Ed Rollins

Published Nov 7, 2011, 5:00 AM

Alec Baldwin talks with political strategist Ed Rollins. A boxing phenom as a kid, Rollins went on to work on six presidential campaigns. He talks to Alec about his recent work with Michele Bachmann, offers new insight into Ronald Reagan’s legacy and shares some of his personal history – of a Democratic bent.

“Pretend I’m your priest,” says Ed Rollins, when he starts to work with prospective candidates. Rollins encourages his clients to tell him everything – even still, he tells Alec, “they always lie.” Rollins tells Alec what is really required of a president and talks about some of the candidates he has helped run for office.

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This is Alec Baldwin. And here's the thing. Ed Rollins could have been a contender. He was a boxing phenom until an injury forced him out. But it wasn't long until this fighter got his first gig in politics, working as a campaign coordinator for Robert Kennedy in California. Eventually he was running Ronald Reagan's re election effort in four, Ross Perot's campaign in nine two that lasted two months, and Mike Huckabee is in two thousand seven. Ed Rollins has worked on six presidential campaigns. He's one of the guys in the back room, coming up with a strategy, making deals and telling candidates wind to duck and wind a jab. Rollins is known for being honest and direct, which brings him admiration and trouble, sometimes big trouble. Just over a week after helping Christine Todd Whitman win election as govern of New Jersey, Rollins himself claimed the campaign had paid black ministers to suppress black turnout. Later, the straight Shooter explained his remarks by saying, quote, I was talking trash fifteen years ago. Ed Rollins declared enough, no more politics for him. He wrote his memoir thirty years in the business, he had a baby daughter. He wanted a different life, but something kept pulling ed Rollins back in. He's worked from Mike Huckabee and two months ago he left Michelle Backman's campaign. Today, Rollins says, the political landscape is entirely different. But when he started, once a primary was over, even if it was an ideological difference, which has always been kind of an establishment art in the conservative element of the party, the operatives got together, you know, winning was important. You didn't carry grudges. You know, you basically put it together, where Democrats obviously had the big ideological fights and and uh never came together. And now the republic can tell the ideological we have the ideological fights. The other thing that's changed dramatically is the role of the consultants versus the role of the party in yours so well, in your lifetime, in my lifetime, if you wanted to run for office, you basically hire someone like me. They can run a campaign, and I in turn hire a media person that can do your television, and I hire a fundraiser that can go raising. That what's happening more, that's that's absolutely what's happening is. I mean, people always say to me, well, why don't the party bosses step in here? All there's no party boss. When did that start to change? Probably in the seventies, uh and maybe even the late sixties. And the people who would run Nixon's campaign and had run Kennedy's campaign were all their pals. They were people who had been their aids on the hill. They weren't professionals. There were people who basically wrote Kennedy's speeches, ran Nixon's office. They didn't make a living doing this. They basically believed in the man. And then they went somewhere in the government worked. Then it started changing somewhat. And of course the big change was the money. After the seventy two camp pin where you know, Nixon smashed McGovern spent over two hundred million dollars, probably a hundred million of it illegal. He knuked him, He knuked him, he deliberately knuked him. After that, you know, you saw the development of a lot more of the operatives, and you know it's now thousands of operatives across the country. Every time you turn on the TV set, you see you know, Republican strategist, Democrats strategist, and I've been in the game for four decades, um one of eight members of the Political Consultants Hall of Fame. I've seen them all, but I don't even know what these people are. You know, what do you think that there are? Are they ideologically or in terms of party affiliation? Is that they're call to duty or are they really just mercenaries in there for high They're not mercenary. Very few people really make money in the business. The media guys make some money, and they're about the only ones that do. Most people go into it because they sort of believe in somebody or something. But you pretty much stay one party of the other. You stay at Democratic, you stay a Republican. You see very little cross over. The only time is crossed over. I crossed over. But I just think, I mean, very early on when you were did you know? I did? Uh? You know from what kind of house? I grew up in a Boston Irish Catholic household. My father had moved to California and the station there briefly in the war. We went to California and uh town again, town called Valeo, which is just north of San Francisco. UH and it's a blue collar shipyard town was a wonderful place to grow up because everybody's old man worked in the shipyard. Anybody who had any money had been bootleggers, would run the whorehouses during the war. You know, it was just everybody else. You know, it was the west. Where was a house? Where's your old man work? You know, works in the shipyard, you know, And they built all this public housing so you live next to African Americans and played ball with him in Mexicans. And it was a classless society. So for me, it was a wonderful uh. You know, my friends are every color, and every city had never thought any of it. But it was all Democrats. There was no I mean, I think there weren't ten Republicans of the entire town. So needless to say, it was an experience. When I became a prominent Republican nineteen seventy two, I shifted kind of a you know, it's the war was a variety of things, uh, and I just felt that the Democratic Party was too left for me at that point in time. I had real guilt feelings about the war. Travis Air Force Base, with ever bringing the Vietnam kids back the bodies, you know, it's ten miles from my house. I broke my back playing football, and so I tried to go the service, couldn't go, and so I had these real heavy pangs of guilt where I saw friends go and some die and some be mangled. At that point in my life, I thought those guys and Warsing are smart guys. You know, they know what they're doing. Having spent twenty five years in Washington and highest levels, I now know they don't, you know, But at that point in time, I thought they did. The Nixon was the first campaign I worked on at seventy two. I've done a Bobby Kennedy man in probably if he would have lived, I probably would have stayed a Democrat. And then when I became a Republican, I tried to change the Republican Party and make it a working people's party. I was sort of architect of the Reagan Democrat, which was sort of what I grew up and sort of what you grew up. So that switched for you. Kennedy's assassinated in sixty eight and Nixon becomes president. You weren't signed on to Nixon, so to speak. I was not signed on sixty eight at all. Now, uh, How does your association with Bachmann begin? What's the genesis of that? How does that work? Did they call you? They they call you. You You know, I don't run campaigns for a living. I sort of do friends from time to time, or I try and be a change agent for the party. I'll take on an African American candidate who doesn't have any resources to broaden the base, or woman candidate. I was going to do my Cuckabees campaign. I had run his campaign four years ago, and I thought I had a real shot at it, and so I spent six eight months with him trying to get a real campaign together for him on like the one we had last time. So when he made a determination not to run, you know, I'd sort of put a team together, put a strategy together a little bit, and and I was trying to think, Okay, is there anybody else they could fit that model? And Bachman came to me several times, came to me. I didn't have a good first initial reaction to her. There's a little high strong house members, very difficult to you know, it's I mean, it's not I've done Katherine Harris's campaign when she ran for the Senate, and there was. There was too much similarity there. So I turned her down and I said to her, you know, the only way I'll do a campaign at this point in my life is and you'll understand this totally. Ronald Reagan was the best candidate ever. And Ronald Reagan once said to me, you have to understand you're my director. He knew what his part was. He knew, you know, he understood that someone had hit the mark. Someone has to see the whole picture as opposed to you know, you do it, You're you're concentrating on your part, but someone has to see them all the other elements of it. And so ever since then, I've always said that I'm the director. I've done this a lot of times. So I said, there the only way I'll do this is if I can pick my team. It's your campaign. Obviously, won't do anything you're not happy with, but at the end of the day, I gotta run it. If you want to run it, then find you go run it, you know, and I'll go back home. So, you know, she came back to me and she said, it's yours, you run it. You do whatever you want to do with that was that was pretty good for about six or eight weeks and then uh, you know, obviously we won the straw poll and no time in Iowa and I when she came back again, what changed? What changed I think was partly she had become a national figure and so everyone wanted her to go to Florida and South Carolina. And at the end of the day, what I kept trying to tell her, your ticket out is Iowa. Romney's the front runner at that point in time, and they'll be a chaser, and the chaser will come out of Iowa or normally New Hampshire, but Romney is gonna win to Hampshire. So the only place for you to get your ticket out, sort of like the the Final sixty four basketball about how great your team is. You gotta win every week, and I was the first week. And the Giuliani example four years ago was the perfect example. Leading in every pole, decides I'm gonna skip everything and go to Florida and got nothing. Fred Thompson the same way, got nothing. What's happened? Do you think? To Bockman During the race, there were all these questions about, you know, her provenance and these schools she went doing, her teachers and their religious use and so forth. None of that bothered you. None of that As an ideological Christian conservative. I'm a Catholic. I'm like you, you know, and I get to struggle with my own faith every day, and I'm very private. It's very room exactly, and that's the way it is. You know. I had a little bit of experience with it last time with Huckabee. You know, he was a Baptist minister, and he would go in the churches on Sunday and just flick a switch. The politics of the week shut down on Sundays. He could go in there and give this extraordinary sermon and then the switch went back on. He never took the sermon out of the church into the politics. And in her particular case, what I said to her early on, as I said, okay, everybody in this race is against Obama. Okay, so saying you're against Obama against Obamacare all arrest. It's all fine, well and good, except it doesn't move you forward. What you have to say is I want to abolish Obamacare, and here's what I want to put in his place. And I could never get to that hurdle. She liked the applause lines the Tea Party type stuff, and and I think part of it was she just wasn't wee the campaign together very quickly. These things take a year of preparation, and we didn't have that. What happened with Huckaby? Do you think I think he basically he had come right out of the governorship. It was sort of like the next thing to do. Not that anybody gets heart at this time. His heart wasn't in it, you know, my senses. He'd have been a great candidate. I was convinced it was going to be a duel between Huckaby and Round. It would have been, I'm telling you would about it would have been Mono and Mono, and I had it all strategized, and that's what that us. That's why I had it. And I knew that my game, and I had spent two years thinking about it, you know. But as I said to him, I can't want it more than you want it. Good point. And do you find sometimes you do? I love the game. But it's amazing how you said that, to say you're against Obamacare and not step up and uh and offer your alternative. It's amazing how many politicians on both sides of the aisle underestimate it just doesn't do enough for you to say, you know, kill Obama, so to speak to his administration. You made a come and in an interview you were giving which as you said, you know, was Kane a serious guy or was he just an entertainer? And then you said, does he have the temperament to be president? Is that in your mind one of the key elements of the temperament of being president is being able to create policy and have ideas well, it's it's I worked for four presidents, uh, and I've spent you know, eight ten years of my life in a White House in twenty five years of my life around and go through all four and describe how they were in terms of their own authorship of public policy. Nixon was brilliant, very aggressive mentally and and gets a great credit on the foreign policy arena, but he did great things on the domestic He created an e p A. You know, Ford was been a decent house leader. You know, it was sort of an accident. Not the temperament for the president's not the big picture he was not. He was not a big big picture guy. You know. Carter obviously was was not someone I worked for, but I got to watch him up close, and I he problem. You know, he was a micromanager. He was an engineer, and he wanted he wanted to manage everything. And the reality of the president isn't a management job. The president is an inspire rational job, and he sets a direction. He has four or five big decisions to make every day. If you have an inability to make decisions, then they basically stack up on you. And he thought Carter was weak on that. I thought Carter was a micromanager. I thought Bill Clinton overthought it. Bill Clinton had an ongoing seminar, but he was viewed as a very decisive guy. You think that that's an unfair Uh, let me just say this. I think Bill Clinton became a much better president as time went on, and I think as we reflect back on his presidency, there's not many people in America who wouldn't rather have him than who we have today. And that doesn't mean he wouldn't be a very viable candidate again. You know, he was a charming man. He had a great ability to make people feel good about themselves. You know Reagan, who I worked for and was closest to. Uh, you know, Reagan had a core of beliefs that he had like you, In addition to having a career, he basically was interested in politics for thirty years. He thought on paper people underestimated his intelligence. He read, he wrote, He knew who he was, and he had three major principles, four major principles of things that he wanted to do. One is he was been fighting communists since his days in all I would so he made a gigantic investment to rebuild the defenses the country so that the Soviets would treat us with respect, just to throw for for arguments like the liberal side to this, I've seen this going cycles where you have a lull crisis of the spirit, so to speak, after the Vietnam War, and we do collapse defense spending, and that's a mistake. But then Reagan comes and starts to ramp up defense spending again. For my money, we probably would have less of a swing of the penduluman if the wars themselves weren't such a waste of time. My question for you is did you think that the Vietnam War amounted to anything? Certainly not today. I mean, what what had amount to is that fifty plus men were killed and we divided this country. What impact did it have on our lives at all? It had. It had a terrible impact because it divided America, and I think to a certain extent as you'd reflect back, and I was very pro Vietnam War because my father had been in the service. Everybody around me was in the service. So it was a real basic my country right around, my country, my country right or wrong. Absolutely, And at the end of the day, you know, my sense is I'm very close to military people. I have great affection for them. Both my brother and my father were servicemen. But I saw that the tragic stuff that happened at the end of the day, I like the pile doctrine. Cap Weinberger basically asked the flag officers who had been the captains and the majors in Vietnam to give us rules. Tell us what are the rules of engagement? Those four things I remember exactly. Don't ever go to war where the US doesn't have a real interest, Don't ever go to war unless we have American support behind it. Always go with overwhelming force so that our troops did not put a disadvantage. And always have an exit strategy. Have we had that in these last two wars? No, we did not. We had it in the first Iraq the Kuwait War. We went with overwhelming force. We yeah going in Afghanistan. Giving that government the opportunity to give up the bin Laden, getting the Taliban out of there was a worthwhile effort. In hindsight, who cared about Iraq? It didn't matter. You know. We look at these two wars and I think to myself, if I was the president, forget about Iraq, I would have assassinated Saddam Hussein later on somehow, or taken him prisoner and put him on trial. But I would have built the mother of all military basis right because Pakistan is the enemy. Pakistan is the most dangerous country. I would build the mother of all military basis right on the Pakistani board of But while I was doing that, I would fly around the world and I would get the leaders of the most reliable allies who had some funds, and I'd say to them, you must give us something. We're gonna have a coalition of twelve or fourteen countries, and if you don't, I'm gonna make your life miserable. I wanted to have half a million men on the ground in Afghanistan. You know, leaflet the whole place, say get out, We're coming and drawing them, and if they make one move, we don't like we go when we just crushed Pakistan with five people. What do you think of that idea? Uh, it's for Hollywood liberals, it's pretty darn good. But I know, I know that's where terrorism that is there. I think I think the battle against terrorism is an ongoing war, and I think to a certain extent, we need to continue it. Uh. My fear of this whole thing. And you know, as you look in the future as a strategist, you alway, I always try and look to the future, the next region. We all focus right now in them at least, But the Pacific is really the big region. I mean, it's the China, but China, you know, Japan, Vietnam, all these all these emerging countries. And I have a Chinese daughter. I adopted a child from China, and China twenty times. I love China. China is not a military threat to us at this point in time. China is building submarines to protect their assets. They've never been an invading country. They're a country that basically, you know, in the absurdity of US was talking about the emerging China. China has been there for five thousand years, you know, right and and or any place else say that they have watched us emerged. They have not watched, you know, and they watched many countries come and fall. My sense is every time China build an aircraft carrier, we don't have to go nuts and worry about going to war. You know. For me, it's my country, right or wrong, but never unfunded. And that is that the problem in our society today is that we need to raise taxes. Do you believe we need to raise taxes. I believe we need to raise revenue. So beyond taxes. However we raise revene, well you get people back to work. No one has come forth with a plan to me to show me how raising taxes basically does any of the rest of it, you know. I mean I find it appalling today when you read in the in the New York Post. You know, all the major corporations that you know are not paying taxes. I mean, they got all the loopholes in the world. So to me, I'd eliminate all the loopholes, I would, you know, I don't think everybody's going to pay something. Everybody has to pay something, and and and I think every well, I think every American would want to pay something, even if it's fifty or a hundred buck minimum at the end of at the end of your bill, I mean, you can't have the taxes the corporations are not paying is merely going towards executive pay, which has become Ye, it's it's you know, it's it's it's obscene. And at the end of the day, I mean the idea that I teach it houstro These young kids that are that are great kids. You know, your your neck of the woods out there, you know, blue collar kids going out of school can't find jobs. That eliminates hope. And somehow we have to we have to fix that. You asked me about Reagan earlier. Reagan leaved deeply in this country, and he inspired this country, and he made Americans feel good about themselves again. He was proud of America, got up every day, was proud of America. To me, Reagan, because I have a very different view of Reagan than you do. He was a failed actor who in my business, what happened. You become ripe and you fall from that tree and you go and he went into this other field because it was a role for him to play. But more importantly, when you say Reagan made people feel good about themselves, I except where some people see that. But what Reagan said to our society was, if it's your choice between you having a swimming pool and you've worked really really hard and some poor person getting some public entitlement or going to school, what have you? Damn it all, you should have your swimming pool. The government's making that choice for you. And Reagan seduced a whole generation of Americans into believing you should have what you want more than they should have what they need, and don't feel guilty. Well I think that's yeah, I think that's overstated. I mean, obviously you're entitled your point of view. Reagan grew up in the generation as did I. I'm sixty eight. My old man said, you're going to college. I don't care what you made your and but you're going to college. And when I had that education, my life was going to be better than my father's life. And obviously it has been. Uh, and that was the dream and and uh, you know, I mean I get changed, it's changed, and and that's and that's the scary part today you have a daughter. I have a daughter. I look in the eyes of my daughter at the world, and I once said, when she was an infant, I said, I hope somedays she doesn't regret the fact that we took her out of China. You know. And at that time it was a ridiculous statement to make, because China was never gonna be anything Johnas did an extraordinary country. You might have been better off the oortunity opportunities she's she's taking Chinese, uh, but she can state college right at the end of the day, you know. I mean, she's lived a great life and she's a one old she's Si Steam and she's the joy of my life. But it just, I guess the thing that bothers me the most. I first went to Warston in February nineteen seventy three. When I went there, there was plenty partisan but there was a social environment to it. You don't you didn't hate each other, and and and and you know, Teddy Kennedy and and and and you shook hands, you went on yet to drink. Chris Matthew is a perfect example. He was Tip O'Neil's press secretary. You know, I yelled at him four or five times. On the course. Today we'd go and have a drink with great friends today. You know, today there's a bitterness, there's a hatred, you know. I think part of it is going to the too. Uh. Nixon was part of its impeachment. I think the ugliness began more. It started then, and then it became the combination of the gym rights and the and the new gingrich. That was the real battle, and not just knocking out of president. We knocked out a speaker on a BS deal. Wasn't like he was taking hundreds of thousands of dollars of stupid book deal, petty theft at best, and not even theft. Then what happened as they started drawing the lines in a way that basically you couldn't have competition. So now that's become an industry, hasn't it? This kind of this kind of intel which brings us to Kane. You know, with this particular primary season for the Republicans, you've got a guy or a woman for that matter, who are really they're at the top and they're looking good, and then it's a bright shining day for them, and then within a week or two they're gone like Kane. Is this the condition for all people in your profession? The political advisor you're working with someone you know, everybody's got something in their closets. Do you think Cane's people they obviously knew about this restaurant. He doesn't have a real campaign, can get in this kind of on a lark. He never expected to be a front runner. He never expected he's weighing it. He's weighing it, and he's winging it on substance. Uh, he didn't put the time in. He doesn't have a team. His team is second tier at best. Where you know, I mean the hat. He had an advisor, a legit operation and advisor, as you would understand that they might have done this. The first the first thing I do in every campaign, and started when I was running assembly races in California where you do. I would sit down and I'd say, Alex, you want to run for the Assembly. I want to check for five thousand dollars printiple don't call me Alex, excuse me, okay, mayor Baldwin mayor Bowen, Uh, Mr Bowen. The first thing I do is ask you for five thousand dollars. And I'd say what, I'm gonna hire a private detective and I'm gonna go find out everything I can about you. And I have Kennedy said, wellhy are you gonna do that? So I'm gonna do it on him too. But at the end of the day, all he has to do is right at check, I have to come after. The first thing I do is I sit down and I say, pretend I'm your priest. You confess all your confess all your sent I will tell you what their mortal of you. You're not capable of making drink for your own good. I've heard it all, you know, I don't care. Just it's a and they always lie, yeah, and they always lie. And when then it does come out, they go, you know, I never thought that was gonna happen. Now, how could you be a CEO of a trade? This is not the Pentagon, This is not a gigantic organization. And you have to not one but two and you're part and probably other things that were you know, uh didn't even come to charge and and and you wouldn't say the first thing you would say, hey, can we check this out or can we go look at it? So it's amateur our I mean, obviously he's not going to be the nominee of the party, and it wasn't even if this hadn't come about. It's a sad thing for the party, sad thing for him at the end of the day. I mean, I mean, an articulate African American is a very important thing for the Republican Party because we don't have any. And I think at the end of the day, you know, he may survive this trauma, but he's not going to survive this in the sense of being a viable candidate. Do you think that Perry has any shot of the nomination? Right? If I was perry strategist, Perry has twenty million dollars at least sitting there who's doing well with money, doing well with money. But he's still a Texas governor. But all he has to do is win two states. He has to win ioways to win South Can you think he will? Who? Do you pretty well win South Carolina? Whoever wins Iowa? Or do you think they'll go hand to him? They do? I think you do? Think so? Do they always? They sometimes not? Sometimes they don't. I think that Romney will win I and Perry woman suck if Romney wins which which he could he could. He's got great strength there. He wins that, he wins New Hampshire. He's on his way. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. More from my conversation with Ed Rollins in a minute. This is Alec Baldwin. You're listening to. Here's the thing I'm talking with Ed Rollins. Obviously, in the in the Whitman campaign, there was the voter suppression issue that you had to deal with, And I'm wondering what did you learn from that experience and how do you think that's played out now? Meaning do you think that's still an issue when race is now well walking around? Money is still an issue. My mistake there was not that I had done to describe that mistake. What had happened is with the public finance race. Florida did not have good relations. Ships was the Floria was running against Whitman. He was that he was the Democratic coming to governor. He had run out of money. What happened to him? He was a good governor from a Democrat perspective, but he wasn't very charismatic. So what happened is we had money to go into the community and basically have walking around money. And the differences when Democrats go out and basically say I want you to turn out your churches, your bus drivers, all the rest of it. We go out and say here's the pay day you would normally get just you know, don't turn your vote out. Uh. How did you feel about the paying people not to vote? I didn't feel I was paying people not to vote. I felt I was paying people who always get a check on election day, uh, not to do their job. If people wanted to go vote, they could go vote. I'm always for people voting. You know, I've spent my life and I believe in democracy and I think, you know, the bottom line is just whoever votes votes. But in this particular case that there was an opportunity. It was very close election. I was doing a press briefing two weeks after, nothing to do with the Whitman race. A reporter asked me, how did she get the vote? And how how do we have to get out the vote? Uh? And I explained to it. It became a big story because we because it did look like you were paying people and we were not. But Carvel and Begala, those guys in the in the clowns, they pounced on it, and they basically hammered me. It's a it's a tough game. And at the end of the day, you know, my own party hammered me a little bit. I had gone off and done paro and so I was sort of the trader who came back and uh, and I was not close to Bush at the end because I had been Jack Kemp's can you know a lot of little stuff that came into it. Uh. You know, you got women elected. I got women elected. I know the game. I know how to make it work. And part of the reason I know the game is I was trained as a Democrat. I was I started in the coalitional politics by Jess underw you know, and and uh and Jess under who ran all the campaigns in California, and Kennedy. It was Kennedy's guy in California told me there were three things that matter, and he said, it sounds very simple, but it's not very simple. You find your voter, you communicate with your voter, you get into the polls. If you're doing anything else besides those three things, you're wasting your time. When I watch you on TV, and you're I mean, you seem like a tough guy, and you seem like a very, very capable guy. At the same time, you don't seem to me like you're in some line with at water and row. I'm not. Why do I feel that way about it? I'm not. You know, I have a different history. I call it the way I see it. My mouth has got me in a lot of trouble over the years because I have been too honest. And you asked me a question, I'm gonna give you the best answer I can. You know, But at the end of the day, I'm an American. You know, I get up every day. I don't think of myself as a Republican. That's not the first thing. I think of myself as a father, And then the second thing, I think of myself as a husband. And no matter how diametrically opposed you and I, maybe if we really sat here for hours, we would enjoy each other's company, and at the end of the day, we'd get up and we'd go try and make America better place. That's how I got into politics. Those are the kinds of people I was Asham. At the end of the day, you know, I was a fighter. I was. I was been a fighter all my life. I've never been a hater. I'm not a hater. You and I will probably both go to the grave disagreeing about Ronald Ray, which is okay, but I wanted to say thank you so much. I get to heaven, he'll be did agree. Oh God, I hope I have a private cabin. Then this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.

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