I talked for about 10 minutes on the phone this afternoon with Sen. Chris Dodd, who was himself a candidate for President this spring. He suspended his campaign this spring and now support Sen. Barack Obama.
Here's the full disclosure bit: Dodd has become a surrogate for the Obama campaign and it was the campaign that approached me about talking to him. But hey: I'll take an interview with a U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate when I can get one and to be fair, Dodd didn't push an agenda on the call and actually answered the questions I asked him. (That, my friends, is not always the case when interviewing politicians.)
Dodd was an interesting guy to talk with and, being chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, is especially knowledgeable about all the doings and misdoings in the financial markets and mortgage industry. We spent a good part of our time talking about how complex some of this stuff is and how hard it will be to sort out.
Which lead me to this question for him: You're supporting Sen. Obama in the presidential chase. But he does not have a really deep banking and/or financial industry resume - he has not even served a full term in the state Senate and does not serve on the Banking or other committees with the oversight responsibility on these industries. Does he have the background to take on this problem were he elected? His reply, transcribed from some poor-quality audio:
"Certainly he does. The background you want in president is to first of all understand the problem needs to be addressed. He certainly gets that. And he needs the gray matter to understand it, and he certainly has that.
"But most importantly, because none of this is going to happen, I don't care how good your ideas are and your position papers are, and even if Barack Obama had spent his entire life becoming knowledgeably about financial institutions and mortgages, if you don't have leadership ability to motivate the country, to motivate people, to sit down and work out things in a way that will resolve issues to the satisfaction of our nation, then none of this is going to happen.
"We don't need to hire a technician. We need to hire a person who can provide that kind of moral leadership, that direction, that inspirational leadership, the ability to attract people who want to be part of the solution who get excited about being invited to that table to make a difference. And those are the qualities.
"Experience is very important, but it shouldn't be judged in isolation. It's your value system, your life experiences, your character, your commitment, your leadership skills - all of these things are much more important than, than - what experiences do you want to have? At this very hour its in housing and financial services, you know, yesterday it was Iraq. Tomorrow it may be Africa or Latin America, then it may be health care.
"We're never going to have anybody in that job who is experienced in all of this. But what they ought to have is the qualities and abilities to know the difference between the people who are coming to the table with an honest commitment to make a difference, who understand a good idea when you've heard it, to not be afraid of people with opposing ideas who come to you with good will and are interested in making a contribution. And I think Barack Obama has that talent and ability.
"I spent a year and a half of my life competing against these people not to mention getting to know them pretty well. And I'm satisfied, and this is not to be against Hillary Clinton. I'm not against anyone, particularly her. I have a lot of respect and admiration for her and she's talented as she can be.
"But I think the moment in history and the individual are coming together in this moment, and Barack Obama is exciting an element in the country that we've not seen in a long time. In our system you need that to get things done and we haven't had it in a long time. So I'm supporting his candidacy - and look, there are people like myself and Ted Kennedy, and others who years of experience. So if he wants to get technicians who know how to do this and who to listen to and so forth, that's what a good president will do. That's what his talent is going to be. That's who you want in that job."
My next question was this: how do the Democrats bring the nomination process to a close in such a way that the party does not hurt the chances for its eventual nominee?
"It going to take some adults in the room over the next few weeks to say, you know, game over, you know, and mean it and make that happen.
"Having said that quickly to you, then how do you do that? You've obviously got to have facts moving in your direction, and they are clearly (moving) Barack Obama's way. What is it, 56-to-32 (percent) among Democrats who believe he has the strongest opportunity to win in November. I know we don't like to talk about winning, but if you don't win you're not going to talk about any of this stuff in January, so you've got to win.
"And you've got to win by not just appealing to your base, but you've got to attract independents and in our case moderate Republicans who are looking for change. One statistic that is not gotten a lot of attention, Mark, is the following: of the 44 contests that have happened, in those contests where Republicans and Independents are allowed to vote in a Democratic caucus or primary, Barack Obama has a million more people that are Independents and Republicans that have voted for him and not voted for his opponent. That's the constituency you better have working for you on November 5 or you're not going to win the election.
"But if you end up going to Denver (the site of this years Democratic presidential nominating convention) in a brawl, with the party highly divided over personalities - it's not like George Wallace and Bobby Kennedy running against each other. We got to get down and drill down into those position papers to find those sub-paragraph three differences."
So, at what point should the adults get together in the room and make some decisions?
"When? ... You and I will know it when we see it. What happens in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, what happens in Indiana. I think taking a good hard look on May 6 is the date I'll be looking at. If Barack wins Pennsylvania, maybe we don't have to look at it any more than April 22. If it's a narrow loss, then obviously what happens in North Carolina will be critical, what happens in Indiana - If the trend lines continue as they have been, then I think its about that time to say let's put a wrap on this one and let's pull people together.
"Candidates always get together. I'm not worried about Hillary Clinton working hard for Barack Obama, or Barack Obama working hard for Hillary Clinton. I'm worried about the legions of people, supporters, people who (gave) financially, people who have committee a year and half - two years of their lives to this, they're much harder to turn around in eight weeks between the end of August and the first week in November.
"I've been around long enough, Mark, to watch this, I've seen what happened. We come out of conventions with all the phony pictures of people holding up each others' hands as a symbol of unity and there isn't an ounce of it in the room, and you try to patch that up and you end up loosing elections.
"So I'm very concerned about it. And I think people who say, 'This is healthy for the party,' and all these things, they don't know what they're talking about. It is to a point, but if you allow this thing to go too far and candidly, this campaign has been run by these cable networks, who are living off this and would love nothing more than to be reporting 24/7 about every nuanced battle between Michigan and Florida and delegates and supporters and fundraisers, what great theater that could be."
