by Larry King
And a year later it happened again, but this time, it was about credentials. For Earth Day, ABC brought actor Leonardo DiCaprio (who was absolutely fantastic in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) to the White House for an interview about environmental issues with President Clinton. All hell broke lose. What is an actor going to ask the president of the United States? How many softball questions are going to come out of this? There are many capable reporters who would love to sit down with Bill Clinton and ask questions and, instead, the White House agrees to a lightweight Q and A session with a pretty face. I kept thinking to myself, “Wait a second. Are people who have a White House credential the only people who can ask questions? DiCaprio cares about these issues.” There was jealousy going on here. It reminded me of my own experience eight years earlier when critics were complaining about candidates going on Larry King Live instead of sitting down with Dan Rather or a White House correspondent. There was a perception of self-importance in 1992 and it continued to exist on Earth Day, 2000. It was ridiculous then and it’s ridiculous now and when it happens in the next five years, it’ll still be ridiculous. And I’ll lay odds future presidents will sit down with Main Street America as well as celebrities and answer questions about a variety of issues. Now if future presidents only sit down with actors to answer questions, then there is a legitimate concern. And while we’ve probably had some presidents whose elevators didn’t reach the top floor in the past, on this issue I don’t think there will be a president who would be dumb enough to do something like that. Oh boy, there goes another prediction$#8230;
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These times of “too much” and “not enough” aren’t limited to politics. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, CNN and other news operations carried a story about six-year-old Elian Gonzales being rescued from shark-infested waters by two fishermen. His mother and twelve others had left Cuba three days earlier in a sixteen-foot motorboat seeking a better life in the United States. They didn’t make it. The boat sank and Elian was the only survivor. It was a great news story. He was a good-looking kid, he had come from Castro’s Cuba, and was settled in Miami’s highly charged Cuban community with his great uncle Lazaro Gonzalez. Elian was a story. And as happens from time to time, the story became a story. The frenzy had returned.
My ability to predict continued to score at the zero level. A few days after Thanksgiving, for instance, I announced to Shawn we were doing another Elian story that night, but I fully expected the kid to be reunited with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, and probably go back to Cuba, and hearing a lot of argument about whether relations with that country should be established. I saw the Elian story as a ten-minute Judge Judy. We had an orphaned kid, his father in a foreign land, and some relatives in Miami who didn’t want the father to have anything to do with the kid. Both sides will be heard while Elian recuperates in the hospital and that’s it. Next case.
But I had lived in Miami and should have known better. I knew the people who had been sent to the United States as children for a better life while their parents or relatives stayed behind in Cuba. It was an emotional issue as much as it was a political issue. And that’s always a tinder-box. And even though anyone with a pulse was saying (1) let’s keep Elian’s best interests in mind and (2) the Elian story has gone on too long, the six-year-old was seized by FBI agents in Miami and flown to Washington to be reunited with his father. Cameras had been set up outside and inside his great uncle’s home. Everyone kept saying “too much” and as they said it everyone was watching. I asked Dan Rather about it on the air one night and the seasoned CBS anchor told me he agreed it was too much. Then he looked at me and said, “But we’re sure not going to shut down our camera.”
After the fifth month of the story, I started thinking Elian might attend the University of Maryland and both Castro and Clinton would be at the graduation. The words “Miami relatives” took on a new meaning, even for a Jew from Brooklyn. I figured his talkative cousin, Marisleysis, will be the weather girl on a Miami TV station. I mentioned this during lunch a few times and the table would start laughing. But then there was a moment when everyone would become silent, and someone would always say, “you know, Larry, it’s possible.” This is the thing about these times: You make a joke or you intentionally say something that is out there, and then you have to think if it really is out there or, just maybe, right next to you.
I’ll put it this way: If you had told me twenty years ago we would be making airline reservations on a computer from our home or writing electronic mail to people on the other side of the country, that the Cold War would be over while Castro was still in power, that cars would have satellite maps on the dashboard, that people would be buying dot-com companies in droves and not have a clue what the dot-com company does, and that the president of the United States would have an affair with an intern, tell us he didn’t inhale when asked about smoking dope, lie directly to the American people and yet possibly win a third term if he were allowed to run, I’d have said you’re a looney tune. So maybe Elian will be a future Ambassador to the United States from Cuba or a United States Ambassador to Cuba? Folks, it really isn’t out there at all. The significance of the Elian story is that we will begin talking to Cuba and traveling to Cuba. And, somehow, this just doesn’t seem so extraordinary when compared to what has happened in the past twenty years.
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CNN had scheduled me to do a face-to-face interview with Nelson Mandela in our New York studio, which meant after the television show was over in Los Angeles I was going to spend the night on the red-eye flying across the country. I stopped at home to say goodbye to Shawn and Chance before heading out to LAX. When Chance was carried into the living room by our nanny, Becky, she told him, “Say good-bye to Daddy.” Chance looked at me and then looked at the television. He waved to the TV. Daddy was the man in the box, not the man in the living room. I flew across America that night wondering if I should be concerned about how a fourteen-month-old child sees the world and his dad. And I wondered at what point does a child see the difference between the man in the box and the man in front of him? I’ll be honest. It bugged me.
I got my answer a few weeks later. In early June ads began in fifteen states at a cost of millions of dollars outlining reasons why the Democrats have good ideas. And as soon as they hit the airwaves, the Republican National Committee began running ads outlining reasons why they have good ideas. In both cases, soft money was being used to suggest one side is ready for the job. In both cases, Americans were being asked to consider these ideas, maybe even let them sit for a while and then, on their own, connect the dots linking them to either George W. Bush or Al Gore. Our perceptions of both candidates were being shaped in part by these spots. Later, after the conventions, the ads would become more aggressive. But for the time being, the ideas of what kind of world we could have if one of these men becomes president was there in the box. Besides a quick TV appearance at a campaign stop shown on the TV or heard on the radio or reported in the morning paper, our general perspective of Al Gore and George W. Bush was limited, even though the political junkie had more than enough information available on the Internet. Like Daddy, the man in the box wasn’t the man in the living room. Unlike Daddy, television had become a significant way for the electorate to learn what this person was all about. And unlike Chance, hopefully those watching television could understand what they see in a sixty-second political ad doesn’t necessarily reflect who the candidate is or what the candidate stands for. That’s why there are talk shows. And that’s why the viewer has to be smarter, or maybe more dubious, than ever before about what is on the screen.
Which is why we have debates. And why in an interview on Larry King Live, Vice President Gore made an offer he knew George W. Bush would refuse:
GORE: Eliminate the thirty-second and sixty-second TV and radio ad and, instead, debate twice a week with a different issue each time. Would you be willing to host one of the first debates, Larry?
KING: Absolutely, of course.
GORE: Well, I accept. Now$#8230;this is in Governor Bush’s hands. He and his party can decide to accept this or they can start the ad war. And I hope they make the right decision because it is very much a sincere offer.
After Gore’s segment was complete we went to a commercial break. I was feeling pretty good about the chance to be involved again in the debates when one of the panelists told me Gore had just been on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and had made the same offer to Bush as well as to Lehrer to host. I had one thought as the floor director counted me out of the commercial: This was typical Al Gore. I bought it and I wasn’t even watching television. And people told me, after watching that show, Gore didn’t play well in their living room.
A few days later George W. Bush was on to talk about his just concluded bury-the-hatchet meeting with John McCain. I knew, from personal experience, these guys didn’t like each other. But for the sake of unity in the Republican party, it was absolutely essential these two candidates appear together and for John McCain to say he supported George W. Bush. They did just that and McCain said what he had to say and as he did, it was a perfect Body Language 101 example of words not matching heart. That night on the show Bush gave me another nugget that cemented my suspicions:
BUSH: We had a good, frank discussion on campaign funding reform. And I really appreciate his friendship and appreciate his endorsement as well.
KING: I remember being with both of you in South Carolina and the mood was rather tense and that’s sometimes hard to get over with.
BUSH:$#8230; You’re right. In South Carolina there were some tense moments but after all we were in the middle of a debate.
One thing I have learned in the more than forty years of interviewing people is, if they tell you they had a “frank” discussion with someone, it is usually code for a yelling match with clenched fists and a few adjectives. Newt Gingrich used to come on the show and talk about having “frank” conversations with Bill Clinton just as Tip O’Neill would talk to me about his “frank” conversations with Ronald Reagan. Now I wasn’t in the room when Bush and McCain talked, but if I were a betting man, I’d say it’s a mortal lock they both wished they were someplace else even though they both had to be there.
I asked Bush about Gore’s offer to stop the ads and start the debates. He said if he believed Al Gore was sincere, he might consider it. But he didn’t believe it. And while he wanted to debate, Bush said it was too early to start. “There’s an old tradition in American politics,” he told me, “you have to have the debate on the debate.” I thought about the years since that night driving to my new job at a Miami radio station and listening to the Kennedy-Nixon debate. I didn’t recall any debate before a debate but I’m certain it was there. I’m certain Lincoln and Douglas debated the debate. And while every campaign for president has one side challenging the other side to debate early, nobody can tell you who made the challenge by election night. And after all the pundits I’ve talked to in the ten elections since 1960 with Kennedy and Nixon, nobody has ever told me one guy won because he started the debate about debates earlier than usual. This says something about what the image of the man in the box appears to be, and after the debates and the final swing through the country, what the man really is. The truth is, even though anything goes, we really still can tell the difference.
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And then there was New York. I was at home in Los Angeles and, of course, the clicker was in my hand. And there was Rudolph Giuliani on TV saying he had prostate cancer and was dropping out of the race against Hillary Clinton. And as I heard the words “this is not the right time for me to run for office,” I thought back a few months earlier to the show I did with the New York mayor when he said he wasn’t even going to announce he was running for the Senate. But now, Giuliani had to announce he wasn’t a candidate, and in addition to prostate cancer, his marriage was over. You couldn’t have written this as a script. But then, people had been saying that throughout the Clinton-Lewinsky story.
I interviewed New York Governor George Pataki that evening, who had been in conversations with Giuliani earlier that day about the pending announcement. He told me he wasn’t going to get into the Senate race even though many in his party were urging him to do just that. Pataki said he liked being governor. And since there happened to be a presidential campaign going on as well, I asked the next question:
KING: But if offered the vice presidency with Governor Bush, you would accept?
PATAKI: Larry, now you’re getting into hypotheticals, and quite simply I want to see Governor Bush become President Bush. I’m going to do everything I can to help him win that race.
The Veep question has always been part of every presidential election. Today, it shows up earlier and it is asked nonstop, and while I will continue to ask it, and variations on a theme of the next VP, I will never expect an answer.
A week before the Republican convention in Philadelphia, I sat down with George W. Bush for an interview about his campaign, his acceptance speech, and, of course, his choice for vice president. I knew former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had been heading the search committee and I knew the short list of candidates was getting shorter as the convention start grew closer. Off camera, Bush guaranteed I would have the first interview with his Veep selection. Never, did I expect it was going to be Cheney, although his experience and knowledge in foreign affairs was going to complement the Bush campaign. And when his name was announced, I thought back twelve years to the Republican Convention in New Orleans. Cheney was a Wyoming Congressman and a former Chief of Staff to President Ford. And having just survived a third heart attack, he was scheduled to leave the convention after George Bush received the nomination to undergo a bypass operation. He knew I had gone through it eight months earlier and cornered me in a stairwell of the Superdome asking to see my scars and tell him what to expect. I held nothing back and Cheney never flinched. This was a tough guy. And when we sat down together, Cheney and I spent a few moments talking about diet and medication before we got into issues pertaining to the job for which he was about to begin campaigning. Had you asked, I’d have never guessed Cheney.
A few weeks later Democrats gathered in Los Angeles to nominate Al Gore for president. And when pundits weren’t talking about how the vice president had to distance himself from Bill Clinton, they were talking about who he was going to select to take the job he’d held for eight years. I had been talking with Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute who said he’d just gotten off the phone with the Gore campaign and had been told the name was Joe Lieberman. My first thought was “wow, a Jew.” And then I thought, “why Lieberman? It sure can’t be for Connecticut’s electoral votes.” But then I thought about Dick Cheney. He was from Wyoming. No electoral vote surges there either. The Larry King Live staff had been promised, whomever is the choice, we’d get the first interview and that Gore himself had signed off on the plan. So fourteen hours after the name Joe Lieberman was announced, I was sitting with the Connecticut Senator to introduce him to the world. I thought back to an interview I’d done with his mother earlier that day and how she’d gone to bed the night before figuring her son wasn’t going to be selected. I remembered how a year and a half earlier he had given a speech in the Senate critical of the president’s behavior regarding Monica Lewinsky. This, I figured had to be a factor in his selection. Gore was beginning his move away from Bill Clinton. Had you told me where Joe Lieberman would be in August 2000, you’d have been labeled “nuts.” Times change. And as these pages prove, change isn’t always an easy thing to do, much less understand.
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A lot has happened since those moments twelve years ago when I sat in a CNN booth at the Omni Arena watching Democrats at work while waiting for the governor of Arkansas to finish his never-ending speech. But some things haven’t changed. Bill Clinton still has a tendency to talk too long. We are part of an election that again pits a Southern governor against a sitting vice president. And I remember do
ing shows on radio and television in 1988 about how much it costs to run for president and how long it takes to do so. Let me tell you something: If the election price tag was too much in 1988, it’s beyond too much in 2000.
Politics, however, has become meaner. I can tell you a number of talented people who have a lot to offer in ideas and solutions and who have looked at possibly taking a step into the arena, but then backed away saying “it ain’t worth it.” And many who have made the step have, later, told me it was beyond what they ever expected it to be. George W. Bush spent a lot of time thinking about this campaign before he ever became a candidate because he had first-hand experience as both a governor and as the son of the president. Al Gore’s father was a seven-term congressman and a three-term senator. Gore brings his own congressional experience as well as the vice presidency to this campaign. Both candidates know what they are getting into.
But it’s different now. I asked Mario Cuomo what he thought future candidates will face in a run for the White House. He said a few questions have to be asked—and answered— before anything is done relating to a campaign:
Do I realize in the end this will largely be a matter of luck and circumstance whether I win or lose? Do I know exactly why I want this thing? Am I firmly convinced that I have the answers and the strengths and the abilities that I know nobody else out there has? And, am I prepared for the scrutiny?