The top three reasons why you need to read this interview with Time Magazines Joe Klein:
1. "I mean, too often, the default position, especially in the left wing of the Democratic Party, is to not respect the military sufficiently, and to assume that anytime the United States would use force overseas, we would be wrong."
2. "I wrote a book about Vietnam veterans, and I've spent a lot of time with Iraq veterans. There ain't a veteran in existence who doesn't either A) get things wrong, or exaggerate a little bit for effect from time to time."
3. "Last Sunday on Stephanopoulos, I said that we can't keep...that we have to keep the nuclear option on the table when dealing with Iran, if for no other reason than to make them worry a little bit, that we might be so crazy as to use it. That gets translated the next day by a number of left wing bloggers into me supporting a nuclear attack on Iran.
HH: Well, doesn't the Democratic Party have to distance itself from this fever swamp?
JK: Well, I think the Democratic Party has to."
04-19klein1.mp3
HH: Joe Klein is a political columnist for Time Magazine. You see him frequently on television. Before he joined Time, he was a contributor to the New Yorker, he's a former contributing editor to the Rolling Stone. He's actually a graduate, as I am, of the halls of PBS, WBGH in the old days. He's a graduate of Penn, and he joins me now, because he's got a terrific new book out called Politics Lost, which I just devoured, as any political junkee will, no matter what your politics are. Joe Klein, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
JK: Well, thanks for devouring it, Hugh. I really appreciate that.
HH: Well, I love inside baseball, and this is chock full of inside baseball, and I like its candor. You admit early on you're an old lefty liberal, though you've headed to the moderate center, though I'm skeptical. You can persuade me.
JK: (laughing)
HH: That is the perspective, and you've covered every presidential campaign since when, Joe?
JK: Carter was really the first. The Carter-Ford race in '76.
HH: All right. You charmed me right away, because I just had Pat Caddell on the show last week, and he is, as you obviously lovingly describe, something of the enfant terrible of American politics.
JK: Yeah, I spent three hours with him, interviewing him, and it took my research assistant I think about a month to transcribe those three hours.
HH: (laughing) Yeah.
JK: (laughing) He goes so hard, so passionate. He was literally foaming at the mouth when he talked about what's happened to his profession.
HH: That's what we covered last week. I'm going to come back to that. But first, Joe, let's get you centered on the political map for the listeners. You are an old style liberal. You admit it...have you ever voted for a Republican for president?
JK: Came close a couple of times, but I haven't.
HH: No. So you're...it's Kerry, Gore, twice for Clinton, once for Carter, all the way back, right?
JK: Yeah.
HH: All right. And you support abortion rights, right?
JK: Well, not really. I think that there's a deal to be made here. You know, I'm pretty much a social conservative on a lot of stuff. I'm certainly opposed to late term abortion, and I think the deal to be made is morning after pill is legal, anything after that probably shouldn't be.
HH: How about gun control? Are you okay with gun control the way it exists in, say, New York?
JK: Oh, I'm totally in favor of gun control.
HH: Drilling in ANWAR?
JK: I think...I don't think it's a violation of the 2nd Amendment. I've grown up in cities, and I see what guns in the hands of wrong people do.
HH: Okay, but how about drilling in ANWAR? Opposed?
JK: I don't care about it.
HH: You don't care? Well, that's good. We're making progress then. That's fine.
JK: No, no. Hugh, in the past year, I've stood for the following things. I've taken the following positions. I agreed with the President on social security reform. I supported his two Supreme Court nominees, and I support, even though I opposed this war, I support staying the course in Iraq, and doing whatever we have to do in order to stabilize the region.
HH: All right. There are two critical aspects...
JK: So where do you put me on the spectrum?
HH: I'm going to put you as an old liberal with some hope of coming around.
JK: You know, I keep on getting hammered by the left.
HH: Oh, I know, but they're crazy now, Joe, as you write in this book. That's what's so wonderful about it. Your descriptions of the Democratic Party made me chuckle. It's lost. It's off the cliff.
JK: It made me cry.
HH: Now let me go to, two things I want you to explain to people. No one can get through Politics Lost without learning about Turnip Day perhaps a hundred times. And also, John Kenny, not John Tunney, but John Kenny. First, tell people what Turnip Day is all about.
JK: Well, Turnip Day was a phrase that Harry Truman used in his 1948 acceptance speech. Now you remember in '48, nobody thought that Truman was going to get elected president in his own right.
HH: Right.
JK: Tom Dewey was the big favorite. Truman goes to his Democratic convention, his party has shattered, Strom Thurmond has taken the South out of the Democratic Party, the left wing of the Democratic Party has gone off with Henry Wallace. And Truman just throws away his text, and riffs his acceptance speech. He just does it spontaneously. And in the midst of it, he challenges the Republican Congress to come back to Washington on July 26th, and he says which out in Missouri, we call Turnip Day. And he challenges them to pass his agenda. Now the key here is that that phrase, Turnip Day, would never appear in a politician's speech now. But it gave the folks a hint as to who this guy was. He's an old Missouri dirt farmer who sowed his turnips...actually, the rhyme is on the 25th of July, sow your turnips, wet or dry. But nowadays, political consultants and speech writers would take that out. But those are the little hooks, those little bits of humanity that enable us to find out who these people are who would lead us.
HH: You know, I think this is, in fact, the key observation of this book, which every candidate needs to know, which is authenticity is earned through candor, though not too much. And I think it's a brilliant lesson, and you back it up with Bobby Kennedy's appearance on the night of Martin Luther King's assassination, and with many other ones. But before we go there, John Kenny is a name out of nowhere. It's at the end of the book. You're attending a Peter Hart focus group behind the glass. What does Kenny say? And why do you think it's important?
JK: Well, it was the most subversive thing I'd ever seen in a focus group. The question is asked, it's the day after the election. What would you whisper in the President's ear? And this guy, John Kenny, who is a Bush supporter, said my opinion doesn't matter. And at first, nobody knew what he was talking about. But I started to get it. What he was saying was lead us. Don't listen to us. Lead us. Don't follow us. Tell us where we're going, tell us the important stuff that we need to know about the future, and think long term, and lead us.
HH: Now with that background, I want to turn to your assessment at the close of the book of the Bush administration, what you call the Iraq disaster. You say, "The Bush administration is in tatters, and still has three years left to run." Why do you think it's in tatters? Why do you think Iraq is a disaster, Joe Klein?
JK: Well, you know, that's as fresh as today's news. I think there have been a couple of problems with the Bush administration, and my critique of Iraq comes almost exclusively from conversations I've had with active duty uniformed military folks, and people in the intelligence community. I think that one of the big problems in the Bush administration is that we've had too many executives, and not enough managers. And when you take away Karl Rove's policy portfolio, as they did today, that's acknowledging the fact that policy needs to be managed better in the Bush administration, and there has to be much more attention to detail.
HH: But Joe Klein...
JK: The other big problem is that...
HH: I need to go back. How do you evaluate, though, in tatters, and Iraq is a disaster. There's got to be an argument there.
JK: Oh, here's how I evaluate that. I go back to June, 2003. I did a cover story for Time Magazine last Fall with the extensive cooperation of the United States Military. I mean, the Army invited me, their top management off-site. I spoke to a room full of generals, many of whom cooperated, and others in the defense intelligence agency cooperated, and other confidential sources in the military cooperated. And their feeling was that this war strategy, concocted by Rumsfeld, executed by Tommy Franks, and abandoned on May 1st, was a disaster. On May 1st, the same day that Bush landed on the aircraft carrier and declared major combat operations over, Tommy Franks shut down his operations in Qatar, and returned to Tampa. And during the next six weeks, as the insurgency built, we pulled 500 intelligence officers out of Baghdad, leaving Rick Sanchez with only 27. At that same time...so in June, the President is briefed by the CIA for the first time, Don Rumsfeld's in the room, Vice President Cheney's in the room, the CIA says we're facing a full blown insurgency here. So what does the Bush administration do in June of 2003? Well, they do a couple of things. They're obsessed with Joe Wilson, and that's when the whole Valerie Plame business happens. But the second more important thing is, instead of choosing to fight the insurgency, they send 1,200 intelligence officers back to Iraq to look for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
HH: But Joe, we've got about a minute to the break. So let me break in here, though. The assertions you've made about the Bush presidency being in tatters, and Iraq being a disaster, are objective evaluation of facts. Which facts? Not the history of how we got here, but what today leads you to say in tatters, and Iraq is a disaster?
JK: Well, I think Iraq is clearly a disaster, because you're on the brink of civil war there. They can't form a government, and our Army, according to the people I talk to in the Army, is near broken.
HH: Is it because they can't form a government that it's a disaster?
JK: That's part of it.
HH: And do you count the polls as evidence of Bush being in tatters?
JK: I think the fact that many of the initiatives that he has made, many that I've agreed with, by the way, like his immigration plan, and I agreed with him on the Dubai ports deal. He cannot get anything that he wants these days. To me, that's being in tatters.
HH: What about the Chief Justice of the United States, and Judge Alito becoming Justice Alito?
JK: Well, I think that was...you know, I supported him on that. I think that's great.
HH: Pretty big wins.
JK: Hugh, you can't lose them all, but he's been losing a lot lately.
HH: Because I think if you look at...we'll come back to this. If you look at John Kenny's focus group statement, of which you rightly, I think, made so much, what George W. Bush is doing is exactly what Kenny said, which is to lead from the gut, and lead in the direction you think is right, and then time will tell.
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04-19klein2.mp3
HH: Joe, as I was reading the credits, because I love credits, and it seems that you don't know any Republicans, but I love the credits anyway. You single out as your pals...
JK: (laughing) You think I don't know very many Republicans?
HH: (laughing) Well, we got Elaine Kamarck, William Galston, Mandy Grunwald, Adam Walinksy, Richard Holbrooke, Leslie Gelb. They get the first paragraph. I said wow, you run in that East side circle that you talk about in here.
JK: Well, you know, I also run in the kind of faith based circle. In fact, one of Bush's nicknames for me is Mr. Faith Based.
HH: Well, that's good.
JK: And at the very end of the book, I acknowledge Bill Bennett as giving the best advice on how to judge a presidential candidate.
HH: At a Christian Coalition meeting. Yeah, it's a great anecdote.
JK: And Bill's a good friend of mine. But I've kind of got to give these guys cover. You don't want to be praised by what you call a traditional liberal, do you?
HH: I know. You could ruin a lot of reputations. But one thing that struck me, you single out for thanks Richard Holbrooke and Leslie Gelb. And I saw on Charlie Rose last week, you were on with Richard Holbrooke, Leslie Gelb and Peter Beinart. Is that PBS' view of a balanced panel nowadays?
JK: No, actually, it was Richard Holbrooke's view of a panel about why Democratic foreign policy is so screwed up.
HH: Well, you know, they should have invited a couple of Republicans along.
JK: Well, no, I don't think so. I think that there, what Holbrooke tried to do when he was the guest host, was to put together several of us who have been critical of Democratic foreign policy, and talk about it from the Democratic side of the aisle. There are other panels where you could have all Republicans.
HH: I just have never seen them on PBS. But nevertheless, Joe, what I want to talk about is reverse Turnip Days, moments where candidates were not candid, and I think it hurt them. I want to start with an episode I find odd not finding it here in Politics Lost, which is the Florida recount, and the disastrous attempt by Gore and Lieberman to throw out the ballots of the military. Was that not the sort of authentic moment where we saw the soul of the modern Democratic Party on display?
JK: I think that the Florida recount in general...well, first of all, you're right about that. I mean, too often, the default position, especially in the left wing of the Democratic Party, is to not respect the military sufficiently, and to assume that anytime the United States would use force overseas, we would be wrong.
HH: Yup.
JK: I find that really offensive. I would not use force the same way Bush did. I wouldn't have gone into Iraq unilaterally. I would have gone into Iraq for the first Gulf War the way the old man did, but only two Democrats voted for the first Gulf War in the Senate, even though the United Nations had approved it.
HH: I know, it's...
JK: How do you explain that?
HH: You can't, and that's their disability. Second reverse turnip moment, when the Swift Boat Vets attacked Kerry...
JK: Yeah.
HH: They began on the Cambodian mission on Christmas Eve, which Kerry had to then come forward and admit never happened. And they attacked him on his magic hat, the Washington Post story of his CIA adventures. He never got around to that. He never released his Naval records until after the campaign was over. Didn't that give sort of a reverse Turnip Day moment?
JK: No, I think that they swifties were mostly reprehensible. The most important stuff that they questioned him on, which was his heroism under fire, they were wrong. They've been proved wrong.
HH: What about the Cambodia on Christmas Eve mission, Joe? Was that correct?
JK: Listen, I wrote a book about Vietnam veterans, and I've spent a lot of time with Iraq veterans. There ain't a veteran in existence who doesn't either A) get things wrong, or exaggerate a little bit for effect from time to time. On the most basic stuff, on saving his crew's lives, on being a good skipper, Kerry was solid. And the fact that...I'll tell you what I think is really reprehensible. It is the fact that so many of our guys who served in Vietnam, who are now in public life, have had their service questioned.
HH: Well, I agree with that. That's outrageous.
JK: I thought it was disgraceful what Bush did to John McCain in South Carolina.
HH: Well, you write about that. I'm coming to that, because what do you think Bush did to John McCain in South Carolina?
JK: He put up this group of phony veterans who questioned McCain's service...
HH: He's always denied that, correct, Joe?
JK: Yeah, well the campaign always denies it, but...and it's hard to find official ties. But these things seem to go along with Karl Rove campaigns.
HH: Well, again, I...
JK: I mean, the campaign denies push polling, and spreading to the radio talk show hosts in South Carolina, that McCain was the father of a mixed race child.
HH: Again, I just want to note for the record, the Bush people completely deny, and reject with some amount of...
JK: But can I just say this about the President? You were saying this before the break. Let me say that of all the major politicians I've covered in presidential politics in the last two or three times around, he is the most likely to stick with an issue, even if the polls are bad, and to govern from the gut as you said. I don't always agree with the decisions that he makes, but I think he is an honorable man, and when I've criticized him, I've tried to criticize him on the substance, and certainly not on his personality, because I really like the guy.
HH: Let me ask you a couple more before we run low on time. I hope you come back. I could do this for hours, because this book's so rich.
JK: Sure.
HH: When Michael Moore shows up in Jimmy Carter's box, the presidential box...
JK: Disgraceful!
HH: Disgraceful?
JK: Utterly disgraceful. I mean, one of the problems that I have with being called a liberal by someone like you is that there are all these people on the left in the Democratic Party who are claiming to be liberals, and I don't want to be associated with them.
HH: And Michael Moore is one of them?
JK: Oh, yeah. I mean, Michael Moore is reprehensible.
HH: How about when Al Gore shouted he betrayed us, he betrayed us? Was that reverse turnip time?
JK: Yeah, I thought that was pretty terrible. I mean, I think that Democrats have gotten so frustrated by their inability to win elections, that they're beginning to get pretty harsh and stupid.
HH: What's going on at the Daily Kos, and at Atrios, and these left wing bloggers? Do you read them?
JK: Only when they attack me, which is just about every day.
HH: Yes, they do. So what's happened...
JK: You know, last Sunday on Stephanopoulos, I said that we can't keep...that we have to keep the nuclear option on the table when dealing with Iran, if for no other reason than to make them worry a little bit, that we might be so crazy as to use it. That gets translated the next day by a number of left wing bloggers into me supporting a nuclear attack on Iran.
HH: Well, doesn't the Democratic Party have to distance itself from this fever swamp?
JK: Well, I think the Democratic Party has to, and I think the Republican Party has to distance itself from Creationists, and extremists on their side. You know, I was up with Newt Gingrich in New Hampshire last week, and someone asked him about intelligent design. And he said I think it's a perfectly fine philosophy, it just shouldn't be taught in science classes, because it has nothing to do with science. And those are the kind of politicians...I've always really respected Newt, because he's a man of honor, and he is a real policy wonk, and he really cares about stuff.
HH: We're out of time. Joe, will you come back when you're done with the hectic of the book tour?
JK: Sure.
HH: Because I would love to continue this on. In fact, as often as you want, you've got the open invitation to be our responsible Democrat on the show, because they're hard to find. Beinart comes on once in a while, but...
JK: If you call me...by the way, Beinart's book, which is coming out next month, is just excellent.
HH: Well, Peter and I have already been boxing about it. We'll continue. Joe Klein, good luck on the tour. Politics Lost is the book, I'll link it at Hughhewitt.com. The transcript of our interview will be up at Radioblogger.com.
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