The Rake: What do you make of Wellstone’s choice to adopt a more cautious, conventional persona?
Hillsman: He is so Washington. He drank the Kool-Aid in 1996—before that, really, in 1993 or ’94. The turning point for Paul in many respects was when he realized it would be a lot harder to get things done than he ever expected. When universal health care failed so miserably in 1993, it shook him. The White House basically botched things up. They made a rookie mistake—they made him take his universal health care plan off the table, which left Hillary’s plan as the most liberal proposal on the board. The other side then came out and blasted away at her. Paul’s plan should have been on the table; it would have meant the Clintons got more. I think since then Paul’s decided just to play the game and get what he can get.
The Rake: Let’s suppose Wellstone woke up tomorrow and said, “What am I doing? I’ve got to take more risks.” And he calls you. Could you do a striking Wellstone campaign this time, or has he made himself too much a gray figure for that?
Hillsman: It’s not that he’s a gray figure to most people. That’s only evident to the people who are paying close attention. And they’re an important part of his base, but what he really doesn’t understand is that his swing vote is elsewhere. In 1990 his swing vote was really the Perot vote, though no one knew about any Perot vote yet. It wasn’t until ’96 that we really figured out who these people were, and it turns out they’re the Jesse voters too. I worked with Ed Gross in 1996 on this. Ed’s a very smart guy. He’d look at the data coming out of Washington and he’d tell me, Wellstone’s people don’t get this. They don’t see who the swing vote is. We need to talk about these people.
They were mostly guys, living up in places like Anoka. You’d ask these guys, “Why do you vote for Wellstone? You don’t agree with him on a single thing.” And they’d scuff their shoes and look at the dirt and say, “I think he’s honest. I think he’s got integrity. And there ought to be one son-of-a-bitch like that in the United States Senate.” And that’s his swing vote. He’s not going to get them this time.
In my opinion he shouldn’t be running. What Wellstone doesn’t understand, because he’s too caught up in Washington, is that the two-term pledge he made is a deal-breaker with these people. These are people he made a promise to—I mean, I was there when he made it, time after time. He hated being called a professor because Boschwitz was calling him that to paint him as ivory tower, out of touch. So he said, “No, I’m a teacher. And after I serve my two terms in the Senate, I’m gonna come back to Minnesota and I’m gonna teach. And it’s not going to be at Carleton or any other private school, it’s not going to be at the University of Minnesota, it’s going to be in the community colleges.”
Well, that’s these guys’ kids—that’s his swing voter’s family. That’s where they go to school. That was a deal to them, and now he’s reneged on that deal.
The Rake: What are the key themes for this fall’s races?
Hillsman: I don’t think that’s the right way to pose the question. That’s how Washington looks at it, it’s what they poll and test for. I think you need to start closer to home, with where people’s heads are at. For years now, until 9/11, you could do any sort of poll you wanted and it always came down to the same four issues: education, taxes, health care, crime. No matter what the order, they would always be on top. That’s not necessarily true anymore. I think there are two main things on everybody’s minds. One is the aftermath of 9/11, and people’s sense of personal safety. That day was a shocker to everyone, and to people in the center of the country it’s remote yet it’s not. The image that haunts us all is the suicide bomber. And the Office of Homeland Security says “You know, there’s really nothing we can do about that.” So how can we be safe? What caught so many of us off-guard about 9/11 was that we did not believe there were people out there who hated us enough to kill themselves along with a whole bunch of innocent people just to make a point. Well, now we know they’re out there, they’re recruiting, and they’re apparently not having a hard time coming up with recruits. When you hear of people getting on buses… I mean, how difficult would it be to put on a suicide bomb and walk on to the University of Minnesota campus? It just isn’t that hard.
People are concerned about that and they don’t have an answer to it. You have to address that feeling of uncertainty with people. I don’t think people are dumb enough—let me put it this way: I know women aren’t dumb enough to think that if we go in and root out al-Qaeda, that that’s going to solve the problem of terrorism. It’s not. The solution to the problem is the answer to the question, Why do people hate us this much? That’s where you have to begin. But no candidate has had the courage, or maybe the vision, to begin to grapple with that question publicly. I don’t think anybody will do it this time around. It’s political dynamite.
Corporate malfeasance is the second thing on everybody’s mind. That should work to Paul’s advantage. But the Democrats have no clue. When I was at Harvard, back in March or so, they did a panel on the future of the Democratic party. And there was no message, there was no sense about the future. These were the best thinkers they could put on the stage, and there was nothing coming out of their mouths. Then all of a sudden [James]Carville wakes up and says, “Oh! These business scandals are the best opportunity for the Democrats in a long, long time.”