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A. I think they made a mistake in not defending it. In the '60s liberalism had some standing. It was under fire, but it was acceptable. After that, progressively, the liberals began to qualify their liberalism, saying, "I'm not an unreconstructed liberal," or "I'm a sane liberal." First the conservatives and eventually the liberals began to attack it and qualify it until it eroded. Some of those people say, "We're neo-liberals." That can be anything.
Q. You're a paleo-liberal then, by that measure.
A. Now I say I'm a pure neo. Not a neo-liberal or liberal-neo. An existential neo. But this is a good place to rest. We ought to retire the word for about seven years.
Q. Do you think that Reagan and his popular successes have changed the nature of the presidency again?
A. He was, in a way, a very constitutional President. It was accidental, I think, but he didn't tamper with the court. He didn't really abuse the Senate. The Democrats just sort of surrendered. The same was true with the House of Representatives. I don't think he had a clear idea of the differentiation of functions.
I think the strength of Reagan was that he said we're going to make the society function again. Whereas the Democrats said, "We are going to take care of failures. We'll have more welfare and do more for the poor." Or "We'll take more people off the tax rolls." This came out of the Great Society -- a handout state.
Q. I'm surprised you're not more offended by the Reagan presidency than you seem to be.
A. I'm kind of offended by the whole process. I'm offended by the candidates we have now. We're lucky we've got by as well as we have. But I was more offended by Carter than Reagan. Reagan had been kind of in national politics. It was bad stuff, but he had been out there saying things. Jimmy came on with his righteousness and the meeting on the mountain and firing everybody at midterm and taking us out of the Olympics, and the grain embargo. Reagan was not as pious as Jimmy. He said he was reborn but didn't know when it happened or what it did to him. Jimmy said he was reborn in the woods with his sister.
Q. Don't you think then that morality should figure into shaping policy?
A. Some, I guess. But I don't think you can get up and say it every morning, which is what Jimmy did.
Q. If you were to win with your coalition -- to ask the Dan Quayle question -- what would be the very first thing you would do as President?
A. At the White House, I'd carry the suitcases up, then check the location of the red telephone and see if it was working.
I don't think you worry so much on what to do first if you've been thinking and writing about the institutions, because you have an understanding of how the office functions. It isn't just a projection of the person -- that's a thing that's been built up. We elect the person and then find out what we've got, what kind of a President he's going to be, when the institutions and the traditions ought to take care of about 90% of it.
Harry Truman had the clearest idea of what the institution was. He knew when he was Harry Truman and when he was President. He respected the other institutions of Government.
Q. Had it not been for Bob Kennedy, do you think you would have been President?