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BILL ADAIRFlorida's senior U.S. senator holds forth on why his presidential bid fell flat and how he plans to keep busy once out of office.
WASHINGTON - After 36 years in government, Sen. Bob Graham is ready for a new career.
Graham, who turns 67 on Sunday, said this week he will not seek a fourth term in the Senate and will focus his energy on nurturing future leaders. In an interview Thursday in his office at the Capitol, the Florida Democrat discussed what went wrong in his presidential campaign, whether he can be happy in retirement and his feelings about appealing to voters who have Confederate flags on their pickups.
Here are excerpts of that interview:
Some people have commented about the photo of you and your wife, Adele, on the front page Tuesday. That's a pretty passionate kiss
Al and Tipper broke the mold, so it's okay.
Is there any chance you might run for governor in 2006?
The blanket answer to that - and a hundred other questions - is that it is not on my agenda of things to do. But I don't believe in saying "never" to virtually anything. I may well get a call from the Miami Heat that they need another point guard. That's what I was at Hialeah Junior High School - and a damn good one at that.
You have always thrived on the hectic pace of being a governor and senator. Now that you're leaving the Senate, will your life be too slow-paced? Will you be bored?
I'm going off into uncharted waters. I don't know the answer to that question. I hope that I have done the things that would make the rest of my life as fulfilling - or hopefully more fulfilling - than another six years in the Senate.
I can't picture you getting up and shuffling out to get the paper without some kind of schedule that says "Here is what you do next, senator." Are you ready for that?
Just the heart-thumping anticipation of having the St. Petersburg Times on your doorstep - that gets your blood going. Will you do home delivery in Miami Lakes?
We're on the Internet.
That's not the same as shuffling out there.
How do you feel about the controversy over Howard Dean's comments about trying to appeal to people with confederate flags on their pickups?
I think as Howard said (Wednesday), it was a clumsy choice of words and was offensive to some people. The thought itself is a very important one: What can Democrats do to regain what should be the party's natural constituencies?
Clearly we are the party that has the interest of working Americans most in mind, whether it's having a tax policy that isn't tilted toward the rich, or getting working Americans access to health care coverage. The fact that they are not voting Democratic I don't blame on them. I blame it on us for not having done an adequate job of explaining what the real differences are (between the parties) on things that count for them.
If you could, what would you have done differently about your presidential campaign?
There were a lot of problems with the campaign, and almost all of them were somehow related to our late start. If I had been able to start the campaign the same time Gov. Dean did - since I actually voted against, spoke against and was one of the more visible opponents of the president's Iraq war - I think I would have gotten some of the uplift that he got.
Second, fundraising. We had a goal of raising $15-million, 40 percent in Florida, 60 percent out of Florida. Where we got killed was outside Florida. One thing I learned is that it takes three or four or five times plowing the ground and planting the seeds before you harvest significant amounts of fundraising.
You had a campaign team that was all outsiders, people who had no experience with you. In hindsight, do you think that was a mistake?
In hindsight, it was. There was a component of the late start there. Since I didn't announce that I was running for president until late December, a lot of people I would have liked to have involved in my campaign had already committed to somebody else's campaign.
Another thing beyond my control was that my close friend and primary national political adviser, Bob Squier, passed away a couple of years ago. I would have benefited by him being involved in the campaign.
And then, of course, having open-heart surgery at almost the same time I had anticipated announcing and actually going out and starting the campaign is not a very good route to the White House.
But Wesley Clark got in late and has become a contender. What else do you think kept you from connecting better with the voters?
In Clark's case, one, he is a very charismatic figure with an unusual background. Most of the people running for president, including myself, had essentially a political biography. Wes had a West Point-Vietnam-four-star general background.
Second, either Wes or people who were working on his behalf had been starting well before his announcement. The whole Draft Wes movement did a lot of advance work.
One thing I've been impressed with is within the first couple of weeks of Wes' announcement, he had given five or six major speeches on different issues. He didn't just scribble those on the back of an envelope. He was well-prepared - better prepared than we were.
I don't want to overlook the fact that I was probably not the greatest candidate in terms of connecting with people. I think some of that was the fact that I was close to this surgery. I didn't look as good, I didn't have the energy that I had even six months later. And maybe the kind of campaign that I had done that was effective in Florida didn't relate. The workdays, for instance, which had been such an important part of my communications in Florida, didn't seem to (connect with voters), particularly in New Hampshire.
You're still not wearing your Florida ties. Are you going to bring them back?
The answer is yes. To be frank, this tie (a silk tie with red and blue stripes) was the top of the pile on my tie rack. The Florida ties are just a little further back. They will be coming back.
- Editor's note: Questions in this interview were asked in a different order than they are printed here.