Tavis Smiley talks to Carl Bernstein about Obama, Bill Clinton and the Clinton campaign...
pbs.org
original airdate January 23, 2008
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein helped unearth President Nixon's role in the Watergate scandal. He went on to become ABC News' Washington Bureau chief and senior correspondent and a contributing editor at Time and Vanity Fair magazines. He's also a best-selling author, whose books include Loyalties: A Son's Memoir and, his latest, A Woman in Charge—a controversial look at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Earlier in his career, Bernstein covered police and court beats for The Washington Post.
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Tavis: Pleased to welcome Carl Bernstein back to the program. The Pulitzer prize-winning journalist is also a bestselling actor whose latest book is called "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Clinton," now out in paperback. Carl Bernstein joins us from New York. Carl, nice to have you on the program.
Carl Bernstein: Good to be back.
Tavis: You did a new afterward. Let me go to the book first. You did a new afterward for the book, which you did for what reason? A lot's changed since you put the book out, but what, primarily, did you want to get across in the new afterward?
Bernstein: The idea that this campaign of the Clintons has devolved into a kind of campaign for restoration of the Clintons to the White House and also very much is about the role of Bill Clinton. I wrote the afterward in October; I guess it turned out to be a little prescient. It seems to me right now the conduct of the Clinton campaign is in itself perhaps the biggest issue of the campaign, rightfully raised by the Obama campaign itself in terms of what both Bill and Hillary Clinton are doing in terms of seeking restoration to the White House.
Tavis: What about their conduct are you referencing? What concerns you?
Bernstein: It's not about what concerns me. I think we have to look to the question, one, of factual truthfulness, which I'll leave to other reporters to sort out but which certainly ought to be sorted out. Obama has said that the Clintons have misrepresented his positions on a number of issues, which I think is the case, and vice versa, the Clintons have said Obama has misrepresented some of the things that Hillary Clinton has said, and I think all that needs to be sorted out.
But more important than that, the role of Bill Clinton in this campaign increasingly is really, I think, troubling to great numbers of Democrats who are concerned, one, that if indeed Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, so much destruction might have been accomplished in the process that she might not be able to beat the Republican nominee.
But there's also a really interesting question of if Bill Clinton were out campaigning for Obama, if he were not the opponent of his wife, I think a lot of people in the Democratic party now who are saying that Bill Clinton would get Barack Obama elected. He's just the kind of candidate that Bill Clinton would enthusiastically embrace.
Tavis: Let me tell you what I find, quite frankly, nonsensical about that. If Barack Obama ends up being the nominee, that is precisely what Bill Clinton's going to do. So what's your point?
Bernstein: I'm simply reporting what I think is being said within a great swath of the Democratic party today at many levels of the party, that indeed that if Obama is the nominee, sure Bill Clinton will go out and campaign for him, I don't doubt that.
Tavis: Exactly.
Bernstein: But so much damage might well have been done -
Tavis: Like what? Like what kind of damage?
Bernstein: By saying that he doesn't tell the truth, among other things.
Tavis: All right, here's what I also find silly about that. Democrats battle it out every four years - this happens all the time. And Democrats are famous for going at each other. And again, I'm not suggesting that people don't have legitimate points to make about the conduct of the Clintons. I guess my question is, why pile on the Clintons when Democrats do this all the time? They tear each other apart. This ain't nothing new, Carl Bernstein.
Bernstein: I think there's something to what you're saying, but what I'm trying to do is try to be a little reportatorial in what I'm picking up and hearing, not necessarily saying what I believe.
Tavis: Right.
Bernstein: But what I do believe is that we have seen the Clinton campaign evolve in the last few weeks into the kind of campaign that we're used to seeing against Republican right-wing opponents who the Clintons have identified over the years as their enemies. And that it is very much a take-no-prisoners scorched earth campaign, and I think that there are reasons to think that it is causing a fissure within the Democratic Party that might be very damaging in the long run.
Tavis: So what ought Bill Clinton, with his wife fighting for the nomination, what ought he or any other husband do at this point?
Bernstein: No, no. First of all, I think you have to separate Bill Clinton from any other husband. I think what we're talking about here is an ex-president of the United States with tremendous abilities to talk about the best in America, the best in his party, his own accomplishments, the accomplishments of his administration.
And I think in what we've seen in the last few weeks, rather than seeing the best of Bill Clinton we've seen him at his most petulant, we've seen him at his most disingenuous, we've seen the Clinton campaign devolve into a kind of disingenuousness that in the short term might work, but there is going to be some long-term damage.
Tavis: You think the media - let me ask you, not to be reportatorial, to use your word, at this point, but to be Bernsteinian -
Bernstein: That's a good word.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter) Give me your honest opinion whether or not you think, to this conversation we're having now, the media, as the Clintons and other Clinton supporters have suggested, have been much kinder to Obama than they've been to the Clinton camp?
Bernstein: No, I don't think that. I think that in fact it's cut both ways. Each side has had its ability to get forth their message. I think, however, that the campaign strategy itself of the Clinton campaign is perhaps a bigger part of this story, and rightly so. Look, there is no question that there is a certain vagueness, and it's fine, it seems to me, to attack Barack Obama for a vagueness.
Clearly he is running a kind of campaign that is meant to be inspirational, that is not meant to be just about a resume, that is meant to go in a different direction than that of what Hillary Clinton is claiming in terms of experience. As somebody says in the afterward to my book, a very close friend of the Clintons who is named, "Look, Hillary realizes she can't match Barack Obama in the change department, so experience, obviously, is what she is going to run on."
And with that experience comes a sense for some people, I think, that this is a tired exercise, that it goes back to the notion of a certain Clintonian circus, that that's part of the baggage that they carry. And the job of the Clinton campaign is to push away that memory of the circus. And by the circus I don't mean, incidentally, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
What I mean is a kind of constant focus on the personalities of the Clintons, their relationship, how they do business, how they campaign, how they tell the truth or don't tell the truth. And Obama, meanwhile, it seems to me has tried to run a different kind of campaign. It might hearken back to the kind of campaign that Bobby Kennedy ran, which also did not have a lot of specifics.
I'm not saying that one campaign is more valid than the other. Hillary Clinton has real experience, there's no question about that.
Tavis: Let me ask you, though, Carl, since you raised it, how does one effectively run a campaign against vagueness? How do you do that? How do you run a campaign against vagueness?
Bernstein: You be specific about your own plans and you say, "This guy is vague." There's nothing wrong with saying - look, all I'm suggesting is that we in the press particularly need to take a look at exactly what the campaign strategies are of both of these campaigns. And that right now is the real story, and if indeed - let people make up their minds about what is motivating each campaign and who is telling the truth. But let's put out there, what is the strategy?
Tavis: But I guess my question, Carl, is whether or not - I'm just asking your opinion - whether or not the media, to your earlier point, is more focused now on the strategy of the Clinton campaign versus the vagueness of the Obama campaign?
Bernstein: No, I think it's focused on both. I don't think Obama has gotten a free pass. I don't buy this. And in fact, look, you've got to separate out - you can't talk about the media simply as one great big monolith. You've got cable news, you've got broadcast news from the three old-fashioned networks, you have the web, you have the three great newspapers, "The Washington Post", "The New York Times", "The Wall Street Journal", which are in a special class by themselves.
They all do different kinds of reporting. What I'm suggesting, however, is that there needs to be more focus right now on the strategies and reporting what the strategies are inside these campaigns because of what they tell us about the candidates.
The real question, I believe, is that this election probably is going ultimately to turn on voters' perception of the character of the candidates themselves, particularly these two candidates, and their life stories and their fealty or non-fealty to truthfulness, and how they conduct themselves in this campaign. I am suggesting at the same time that I think there is a short-term game that the Clinton campaign is playing and a long-term game that they're playing in terms of Bill Clinton's role.
And that is that they're banking that Bill Clinton is a figure of such affection that in individual states where the Clintons might lose to Obama, they can go in there and attack in such a way that elsewhere in the country it might be helpful to them as it's replayed on television and on the national stage.
Tavis: Well, we will see what comes of the strategies of both of these campaigns in South Carolina this week and of course beyond as we continue to follow the nominating process here for the Democrats and, for that matter, the Republicans as well. Carl Bernstein's new book is "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton." New book in the sense that it is now out in paperback. Carl Bernstein, nice to have you on the program.
Bernstein: Good to be with you. |
