E-mail a friendMichael Kinsley
airdate November 4, 2004
E-zine pioneer and pundit Michael Kinsley is the new Los Angeles Times' editorial and opinion editor. He was the founding editor of the Web magazine Slate.com and co-hosted CNN's Crossfire. He was also a senior editor of The New Republic. In 2002, after acknowledging he suffered from Parkinson's disease, diagnosed eight years earlier, Kinsley left Slate's top spot but remained a columnist. A Harvard Law School grad, he's a member of the D.C. bar.
Michael Kinsley
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Michael Kinsley back to the program tonight. The former 'Crossfire' host is now editorial and opinion page editor for the 'Los Angeles Times.' Prior to that, columnist and one of the driving forces, in fact, behind Slate.com, and he used to be a columnist at the 'Washington Post.' He's been a busy guy. Michael, nice to see you.
Michael Kinsley: You, too, Tavis.
Tavis: Speaking of being busy, I suspect you were busy on election night.
Kinsley: Yeah.
Tavis: I was doing coverage for--
Kinsley: Everything, basically. Every channel on the radio and the television.
Tavis: It was a busy night for me. How did you spend election night?
Kinsley: Well, I had an exciting night, too. I wrote--I actually started--in the middle of the afternoon, there were these exit polls that looked good for Kerry, so I sat down and wrote a column about the meaning of John Kerry's victory.
Kinsley: And then things turned a little different, and we had an editorial to produce. And I sort of wrote off that column, and I wrote an editorial: the meaning of George Bush's victory. And then Ohio hung for a while, and the newspaper--the 'Los Angeles Times'--didn't want to go with that. Everyone was being very cautious because of 4 years ago. So I wrote a "Kerry's Victory" and a "Bush's Victory," and both of them are--are...disappeared.
Tavis: You and I can talk candidly, as we always do. I was fascinated, I can say this now--I remember Geraldo Rivera, my friend, had a TV show once. It was called 'Now It Can Be Told.' So now I can actually tell this story. I was fascinated--on election night, everybody in town--everybody in every newsroom in this country knew what those exit polls were saying. In retrospect, I guess it's a good thing that we didn't go with that on the air because it turned out to be inaccurate. But I was cracking up at the cautiousness. Everybody was, like--nobody wanted to touch that. They were telling me in my earpiece, "Don't say that! Don't say that! Do not say that, Tavis!"
Kinsley: Oh, yeah. This is a pet peeve of mine, and this year, actually, is a bad example because the exit polls were off. But you know, Ronald Reagan made his living in his very early days reporting baseball games on the radio, and he would have the whole score in front of him, inning by inning, and he would use sound effects to play it out. And that's essentially what the election night is in America. Because of this fixation that they shouldn't report the exit polls because--I think this is crazy--it will somehow or other deprive you of your vote if you know what the result is gonna be. And it is like a phony baseball game. They know what the results are, and they're not allowed to say them.
Tavis: How could it be that 4 years ago what we got wrong were the projections--this time around what we got wrong were the polls? The exit polls. They were wrong.
Kinsley: Well, there's all sorts of theories coursing around the web. One is that people who are angry vote early and that the Kerry voters were angry at Bush 'cause he's the incumbent, so they voted early, and the exit polls were misleading for that reason. But, you know, who knows?
Tavis: How much of Kerry's loss--I think this is particularly true, perhaps, of the African-American vote, and maybe even the Hispanic vote that Kerry did get. And I say that he did get because he didn't get what Gore got 4 years ago. But how much of Kerry's loss do you think had to do with the fact that he never really ignited and excited his base? It's one thing to go to the polls to vote against the other guy, quite another to be motivated to go vote for your guy.
Kinsley: Well, the wonderful thing about a close election, Tavis, is that all explanations are correct. You know, anything could have made the difference. You know, that made a difference, and if you said it was because he wore a blue tie instead of a red tie, you know, that might have been enough votes to make a difference. All theories are correct. I think that is definitely one of them.
Tavis: I'm interested in Michael Kinsley's theories about what you think went wrong for Mr. Kerry.
Kinsley: Well, you know, another funny thing about elections and political coverage is that all the explanations change on Election Day. Last week, you and people on your show, and I and people on the newspaper were saying, "What effect will Kerry's remark about Mary Cheney have? What effect will Bush's scowl have in the third debate?" Or the first debate. And then on Election Day, all that changes, and people say, "This election was part of a historical process," and we talk about large trends toward the Republican South, or if Kerry had won we'd be talking about the trends towards increased votership by blacks and Hispanics. And I think, you know, it's a spectrum of things. On the one hand, I think--I am a partisan Democrat, a Liberal, I will admit--it was very dirty campaigning, but--on both sides, but mainly by the Republicans, which worked. On the other extreme, there are historical forces that are helping the Republicans. And they are better in many legitimate political ways, too, at making people feel that their values are being protected.
Tavis: Let me pull 2 gems out of what you just said there, get you to dissect them for me. The first is the notion, historically, what the Republicans had going for them. At the end of the day, shouldn't we have realized going into this that we have never, ever, ever not sent a president back to the White House in wartime? It's just never happened.
Kinsley: Well, is that true?
Tavis: I think that is true.
Kinsley: All right--
Tavis: Unless I'm missing something, I can't recall a president who ever lost, running for re-election as a war president.
Kinsley: Well, of course, Bush said that the war was over. Last April. Yeah, but you know, if the election had gone the other way, this would be the first time. You know, there's only been 40-some presidents, and every election still will be the first time something happens.
Tavis: The other thing I want to pull out you said a moment ago is--you call it dirty politicking. The phrase I tried to use was the politics of fear. Whatever phrase you use, talk to me about where you think we are headed or not headed, as it were, as a country given the nastiness, the bifurcation of the body politic, the ugliness, the politics of fear--whatever you want to call it--that's now injected itself in the center of our body politic.
Kinsley: Well, it's a problem. Bush said some very decent things yesterday in his--in his, um, acknowledgement of Kerry's concession, and I hope he--he operates with him. You know, a second-term president is in a great position. He's not running again. He doesn't need to listen to Karl Rove about anything. He can do what he thinks is right, and some of that is gonna be stuff that I'm not gonna like and you're not gonna like, I suspect--you know, of the judges he's gonna appoint--but he could be non-partisan in a very good way, if he chose. Precisely because he's not running again.
Tavis: On the other hand, though, Michael, he doesn't have to.
Kinsley: Right.
Tavis: "I'm not running for reelection again. I ain't gotta deal with this ever again. I can be as rabid as I want to be. I don't have to really try to be a uniter. I can be a divider if that's what I choose to do." Why do you believe he would do one, the former, as opposed to the latter?
Kinsley: Oh, I don't. I'm just pointing out he could. And if you look at the two--you know, I was trying to think about this during the Election Day, and I--I was thinking about the two 2-term presidents we've had in our recent decades, Clinton and Reagan, and both of them, people speculated the same way, and both of them basically frittered it all away with scandals, Iran-Contra and then Monica Lewinsky. So maybe that'll happen to Bush, too.
Tavis: I was asking you earlier before we came on the air right quick what struck you, um, quite unusually about this last 48 hours. You mentioned remarks that Cheney made.
Kinsley: Well, it wasn't unusual. It was--it was, uh, typical. I mean, George Bush made a gracious, um, talk and said he was gonna--Cheney said, "The world is going great. The war is going great. The economy is going great." And I thought, you know, he's still living in--in this dream world.
Tavis: In 20 seconds, is there anything that George W. Bush cannot get done in the next 4 years with a senate, a house, and a supreme court that all belongs to him?
Kinsley: Well, not much, but the good part of that for the other side is he cannot claim gridlock in Washington. If he makes a promise, he can keep it, and when he keeps it, he is responsible for the consequences. And there's something to be said for that in a democracy.
Tavis: These are interesting times, to say the least, and I continue to read the 'Los Angeles Times' every day to see what they have to say about it, and I enjoy, of course, having on this program, always, Michael Kinsley. Michael, nice to see you.
Kinsley: Thanks, Tavis.
Tavis: All the best to you.
Kinsley: You, too.
Tavis: Up next on this program, actor Hank Azaria from the new Showtime series 'Huff.' Stay with us.
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