You've praised President Bush's performance in recent months, but do you really think he's doing any better than you could do?
I do believe I'd collapse under the pressure -- I really do believe I'd do that. I'm not kidding. If I had to make a decision that was really affecting the lives of millions of people, I think I'd be crushed by the pressure.
The first day [Sept. 11] he wasn't so hot; he looked a little shaky. But I thought he came back in a way that showed that he maybe had the stuff to be the guy who had to be in charge during that time. I certainly don't agree with any of his domestic policies, or the basic thrust of his domestic policies. And I do think that to some degree a lot of that has been disgraceful.
How about Dick Cheney's job? Is that a role you think you could handle?
Uh, probably could handle that, yeah. I could probably not be crushed ... but, goddamn, I don't know if I could sit in that meeting and go, "OK, what do we do?" I think they did what you had to do. And I think that it was a blessing that they had the freedom to do what they did, whereas I don't know if Gore would have. Because he would have had the tremendous pressure by the Republican assholes in Congress -- the Tom DeLays and those guys -- [saying] "You gotta strike back within an hour."
Bush had the luxury of waiting a little while.
Yes, he had the luxury of doing what made sense.
Do you think Clinton would have handled things any better?
I think he would have handled things similarly. He would have been in a much different situation. He would have been having to deal with the accusations that he had let our guard down. It would have been his CIA; it would have been his FBI. I'm not the first to say this, so in an odd way it was better that it was Bush than Gore. The country did unite behind Bush, and that's partly because the Democratic Party was willing to close ranks behind him. And I don't know that the Republican Party, ... to their disgrace, would have been able to close ranks around Gore.
Without mentioning the name Rush Limbaugh, why do right-wing pundits do so much better on TV and radio than left-wing pundits? Is it because, politics aside, right-wingers are just better theater?
It does help if you don't really care about what you're saying in terms of how factually accurate you are. That makes it easier to be theatrical. And Rush certainly doesn't care. Being able to really believe that you're absolutely certain of what you're saying helps. Reasonable liberals like myself -- I wrote about it in the Rush book -- have some sense of not being sure of everything that they say. And I don't know if being absolutely certain about everything is necessarily a sign of wisdom, but Bill O' Reilly seems to think so.
What's happened to the left anyway? We're hearing so little from them. Have they just given up?
The success of Michael Moore's book ["Stupid White Men"] gives you some idea of how much people are yearning for something. And I do think there was more of a delay on Gore's part than there should have been. He spoke, finally, this week in Florida, about Bush policies on the environment and the budget, things like that. And I think all of that got sucked out by the World Trade Center.
And you know, slowly, and maybe just in time for the [midterm] elections, we'll see some real discussion on what the Bush administration has been doing on these policies -- and blowing it, saying they're going to protect Social Security, then not. War and recession were the two things [Bush] said would stop them from protecting [Social Security], so he's kind of covered there. But now the information's coming out about the Cheney task force [on energy policy] and who they met with, and everything's becoming clear: They're exactly what we feared.
Do you think Gore should run again? Would he get your endorsement?
That's the $64,000 question that was asked a lot this last weekend. I'd like to see what he's saying. It was interesting that this weekend he said something about how he and Clinton thought they had done a good job. I wish he had said that during the election. I was talking to friends in the campaign the whole time [during the 2000 election] and I kept saying, "Talk about the last eight years!" And they would say, "Our focus groups show that people don't want to hear about it and don't give Gore credit for it." And I'd say, "I know. Then change that!" This was July 2000. I said, "You have from July to November to remind people of how good things have been the last eight years and to give Gore some of the credit for it."
I mean, John Ellis, who is Bush's first cousin, who is the guy at Fox who called Florida for Bush the first time, said he never understood why Gore didn't say, "What is it, Gov. Bush, that you don't like about peace and prosperity?" And I think that would've won the election. There are a million things you could point to that could've won the election when you've lost by 200 votes. You know: Someone farted at a labor union get-out-the-vote rally and some people left and didn't get out to vote -- there are a million things I could point to.
Next page: There were a million places during the campaign where the election should have been won