Carville Responds To Liberal Blogosphere's Case That He Should Be I.D.'ed As Hillary Backer On CNN
March 30, 2007 -- 6:48 PM EST // // Post a Comment
Okay, I just got off the phone with James Carville. We spoke at length about the case being made against him by the liberal blogosphere: That as a supporter of Hillary Clinton, he should be identified as such -- rather than being identified as an independent analyst -- when he talks about the Presidential race on CNN. Particularly when he smacks Hillary's chief rival, Barack Obama.
Just to catch you up, MyDD, DailyKos, and Atrios have all been hammering Carville and CNN over these comments Carville made about Obama. He said that Obama had been "less than impressive" during a recent appearance and needed to get "up to speed" on some issues. These bloggers all argued -- pretty persuasively -- that Carville should be identified as a Hillary supporter by CNN when he goes on the air and criticizes one of her chief rivals.
When I checked in with CNN about this, CNN opted to have Carville answer the complaints. It seemed that Carville saw at least a grain of merit in the case being made here. At one point, he said: "I think that I'm gonna be cognizant that if I criticize one of the Democratic candidates," then he might mention that "I'm gonna vote for Hillary." On the other hand, Carville also said that if he brought up his voting plans every time he said something critical of her rivals, it would make for "horrible TV."
Carville also said he thought the case that he was an adviser to Hillary was overstated. "I'm not an adviser to her campaign," he said. "I'm not being paid by her campaign...I don't get paid. I'm not an adviser." Asked if he never advised the campaign in any way, Carville said: "Do I ever consult? No. I have a lot of friends [in the Hillary campaign]. I talk to them. But I have a lot of friends in the Obama campaign. And Edwards."
Carville acknowledged, though, that as a CNN analyst he shouldn't have allowed himself to be featured as the author of a fundraising letter for Hillary. "To be honest with you, my contract at CNN says I'm not supposed to raise money [for Presidential candidates]," Carville conceded. He said he'd approved a stack of letters bearing his signature without checking them closely enough. "I approved it by mistake. It wasn't Hillary's fault, it wasn't my office's fault. I signed off on a whole stack. When CNN found out about it, they called me, and I said, Call the Hillary people, tell them to take it down. Which they did." No future fundraising for Presidential candidates while a CNN analyst, he promised.
When I asked him if it was possible that he could be pushing her agenda when stating opinions that the audience would accept as neutral, he seemed to acknowledge that this was at least conceivable. "I guess I could have said, `I'm not just saying this as a Hillary person, but if you're running for the Democratic nomination, you've gotta bone up on health care,'" he said. But he added: "I'm not defined by my support of Hillary Clinton. I like her, but if she drops 5 points in the polls," he'll point it out. "This is hardly firing a U.S. Attorney for political reasons," he said.
Okay, so there you have it. I'm too tired to have an opinion about this right now, except to say it raises a bunch of interesting questions about the blurriness of the lines between "supporter," "adviser," "pundit," "independent analyst" and all sorts of other shadowy fixer-ish roles people carve out for themselves behind the scenes in official Washington. You guys have at it.
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