You’ve spent time knee-to-knee with Clinton and Bernie Sanders. What are they like off camera?
It’s fascinating. I did an hour-long interview with Hillary in the studio last fall, right before the televised forum I did with the candidates in South Carolina. We had no ground rules. She had no idea what I was going to ask. When she came in, she listened to me so hard it felt like she was prying my thoughts out of my brain through my eyeballs. Hillary’s got tractor beams. She was so intently focused and had a ton to say about every issue. It’s the same way Bill Clinton would give press conferences when he was president and wouldn’t want them to end. He’d just be like, “Bring it on.” She kind of has that going on. She’s not that guarded. She has something to say about everything. She’s policy-minded—that to me is a nice form of seriousness in a politician—and has an ability to handle a wide range of subject matter. Very impressive.
But then, a couple of weeks later, at the forum in South Carolina, it wasn’t just us and the camera guy in the room. There were 3,000 people, and it was as if I wasn’t there. I would ask her a question and she would physically turn to the audience and answer. I was like, “Yoo-hoo, over here!”
Was Sanders like that too?
The thing that’s interesting about Bernie is that he is a freaking good politician, and he’s aggressive. We had a commercial break in the middle of our discussion because I wanted to have a reset. During that break, Martin O’Malley was hyperventilating. Hillary started playing to the audience again and waving to people like she was campaigning. Bernie was working me to ask the questions he wanted for the second half. He was like, “When we come back, are you going to ask me about…?” I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re supposed to be Mr. Socialist.”
Can you picture him being president?
Bernie Sanders is running this fascinating campaign where he’s all about people being angry and dissatisfied and frustrated. He wants you to be disaffected and frustrated about an economic system that keeps you from ever ascending the ladder. That is a great emotion to tap into for a politician but a hard lesson to sell in terms of where people should channel it. If that message works for you, it’s cathartic. People love him. They really do feel the Bern. He gets tens of thousands of people to turn out, but that sort of economic populism is a tough sell. The diagnosis is right; the cure isn’t easy. My prediction for Bernie: populist hero forever but hard to imagine him still being there at the convention.
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