JBM I don’t know that there’s time to change the mood before the RNC begins.

NM I don’t think there is, but my hope is that there are also going to be enough people whose most powerful passion will not be to get on TV, but to defeat Bush.

JBM I don’t know that we can make it through another four years of Bush.

NM Oh, we’ll make it through, although I’m not saying what we’ll be like at the end. By then, Karl Rove may have his twenty years. Just think of the kind of brainwashing we’ve had for the last four. On TV, Bush rinses hundreds of thousands of American brains with every sentence. He speaks only in clichés. You know, I happened to run into Ralph Nader recently in Chicago, and I, like a great many others, was looking to dissuade him from his present course. He’s a very nice man, maybe the nicest man I’ve met in politics—there’s something very decent about Nader, truly convincing in terms of his own probity. So I didn’t feel, “Oh, he’s doing it for ugly motives.” Didn’t have that feeling at all in the course of our conversation. Still, I was trying, as I say, to dissuade him, while recognizing that the odds were poor that I’d be successful. At one point, he said, “You know, they’re both for the corporation, Kerry and Bush.” And it’s true; both candidates are for the corporation, and I do agree with Nader that ultimately the corporation is the major evil. But in my mind, Bush is the immediate obstacle. He is a collection of disasters for America. What he does to the English language is a species of catastrophe all by itself. Bush learned a long time ago that certain key words, “evil, patriotism, stand-firm, flag, our-fight-against-terrorism,” will get half the people in America stirred up. That’s all he works with. Kerry will be better in many ways, no question. All the same, he will go along too much with the corporations who, in my not always modest opinion, are running America. At present, I don’t see how any mainstream politician can do otherwise. Finally, they’re working against forces greater than themselves.

JBM Can we talk about the moderate Republicans’ role in this election? Like McCain, for instance. He came out strong for Bush. Why?

NM McCain, I think, wants to be president. He certainly has every right. All the same, successful politicians have to make hard choices. Very few good people can do it because the hard choices are so often godawful. In addition, you have to smile standing next to people you despise. Even a relatively honest man has to become pretty phony. If you don’t know which way the wind is blowing, you’re dead as a politician. You can have the honesty and incorruptibility of Ralph Nader, but, as we see, that does not get you elected. So, even McCain must have said to himself, “I could be president. I could be a much better president than George Bush ever dreamed of being. Whereas, if I go with Kerry, and Kerry loses, I’m doomed—I will be a black sheep to my own party. And if Kerry wins, I’ll be a lame-duck vice-president all the way. On the other hand, if I go with Bush and he wins, in four years I’m the logical choice to be the Republican candidate. Indeed, win or lose for Bush, I’m the front-runner Republican candidate for 2008.

JBM However, if McCain comes out strong for Bush—say, were he even to run as his vice-president, and Bush wins, I can’t imagine McCain would be able in all good conscience to put up with what Bush would do with another four years. How is he in a strong position to run for president if he kowtows to Bush?

NM Politicians do have their vanity. McCain might think, “George is an empty vessel. If I were vice-president, I could influence him. He might become a better chief executive if I were vice-president.” That could be the barb on the harpoon that hooks McCain. “I owe it to the country to make George W. Bush a better president.” Yes, McCain could decide, “I have to bite the bullet and work for a man I truly despise. But it’s necessary. America needs it.” The moment a politician says to himself, “America needs it,” he can shift the direction of the wind within the halls of his own brain.

I can’t remember an election when the stakes were so high. There has been, after all, such mendacity about the entrance into Iraq. It sits like an incubus over the first week of November.

JBM Let’s talk about protest as an end in and of itself. Are there benefits other than the political?

NM Yes. I think so. People who run protests have a chance to exercise power where they couldn’t otherwise, since generally they are against the system in one large way or another. Yet, some of them have serious talents for organizing, directing, and leading. And people who join very often get a good bit of therapy. Literally. They are not only able to vent real rage but can test their courage.

JBM Well, they are also doing something about the way they feel politically.

NM That’s the third benefit—a dubious one. You can feel that, yes, you’re working to change the system, but are you changing it or confirming it? Never assume that a protest is going to accomplish what you want it to. Media interpretations of your protest dull the impulse, warp it, or even choke it off. If you could talk to the people you really want to reach out there, people far from New York, talk to them face to face, eye to eye, they might listen, because you do have things to say. Of course, you have to stay cool. Americans get nervous when listening to anyone who’s keyed up. Major politicians are always cool. The one moment, for example, when Howard Dean went over the top, remember? The media never forgave him. And the mass of TV viewers followed like sheep. Dean had committed a no-no—he had expressed his pain and anger loudly. The problem with mass protests is that you have to pass through that immense filter of the news media. So you do get on TV for your fifteen seconds of Warholian fame. All your friends say, “Hey, man, you were on!” As if you’ve accomplished something. You might have been screaming. You might have had your face painted with ketchup to look like blood. Even if you manage to be semi-reasonable on the air, the odds are against speaking incisively and calmly. Because you’ve just got the one moment. So, all too often, protests accomplish the opposite of what they desire. Over the long term, protests can do a lot, but not at once. For example, when we had the march on the Pentagon in the fall of 1967, the immediate reaction was bad. The media trashed us. But we did have a positive effect over a period of time. In contrast, the demonstrations in Chicago in the summer of ’68 probably lost Humphrey the election.

JBM Why?

NM Well, liberals did react against the open, ugly, and unforgettable spectacle of the police smashing into the front ranks of the marchers, but even more voters felt that anarchy was loose in the street, so they blamed the marchers for aggravating the cops. A great majority of Americans are very much keyed to public order. We’re a country where everyone who came here tore up old roots by leaving their home country. That creates a long-term anxiety. So in America, the reluctance to cause disturbance is always sitting there in opposition to the other big American desire—which is to express oneself, to be free and free-spoken. I can speak from my own experiences as a candidate for mayor in the New York primaries of 1969. I thought people would want what I offered. But I was opting for too much change. In politics, people want continuance. Americans don’t want their lives disturbed. That’s the basic problem with protest. It’s good for the protesters, but not always so good for the candidate you want to get in.

JBM Let’s go back to the ’68 protest. What were its successes?

NM I think it was not too bad for a lot of people who were in it, individual kids who discovered that they did have the balls to protest. Because when you do, you have to pass through your fear. After all, you can get beaten up. Not everyone can face that possibility. So it could have been good for some of those who forced themselves into the protest, good for their self-respect down the road.

JBM Don’t you think that it was thanks to the protests, in large part, that the Vietnam War ended?

NM That was one large reason. But I’ve always felt that what made the suits who run so much of America truly nervous was the notion that they could no longer trust the kids who came to work for them from the best universities. In that sense, protests against the war were serious, were effective. But that’s not the situation today.