E-mail a friendFrank Rich
airdate April 3, 2007
During the past 25 years, Frank Rich has been an Op-Ed columnist, theater, film and TV critic, editor and best-selling author. He's the first New York Times columnist to write a regular double-length column for the Op-Ed page. Expressing his views on politics and culture, his column topics have included the religious right, the film The Passion of the Christ and President Bush's reelection victory. Rich's books include his childhood memoir, Ghost List, and, his latest, The Greatest Story Ever Sold.
Frank Rich
Tavis: A quick note here before we start. For those who may not have heard, we are planning two very unique presidential forums this year that will specifically deal with issues related to people of color. The All-American Presidential Forums will kick off with the Democrats in June at Howard University in Washington, of course, followed by the Republican forum in September at Morgan State in Baltimore.
Both forums will air live right here in prime time on PBS, but of course in advance of that we will continue our series of conversations about the presidential campaign with some of the best in the business, like my first guest tonight, Frank Rich. For millions of Americans, he is must-read copy on Sundays - yours truly, certainly - in the pages of "The New York Times."
He's also a bestselling author whose most recent book is "The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina." The book is out in paperback this summer. He joins us tonight from New York. Frank Rich, it's always an honor to have you on this program, sir.
Tavis: Let me start by suggesting to you, as if you don't already know, this is going to be the most expensive primary on record. You think?
Rich: The most expensive and the longest. The question is, can we all survive it, let alone the candidates?
Tavis: What do you make on that latter point there? I agree with you that this is going to - we're gonna know so soon who the nominee is, saying nothing of the process we're already in. This is gonna be, like, a two and a half year race to the White House.
Rich: It is, and we're gonna be - I suspect we're gonna be sick of all of them (laughs) by the tie it's done, and already want a change before anyone has even taken office. But it is, it's hugely expensive, and it's interesting - all this money, of course, is largely - not completely - a lot of it's for television commercials and advertising.
Yet I'm not sure how much the candidates realize the world has change, and one mistake that's caught on YouTube which caused nothing can come back to haunt any of these candidates, no matter how much money they spend on their own image manipulation.
Tavis: Fair enough. The flipside of that, though, is - speaking of technology - that a lot of this money we are told over the last few days has been raised thanks to the Internet.
Rich: Yes, it's sort of ironic in that way. It comes in one end and goes out the other, but I guess that's just the - everything has its own alimentary change.
Tavis: What do you make of that - speaking of stories being sold, what do make of the fact that people have wised up? I saw your column this past Sunday where you, in fact, referenced that clip on YouTube that was not so kind to one Hillary Clinton. The Obama campaign says they had nothing to do with it, but it got so many millions of hits right quick. So what do you make of the fact that one thing on YouTube can, in fact, 'cause any candidate a great deal of consternation?
Rich: Well, I think it's fascinating. I think it shows that even in this era of big media and big media companies that one person, or even one - this guy who made the Hillary spot had an affiliation with a company connected with Barack Obama, but was not really an Obama campaign worker. But any citizen can put something up and sort of change the world.
In the case of this famous spot about Hillary Clinton, if the Hillary Clinton campaign is smart, they'll learn from it. Why was the spot so successful? It made her look controlling, saying, "Let the conversation begin," when really it's not a conversation, it's sort of dictated from above in her campaign. And it sort of I think affected people and made them wanna watch it 'cause it touched something about her public image.
Just as in a completely different way in the last campaign, George Allen, the incumbent senator from Virginia, was destroyed when he was caught basically saying a racial epithet to a rival campaign worker, and caught on "Candid Camera" on that.
Tavis: What do you make of - and I don't wanna prejudge your answer - I guess in some part, not to be naive here, it would depend on what the issue is that was being showcased on YouTube or on the Internet. But what do you make of the fact that any one thing can, in fact, derail a campaign and do away - just obliterate whatever good that person might have ever stood for?
Rich: I think we have to feel - look, that would be an extreme case, and I think that it won't happen that often. We have to feel that there is a cultural marketplace, things come and go. This Hillary Clinton spot certainly has not destroyed Hillary Clinton. It may be a little bit of a warning signal. In the case of the George Allen incident, he always had trailing him accusations of at the very least racial insensitivity.
So when this real life event happen, a nonfiction event and someone caught it, it played into a problem he already had and dramatized it. If he was thought of as not having those problems, maybe no one would have cared or watched it, and they would have shrugged about it. So all these things have a cultural context we have to look at.
Tavis: Let me ask you - and you've written to some degree about this, and I keep watching every Sunday to see when Frank Rich is really, really gonna jump into sharing his thoughts on the Obama campaign. You've done a little bit of that heretofore, but Obama has raised some money this week, as well. Of course, nobody's come close to Hillary, really, but he's raised some money as well. What's your sense of how seriously the American public will take this candidacy with the race factor attached to it?
Rich: I may be crazy. I feel that the race factor with Obama is not a huge factor. My own feelings about him - and you picked up on something correctly - I haven't come to real conclusions because I think like many Americans, I want to learn more about his views, the specifics, see him be tested more. I think he's experienced enough to run.
If George Bush was experienced enough to run, certainly Barack Obama is. But he's a work in progress, and we'll have to see. The fact that he's raised a lot of money shows that he's giving a lot of people optimism and faith at a time when a lot of people in this country are very dejected about what we've seen in recent years, particularly in Washington.
That's all a plus. We'll have to see how it plays out. But so far while yes, there are probably some people who won't vote for him because of his race, I think those are people who would probably not vote for any Democrat. And he can easily win without those jerks.
Tavis: I've heard that line before, and - well, not in the way you just put it, "those jerks," which I find funny (laughs), but...
Rich: In a kind way. (Laughter) I could use a nasty word, but let's not bring the FCC in.
Tavis: (Laughs.) I take your point. I was in a conversation the other day with a person who shall remain nameless 'cause it'd be totally unfair to put them out in this way without their permission. But you know this person; all of America knows this person. This person happens to be an African American who is an American icon, who happens to be Black. And she said to me in a private conversation the other day that she wonders whether or not America is really ready to see a first family, Black, in the White House.
With two little Black kids running around the White House. Her point was that while she supports Barack Obama, that she thinks a lot of the conversation right now is really about what we think of Barack. But were this thing to really get serious and White folk across the country have to consider a Black first family running around the White House, that conversation might change dramatically. So you're one White guy that a lot of White folk read every Sunday in "The New York Times." What say you about that?
Rich: I never thought of that distinction between him and his family. Look, maybe I'm crazy again, and I'm only one person. I would like to believe it wouldn't matter. He's got a family that - like some of the other families that are involved in this campaign, is extremely appealing based on seeing them on "60 Minutes." A smart, capable wife, two adorable kids.
And I think it's all a plus. But we don't know. Pollsters always say, "People say they'll vote for people of color to a pollster, but then they're different in the privacy of casting a ballot." I wanna believe - and again, maybe I'm nuts - but I wanna believe we've gone through particularly a fair amount of generational change, and if George Allen can lose in Virginia, maybe Barack Obama can win nationwide, if he deserves to be President of the United States.
Tavis: Fair enough. I mentioned earlier, and I want to mention again now, 'cause I loved it so much: "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" comes out in paperback in just a few months down the road - although I don't know why the publisher's doing that, 'cause it's still selling so well in hardcover, but that's not my decision.
Rich: Nor mine, (laughter) but you know what publishing is like.
Tavis: Yeah, so it comes out in paperback in a few months. It occurred to me last night, thinking about our conversation today, that you really could have written another entire book about "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" because is it just me or does this campaign - this Bush White House, rather, keep finding new ways to fall and sink deeper into the abyss?
Rich: Well, I wrote the book on the hunch that they would never recover from the horrible way that they mismanaged the fallout of Hurricane Katrina, (laughs) and my assumption was right. They've never dug themselves out of their hole, and they keep finding new things to mess up. Because whether it's Walter Reed or the U.S. attorney scandal or the surge - whatever it is, they just show the same mixture of sort of arrogance and incompetence, but always with terrific backdrops.
They're always putting the president in front of either children or veterans or books. Lately there've been a lot of books as he announces some fiasco or another. For a journalist, however, it is the gift that keeps on giving.
Tavis: Well, Frank Rich, I'm always glad to have you on the program again. The book, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold," "New York Times" best seller out in August in paperback. You can read, of course, Frank Rich every Sunday in "The New York Times." Frank Rich, as always, nice to have you on the program.
Rich: Great to be here. Thank you so much.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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