Do we have to give up any of our freedom or privacy to maintain a reasonable degree of safety?
I don’t mind being inconvenienced. I do mind if you step on my privacy toes. I heard this from good, decent Americans many times during the Patriot Act debates: “I don’t care if you’re listening in to my conversations, I’m not doing anything wrong.” My hopefully respectful response was, “Yeah, you do care. Nobody has a right to listen in to your conversations unless they have probable cause to do so.” I felt that way then, I feel that way now. I would draw a line in the sand and not erase it.
Do you think the threat of terrorism is receding or expanding?
I think the threat of terrorism has grown. I think that and cybersecurity are two permanent conditions that the broader world community is going to have to deal with forever more.
We can’t be breathless about this. We can’t be so concerned about the prospects [of more attacks], as horrible as they are, [that we become] preoccupied with eliminating all possibility that those ever happen again and just kind of surrender how we live, what we do. The security measures we build into our communities [can] begin to become a gradual infringement of that right of privacy.
It’s about managing the risk, and risk management is not a mindset that is acceptable to a lot of people, even though day in and day out in their own lives they manage a lot of risks. They put an addition on the house, they don’t increase their insurance. They go down to the store, but it’s only a mile away so they don’t bother putting on their seat belt. We just have to accept the reality that the terrorism threat is a global scourge. We’ll deal with it. You get to the point where you start infringing on my rights, and that’s when the returns start to diminish. That’s when we have to say: OK, the risk is there, enough is enough.
You were on the short list for vice president.
Yeah, a couple of times. I’ve been a bridesmaid! [Laughs.]
Do you think John McCain could have fared better with another VP candidate?
Yes, no question. I’m not going to say anything bad about Sarah Palin, but I think there were opportunities. John McCain and I are very close friends; I’m never going to second-guess my buddy. [But] I think that there were a couple of other individuals who would have added the kind of gravity and experience that would have added to his credibility, number one. Number two, there was a John McCain and a John McCain story out there that I wish they would have told, about John as an individual and as a leader. I wish they had framed the campaign around him a little differently.
You’ve run for office eight times and never lost. Ever see yourself running again?
I’d like to retire undefeated, like Rocky Marciano. [Laughs.] No, probably not. I think the door is pretty much closed for a lot of reasons. I love what I’m doing, I’m able to effect some change, I chair the National Organization on Disability, I love that challenge, and I keep my hand in the game politically with some of the think tanks. I was invited to speak to the Log Cabin Republicans [a gay conservative organization] at a fundraiser in November. I accepted it with relish and I laid out my vision for what I think the 21st-century Republican Party should be—that it be the nonjudgmental conservative party—and I talked about the social issues and I talked about immigration.
The role I hope to play in the political community and within the Republican Party [is to make the point that] before we worry about the messenger in 2016, we better have an appealing message. So right now my focus is not on candidacy or candidates, it’s on what’s our message. Right now, it’s not particularly attractive, especially to young people or Hispanics.
I think we are dead wrong when it comes to this immigration debate. We’re wrong for social reasons, for economic reasons, for political reasons. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve encountered immigrants—there’s an awareness among new entrants to this country about the political system, how important it is to them, that astonishes me. It makes me feel good about them and this country, and it annoys the daylights out of me that my party is being perceived as anti-immigrant. I know they’re opposed to illegals, but the perception is that we’re anti-immigrant generally. That’s a bad place to be, and it’s the wrong place to be.
Thank you, Governor, for taking the time to do this interview.
I’ve been out of politics so long, it’s nice to think a group of people might be remotely interested in what I have to say.
Tom Shroder is the former editor of The Washington Post Magazine and author of Acid Test (Blue Rider Press, September 2014), a forthcoming book about the effort to rehabilitate psychedelic drugs as a treatment for PTSD. To comment on this story, email comments@moco360.media.
