where, unless you are going to spend a whole lot of money — but look at Jon Corzine. Jon Corzine runs against [Bob Franks]; remember that race?

Yeah.

[Bob Franks], public servant, [he had] been in the Peace Corps, ran for Congress, was a teacher; he did all of these things you were supposed to do. Right? But he didn’t make a lot of money. Corzine goes on to Wall Street, becomes this investment banker, makes a fortune, goes and spends $69 million of his own against [Franks]. Corzine wins. So what kind of message does that give to a guy? And yet, Buckley v. Vallejo said it was . . .

Yeah. What can you do about that?

I think you can do stuff about it. But to me, until you do stuff about it, you can’t address the other. Because if somebody comes in and says, “Well, I have a constitutional right to spend more money,” everything goes out the window unless you mandated, as they have attempted to do, that federal funding or state funding would match that person dollar-for-dollar and at an increase. You would have to have a system for every dollar spent. So Jon Corzine spent $69 million, you give [Bob Franks] $120 million. And that would limit it, and would address, I think, the free-speech issue.

Well, in some states they do have that.

They try to. They have something like this in Florida: the millionaire’s penalty. But it’s never really, that I know of, anywhere been addressed effectively. But that, to me, when I just look at what are the most unfair races, some guy can come in and spend all of this money.

But they don’t always win: [Michael] Huffington in California.

No, it’s not a guarantee.

As Mo Udall famously said: “I have been rich and I have been poor. And rich is better.”

Yeah. I mean, if Bloomberg spent $40 million would he have been elected mayor? I don’t think so. $50 million? There is this great story that, this guy Bill Knapp, you know Bill Knapp? He’s a media guy.

Yeah.

Then again, he’s doing Bloomberg. Bloomberg was running as a Republican. And as like Knapp tells the story, Terry McAuliffe called him up and said, “Listen, if you do this, you are never going to work again in the Democratic Party.” And he said: “But Terry, he is going to spend $70 million. That’s the point. I don’t ever want to work again. I mean, come up with some better threat.”

Do you think the accumulation of money inevitably leads to negative campaign?

No, no, no. I think the more money you spend, the more positive [the campaign]. Staying negative is more efficient. It’s like if you have three weeks of television, you are going to run negative or contrast in a tight race. Take Florida, for instance. I was working for Charlie Crist. Charlie had raised a good bit of money this last election. The primary was like the first week of September. We went up in May. We did all positives, because we wanted to tell people about Charlie Crist. Had we had three weeks, we would have had to go contrast. We would have had to go efficiently to kind of your closing argument. You wouldn’t have had this, “Let me tell you about this, let me tell you about that.” Having run positives always helps your negatives. Always, always, always. So if you have the luxury of being up longer, if you look at these states that have become huge battlegrounds but are cheap, like South Dakota, they run a load of positives in South Dakota. It’s like a dollar a holler. You are on the air forever up there. If you look at the [John] Thune-[Tom] Daschle race, they each ran tons of positives. Now they ran a lot of negatives, but had you had just a small amount of money, you are going to end up just going to contrast.

It used to be the rule that you had to do positive first to establish your own candidate. What’s happened to that idea?

Well, I still think it is better.

Depends on money?

Yeah. But I think elections are about choices. You have to get to the choice. It’s like if you had 10 minutes in front of a jury versus a week, 10 minutes you get to the core of your argument. Like, here is why you are right and the other guy is wrong. But the other, you can sort of tell stories and begin to lay out longer narrative. If you had an hour debate at the Oxford Union, it would be better than a 10-minute debate.

So, in that theory, you could make the argument that more money is good, because it enables you to do more positive.

I don’t think that longer campaigns are bad, personally. I don’t get that. I mean, why is it bad that we take longer to look at this? And I think it places more pressure on candidates, which I think is probably good. It’s why I think early voting is bad. Because I think it allows people to vote at a time in the process in which information may come out and might alter their vote.

Buyer’s remorse is removed.

Exactly. I think it’s very hard for the press, too. So you are working on a story that maybe now you have three-week-out voting. Typically you guys don’t like to do big stories the last, what, 72 hours for Tuesday election? Are you going to break a big story on Sunday? It has to be a really big story.

Yeah.

You kind of go to your wrap-up just because people have time to respond. And so three weeks out, really, in these wacky states like Oregon, they only vote by mail. It’s insane, I think. So I don’t think more money is bad in that sense. I also don’t think it’s bad for candidates to have to raise money. I think it’s kind of good for them, because they have to go out and talk to people.

Do you know any candidates who really like to raise money and are really good at it?

Yeah.

Who? Name me a few.

Haley Barbour loves to raise money. Haley’s great at it. Haley says: “I’m going to go up in front of people and tell them why I am going to do a really good job. And I am going to spend their money smart. And why they ought to invest in me.” He loves it.

Do you think that comes out of being a staff guy for so long and not being a candidate for so long, in politics?

I think it comes from a mindset that raising money is part of the integral process to politics. It’s the invisible primaries. So you need to compete in the primaries. And I think it also comes with an assurance that you are not tainted by money. If you’re going to take somebody’s money, you are going to disagree with them. But a guy like Haley, he’ll disagree with anyone on anything if he wants to. He loves to tell people no. And so he’s like: “Does somebody think that if they gave me $2,000 it’s going to influence me? They are out of their minds.” So I think there is a certain confidence in that. The process of raising money, per se, you get states without limits, which I love to work in for obvious reasons. People can write $100,000 checks.

What about frontloading the process? Do you have the same feeling about that?

Frontloading like in a presidential?

Yeah. That it’s bad because it doesn’t give people the chance to assess the candidates.

By moving all the primaries up?

Yeah.

I don’t know. We’ll see. I am not sure. I can argue round and flat. I can argue it.

You can have a lot of buyer’s remorse in that sense, if the decision is made in February.

Or you can have a situation, the reason the decision is getting made in February is because there are more races. And it’s going to keep more people in the field. Because let’s say California moves up, Florida moves up. In 2000, I was one of the geniuses that said it’s impossible to win New Hampshire if you don’t compete in Iowa. Like that worked out real well. I mean, we ran a 60-point lead, and we lost by 19 in New Hampshire. It’s like the single most humiliating defeat. So you take California and Florida, you can envision a scenario where someone only campaigns in Florida and California, and if they go winner-take-all in those states, you’d come away with a huge number of delegates. So you could be in the process longer, theoretically, if somebody were going . . .

If somebody wasn’t going to do well otherwise. But suppose you are one of these candidates, a marginal candidate who doesn’t have a lot of money. Frontloading is going to kill you. Wouldn’t it? Sooner or later, if it’s not the first week or the second week, the third week you’ll be dead.

I think that it will be very interesting to see how much media and money plays a role in winning a state like California and Florida. I don’t think anybody’s going to have enough money to run effective media in those states. Think about it. I think it’s going to be about free media, my instinct is. I mean, if you are going to spend $1 million in California, maybe you could say in Fresno, there are some efficiencies there. But I don’t know. These are black holes.

Generally speaking, how do you feel about frontloading, in terms of given the voters opportunity to talk about before? Do they really have a chance?

Well, the argument for it is they get to participate in it. And that it takes the power away from fewer states that have their own quirks. And you get a more diverse group of people voting. And the argument against is what you are saying.

If Iowa and New Hampshire go first, that’s going to be more of a magnet for a second or third candidate to say: “Well, maybe lightning will strike. We’ll start out in California.”

Right. I don’t think that’s going to change. I mean, I think if you win Iowa, you are going to be a big deal, particularly if you were not expected to win Iowa.

Yeah. But would it be enough time, if California moves up, to raise the kind of money you need in California, even if, say, you win Iowa and New Hampshire?

Can you raise the money? Yeah.

In that time?

See, it goes to whether or not the money is going to matter in California and Iowa.

And maybe it depends on whether the candidate is a flash in the pan or somebody of substance who once demonstrates ability to win, who will trigger a lot of money to him.

Right. I think if you looked at 2000, it would be interesting to do a study.

If [Duncan] Hunter wins California, you think that’s going to make a difference?

I think it would be interesting. I don’t think it will happen. But it would be an interesting study to do for 2000 as to who spent the most money, how it affected the Republican primary winning the nomination. Just thinking of it, I mean, we spent the most in Iowa and we won. But then we spent way more in New Hampshire and got our ass kicked. I think we spent more in Michigan, and we lost. South Carolina, I think, was kind of a wash. It would be an interesting study, actually, to go in and look at the math and say, California we ended up winning. I mean, I think we spent money in California. I don’t think we won because of that money.

There has been a study that whoever raised the most money going into an election year, but not by state, wins.

Yeah. I tend to think that [it’s like] how people end up worshiping volcanoes; it’s two unrelated events. It rains and the volcano belches. I think it’s a sign of strength of a candidate, and stronger candidates win. I am not sure it’s because of the money. I think John Edwards is going to be the Democratic nominee.

Do you?

And I think he’s going to raise the least money. I am stone-cold convinced — I am usually wrong — but I am stone-cold convinced that he’s going to be the Democratic nominee. I think Obama and Hillary [Clinton] are going to kill each other.

That could happen.

And Edwards is acceptable.

What about Bill Richardson? Is he in the equation at all?

No, in my opinion.

Why do you say that? Do you know something?

No, no, no. I just don’t see the rationale for his candidacy. To me, he’s got the Fred Harris, Bruce Babbitt slide.

But he’s got some paper credentials as a Cabinet member or . . .

He’s not a lightweight. But neither were Bruce Babbitt and Fred Harris. One is a United States senator. One is a governor. There is a lot of blocking and tackling to this. And I just don’t see him putting together that blocking and tackling.

Do you think voters care about how much money somebody spends?

No.

Not a voting issue?

No.

So anybody or any organization that pounds away about how much money you spent on a campaign is barking up the wrong tree?

Yes. I think it’s just whining. Look at Bloomberg. I mean, The New York Times didn’t go [expletive] that Bloomberg spent all of that money.

There have been some surveys where people say, “Well, I can trust him because it’s his own — he doesn’t need the money.”

Right. Well, didn’t [Democratic Senator] Herb Kohl [of Wisconsin], when he ran, didn’t he have that part of his slogan, something like “can’t be bought” or something?

Yeah.

Something to that effect. Corzine, look at these people. I mean, they spend ungodly amounts of money.

What’s your feeling about the way presidential debates are financed? Have any problem with that in terms of any kind of corruption it might have on a debate?  Again, it goes to the question, what is the public perception? Do you think voters know that General Mills and Mobil or whoever does that?

Sponsoring the debate?

Sponsoring the debates. That they think that tarnishes the debate in some way?

No. No.

Do you think that having the debates in the hands of a commission headed by two guys who are party chairmen affects . . .?

I hate the Commission on Presidential Debates.

You hate them?

Yeah, just because they are self-appointed sort of arbiters of this world.

Well, at least they are not like the League of Women Voters, the way they ran things.

I hated that, too. I just think there ought to be candidates, in the best of all possible worlds, get together and decide if they want to have debates and how much they should have debates.

Well, it’s harder now, but they can still opt out if they want to.

You could.

But it’s become kind of institutional now.

I know.

So you think that’s bad? Doesn’t it inform people?

I think the formats of the debates are not good. I think we ought to have more real debates.

Well, that’s up to the candidates. They’re not willing to do it. You may find one, but you won’t find both of them who are willing to do it.

You get the commission now, and these precedents that they set, that they want to use these guys’ lines. I mean, I just think it’s incredibly awkward. My experience dealing with them is that they are kind of pompous and self-important and a pain to deal with.

More people pay attention to the presidential debate than any other aspect of the campaign, in one night. But if you counted up all of the ads they watched over the campaign, [it probably would exceed] that. But in terms of concentration of attention by voters, there is nothing like that.

No, I would be for more debates.

And how would you change them then? Do you like a panel or do you like the one moderator?

I don’t like panels. If you are practicing for a debate, and you have a panel, it’s always easiest, because one guy is not going to ask a follow-up for the next guy. They are going to go on with their questions, prepared questions. And if the guy next to you has some question, and the person boots it and does a terrible job, as a natural follow-up the next person is going to ask whatever question they prepared, nine times out of 10. So they are always easier, just preparing a candidate. You get four people asking questions, each person gets two or three questions. Those are much easier to prepare for.

You know, in the famous [Ronald] Reagan-[George H.W.] Bush debate in New Hampshire, John Sears’s strategy was the more candidates the merrier, so that his own guy would only get two or three questions the whole hour.

Yeah, it’s true. It’s absolutely true.

And that’s why he invited these other guys to come.

That’s absolutely true. Now in Massachusetts I just went through this process where I was working for Kerry Healey, who was running against Deval Patrick. And there had always been a history of one-on-one debates in Massachusetts. And Massachusetts is one of those few states that they actually pay attention to the debates. And Deval Patrick wouldn’t allow there to be one-on-one debates. I think it was terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. You had this wacky woman who was like the moonbeam candidate, and then you had this other. And I thought it was really bad. And it really was played to Deval Patrick’s advantage. So I think there ought to be one-on-one debates. That’s good. So to the extent the presidential panel says it’s been useful in establishing a barrier to keep independents out, like [Ralph] Nader and these guys, that’s good. I like that.

What about the Phil Donahue format where Clinton played the actor and walked around and did all that?

I think it’s stupid.

It really worked for him, didn’t it?

Yeah. But it’s a skill set that’s not applicable to being president. So can you be good at that?

Unless you feel that a role of a communicator is a large role for the president.

Well, it drives to glibness. And I don’t think that being a communicator in that sense is as important as being able to — I mean, it’s weird. We place all of this emphasis on debates and yet, in our system, people don’t debate. As a presidential candidate, you never debate. It’s very odd. Like the Brits, you could say, OK, this is a skill you have to use every day. We don’t have to use that skill. I wish there were more debates. I wish they had more flexible formats.

Again, you talk about a flexible format. Then you can get into the kind of situation you had Perot, Bush, and Clinton. For Clinton who, that had that debate, I think it was in Richmond, where he walked around with the . . .

It’s probably just a visceral reaction, but they’re so arrogant. I have been reading this Constitution, and I don’t see a presidential debate commission in it.

Neither are there parties. Neither are there conventions.

I know. But they are so arrogant.