Q: Bill Clinton supposedly advised Kerry to defuse the same-sex marriage issue, which was on, I think, 11 states in the form of a referendum, by endorsing a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Do you have any awareness of that?

LOCKHART: I don’t remember that. I remember that this was on the ballot; it was on the Ohio ballot I believe, and the smart numbers, people believe that this was a very important — I just don’t — I’m not a smart numbers person, so… You know, what I remember about Ohio was, if you lived in a white, rich suburb, you could go in and there were 28 working machines. If you lived on a college campus, [01:04:00] in a campus town, or in a poor neighborhood, you waited on line for four hours.

Q: You have, at various times, sort of talked about the press’s the media’s focus on — and this is a quote, “how we make the sausage.” I wonder if you could elaborate on that; in other words, did the — in what ways did the media coverage of the election disserve the public?

LOCKHART: Well, I think, let’s go back to Swift Boats. I think it was a lot easier to cover the tactics and the strategy than the substance. I mean, who wanted to go spend three weeks at the archives checking Kerry’s war record? There were a couple of news organizations that did, and they wrote impressive stories on it, that gave it a good accurate sense —

Q: Do you recall in particular?

LOCKHART: — of what it was like. I think [01:05:00] the — I think maybe the Times or the Globe, and their coverage — and not all of it was good news for Kerry, but you know, they did the legwork. Most of the other people — and there are exceptions, I’m not — you know, this is always the danger, because you end up insulting the people who are doing good work. But most of the press in that campaign wanted to just focus on who was gaining the strategic advantage by this. So it reinforced the idea that — and I think Karl Rove was well aware of this, was — you can say anything. And as long as you couched it in strategy, no one would ever go back to the underlying. You could say — you could accuse your opponent of anything, and there was no price to be paid for that. Bush paid no price for what Republicans did; none. And if they put as much attention into the substance of that [01:06:00] story as opposed to the strategy, I think things — the coverage would have been different.

Q: Was Swift — was Swift Boat —

LOCKHART: And I’ll give you a flipside example, where it benefitted the Kerry campaign. There a story — a significant story, but not a story that should turn a presidential election, about some weapons being lost in Iraq, misplaced. Like they were under our control, all of a sudden — we had a five day field day over that. We pushed it as hard as we pushed anything in the campaign. Again I don’t think it was something that — a presidential campaign should have turned on. It wasn’t significant enough, but it was symbolic of this president not knowing what he’s doing, and rushing into things without any — you know, and he’s throwing money, and weapons around, and it’s all going to come back to bite us, and very few people [01:07:00] tried to take that story and put it into perspective. So, it worked both ways.

Q: What’s your sort of campaign professional’s evaluation of the Bush campaign, the effectiveness of it?

LOCKHART: Technically, and I think — I think very advanced, as far as the technical aspects of running a campaign, voter contact, reaching people that was — you know, there were all sorts of stuff, about, you know, they were running ads in health clubs, because that was what their target was. I don’t know how they were doing it; I’m not an expert on this. But I do remember — we knew every TV ad they had. Because it was all a matter of — not public record, but the stations told you. It was in the station’s interest to say, “Bush just bought two million dollars on us. What are you going to buy?” So they — we had a map of what they were doing, they had a map [01:08:00] of what we’re doing. We had maps of what independent groups were doing, and we had the same amount of money. And I remember, near the end, looking up and asking, like I didn’t know, I said — what — all the money’s spent, but they’ve got like two or three million dollars, and we don’t know what they’ve spent it on. What did they spend it on? And we didn’t know.

And I think they were doing things that were — that were the precursors to the Obama microtargeting that really has developed into a weapon. It was a crude weapon, I think, back then, but when you win an election by 65,000 votes in Ohio, you can’t tell me that it may not be an important and crucial weapon, so I think — I give them credit for being more advanced than the Democrats were at that point. Democrats came back with a vengeance in 2008, and I think we — Democratic Party owns a technological superiority [01:09:00] that, we’ll see what the Republicans do. I think they were very disciplined. They had a strategy; they stuck to it. I think they get points for that. I think the candidate performance was mediocre, at best.

I would say for the Kerry campaign, Kerry’s performance was inconsistent, and not always disciplined, but at times superior. I mean, he had weeks where, he was a great candidate. And he some weeks where he was mediocre, where for whatever reason, he decided to go off-script, and talk about something else, or you know, and you know, it’s — I say this, and I have to put it in the preface; it’s the hardest job in the world to be — it’s easier being presidential than being a presidential candidate. You don’t have any other resources, and you’re out there with a camera in your face all the time. So some of the missteps [01:10:00] I think were inevitable. But there were times where he was an incredibly potent political weapon. There were times when he was just OK.

I think Bush seemed — never seemed like, you know, Bush being out there helped that much. The situation in the country and the world helped them. And again, the most dynamic candidate doesn’t always win; often doesn’t win. But I think if you look at, you know, they had very good — very professional campaign staff, very disciplined strategy and message, and I think they were hurt by the fact that, you know, Bush didn’t show up a lot of the time. I think he had what a lot of incumbents had, which is, you know what, I got a day job, and I’m doing it pretty well, and you know, the voters will understand.