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American Morning

Interview with Joe Klein

Aired January 02, 2003 - 07:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's move on to looking back here at the U.S. and to the political follies and a look at some of the major faux pas over the past year.
Paula, before she took off for the holiday, talked with our own Jeff Greenfield, also with "TIME" magazine columnist Joe Klein about some political moves that even the spin doctors couldn't repair.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: What was the biggest political blunder of 2002?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you could actually say that the two most consequential events politically this year was a birthday party and a funeral, because I do think that what happened, I do think that what happened at the Wellstone funeral not only might have cost Walter Mondale that seat, but may have had some spillage in other states. I don't know. But it clearly made people sour on the Democrats, made them look like they so thoroughly couldn't, literally couldn't wait for the body to be buried before they started to...

ZAHN: Sure, they looked ghoulish.

GREENFIELD: And the birthday party for Strom Thurmond in which, it's not every time that you win control of the Senate and lose your majority leader post. I don't know that that's ever happened before. And I think the other thing was that the attempts of Trent Lott to explain himself, you know, sheer comic relief. He did everything but come out and say I want to...

ZAHN: In gross...

GREENFIELD: ... do a shout out for my homies. He was going to, you know, he almost was in a, he was close to putting his hair in corn rows and talking about what a great fighter Joe Lewis was. It was the most tone deaf attempt, and the reason was it was not explicable. I noted that a few days later he explained that his enemies were out to get him because he was a conservative Christian from Mississippi, if you get his drift.

JOE KLEIN, "TIME" MAGAZINE: You know, the other weird thing about this year is that history repeated itself, first as travesty and this time as fact. In 2000, you had an election that was a travesty and 36 days later Al Gore resigned. This year, you had George Bush for the first time clearly winning a national election, and about 35, 36 days later Al Gore resigned. I mean it's, you know, that was a major event in the year, as well.

ZAHN: Were you surprised Al Gore decided not to run?

KLEIN: No.

ZAHN: Because he couldn't raise the money?

KLEIN: No, I think...

ZAHN: He had so many members of the Democratic Party saying don't do it?

KLEIN: I think more the latter than the former. I just think it was very painful to be out there. Every time he said a word, the press was all over him. There are an awful lot of people out there who were saying Al, we love you, but think again about this. And it was the wise thing to do, I think.

GREENFIELD: I'd like to put in a word for politicians as human beings. This is a guy who has often seemed as uncomfortable in the political role as Richard Nixon was and a man who literally from the day he was born when his father got his picture on the front page of the local paper in Tennessee was groomed to be president. All the sighs people talked about during the debate, what I heard from Gore was an enormous sigh of relief.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: These funds need to be protected. They need to be put aside.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know, in some kind of metaphorical lock box.

GORE: Lock box.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: And then the "Saturday Night Live" sketches, which everybody thought were (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Nobody would have done what he did that night if he hadn't been liberated from any kind of political calculation, I think.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Anything just to look at that skit one more time.

HARRIS: Have we seen enough of that?

WHITFIELD: Oh, it's cracked us up.

In our next hour, Paula is going to look back at the political stars of 2002 with Jeff Greenfield and Joe Klein. So we don't just focus on the faux pas, we also get some winners in there, as well.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired January 2, 2003 - 07:35   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's move on to looking back here at the U.S. and to the political follies and a look at some of the major faux pas over the past year.
Paula, before she took off for the holiday, talked with our own Jeff Greenfield, also with "TIME" magazine columnist Joe Klein about some political moves that even the spin doctors couldn't repair.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: What was the biggest political blunder of 2002?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you could actually say that the two most consequential events politically this year was a birthday party and a funeral, because I do think that what happened, I do think that what happened at the Wellstone funeral not only might have cost Walter Mondale that seat, but may have had some spillage in other states. I don't know. But it clearly made people sour on the Democrats, made them look like they so thoroughly couldn't, literally couldn't wait for the body to be buried before they started to...

ZAHN: Sure, they looked ghoulish.

GREENFIELD: And the birthday party for Strom Thurmond in which, it's not every time that you win control of the Senate and lose your majority leader post. I don't know that that's ever happened before. And I think the other thing was that the attempts of Trent Lott to explain himself, you know, sheer comic relief. He did everything but come out and say I want to...

ZAHN: In gross...

GREENFIELD: ... do a shout out for my homies. He was going to, you know, he almost was in a, he was close to putting his hair in corn rows and talking about what a great fighter Joe Lewis was. It was the most tone deaf attempt, and the reason was it was not explicable. I noted that a few days later he explained that his enemies were out to get him because he was a conservative Christian from Mississippi, if you get his drift.

JOE KLEIN, "TIME" MAGAZINE: You know, the other weird thing about this year is that history repeated itself, first as travesty and this time as fact. In 2000, you had an election that was a travesty and 36 days later Al Gore resigned. This year, you had George Bush for the first time clearly winning a national election, and about 35, 36 days later Al Gore resigned. I mean it's, you know, that was a major event in the year, as well.

ZAHN: Were you surprised Al Gore decided not to run?

KLEIN: No.

ZAHN: Because he couldn't raise the money?

KLEIN: No, I think...

ZAHN: He had so many members of the Democratic Party saying don't do it?

KLEIN: I think more the latter than the former. I just think it was very painful to be out there. Every time he said a word, the press was all over him. There are an awful lot of people out there who were saying Al, we love you, but think again about this. And it was the wise thing to do, I think.

GREENFIELD: I'd like to put in a word for politicians as human beings. This is a guy who has often seemed as uncomfortable in the political role as Richard Nixon was and a man who literally from the day he was born when his father got his picture on the front page of the local paper in Tennessee was groomed to be president. All the sighs people talked about during the debate, what I heard from Gore was an enormous sigh of relief.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: These funds need to be protected. They need to be put aside.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know, in some kind of metaphorical lock box.

GORE: Lock box.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: And then the "Saturday Night Live" sketches, which everybody thought were (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Nobody would have done what he did that night if he hadn't been liberated from any kind of political calculation, I think.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Anything just to look at that skit one more time.

HARRIS: Have we seen enough of that?

WHITFIELD: Oh, it's cracked us up.

In our next hour, Paula is going to look back at the political stars of 2002 with Jeff Greenfield and Joe Klein. So we don't just focus on the faux pas, we also get some winners in there, as well.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com