Carville Wows ARCO Forum Crowd

Four politicos shared the mike last night at the Institute of Politics to discuss the history of presidential campaigns, but it was the flamboyant James Carville, chief architect of the 1992 presidential campaign for Bill Clinton and Al Gore '69, whose characteristic soundbites elicited laughter from the audience of about 100.

"The fact that you know who I am speaks volumes about the rise of spinners and handlers [in American politics]," Carville said, setting the tone for the evening of complaints about the ills of modern politics.

Carville's red sweater and khakis stood out from the dark suits of co-panelists Charles Black, a Republican political strategist, journalist Jules Witcover and moderator Jill Hanson who was the national political director for the Dole-Kemp 1996 campaign.

Witcover agreed with Carville, saying the "one-horse jockeys" who managed campaigns at the beginning of his career have disappeared in today's "era of the hired gun."

The 1974 and 1976 political campaign reform legislation in Congress created spending limits so low the candidates started to look for loopholes and alternative means of fundraising, he said.

"Media consultants became, if not as big, at least as entertaining as the candidates," Witcover said of politicos like Carville.

Sitting on the edge of his seat and waving his arms, Carville was quick on the uptake as he diagnosed the nation's political maladies.

"Anything they do they're going to put 'reform' on the end of it," he said. "All the intelligentsia urges this process on, [but] once you run out of money, [your candidate] is toast--butter him."

Carville, acknowledging that fundraising was essential in the '92 Clinton campaign, commented sarcastically on what he saw as the blindness of the current discussion of campaign finance reform.

"It's like an old-time posse--they just go around the circle shooting their guns in the air," he said. "We need change."

Black denied that big-budget campaigns are inherently destructive, instead blaming their finance system.

Black blamed a system that allowed independent presidential candidates Ross Perot and Steve Forbes to spend their private fortunes on their campaigns, tempting the Clinton campaign to "engage in a massive and successful campaign to raise illegal donations."

Carville, meanwhile, leaned back in his chair and smiled smugly as he awaited his turn to deliver the counter-spin for which he is famous.

"Assume the worst [about the Clinton campaign]," he began, pausing dramatically. "Now double it. Does it match the fact that Newt Gingrich gave [tobacco interests] a $50 billion tax cut at one o'clock in the morning?"

The audience laughed at his humorous defense of the Clinton campaign.

"[Selling the Lincoln bedroom] is not illegal, it's good politics," he said.

The panelists all agreed that recent campaigns have suffered from a lack of emphasis on ideological issues which has contributed to the widespread apathy.

"No one in the Republican party is smart enough to make a fool out of Clinton so they have to make a criminal out of him," Carville said.