It got a bit frosty last year when you supported Ned Lamont after he defeated Lieberman in the Democratic primary.
It did get tough at a point. But Joe did what he had to do, and I did what I had to do in this thing. It was painful, but I can't reject 300,000 people in my state who participated in the process. As the senior Democrat in the state, I can't say I'm going to disregard your conclusion.
I nominated [Lieberman at the party convention], I campaigned with him [in the primary], I was tireless on the stump. And it was a dreadful campaign. He ran a much better campaign as an independent. Had he run that kind of campaign in the primary, he would have won. Case over.
Our relationship is too deep and too long-lasting for us not to maintain it. It still has some tension a bit, but we're getting over it.
I would be very surprised [if he became a Republican]. Joe's instincts are so much a Democrat's -- on environmental questions, on choice questions, on economic parity. Joe is profoundly a Democrat. This [a party change] would be so uncomfortable for him. Not that this issue [Iraq] is insignificant, but it's not so big that it would cause him to abandon a whole set of principles that he's embraced for four decades.
In your speeches, you talk about shared sacrifice and the bonding experience that came with people from different backgrounds sharing the same foxholes in World War II. But I don't see how you can achieve that level of shared involvement with what you're advocating for national service. [Dodd's plan calls for the eventual expansion of AmeriCorps to 1 million participants, doubling of the size of the Peace Corps and requiring 100 hours of community service as a high school graduation requirement].
Obviously, I am not going to duplicate the experience of World War II. I am going to try to approximate that sense of having done something. I believe it is addictive. I believe it is contagious. That once people start to do these things, there is almost a smugness of reward that you feel.
My hope is creating the opportunities and the structures for it [national service]. I got 30 million people between the ages of 18 and 24. Employing that at a livable wage for a year of service is just astronomical. I got 4 million 18-year-olds. I'm trying to figure out a way to structurally create this opportunity and promote this idea that I realize is a shadow of a foxhole in the Battle of the Bulge.
And so if I can create the structures and opportunities -- albeit on a local and state level -- it's not as much as what in my mind I'd like to create. But in the absence of doing nothing and trying something, this gets as close as I can do. And making it part of using [the White House] to promote the idea.
In hindsight, do you regret declaring your candidacy for president on the Don Imus show?
No, not at all. I'll tell you candidly that if CBS or somebody else had said that we'll give you a couple of minutes, maybe. But I've done the Imus show -- and there is as big an audience there. You get 20 minutes. That hour between 7:30 and 8:30 was always a pretty good hour.
But don't you think that to a small degree you were an enabler of him in treating this like "Meet the Press"? A place not to make jokes, but a place to make a serious political statement?
I've done all those [Sunday] programs for many years. I don't have anyone come up to me and say, "You were great on 'Meet the Press.'" But I can walk through an airport and people will say, "I miss you on Imus." I've heard that 20 times in the last two days. I loved the fact that you could talk -- and not only have some self-deprecating humor -- but you also got a chance to talk about an issue for more than 30 seconds.
It was a dreadful thing that he said and did. We all said so. He went over the top. Imus made the mistake that instead of being Howard Stern all the time, he would move back and forth. So he damned himself to the fate he had by slipping into the traditional mainstream stuff.
Look, there are other ways I might have done things, but I don't regret it.
What do you think of the fact that after 9/11 everyone said that we need experience in the White House, but the three leading candidates for the Democratic nomination have spent a total of 15 years holding federal elective office?
You're talking almost about incumbency status for different reasons. You've been on a national ticket [Edwards], or spouse of a eight-year president [Hillary Clinton], or someone who has attracted a tremendous amount of interest in himself as an individual [Obama]. Again, if the election were tomorrow, I'd say that's troubling. But it's not tomorrow. And I'm already sensing that despite all the resources and all the notoriety, this is not [over]. You can ask me why I'm not doing better. But it's a very appropriate question for them as well.
You have 100 percent name recognition. You have the [former] president of the United States campaigning for you. You've been on the cover of every news magazine. Why aren't you winning this thing hands down? Why is the door still open?
I think the answer is that people have a lot at stake in this election -- and they want to win this. The number one issue in Iowa today is not Iraq. It's not healthcare. It's not energy policy. It's electability. And it has happened in the last month.
By implication are you saying that Hillary Clinton is less electable than other Democrats?
Not necessarily. But it is a very legitimate issue to raise. And the question is going to be a very important issue over the next 190 days.
Since experts can't figure out electability 16 months before the 2008 elections, how should an average voter figure out electability?
It's a gut thing. The first and most important thing that you and I ask anybody who solicits our support is a question that we don't even know how to ask. So we disguise it. Gussy it up as some substantive question.
But the question we're asking is -- whether you're running for the city council or the presidency -- is the following one:
Do you know who I am? Do you pay any attention to me? Do you know what I care about? What fears I have, what worries I have? I want to get a sense that you're paying attention.
And if I don't get that sense down here about you, then forget about it. You can give me 20 answers on every substantive question that I agree with. But if I don't draw this gut, primal reaction to you -- that I think you're paying attention to me -- then forget about it.
I don't care where you're from or what your ideology is. If you connect with me, then I can be for you. Tell me about your issues now. I'm interested in you. But if you don't pass the first test, you never get to the second.
There's that great story that I heard a million times. About the Roosevelt funeral procession and the reporter going around and interviewing people in April of '45 about their recollections of Roosevelt. And one guy seems more grief-stricken than the next, and the reporter naturally gravitates to him and says, "You must have known the president pretty well." The man says, "I didn't know him at all." Then why do you seem so grief-stricken? "I didn't know Roosevelt, but Roosevelt knew me."
If at the end of your day, if people will say that about you, that's the best monument that can ever be built to you.
About the writer
Walter Shapiro is Salon's Washington bureau chief. A complete listing of his articles is here.
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