Interview with Mark Halperin
Mark Halperin is a journalist and political commentator.
Biden and Clinton
Contents
Max Raskin: Was news of Biden not running the biggest story you’ve ever broken? Does anything else come close?
Mark Halperin: Possibly. But I was fortunate enough working with my colleagues to break a lot of stories when I covered Bill Clinton, and the 2008 election cycle also had some incredible, historic stories to break.
MR: Which politician do you think you were the closest to in your whole career? On a human level.
MH: It’s a hard question to answer because it depends on how you'd measure it. I most intimately covered Bill Clinton in the sense that I was assigned to follow him when very few national reporters were covering him. I spent over a year with him, beginning in the fall of '91 and then spending all of ’92 with him. For the first months, it was just a tiny group on the plane, including me, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and his original key staff.
MR: If you called him today, would he pick up your call?
MH: Probably not but I don't try and I don't have his current number. When he sees me, he always smiles and when I run into him, he always says, "Mark, what are you doing here?" It can be at a political event, or sometimes just at the airport. He was the first politician I covered and the one I spent the most time with. And because of the excitement of the story of his election, there's a professional bond there for me.
MR: What’s the longest you ever spent with him?
MH: There was a period of several months where some days I was the only reporter on a small private plane with him. Now, there were some staffers around, but there was a lot of one-on-one time.
MR: You hear about his charisma and charm. What does he do when he is just sitting there by himself?
MH: Reading. He's a voracious reader. He'd read newspapers. This was pre-digital, so he'd read newspapers, he'd read novels. He'd read nonfiction books. He also could be quite chatty.
MR: Was he fidgety?
MH: He’s intellectually restless, but physically, he was pretty calm.
MR: Is there anyone you covered who over the years you ended up just hanging out and becoming friends with?
MH: There's no one who is a personal friend who I hang out with, but there are people who I have regular interactions with and part of my career that I'm proudest of, and part of the extent I've had success, I attribute to this is, that I have relationships like that. Again, not pals, but regular respectful interactions.
MR: Can you say who any of them are?
MH: If you go on the website of my Concierge Coverage business, there are nice blurbs from both Newt Gingrich and Bill Bradley.
What it Takes to Change the Game: Fear and Loathing
MR: Who would you tell young political reporters today to read? With the conventions this summer I’m thinking about Norman Mailer.
MH: Two things: What It Takes: The Way to the White House by Richard Ben Cramer and Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson. The mistake I think the young political reporters make is to think that covering politics, and especially presidential politics, is about process and polls. It should be about purpose and personality. If you're going to be a great storyteller, the point for me of covering presidential elections is to use them as a prism to understand and explain America and Americans. Not to become obsessed with the process of the campaigns but try to understand and explain to others the personalities of those who want to be president. Those two books are extremely well-written, which is also an important thing.
MR: If you could recommend just one of your own books, which would it be?
MH: Game Change.
MR: The first time we met I said that your show The Circus reminded me of Hunter Thompson. Would you say that was what you were going for?
MH: I found that to be an extraordinarily generous compliment. In all my work covering presidential campaigns and government, I aspire to do what he did, which is to tell interesting stories in interesting ways that allow the readers or viewers to better understand the country and our leaders.
MR: What's your second favorite Hunter Thompson book?
MH: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Rolodex
MR: I want to talk to you about keeping track of people. You must have just a huge number of people that you have to maintain relationships with…
MH: …what Grandpa Halperin calls a Rolodex.
MR: Yes.
So what is your method for maintaining contacts, and then what’s your method for remembering to say in touch with people — both sources and friends.
MH: I don't think I'm going to be providing secret sauce on this one. I use Apple Contacts on my devices synched through Google.
MR: When you put someone in will you write “Mark Halperin (Journalist)” or something like that?
MH: No.
I have a memory that's good in some ways and bad in others. In general, I will remember who people are, or I can load them back in the Google machine to figure it out. But I don't spend the time to code that I met someone in the Fontainebleau Hotel in 1942. I don't do any of that.
MR: Are there any politicians that you knew over the years who had a coding system like that?
MH: Yeah. Although I'd say the more common is the cause-and-effect of someone being a successful politician because they can remember friendly personal details about people they meet.
Bill Clinton is the ultimate example where he’d meet somebody he hadn't seen in 15 years and say, "How did your son's high school graduation go?" Because 15 years ago, the person had said they were nervous about the graduation.
MR: What about staying in touch with people?
MH: I tend to stay in touch with people — and I wouldn’t want to assign a percentage to this — but part of it is humanity and part of it is just being a good reporter and source-building.
I tend to follow up with people not on the day when every reporter is calling them because something they're working on is in the news. I tend to always have in my head that metaphor of second graders playing soccer where they're all hovered around chasing the ball. Don’t run to where the ball is, run to where it’s going to be.
When somebody gets fired or canceled or is not in the limelight, I'm very apt to reach out to them and just check in on them and see how they are and listen to them. I think that serves me well professionally, but also karmically. It’s the right thing to do, and it allows for a more human connection.
MR: What’s the process of deciding you’ll run something like the Biden story — how do you build confidence in your sources?
MH: Years of experience and knowing who can be trusted and who cannot, and understanding in each situation how to approach additional sources for solid confirmation.
MR: What do you use to take notes?
MH: It depends on the project. If it's a book, I record it. With permission, I record everything and do transcripts if I'm interviewing somebody.
MR: What was the last conversation that you took notes on?
MH: The last conversation I took notes on was not an interview. I was in a meeting about a new project, and I took notes about what everybody's follow-up responsibilities were.
MR: Can you tell us what the project is?
MH: It's my new platform called 2WAY to try to create conversations like no other by connecting content creators and notable people with their superfans.
MR: Like Cameo, but interactive.
MH: That's a good way to describe it. It's like Cameo, but over live video with bespoke pricing that is based on the event itself or an author selling a book or breaking news. And long substantive conversations that create a sense of community as opposed to one-on-one or one-way communication. It’s not passive.
We already have seen some incredible, insightful conversations between very well-known media and political figures, and brilliant civilians who have raised a hand to participate, and just sharing ideas and chatting.
Not Mark Helprin (or Dan Halper)
MR: Do you know Dan Halper?
MH: The conservative writer? I've met him. I don't know him.
MR: Do your names get mixed up?
MH: No. The person whose name gets confused with mine is the novelist, Mark Helprin. It's pronounced roughly the same, but it's spelled differently. And he has dabbled in politics. He mostly writes these epic novels that are extremely well received and do pretty well commercially.
His greatest foray into politics was in 1996 when he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about what a great American Bob Dole was and how it would be an outrage for America to elect a scoundrel like Bill Clinton again. Dole loved the piece and hired him to write his convention speech. And he did, but it didn't end well. And he quit because they tried to edit his speech as I understand it.
MR: Did you ever get confused with him in an interesting way?
MH: So there was a period from when Dole quit the Senate, which was around the time Helprin wrote his first speech for Dole through the convention when he quit in a huff because they edited his speech. When I would call the Dole campaign, because back then you had to call people, and I'd say, "Hi, it's Mark Halperin calling for such-and-such senior official." The first time I called after he'd been hired, the young receptionist said, "Oh, Mr. Helprin…such a big fan of your work…I'll put you right through." And so that happened for the several months that he worked there. I got all my calls put through, and then after he was fired, I went back to having to struggle to get people on the line.
Trump, Biden, and Harris
MR: What is your track record with predictions of presidential elections?
MH: Mixed. I tend not to predict that much because I don't see any mileage in it. You don't get credit when you're right, and you're mocked when you're wrong. And I don't like to bet on or predict things that I cover.
But sometimes when you are out in the field a lot, you witness things that are manifest. In 2011, I said Donald Trump should be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. And then I said the same thing into 2015 and 2016, and that was kind of an out there thing to say, and I was criticized for reporting the reality of what was happening in the country.
So you asked me what my track record is — with the exception of Clinton '92, where I thought he could win and Trump 2011 through 2016 where I thought he could win — I just haven't made that many predictions. Sometimes on TV I'm pressed to, but I really shy away from it.
MR: Do you think it’ll be Trump or Harris?
MH: Don’t know.
MR: Do you have a relationship with either Trump or Biden?
MH: I've known them both for a pretty long time — Biden for longer than Trump. Again, as a political reporter, I just don't think of myself as "tight" with people who I cover. But I know them both. If I were in the room with either of them, they'd recognize me. They could probably recount past experiences.
MR: Do you have any personal anecdotes about either of them that you've never shared or whatever?
MH: I wrote a book called How to Beat Trump, which was based on interviews with Democratic strategists before the 2020 election about their best sense about how to stop him from getting re-elected. I told a lot of my best Trump stories in that book.
Biden stories I’ll probably save them for my memoirs.
MR: Do you keep notes for your memoir?
MH: I should, but I don't.
MR: So what do you do?
MH: I have mementos of things that are spurs to stories.
MR: What's the closest memento that you see right now?
MH: Well I'm in a hotel room in Phoenix, so none.
MR: What's the first one that's conjured up in your mind right now?
MH: When we were on the plane with Clinton in '92 at the heat of and height of Veepstakes, all the reporters were trying to break the story of who he was going to pick. We played a little game with him about who he might pick, and he wrote some stuff on a back of a napkin and signed it. And I have that in my office in New York.
MR: What does it say on it?
MH: I'm embarrassed to say at the moment, I can't remember. He wrote down some jokey answer about who was running.
MR: That plane sounds like it was fun.
MH: I had a very distorted impression because I'd never covered anybody full time. I'd never covered a presidential campaign on the road. And Clinton was incredible, and the press corps was incredible, and we had fun…it was intense and intimate.
But I thought, "Well, this is what it's like covering anybody running for president." And then through the years, I saw that in fact, Clinton was one of a kind.
But it was Adam Nagourney then at USA Today, Gwen Ifill, my friend, who was then at the New York Times, and a bunch of other people. It was just a great group of people, some of whom stayed my friends for many, many years. We were covering history because a Democrat hadn't won in so long, and it was a three-way race because of Perot.
And Clinton was the best politician any of us had ever seen or ever would see.
MR: Does he still hold that for you?
MH: Oh, he's unambiguously the best.
MR: Who's number two?
MH: Trump.
I say that sometimes publicly and Democrats get all upset, and I say, "The worse a person you think Trump is, the more ridiculous you think he is, the more you should realize my answer is correct, because only a great politician truly could overcome all the baggage that he carries.
Nixon and Chappelle
MR: Don't you think Richard Nixon was the best politician? He didn’t have Clinton’s charisma but still became president.
MH: He might've been, but I never covered him. My dad worked in Nixon White House, but I never covered him.
MR: What'd he do in the Nixon White House?
MH: He was one of Henry Kissinger's deputies at the National Security Council.
MR: Did you know Kissinger?
MH: I knew him in the sense that I have a pretty vivid early memory of him picking me up to play with me and put me on a desk in the White House. And then I sued him for being part of the effort to wiretap my home phone.
MR: What is it that Trump or Clinton have?
MH: A fingertip feel for understanding how to appeal to the electorate in the most winning way. It's giving a speech and having this sensory understanding of what's striking the chords and then honing it to eliminate the stuff that's not working and make the message even more enticing.
MR: Is there anyone who's not a politician who has that?
MH: Frank Sinatra, Don Rickles, David Chappelle, Taylor Swift.
The Media
MR: Some of my friends in political media wanted me to ask if Trump's transparency killed the tell all political memoir?
MH: No. The right person with the right story and the right writing could still have great success.
MR: Do you have any desire on the record in this interview to criticize the mainstream media at all?
MH: Sure. I do it all the time.
MR: Who's your least favorite person in the mainstream media?
MH: Oh, I don't think I want to answer that.
MR: What's your least favorite outlet?
MH: I just don't see any mileage in answering that either. But I'll give you a general critique.
MH: Liberal bias has been a longstanding concern of mine. Failure to hold powerful interests accountable and to be distracted by bright and shiny objects.
MR: Who are the powerful interests that you think are most under-attacked?
MH: Unions, big business, government officials, the wealthy. My main concern now as it's been for a while is Trump Derangement Syndrome, has kept to the press from thinking about and grappling with and explaining why Trump is popular. They attribute his popularity to the MAGA base and some sort of voodoo psychological hold that he has on them. And that's true as far as it goes, but Trump's popularity, and if he wins again, I think that the failure to grapple with it will be even more unfortunate, particularly for those who don't want him to win. We'll have to, I hope, finally have the discussion of what is the source of his popularity that is related to the real lives of real people.
It's ironic and paradoxical and super annoying because the people who enabled Trump, who arguably play the largest role in enabling Trump to do well and to win as he did in '16, and as he may again, are the very people who spend their lives abrogating their professional responsibility by not covering him either fairly or fully.
MR: Do you buy the theory that they want him to win because he is so good for ratings?
MH: No.
MR: Okay.
MH: Well, I don't think it's their dominant motive, and I think they think they're trying to stop him. Although, again, as I just said, they're helping him. But no, I mean, he is good for ratings and clicks, but they'd rather he not win because it undermines their whole reason to be at this point.
MR: Which is?
MH: Stop Trump. Help their liberal friends stop Trump.
Meet the Press
MR: In the morning, what does your news consumption look like?
MH: Well, we're in the midst of a presidential, so it's a little different because I'm covering it minutely day-to-day. New York Post, Drudge, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times.
MR: You get them all? You read them all?
MH: I read them all digitally.
MR: Do you scan?
MH: I just know how to read their websites efficiently.
Then I read the main newspapers in the battleground states. Then I read about six morning newsletters from various places.
MR: Can you share some of them?
MH: I read the Politico ones. I read the Axios ones. I read the Semafor ones, and then I read the Wall Street Journal marketing one. And then I think Twitter is substantially less useful than it used to be because of the changes Musk made and how it works, but I still look at it throughout the day on a regular basis.
MR: Is there anyone that's a must follow for you that's not someone people would have heard of?
MH: Several. But I'll give you one. There's a guy named Aaron Fritschner who is the communications director for a Democratic House member from Virginia named Don Byer. He is hilarious. And he's very quick. He’s almost like a reporter. He knows a lot about what's happening on Capitol Hill, and he'll post about that. But he's also a blue warrior. He very much offers a window into what the fiercest blue warriors are arguing at any one time.
MR: Is there any analogue of him on the right?
MH: Probably the closest, although not a perfect analogue, would be Doug Andres who works for Mitch McConnell.
Mark and Matt (Drudge)
MR: What do you think about Matt Drudge?
MH: I'm a big fan of Matt Drudge. Very respectful of his place in history. I wrote a chapter about him in a book that I'm very proud of. I thought it did a very good job of explaining his place in the world.
Early on, before he was super famous, I got him into the Clinton White House Briefing Room, which pre-9/11 was the kind of thing I could do. I could just clear some random guy in, and he updated his site from the Briefing Room. He borrowed somebody’s phone line drop in the briefing room. So I felt proud to have done that.
MR: How is the site still so good?
MH: He developed a plain, stripped-down format that is readable and consistent and people have just come to understand the semiotics of it.
MH: And so it's comforting. They know where to look. They know how to read it. They know how to consume it, to find what they're interested in.
MR: What do you mean by semiotics?
MH: The symbolism of it, the gestalt of it.
MR: There’s certain things you know he’s interested in. Like aliens and weather.
MH: There's things he's interested in, but just the layout. The combination of how he uses his real estate at the top of the page, that sometimes he'll just have a photo and some links, but occasionally he'll have, in the upper left a line of links either related to that main story or a separate story.
And then he's just got the three columns and he's got links to people. There've been various efforts to take him on and compete with him. And I've tried to, on a couple of occasions. It's just he's got a winning formula and a brand name, and he has, I think, for idiosyncratic reasons, resisted monetizing it as much as he could have by selling it to somebody. And that's allowed him to stay true to the formula that's worked so well.
And I shouldn't bury this because this is really the key to the whole thing — he just has a great nose for news. He just has a great sensibility about tabloid perspective and headlines and what's of interest to people.
MR: Does anyone write better headlines than him?
MH: No.
MR: He's the best headline writer except the New York Post, right?
MH: Yes. But he's writing so many headlines every day. He maintains mystery about who's helping him. He did it all himself originally, but he's had people helping him over the years.
He's king of the hill. He's king of the hill. Full props that he’s sustained success with a simple formula that he replicates on a daily basis.
The Jacket
MR: You famously lost a nice jacket the night we met. I’m happy to post a picture of it if you like.
Who’s your favorite Japanese designer?
MH: Yamamoto. He's just a genius. His stuff is just phenomenal.
MR: What's the last song you listened to?
MH: The last song I listened to was Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About.”
MR: What was the last album you listened to front to back?
MH: The new Taylor Swift album.
MR: Do you floss?
MH: I do.
MR: Do you believe in God?
MH: Mm-hmm.
MR: You're Jewish?
MH: By birth, yes.
MR: Do you believe in Jewish dogma?
MH: No. I'm a secular humanist.
MR: Do you pray?
MH: Only before free throws.
MR: Do you believe in an afterlife?
MH: No.
MR: What kind of pencils or pens do you use?
MH: I don't believe in writing by hand.
MR: Who’s the first musician that comes to your mind right now?
MH: Paul McCartney.
MR: What's the first movie that comes to your mind right now?
MH: The Birds.
MR: Who's the first dictator that comes to your mind right now?
MH: Mussolini.
MR: Have you ever done therapy?
MH: All sorts of therapy.
MR: Is there a politician under the age of 40 who you think in ten years could be president? Someone who you’d buy low and sell high?
MH: I don't know how old Josh Shapiro is, but Josh Shapiro.
I think he's probably older than 40.
MR: Do you snack during the day?
MH: Compulsively, obsessively, and continually.
MR: What do you snack on?
MH: Carrots, bags of nuts, and dried fruit from nuts.com.
MR: What's your favorite dried fruit?
MH: Probably papaya.