Anything Goes

by Larry King

  ——

  When I started reading and hearing and watching stories about George W. Bush raising a million dollars here and another million dollars there while building a campaign war chest of more than $75 million, I also started to dread the 2000 presidential campaign. Still, pundits would come on the show and say this proves how organized the campaign is and it’s good they are getting the support lined up early and it shows a wide base will back George W. It was probably all true, but I was fearing a coronation. I wanted a competitive race. He makes for a better show and it attracts people to participate.

  The other part of my dread came from the system that was in place to elect the next president. The primaries were front-loaded, meaning if a candidate didn’t have enough electoral votes by Super Tuesday, then he or she was out of luck. And it made me wonder about the couple in Montgomery, Alabama, whose primary didn’t occur until June. If they wanted someone other than the Super Tuesday victors in either party, they too were out of luck. It didn’t seem fair.

  The Republicans, however, came from all sides of their aisle to run for president and I was looking forward to some great sessions with each of them. More so, I was hopeful they would be able to reach the disenfranchised voter. There had to be a spark and if that was ever going to happen, this group, which included Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, John McCain, Gary Bauer, Elizabeth Dole, and Orrin Hatch, was going to deliver. Bill Bradley was campaigning hard to challenge Vice President Gore for the Democratic nomination. And I was starting to think maybe my concern about a coronation was ill-founded.

  Late in the year I traveled to, what else, a fund-raiser for George W. Bush in Nashville to do an interview at a place called the Wild Horse Saloon. And we spent the first few minutes talking about why the Rangers just can’t beat the Yankees. Bush had a good answer: The Yankees were unified as a team. That’s what wins games. Sometimes the simple is the most difficult. Bush had distanced himself from others in his party by calling himself a “compassionate conservative.” And it proved to be a good move, especially after the bad press the Republican leadership had been getting for the past few years. That brought us to the last conversation we’d had about the campaign where he admitted to being concerned about its effect on not just him but his family. He had a good answer on that too:

  BUSH: Well, let me put it this way: I understand what a campaign is about. I know it’s a marathon. I know it takes incredible patience—

  KING: Too long?

  BUSH: —and discipline. It’s long. You bet it’s long. But it’s important for candidates to go through the process because it does two things: One, it shows the American people that the candidate’s got what it takes to become the president. And it shows the candidate, he or she has got what it takes to be president.

  KING: So it should be grueling?

  BUSH: Yes, it should be grueling, you need to be scrutinized and questioned.

  Bush told me the debates were healthy for the candidates as well as for the public. And by the time I spoke with him, the Republican candidates had already debated once. But Bush didn’t participate because of a prior commitment to attend an honorary event for his wife. The excuse didn’t fly with the other candidates and it wasn’t exactly being accepted by reporters I had spoken with, either. But his overall approach to debates was in direct contrast to that of his father, whom I had interviewed just a few weeks earlier.

  BUSH: To George, the family’s important. It’s everything.

  KING: You would have gone if Barbara were being honored and you—

  BUSH: Oh, no question about that.

  KING: No question?

  BUSH: I hated the damn debates anyway.

  KING: But you would have gone?

  BUSH: He did the right thing. I remember different debates when I was running at different times. Four runs for national offices$#8230;and someone’s always telling you to do more debates.$#8230;It’s show business.

  It was the best interview I had ever done with the former president. He was at peace. And he said, other than the staff, he didn’t miss the White House at all. We talked about his years in the Navy in World War II where he served under an admiral named McCain. That’s right, Admiral McCain was the father of the man who was now running against Bush’s son.

  John McCain had already launched his “Straight Talk Express” bus trips in search of voters, which was considered by many reporters to be something new. He made himself available in between campaign stops. The fact was he had done this all along. McCain was always available when I did my late-night radio show to spend a few minutes with me by phone or to sit in the radio booth we had in the Senate and take phone calls on whatever current issue we were talking about that particular day. And he was a frequent guest on the television show as well. I enjoyed having him on because McCain always had nonstop jokes to tell. And nothing was off the record when you talked to him. It went against the norm, which is always the ticket to get noticed. One approach to campaigning was to limit the candidate’s exposure, which, in turn, would create an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation when an appearance was made, and provided an opportunity for the other side to define you. But this wasn’t McCain’s approach—he was always talking. And it was working. Like George W., McCain wasn’t allowing himself to be defined by the Republican party.

  KING: Some people say, Senator, your problem is that you would do better in a general election than in your own party’s primary because you go against your own party’s principles often.

  McCAIN: Well, I’m doing very well with average Republicans. I don’t do very well with the inside-the-Beltway crowd and the top people in the party$#8230;but I think I’m doing well with average Republicans who think they’ve been disconnected from government.

  Unlike four years earlier, I was looking forward to the Republican campaign. There was a degree of unknowing, there were blatant differences, and a good national conversation, or depending on the day, argument, was taking place. It also made my job more interesting when an issue could be debated rather than be just another verse in the song sung by the choir.

  The same fresh air was to be found with both Al Gore and Bill Bradley. They had agreed to a face-to-face debate in New Hampshire in late October, a full three months before that state’s primary. And there were more being scheduled. Gore had proven to everyone he could handle himself in debates. In fact, taking a cue from Barry Goldwater, he suggested Bradley join him on a plane and fly to cities around the country for debates. Gore led in the national polls, but there were problems in New Hampshire. He wanted a chance to change perceptions in the state with the first primary.

  KING: Why would the front-runner challenge the guy who is not the front-runner to debates?

  GORE: This is a new campaign$#8230;I think the competition will be good for us as candidates and I think it will be good for the country.

  Gore told me he was the underdog. It’s a Campaign 101 tactic because if you lower expectations, even the most minute success is considered a groundswell. People are more intrigued with the underdog too. Gore was working all the angles.

  Years earlier, I had interviewed Bill Bradley for his book Life on the Run, which, to this day, is still one of the best sports stories ever written. That’s because a good sports story is rarely about what’s happening on the field or the floor or the rink. It’s about life. And Bradley had spent years as a forward for the New York Knicks. They won the NBA championship in 1970 and 1973. But the story was his experience being a white starting player on a team that traveled around the country. Sports was a small part of that story. And in that first interview it was clear he had aspirations. Let me put it this way: He left the Knicks in 1977 and by 1978 he was a U.S. senator.

  One evening Bill Bradley came on the TV show to talk about an issue the Senate was facing, and we had a few moments to shoot the breeze before going on the air. I’ll never forget this. He leaned over to me while the crew was setting lights and getting a microphone level sayin
g, “Suppose I answer all the questions tonight like a jock?”

  “Bill,” I said, “that ain’t gonna help your cause here.”

  He started in. “Well, Larry, you know what they always say, you’re only as good as your last election. Well, Larry, I play it one vote at a time. Well, Larry, when you get down to it, it’s never just a single senator, it’s the whole team that gets the job done.” He looked at me and smiled. The crew was in absolute hysterics. “Well, Larry,” he started in again, “you know, like I had the vote but you know, I didn’t know which way it was, you know, gonna go, so, you know, I said all that work for, you know, all those years, now’s the time to make it all, you know, come together.” He smiled again and said, “Okay, I’m ready.” I didn’t know where that came from but Bradley didn’t talk like a jock for the rest of the hour.

  ——

  On New Year’s Eve CNN followed the clock across the earth, stopping for just a moment wherever it was midnight. We saw celebrations that used different languages but each used the same word: wow. I hadn’t heard “wow” for a long time. But a new century is probably as good a time as any to say it. Technology probably is a reason we don’t hear the word as often as we used to. Nobody makes plans to attend a World’s Fair anymore. We don’t need them because television and the Internet are a world’s fair of sorts. So maybe that’s why “wow” isn’t used very often.

  I went on the air as the new century began in Rio de Janeiro. People were on the beach cheering and laughing and drinking. And then I went to an entirely different atmosphere. It was Sarnath, India, where 2,500 years earlier, the Buddha began the lesson that we were all part of the same world and what one person does, affects us all. My guest was the Dalai Lama. It was the perfect way to change the calendar even though, for him, this was just another day:

  I think the now modern time, the world becomes smaller and smaller. So under these circumstances, I believe the concept of “we” and “they” as something independent, completely separate, that concept I think, gone. So whole world is just like one entity.

  As I listened to the not-so-perfect English, the Dalai Lama’s words made more sense than most of the words I’d heard all century. I had a job where I could talk with presidents and despots and victims and entertainers. And if the actions of one person can affect how another feels, then maybe the viewer watching the despot can change the next action, or the president’s decision about going to war? Maybe the Buddha had this figured out centuries ago?

  All of us had just come through an extraordinary time. And the actions of a president had affected everyone. Technology played a role, both good and bad. But the decisions were still those of a human being. It’s always going to be that way. And I was looking forward to saying “wow” a few more times, be it because of a president or a triple play. Best of all, no clicker would be needed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Clicker Shock

  January 2000. The speed of these times has spread from the clock to the calendar. Everyone jokes about one election beginning as soon as another election ends. The thing is, it isn’t a joke anymore. In the 1996 presidential election, the Iowa caucus was held on February 12. Four years later it was held in late January. The New Hampshire primary was held on February 20 in 1996 but was bumped up to February 1 in the 2000 campaign. This means the 2004 presidential election will be held in 2003, which makes sense because people will have been campaigning for two years anyway.

  Why do we do this? Because we pay attention to the first primary as if it is going to tell us about the second and the third. I don’t buy it. Campaigns are bad enough and long enough and the United States ranks low enough in voter turnout among democracies that knowing what happens in Iowa means something will happen in Wisconsin is not my idea of a good way to increase voter interest. And if Iowa tells us about November, then nobody’s gonna watch me interview the candidates in October. So there’s a personal thing going on here too.

  Iowa is unimportantly important. It carries a lot of weight because it’s first but the delegate total to either convention is almost insignificant. And in November Iowa offers only seven electoral votes. Like New Hampshire, Iowa is retail politics. A parade of Republicans and two Democrats told Iowans this year what they wanted to do and then asked Iowans to let them do it. Hands were shaken, the voters were able to look the candidates in the eye, and, in some cases, the candidates sat in the voter’s living room to make their case.

  But I have never understood the Iowa caucus. Months of campaigning and millions of dollars are spent here for a meeting that begins at 7:00 P.M. with a result predicted by the networks at 7:01 P.M. And in the days leading up to this event, reporters and producers bitch about the snow while whispering what someone else is saying about such and such a candidate. I hear the same lines every time I get to town. “Did you hear about Keyes saying he’s thinking about saying such and such” or “I’m told Forbes will make a surprise stop at this or that diner and buy lunch for everyone.” Only the names change. Still, it works better this way than if the candidates were decided only by states with huge electoral votes. And that raises the question: Does this first test of the voter say anything about the future? Yes.

  Well, sometimes.

  Iowa has the reputation of being, for the most part, anything but a way of forecasting, unless you view a defeat in the caucus as a hint of good things to come. Now it doesn’t always work that way: Jimmy Carter won Iowa in 1976 and ended up with the job he wanted. But in 1980, George Bush beat Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucus. By November, he had another job but it wasn’t the one he originally wanted. Four years later, just to prove there are no absolutes, the Reagan-Bush team took Iowa. In 1988, Bob Dole beat George Bush in Iowa. Bush won the GOP caucus in 1992 while, who else, Bill Clinton came in fourth on the Democratic side. In 1996, Bob Dole won the Republican race in Iowa, but did so by only three percentage points over Pat Buchanan. But George “Dubya” Bush took the state by the largest margin on record (41 percent of the vote), and he was feeling pretty good when he talked to me minutes after winning the caucus:

  BUSH: I’m extremely happy. Not only am I happy, I’m thrilled. This is a huge victory and it’s a victory of message and organization.

  Although it was a convincing win, I still saw the race as competitive. Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes, who finished second and third respectively, had almost as many votes combined. And John McCain, who was considered Bush’s real competition, hadn’t even shown up to campaign in the state and still got 5 percent. On that cold night in Des Moines, I asked Jeff Greenfield if this had any significance because I sure didn’t know what was happening:

  GREENFIELD: The history of spin is that candidates very rarely come on and say, I’m a little upset with what happened tonight, especially when they won. But what I am saying is, I think there is a small, but palpable danger ahead for George W. Bush, other than the fact that John McCain is leading in New Hampshire.

  Bush continued to call himself a “compassionate conservative” and filed paperwork to trademark the words so that no other candidate would try to jump on the bandwagon. As this happened, Warren Beatty, who was giving thought to making a run himself, said he would trademark the word “liberal.” And as that happened, the Democratic National Committee filed its paperwork to do the same with the phrase “fiscally conservative but socially moderate.” You know, things like this just ruin a guy’s day. I woke up that morning and the first thing I said to Shawn was, “Gee, I got this feeling of being fiscally conservative$#8230;” It was proof the world “has gone mad today—” which may be copyrighted by Cole Porter, now that I think about it. I should look into owning the words “I don’t know,” since I use them all the time.

  My read of the phrase “compassionate conservative” (all note: This is owned by George W. Bush, so what I’m going to do here is just borrow it for one second but he gets all the credit) is that it’s Bush’s attempt to attract voters turned off by the far right wing of the party. And after the
events of the past two years, deserved or not, it was a good move. So when we talked about his definition of the compassionate conservative theme, this led to the abortion question, since that, among other issues like honor, family, trust, and the Second Amendment, occupied the framework of conservative values. Bush stayed on their side:

  KING: Isn’t a fetus a product of a rape or a product of incest still a living thing?

  BUSH: Well, as you know that if the country ever were to come to be voting on a constitutional amendment, then I would support the exceptions. I understand that we’ve got a long way to go there. And so the next president must herald life and explain the value of life to the American people. And that’s what I intend to do.