E-mail a friendJoe Klein
airdate June 21, 2006
Journalist Joe Klein is best known as the "anonymous" author of the best-selling book, Primary Colors. A senior writer at Time, Klein's "In the Arena" column covers national and international affairs. He's a veteran of eight presidential campaigns and has been a CBS News consultant, Rolling Stone Washington bureau chief and political columnist for The New Yorker. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, and his books include The Natural, on the Clinton presidency, and Politics Lost.
Joe Klein
Tavis: Joe Klein's a political columnist for 'Time' magazine and bestselling author of books like 'The Natural' and 'Primary Colors.' His latest book is called 'Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You're Stupid.' He joins us tonight (laughs) from New York. Joe Klein, nice to have you on the program.
Joe Klein: Good to be here, Tavis.
Tavis: I wanna come back to the book, obviously, in a few minutes. This is not a new phenomenon, is it? People thinking that voters are stupid?
Klein: No, but I think that the television age has really done a lot to move things in the wrong direction. Because during that time, politicians became overly dependent on consultants and pollsters, people who tell them what not to do. And it's robbed a lot of the interest and spontaneity and the humanity from the process.
Tavis: Who do you blame for that?
Klein: I blame the gods. I blame the fact that television exists, and that we've lived in a period of incredible peace and prosperity, so people haven't been paying that much of attention to politics, although that should have changed on September 11, 2001. I'm hoping it'll change in this next election cycle. Because we got some big problems in this country.
Tavis: All right, so I lied. I said I wanted to come back to the book, we're already here. Let's just stay here for a second, since we've jumped into it already. Tell me how and why you make the argument that because politicians want more data, put one way, that means that the process has been trivialized. Because they wanna study, because they wanna poll, etcetera, etcetera. Tell me how that trivializes, rather than making what they do more on point, more on target.
Klein: Well, it could be more on point and more on target if they had some sense of perspective about it. But I've been doing this for 37 years, God help me, and during that time, two big things have happened. Because of all this data, politicians have lost a lot of their faith in us, in the public. And some of that's been justified, because we just haven't been that interested in politics.
But they've also lost faith in themselves. They've treated the pollsters and consultants as if they were Merlin the magician. And what the pollsters are giving them is looking in the rearview mirror. They're looking at the facts as they exist, not the facts as they can change if a politician calls on us to sacrifice, challenges us in some way, tells us an inconvenient truth, to coin a phrase.
And I hope that in 2008, now that the public knows what all this market-tested language sounds like, they know if a politician comes to you and says, 'Rather than policies of family value, we need policies that value families,' people know that's baloney. They know that no human being on the face of the planet speaks like that. And I'm hoping the reason why road politics lost is that this time, the public, and I'm part of that public, and as a journalist, I'm gonna do this, will demand from politicians an inconvenient truth. They will demand to be challenged. Because if a politician doesn't ask anything of you, you should not give him or her your vote.
Tavis: And yet Joe, you've been around long enough, to your point, 37 years of covering this, to know that when people have the courage or the conviction of the commitment to share with the American voter what you call inconvenient truths, oftentimes, they go down in flames.
Klein: And yeah, sometimes they do. It's easy to pick on that and paint it wrongly. But look at the President. Look at George Bush. I disagree with him on practically everything. But if he were following the polls right now, we'd be skedaddling out of Iraq. He actually believes in that war, and that's why he's continuing to fight it. Now, he's suffering in the polls right now.
But who knows what history's gonna say about that? I believe that history will say that it weakened us considerably in the world, and it really retarded our fight against Islamist radicalism. But politicians do do this. Bill Clinton did it time and again, and was rewarded for it.
Tavis: I hear the point you're making, and I don't think you meant this, and let me probe a little further. I hear the point you're making about the President doing what he believes in, even though the poll numbers are shrinking, but there is a critical distinction, obviously, between righteous indignation, and unrighteous indignation, yes?
Klein: Well, I think that there is a difference between right ideas and wrong ideas, but the fact that a politician believes in something that turns out not to work doesn't diminish the fact that this is a guy who had the courage of his convictions. In 1996, Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's consultant, told him you will not be reelected President if you continue to support affirmative action.
Racial preferences. Clinton looked at the numbers, he looked very carefully at the numbers, and then he said to Dick Morris, sorry, I can't go there. I believe in this. And I think that when politicians do that, the public will give them a pass. The public will say to them, look, I may not agree with Bill Clinton about racial preferences, or George Bush about the war. But they're obviously acting out of their convictions, and that's why I think George Bush won in 2004. It was a pathetic election, 2004, Tavis.
Tavis: Yeah.
Klein: One sentence on each side. John Kerry's sentence was, I voted for the 87 billion for the war before I voted against it, and George Bush's sentence was, you may not agree with me, but you'll always know where I stand. And that was the winning sentence.
Tavis: I guess what I'm trying to get to is where we draw the line between a political, a politician, elected official having the courage of one's convictions and being prepared to cut against the grain, as compared to or versus going it alone, even when everybody else thinks you are wrong.
Klein: Well, I think that obviously, going it alone when everybody else thinks you're wrong is a very risky business, and if you are wrong, you'll pay the price for it. My guess is that George Bush is gonna pay the price in history, and that our country has paid a tremendous price for his going it alone overseas. But I gotta say, he did not pay the price in 2004, when it was obvious to many people that that war had been a mistake.
Tavis: All right.
Klein: And it entered into under false pretenses.
Tavis: That comes, then, to the latter part of your subtitle. If that in fact is the case, and you're right about that, and at first glance, it would appear that you are right, maybe the American voter is stupid. For everybody to have seen that Bush was sending us to Hell in a handbasket, to your point now, and reelect the guy anyway, maybe American Democracy's been trivialized because the American voter is stupid, Joe.
Klein: Look, you don't do what I've been doing for 37 years if you're a cynic. I don't do this to watch them screw up, as entertaining as that might be. I watch them for the up side, for the inspiring side. And I have good faith in the American people. If you're gonna give them a choice between one guy who says, I voted for it before I voted against it, and the other guy who says, you may not agree with me, but you'll always know where I stand, if that's the actual choice, they're gonna vote for the guy who says you may not agree with me.
Now, that was a perfectly focus group sentence. It was outrageous. The translation is, you may not agree with me, God, they hate everything I'm doing. (Laughs) But you'll always know where I stand, translation, the other guy's a windsurfer, you can't trust him to do anything. And I think that when you give people that sort of choice, they're gonna make that sort of decision. It was John Kerry's fault that this election turned out that way. And it was in large part because he didn't have the faith in the public to tell them what he really thought.
Tavis: All right, let me break this down to two parts in the time I have left, then. Given the arguments that you make in the book, very forcefully and with great clarity, I might add, given the arguments you make here, what ought to be the lessons that Republicans learn this election cycle, and what ought the lessons be that Democrats learn? 'Cause I think they're different, as I read the book.
Klein: Well, I think that Democrats have the bigger lessons to learn. And the biggest lesson is what I just said. My test as a journalist, as I go out and I watch these people work, is gonna be are you telling me something that challenges me? Are you demanding something of me? Because the public knows if 70 percent of the people believe that this country's headed in the wrong direction, the public knows that we got problems.
And they know that they can't be solved on the cheap or without any sacrifice. And so for both sides, the challenge is essentially the same. Tell us how you're gonna do it. Tell us how you're gonna make us energy independent. Tell us how you're gonna relieve the burdens that exist on the middle class now. Tell us how you're going to confront Islamic radicalism in a way that brings the rest of the world along with us.
And also, tell us how you're gonna pay for the retirement of my big, fat, self-indulgent baby boom generation. Because we're gonna live to the age of 237, and our kids are gonna pay for it.
Tavis: Let me throw a few names at you right quick, since I raised them at the top of the conversation. What do you make of all the hype around Hillary at the moment?
Klein: Well, it's hype. I'm an old man now, and I've become a patient old man. And I'm willing to sit back and wait and watch and see how this happens. But I suspect that Hillary Clinton, if she chooses to run, will roar into Iowa in 2008, kind of the way Howard Dean did in 2004, with a lot of money, a lot of endorsements, strong poll ratings based on name recognition, and then we'll have an election.
And the folks will wanna know one big thing. They'll wanna know, what's he gonna do? What's his job? You did healthcare for him, what's he gonna do for you? And isn't there a Constitutional amendment that says that he was already President? And do we really wanna have our most precious institution traded back and forth between these two prohibitively weird families? So I think that there's an opening there for other candidates.
Tavis: Why do I keep hearing Al Gore and Barack Obama's name come up, and both of them keep suggesting they have no interest in running?
Klein: Well, listen to Barack Obama a little bit more carefully. I wrote a column about this about three or four weeks ago. He hasn't closed the door. He's thinking seriously about 2008. He's listening. And I think he brings a lot to the table, not least of which is he's not a baby boomer like me. I'm really tired of all the politicians my age. (Laughs) We haven't done a very good job of leading this country.
Not George Bush, not Bill Clinton or Al Gore. And I think Barack Obama is very, very, very smart, and really works well with audiences and with crowds. He's a very appealing guy. And it's not impossible that he'll run. Al Gore I think is living proof of the thesis of my book 'Politics Lost.' If he had talked about global warming in the way that he's talking about it now, in the passionate way, people wouldn't have thought he was such a stiff in 2000.
Tavis: Hey, but...
Klein: That's probably why he didn't get elected.
Tavis: But who says it's too late, Joe? Maybe this is the opening salvo in his campaign.
Klein: I'm ready to listen. I think that this is a guy who not only was right about global warming, but he's been right, to my way of thinking, about both wars. Both Gulf Wars. He voted for the first one, when you remember we had the approval of the UN in an international coalition to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and he was against the second one, which was indefensible.
Tavis: Finally, right quick, on the Republican side, back to your earlier formulation of being courageous enough to share with us inconvenient truths, that would seem to be the label that John McCain has worn, at least historically, as a member of the Senate. Who best is positioned on the Republican side, you think, to tell us those inconvenient truths?
Klein: Well, I'm glad you used the word historically with regard to John McCain, because it's becoming part of history now.
Tavis: Exactly.
Klein: The last three or four months, he hasn't been doing that. I don't mind that he went to Liberty College and communed with Jerry Falwell. In fact, I really think that Democrats should go to those audiences and talk to them and tell them what we have in common, and where we differ. But the part that I disagree with with McCain was he was always a guy who was in favor of fiscal responsibility, who voted against the Bush tax cuts.
And now he's voting to extend the Bush tax cuts. And so, a central pillar of what John McCain was all about has now shattered. And he's gonna have to work overtime to convince me that he was the guy who ran telling the plain truth in 2000.
Tavis: Joe Klein, telling it like it is, as usual. 'Politics Lost.'
Klein: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: 'How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid.' Joe Klein, nice to have you on.
Klein: Good to be here.
Tavis: It's my pleasure. Up next on this program, singer-songwriter Neko Case. Stay with us.
Back to June 21, 2006