Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin. And here's the thing. Ed Rollins
Speaker 1: could have been a contender. He was a boxing phenom
Speaker 1: until an injury forced him out. But it wasn't long
Speaker 1: until this fighter got his first gig in politics, working
Speaker 1: as a campaign coordinator for Robert Kennedy in California. Eventually
Speaker 1: he was running Ronald Reagan's re election effort in four,
Speaker 1: Ross Perot's campaign in nine two that lasted two months,
Speaker 1: and Mike Huckabee is in two thousand seven. Ed Rollins
Speaker 1: has worked on six presidential campaigns. He's one of the
Speaker 1: guys in the back room, coming up with a strategy,
Speaker 1: making deals and telling candidates wind to duck and wind
Speaker 1: a jab. Rollins is known for being honest and direct,
Speaker 1: which brings him admiration and trouble, sometimes big trouble. Just
Speaker 1: over a week after helping Christine Todd Whitman win election
Speaker 1: as govern of New Jersey, Rollins himself claimed the campaign
Speaker 1: had paid black ministers to suppress black turnout. Later, the
Speaker 1: straight Shooter explained his remarks by saying, quote, I was
Speaker 1: talking trash fifteen years ago. Ed Rollins declared enough, no
Speaker 1: more politics for him. He wrote his memoir thirty years
Speaker 1: in the business, he had a baby daughter. He wanted
Speaker 1: a different life, but something kept pulling ed Rollins back in.
Speaker 1: He's worked from Mike Huckabee and two months ago he
Speaker 1: left Michelle Backman's campaign. Today, Rollins says, the political landscape
Speaker 1: is entirely different. But when he started, once a primary
Speaker 1: was over, even if it was an ideological difference, which
Speaker 1: has always been kind of an establishment art in the
Speaker 1: conservative element of the party, the operatives got together, you know,
Speaker 1: winning was important. You didn't carry grudges. You know, you
Speaker 1: basically put it together, where Democrats obviously had the big
Speaker 1: ideological fights and and uh never came together. And now
Speaker 1: the republic can tell the ideological we have the ideological fights.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's changed dramatically is the role of
Speaker 1: the consultants versus the role of the party in yours
Speaker 1: so well, in your lifetime, in my lifetime, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to run for office, you basically hire someone like me.
Speaker 1: They can run a campaign, and I in turn hire
Speaker 1: a media person that can do your television, and I
Speaker 1: hire a fundraiser that can go raising. That what's happening more,
Speaker 1: that's that's absolutely what's happening is. I mean, people always
Speaker 1: say to me, well, why don't the party bosses step
Speaker 1: in here? All there's no party boss. When did that
Speaker 1: start to change? Probably in the seventies, uh and maybe
Speaker 1: even the late sixties. And the people who would run
Speaker 1: Nixon's campaign and had run Kennedy's campaign were all their pals.
Speaker 1: They were people who had been their aids on the hill.
Speaker 1: They weren't professionals. There were people who basically wrote Kennedy's speeches,
Speaker 1: ran Nixon's office. They didn't make a living doing this.
Speaker 1: They basically believed in the man. And then they went
Speaker 1: somewhere in the government worked. Then it started changing somewhat.
Speaker 1: And of course the big change was the money. After
Speaker 1: the seventy two camp pin where you know, Nixon smashed
Speaker 1: McGovern spent over two hundred million dollars, probably a hundred
Speaker 1: million of it illegal. He knuked him, He knuked him,
Speaker 1: he deliberately knuked him. After that, you know, you saw
Speaker 1: the development of a lot more of the operatives, and
Speaker 1: you know it's now thousands of operatives across the country.
Speaker 1: Every time you turn on the TV set, you see
Speaker 1: you know, Republican strategist, Democrats strategist, and I've been in
Speaker 1: the game for four decades, um one of eight members
Speaker 1: of the Political Consultants Hall of Fame. I've seen them all,
Speaker 1: but I don't even know what these people are. You know,
Speaker 1: what do you think that there are? Are they ideologically
Speaker 1: or in terms of party affiliation? Is that they're call
Speaker 1: to duty or are they really just mercenaries in there
Speaker 1: for high They're not mercenary. Very few people really make
Speaker 1: money in the business. The media guys make some money,
Speaker 1: and they're about the only ones that do. Most people
Speaker 1: go into it because they sort of believe in somebody
Speaker 1: or something. But you pretty much stay one party of
Speaker 1: the other. You stay at Democratic, you stay a Republican.
Speaker 1: You see very little cross over. The only time is
Speaker 1: crossed over. I crossed over. But I just think, I mean,
Speaker 1: very early on when you were did you know? I did? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know from what kind of house? I grew up
Speaker 1: in a Boston Irish Catholic household. My father had moved
Speaker 1: to California and the station there briefly in the war.
Speaker 1: We went to California and uh town again, town called Valeo,
Speaker 1: which is just north of San Francisco. UH and it's
Speaker 1: a blue collar shipyard town was a wonderful place to
Speaker 1: grow up because everybody's old man worked in the shipyard.
Speaker 1: Anybody who had any money had been bootleggers, would run
Speaker 1: the whorehouses during the war. You know, it was just
Speaker 1: everybody else. You know, it was the west. Where was
Speaker 1: a house? Where's your old man work? You know, works
Speaker 1: in the shipyard, you know, And they built all this
Speaker 1: public housing so you live next to African Americans and
Speaker 1: played ball with him in Mexicans. And it was a
Speaker 1: classless society. So for me, it was a wonderful uh.
Speaker 1: You know, my friends are every color, and every city
Speaker 1: had never thought any of it. But it was all Democrats.
Speaker 1: There was no I mean, I think there weren't ten
Speaker 1: Republicans of the entire town. So needless to say, it
Speaker 1: was an experience. When I became a prominent Republican nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, I shifted kind of a you know, it's
Speaker 1: the war was a variety of things, uh, and I
Speaker 1: just felt that the Democratic Party was too left for
Speaker 1: me at that point in time. I had real guilt
Speaker 1: feelings about the war. Travis Air Force Base, with ever
Speaker 1: bringing the Vietnam kids back the bodies, you know, it's
Speaker 1: ten miles from my house. I broke my back playing football,
Speaker 1: and so I tried to go the service, couldn't go,
Speaker 1: and so I had these real heavy pangs of guilt
Speaker 1: where I saw friends go and some die and some
Speaker 1: be mangled. At that point in my life, I thought
Speaker 1: those guys and Warsing are smart guys. You know, they
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. Having spent twenty five years in
Speaker 1: Washington and highest levels, I now know they don't, you know,
Speaker 1: But at that point in time, I thought they did.
Speaker 1: The Nixon was the first campaign I worked on at
Speaker 1: seventy two. I've done a Bobby Kennedy man in probably
Speaker 1: if he would have lived, I probably would have stayed
Speaker 1: a Democrat. And then when I became a Republican, I
Speaker 1: tried to change the Republican Party and make it a
Speaker 1: working people's party. I was sort of architect of the
Speaker 1: Reagan Democrat, which was sort of what I grew up
Speaker 1: and sort of what you grew up. So that switched
Speaker 1: for you. Kennedy's assassinated in sixty eight and Nixon becomes president.
Speaker 1: You weren't signed on to Nixon, so to speak. I
Speaker 1: was not signed on sixty eight at all. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: How does your association with Bachmann begin? What's the genesis
Speaker 1: of that? How does that work? Did they call you?
Speaker 1: They they call you. You You know, I don't run campaigns
Speaker 1: for a living. I sort of do friends from time
Speaker 1: to time, or I try and be a change agent
Speaker 1: for the party. I'll take on an African American candidate
Speaker 1: who doesn't have any resources to broaden the base, or
Speaker 1: woman candidate. I was going to do my Cuckabees campaign.
Speaker 1: I had run his campaign four years ago, and I
Speaker 1: thought I had a real shot at it, and so
Speaker 1: I spent six eight months with him trying to get
Speaker 1: a real campaign together for him on like the one
Speaker 1: we had last time. So when he made a determination
Speaker 1: not to run, you know, I'd sort of put a
Speaker 1: team together, put a strategy together a little bit, and
Speaker 1: and I was trying to think, Okay, is there anybody
Speaker 1: else they could fit that model? And Bachman came to
Speaker 1: me several times, came to me. I didn't have a
Speaker 1: good first initial reaction to her. There's a little high
Speaker 1: strong house members, very difficult to you know, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not I've done Katherine Harris's campaign when she ran
Speaker 1: for the Senate, and there was. There was too much
Speaker 1: similarity there. So I turned her down and I said
Speaker 1: to her, you know, the only way I'll do a
Speaker 1: campaign at this point in my life is and you'll
Speaker 1: understand this totally. Ronald Reagan was the best candidate ever.
Speaker 1: And Ronald Reagan once said to me, you have to
Speaker 1: understand you're my director. He knew what his part was.
Speaker 1: He knew, you know, he understood that someone had hit
Speaker 1: the mark. Someone has to see the whole picture as
Speaker 1: opposed to you know, you do it, You're you're concentrating
Speaker 1: on your part, but someone has to see them all
Speaker 1: the other elements of it. And so ever since then,
Speaker 1: I've always said that I'm the director. I've done this
Speaker 1: a lot of times. So I said, there the only
Speaker 1: way I'll do this is if I can pick my team.
Speaker 1: It's your campaign. Obviously, won't do anything you're not happy with,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, I gotta run it.
Speaker 1: If you want to run it, then find you go
Speaker 1: run it, you know, and I'll go back home. So,
Speaker 1: you know, she came back to me and she said,
Speaker 1: it's yours, you run it. You do whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do with that was that was pretty good for
Speaker 1: about six or eight weeks and then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously we won the straw poll and no time in
Speaker 1: Iowa and I when she came back again, what changed?
Speaker 1: What changed I think was partly she had become a
Speaker 1: national figure and so everyone wanted her to go to
Speaker 1: Florida and South Carolina. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what I kept trying to tell her, your ticket out
Speaker 1: is Iowa. Romney's the front runner at that point in time,
Speaker 1: and they'll be a chaser, and the chaser will come
Speaker 1: out of Iowa or normally New Hampshire, but Romney is
Speaker 1: gonna win to Hampshire. So the only place for you
Speaker 1: to get your ticket out, sort of like the the
Speaker 1: Final sixty four basketball about how great your team is.
Speaker 1: You gotta win every week, and I was the first week.
Speaker 1: And the Giuliani example four years ago was the perfect example.
Speaker 1: Leading in every pole, decides I'm gonna skip everything and
Speaker 1: go to Florida and got nothing. Fred Thompson the same way,
Speaker 1: got nothing. What's happened? Do you think? To Bockman During
Speaker 1: the race, there were all these questions about, you know,
Speaker 1: her provenance and these schools she went doing, her teachers
Speaker 1: and their religious use and so forth. None of that
Speaker 1: bothered you. None of that As an ideological Christian conservative.
Speaker 1: I'm a Catholic. I'm like you, you know, and I
Speaker 1: get to struggle with my own faith every day, and
Speaker 1: I'm very private. It's very room exactly, and that's the
Speaker 1: way it is. You know. I had a little bit
Speaker 1: of experience with it last time with Huckabee. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a Baptist minister, and he would go in
Speaker 1: the churches on Sunday and just flick a switch. The
Speaker 1: politics of the week shut down on Sundays. He could
Speaker 1: go in there and give this extraordinary sermon and then
Speaker 1: the switch went back on. He never took the sermon
Speaker 1: out of the church into the politics. And in her
Speaker 1: particular case, what I said to her early on, as
Speaker 1: I said, okay, everybody in this race is against Obama. Okay,
Speaker 1: so saying you're against Obama against Obamacare all arrest. It's
Speaker 1: all fine, well and good, except it doesn't move you forward.
Speaker 1: What you have to say is I want to abolish Obamacare,
Speaker 1: and here's what I want to put in his place.
Speaker 1: And I could never get to that hurdle. She liked
Speaker 1: the applause lines the Tea Party type stuff, and and
Speaker 1: I think part of it was she just wasn't wee
Speaker 1: the campaign together very quickly. These things take a year
Speaker 1: of preparation, and we didn't have that. What happened with Huckaby?
Speaker 1: Do you think I think he basically he had come
Speaker 1: right out of the governorship. It was sort of like
Speaker 1: the next thing to do. Not that anybody gets heart
Speaker 1: at this time. His heart wasn't in it, you know,
Speaker 1: my senses. He'd have been a great candidate. I was
Speaker 1: convinced it was going to be a duel between Huckaby
Speaker 1: and Round. It would have been, I'm telling you would
Speaker 1: about it would have been Mono and Mono, and I
Speaker 1: had it all strategized, and that's what that us. That's
Speaker 1: why I had it. And I knew that my game,
Speaker 1: and I had spent two years thinking about it, you know.
Speaker 1: But as I said to him, I can't want it
Speaker 1: more than you want it. Good point. And do you
Speaker 1: find sometimes you do? I love the game. But it's
Speaker 1: amazing how you said that, to say you're against Obamacare
Speaker 1: and not step up and uh and offer your alternative.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how many politicians on both sides of the
Speaker 1: aisle underestimate it just doesn't do enough for you to say,
Speaker 1: you know, kill Obama, so to speak to his administration.
Speaker 1: You made a come and in an interview you were
Speaker 1: giving which as you said, you know, was Kane a
Speaker 1: serious guy or was he just an entertainer? And then
Speaker 1: you said, does he have the temperament to be president?
Speaker 1: Is that in your mind one of the key elements
Speaker 1: of the temperament of being president is being able to
Speaker 1: create policy and have ideas well, it's it's I worked
Speaker 1: for four presidents, uh, and I've spent you know, eight
Speaker 1: ten years of my life in a White House in
Speaker 1: twenty five years of my life around and go through
Speaker 1: all four and describe how they were in terms of
Speaker 1: their own authorship of public policy. Nixon was brilliant, very
Speaker 1: aggressive mentally and and gets a great credit on the
Speaker 1: foreign policy arena, but he did great things on the
Speaker 1: domestic He created an e p A. You know, Ford
Speaker 1: was been a decent house leader. You know, it was
Speaker 1: sort of an accident. Not the temperament for the president's
Speaker 1: not the big picture he was not. He was not
Speaker 1: a big big picture guy. You know. Carter obviously was
Speaker 1: was not someone I worked for, but I got to
Speaker 1: watch him up close, and I he problem. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a micromanager. He was an engineer, and he
Speaker 1: wanted he wanted to manage everything. And the reality of
Speaker 1: the president isn't a management job. The president is an
Speaker 1: inspire rational job, and he sets a direction. He has
Speaker 1: four or five big decisions to make every day. If
Speaker 1: you have an inability to make decisions, then they basically
Speaker 1: stack up on you. And he thought Carter was weak
Speaker 1: on that. I thought Carter was a micromanager. I thought
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton overthought it. Bill Clinton had an ongoing seminar,
Speaker 1: but he was viewed as a very decisive guy. You
Speaker 1: think that that's an unfair Uh, let me just say this.
Speaker 1: I think Bill Clinton became a much better president as
Speaker 1: time went on, and I think as we reflect back
Speaker 1: on his presidency, there's not many people in America who
Speaker 1: wouldn't rather have him than who we have today. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean he wouldn't be a very viable candidate again.
Speaker 1: You know, he was a charming man. He had a
Speaker 1: great ability to make people feel good about themselves. You
Speaker 1: know Reagan, who I worked for and was closest to. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Reagan had a core of beliefs that he
Speaker 1: had like you, In addition to having a career, he
Speaker 1: basically was interested in politics for thirty years. He thought
Speaker 1: on paper people underestimated his intelligence. He read, he wrote,
Speaker 1: He knew who he was, and he had three major principles,
Speaker 1: four major principles of things that he wanted to do.
Speaker 1: One is he was been fighting communists since his days
Speaker 1: in all I would so he made a gigantic investment
Speaker 1: to rebuild the defenses the country so that the Soviets
Speaker 1: would treat us with respect, just to throw for for
Speaker 1: arguments like the liberal side to this, I've seen this
Speaker 1: going cycles where you have a lull crisis of the spirit,
Speaker 1: so to speak, after the Vietnam War, and we do
Speaker 1: collapse defense spending, and that's a mistake. But then Reagan
Speaker 1: comes and starts to ramp up defense spending again. For
Speaker 1: my money, we probably would have less of a swing
Speaker 1: of the penduluman if the wars themselves weren't such a
Speaker 1: waste of time. My question for you is did you
Speaker 1: think that the Vietnam War amounted to anything? Certainly not today.
Speaker 1: I mean, what what had amount to is that fifty
Speaker 1: plus men were killed and we divided this country. What
Speaker 1: impact did it have on our lives at all? It had.
Speaker 1: It had a terrible impact because it divided America, and
Speaker 1: I think to a certain extent as you'd reflect back,
Speaker 1: and I was very pro Vietnam War because my father
Speaker 1: had been in the service. Everybody around me was in
Speaker 1: the service. So it was a real basic my country
Speaker 1: right around, my country, my country right or wrong. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, you know, my
Speaker 1: sense is I'm very close to military people. I have
Speaker 1: great affection for them. Both my brother and my father
Speaker 1: were servicemen. But I saw that the tragic stuff that
Speaker 1: happened at the end of the day, I like the
Speaker 1: pile doctrine. Cap Weinberger basically asked the flag officers who
Speaker 1: had been the captains and the majors in Vietnam to
Speaker 1: give us rules. Tell us what are the rules of engagement?
Speaker 1: Those four things I remember exactly. Don't ever go to
Speaker 1: war where the US doesn't have a real interest, Don't
Speaker 1: ever go to war unless we have American support behind it.
Speaker 1: Always go with overwhelming force so that our troops did
Speaker 1: not put a disadvantage. And always have an exit strategy.
Speaker 1: Have we had that in these last two wars? No,
Speaker 1: we did not. We had it in the first Iraq
Speaker 1: the Kuwait War. We went with overwhelming force. We yeah
Speaker 1: going in Afghanistan. Giving that government the opportunity to give
Speaker 1: up the bin Laden, getting the Taliban out of there
Speaker 1: was a worthwhile effort. In hindsight, who cared about Iraq?
Speaker 1: It didn't matter. You know. We look at these two
Speaker 1: wars and I think to myself, if I was the president,
Speaker 1: forget about Iraq, I would have assassinated Saddam Hussein later
Speaker 1: on somehow, or taken him prisoner and put him on trial.
Speaker 1: But I would have built the mother of all military
Speaker 1: basis right because Pakistan is the enemy. Pakistan is the
Speaker 1: most dangerous country. I would build the mother of all
Speaker 1: military basis right on the Pakistani board of But while
Speaker 1: I was doing that, I would fly around the world
Speaker 1: and I would get the leaders of the most reliable
Speaker 1: allies who had some funds, and I'd say to them,
Speaker 1: you must give us something. We're gonna have a coalition
Speaker 1: of twelve or fourteen countries, and if you don't, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make your life miserable. I wanted to have half
Speaker 1: a million men on the ground in Afghanistan. You know,
Speaker 1: leaflet the whole place, say get out, We're coming and
Speaker 1: drawing them, and if they make one move, we don't
Speaker 1: like we go when we just crushed Pakistan with five people.
Speaker 1: What do you think of that idea? Uh, it's for
Speaker 1: Hollywood liberals, it's pretty darn good. But I know, I
Speaker 1: know that's where terrorism that is there. I think I
Speaker 1: think the battle against terrorism is an ongoing war, and
Speaker 1: I think to a certain extent, we need to continue it. Uh.
Speaker 1: My fear of this whole thing. And you know, as
Speaker 1: you look in the future as a strategist, you alway,
Speaker 1: I always try and look to the future, the next region.
Speaker 1: We all focus right now in them at least, But
Speaker 1: the Pacific is really the big region. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the China, but China, you know, Japan, Vietnam, all these
Speaker 1: all these emerging countries. And I have a Chinese daughter.
Speaker 1: I adopted a child from China, and China twenty times.
Speaker 1: I love China. China is not a military threat to
Speaker 1: us at this point in time. China is building submarines
Speaker 1: to protect their assets. They've never been an invading country.
Speaker 1: They're a country that basically, you know, in the absurdity
Speaker 1: of US was talking about the emerging China. China has
Speaker 1: been there for five thousand years, you know, right and
Speaker 1: and or any place else say that they have watched
Speaker 1: us emerged. They have not watched, you know, and they
Speaker 1: watched many countries come and fall. My sense is every
Speaker 1: time China build an aircraft carrier, we don't have to
Speaker 1: go nuts and worry about going to war. You know.
Speaker 1: For me, it's my country, right or wrong, but never unfunded.
Speaker 1: And that is that the problem in our society today
Speaker 1: is that we need to raise taxes. Do you believe
Speaker 1: we need to raise taxes. I believe we need to
Speaker 1: raise revenue. So beyond taxes. However we raise revene, well
Speaker 1: you get people back to work. No one has come
Speaker 1: forth with a plan to me to show me how
Speaker 1: raising taxes basically does any of the rest of it,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I find it appalling today when
Speaker 1: you read in the in the New York Post. You know,
Speaker 1: all the major corporations that you know are not paying taxes.
Speaker 1: I mean, they got all the loopholes in the world.
Speaker 1: So to me, I'd eliminate all the loopholes, I would,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think everybody's going to pay something.
Speaker 1: Everybody has to pay something, and and and I think
Speaker 1: every well, I think every American would want to pay something,
Speaker 1: even if it's fifty or a hundred buck minimum at
Speaker 1: the end of at the end of your bill, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't have the taxes the corporations are not paying
Speaker 1: is merely going towards executive pay, which has become Ye,
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it's it's it's obscene. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I mean the idea that
Speaker 1: I teach it houstro These young kids that are that
Speaker 1: are great kids. You know, your your neck of the
Speaker 1: woods out there, you know, blue collar kids going out
Speaker 1: of school can't find jobs. That eliminates hope. And somehow
Speaker 1: we have to we have to fix that. You asked
Speaker 1: me about Reagan earlier. Reagan leaved deeply in this country,
Speaker 1: and he inspired this country, and he made Americans feel
Speaker 1: good about themselves again. He was proud of America, got
Speaker 1: up every day, was proud of America. To me, Reagan,
Speaker 1: because I have a very different view of Reagan than
Speaker 1: you do. He was a failed actor who in my business,
Speaker 1: what happened. You become ripe and you fall from that
Speaker 1: tree and you go and he went into this other
Speaker 1: field because it was a role for him to play.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, when you say Reagan made people feel
Speaker 1: good about themselves, I except where some people see that.
Speaker 1: But what Reagan said to our society was, if it's
Speaker 1: your choice between you having a swimming pool and you've
Speaker 1: worked really really hard and some poor person getting some
Speaker 1: public entitlement or going to school, what have you? Damn
Speaker 1: it all, you should have your swimming pool. The government's
Speaker 1: making that choice for you. And Reagan seduced a whole
Speaker 1: generation of Americans into believing you should have what you
Speaker 1: want more than they should have what they need, and
Speaker 1: don't feel guilty. Well I think that's yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's overstated. I mean, obviously you're entitled your point of view.
Speaker 1: Reagan grew up in the generation as did I. I'm
Speaker 1: sixty eight. My old man said, you're going to college.
Speaker 1: I don't care what you made your and but you're
Speaker 1: going to college. And when I had that education, my
Speaker 1: life was going to be better than my father's life.
Speaker 1: And obviously it has been. Uh, and that was the
Speaker 1: dream and and uh, you know, I mean I get changed,
Speaker 1: it's changed, and and that's and that's the scary part
Speaker 1: today you have a daughter. I have a daughter. I
Speaker 1: look in the eyes of my daughter at the world,
Speaker 1: and I once said, when she was an infant, I said,
Speaker 1: I hope somedays she doesn't regret the fact that we
Speaker 1: took her out of China. You know. And at that
Speaker 1: time it was a ridiculous statement to make, because China
Speaker 1: was never gonna be anything Johnas did an extraordinary country.
Speaker 1: You might have been better off the oortunity opportunities she's
Speaker 1: she's taking Chinese, uh, but she can state college right
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's lived a great life and she's a one old
Speaker 1: she's Si Steam and she's the joy of my life.
Speaker 1: But it just, I guess the thing that bothers me
Speaker 1: the most. I first went to Warston in February nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three. When I went there, there was plenty partisan
Speaker 1: but there was a social environment to it. You don't
Speaker 1: you didn't hate each other, and and and and you know,
Speaker 1: Teddy Kennedy and and and and you shook hands, you
Speaker 1: went on yet to drink. Chris Matthew is a perfect example.
Speaker 1: He was Tip O'Neil's press secretary. You know, I yelled
Speaker 1: at him four or five times. On the course. Today
Speaker 1: we'd go and have a drink with great friends today.
Speaker 1: You know, today there's a bitterness, there's a hatred, you know.
Speaker 1: I think part of it is going to the too. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nixon was part of its impeachment. I think the ugliness
Speaker 1: began more. It started then, and then it became the
Speaker 1: combination of the gym rights and the and the new gingrich.
Speaker 1: That was the real battle, and not just knocking out
Speaker 1: of president. We knocked out a speaker on a BS deal.
Speaker 1: Wasn't like he was taking hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: of stupid book deal, petty theft at best, and not
Speaker 1: even theft. Then what happened as they started drawing the
Speaker 1: lines in a way that basically you couldn't have competition.
Speaker 1: So now that's become an industry, hasn't it? This kind
Speaker 1: of this kind of intel which brings us to Kane.
Speaker 1: You know, with this particular primary season for the Republicans,
Speaker 1: you've got a guy or a woman for that matter,
Speaker 1: who are really they're at the top and they're looking good,
Speaker 1: and then it's a bright shining day for them, and
Speaker 1: then within a week or two they're gone like Kane.
Speaker 1: Is this the condition for all people in your profession?
Speaker 1: The political advisor you're working with someone you know, everybody's
Speaker 1: got something in their closets. Do you think Cane's people
Speaker 1: they obviously knew about this restaurant. He doesn't have a
Speaker 1: real campaign, can get in this kind of on a lark.
Speaker 1: He never expected to be a front runner. He never
Speaker 1: expected he's weighing it. He's weighing it, and he's winging
Speaker 1: it on substance. Uh, he didn't put the time in.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a team. His team is second tier
Speaker 1: at best. Where you know, I mean the hat. He
Speaker 1: had an advisor, a legit operation and advisor, as you
Speaker 1: would understand that they might have done this. The first
Speaker 1: the first thing I do in every campaign, and started
Speaker 1: when I was running assembly races in California where you do.
Speaker 1: I would sit down and I'd say, Alex, you want
Speaker 1: to run for the Assembly. I want to check for
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars printiple don't call me Alex, excuse me, okay,
Speaker 1: mayor Baldwin mayor Bowen, Uh, Mr Bowen. The first thing
Speaker 1: I do is ask you for five thousand dollars. And
Speaker 1: I'd say what, I'm gonna hire a private detective and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go find out everything I can about you.
Speaker 1: And I have Kennedy said, wellhy are you gonna do that?
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do it on him too. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, all he has to do
Speaker 1: is right at check, I have to come after. The
Speaker 1: first thing I do is I sit down and I say,
Speaker 1: pretend I'm your priest. You confess all your confess all
Speaker 1: your sent I will tell you what their mortal of you.
Speaker 1: You're not capable of making drink for your own good.
Speaker 1: I've heard it all, you know, I don't care. Just
Speaker 1: it's a and they always lie, yeah, and they always lie.
Speaker 1: And when then it does come out, they go, you know,
Speaker 1: I never thought that was gonna happen. Now, how could
Speaker 1: you be a CEO of a trade? This is not
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, This is not a gigantic organization. And you
Speaker 1: have to not one but two and you're part and
Speaker 1: probably other things that were you know, uh didn't even
Speaker 1: come to charge and and and you wouldn't say the
Speaker 1: first thing you would say, hey, can we check this
Speaker 1: out or can we go look at it? So it's
Speaker 1: amateur our I mean, obviously he's not going to be
Speaker 1: the nominee of the party, and it wasn't even if
Speaker 1: this hadn't come about. It's a sad thing for the party,
Speaker 1: sad thing for him at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, an articulate African American is a
Speaker 1: very important thing for the Republican Party because we don't
Speaker 1: have any. And I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, he may survive this trauma, but he's not
Speaker 1: going to survive this in the sense of being a
Speaker 1: viable candidate. Do you think that Perry has any shot
Speaker 1: of the nomination? Right? If I was perry strategist, Perry
Speaker 1: has twenty million dollars at least sitting there who's doing
Speaker 1: well with money, doing well with money. But he's still
Speaker 1: a Texas governor. But all he has to do is
Speaker 1: win two states. He has to win ioways to win
Speaker 1: South Can you think he will? Who? Do you pretty
Speaker 1: well win South Carolina? Whoever wins Iowa? Or do you
Speaker 1: think they'll go hand to him? They do? I think
Speaker 1: you do? Think so? Do they always? They sometimes not?
Speaker 1: Sometimes they don't. I think that Romney will win I
Speaker 1: and Perry woman suck if Romney wins which which he
Speaker 1: could he could. He's got great strength there. He wins that,
Speaker 1: he wins New Hampshire. He's on his way. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. More
Speaker 1: from my conversation with Ed Rollins in a minute. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin. You're listening to. Here's the thing I'm
Speaker 1: talking with Ed Rollins. Obviously, in the in the Whitman campaign,
Speaker 1: there was the voter suppression issue that you had to
Speaker 1: deal with, And I'm wondering what did you learn from
Speaker 1: that experience and how do you think that's played out now?
Speaker 1: Meaning do you think that's still an issue when race
Speaker 1: is now well walking around? Money is still an issue.
Speaker 1: My mistake there was not that I had done to
Speaker 1: describe that mistake. What had happened is with the public
Speaker 1: finance race. Florida did not have good relations. Ships was
Speaker 1: the Floria was running against Whitman. He was that he
Speaker 1: was the Democratic coming to governor. He had run out
Speaker 1: of money. What happened to him? He was a good
Speaker 1: governor from a Democrat perspective, but he wasn't very charismatic.
Speaker 1: So what happened is we had money to go into
Speaker 1: the community and basically have walking around money. And the
Speaker 1: differences when Democrats go out and basically say I want
Speaker 1: you to turn out your churches, your bus drivers, all
Speaker 1: the rest of it. We go out and say here's
Speaker 1: the pay day you would normally get just you know,
Speaker 1: don't turn your vote out. Uh. How did you feel
Speaker 1: about the paying people not to vote? I didn't feel
Speaker 1: I was paying people not to vote. I felt I
Speaker 1: was paying people who always get a check on election day, uh,
Speaker 1: not to do their job. If people wanted to go vote,
Speaker 1: they could go vote. I'm always for people voting. You know,
Speaker 1: I've spent my life and I believe in democracy and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the bottom line is just whoever
Speaker 1: votes votes. But in this particular case that there was
Speaker 1: an opportunity. It was very close election. I was doing
Speaker 1: a press briefing two weeks after, nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the Whitman race. A reporter asked me, how did she
Speaker 1: get the vote? And how how do we have to
Speaker 1: get out the vote? Uh? And I explained to it.
Speaker 1: It became a big story because we because it did
Speaker 1: look like you were paying people and we were not.
Speaker 1: But Carvel and Begala, those guys in the in the clowns,
Speaker 1: they pounced on it, and they basically hammered me. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a tough game. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you know, my own party hammered me a
Speaker 1: little bit. I had gone off and done paro and
Speaker 1: so I was sort of the trader who came back
Speaker 1: and uh, and I was not close to Bush at
Speaker 1: the end because I had been Jack Kemp's can you
Speaker 1: know a lot of little stuff that came into it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, you got women elected. I got women elected.
Speaker 1: I know the game. I know how to make it work.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason I know the game is
Speaker 1: I was trained as a Democrat. I was I started
Speaker 1: in the coalitional politics by Jess underw you know, and
Speaker 1: and uh and Jess under who ran all the campaigns
Speaker 1: in California, and Kennedy. It was Kennedy's guy in California
Speaker 1: told me there were three things that matter, and he said,
Speaker 1: it sounds very simple, but it's not very simple. You
Speaker 1: find your voter, you communicate with your voter, you get
Speaker 1: into the polls. If you're doing anything else besides those
Speaker 1: three things, you're wasting your time. When I watch you
Speaker 1: on TV, and you're I mean, you seem like a
Speaker 1: tough guy, and you seem like a very, very capable guy.
Speaker 1: At the same time, you don't seem to me like
Speaker 1: you're in some line with at water and row. I'm not.
Speaker 1: Why do I feel that way about it? I'm not.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a different history. I call it
Speaker 1: the way I see it. My mouth has got me
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble over the years because I
Speaker 1: have been too honest. And you asked me a question,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you the best answer I can. You know,
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, I'm an American.
Speaker 1: You know, I get up every day. I don't think
Speaker 1: of myself as a Republican. That's not the first thing.
Speaker 1: I think of myself as a father, And then the
Speaker 1: second thing, I think of myself as a husband. And
Speaker 1: no matter how diametrically opposed you and I, maybe if
Speaker 1: we really sat here for hours, we would enjoy each
Speaker 1: other's company, and at the end of the day, we'd
Speaker 1: get up and we'd go try and make America better place.
Speaker 1: That's how I got into politics. Those are the kinds
Speaker 1: of people I was Asham. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, I was a fighter. I was. I was
Speaker 1: been a fighter all my life. I've never been a hater.
Speaker 1: I'm not a hater. You and I will probably both
Speaker 1: go to the grave disagreeing about Ronald Ray, which is okay,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to say thank you so much. I
Speaker 1: get to heaven, he'll be did agree. Oh God, I
Speaker 1: hope I have a private cabin. Then this is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.