I was the guy that told Bill Clinton he was going to win. I had gotten the final polling numbers. He had a comfortable lead. He was not going to lose.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.
I have never lost an election yet. I am a winner. Let's just say that.
When Bill Clinton ran in '92, and I listened to him, and I had of course known of his record from Arkansas, I found him extraordinarily inspirational, and I voted Democratic.
I rallied against Clinton when he was in office. I didn't vote for him in '96. I didn't vote for Gore in 2000.
And on election night I'd go down to city hall in El Paso, Texas and cover the election. In those days, of course, we didn't have exit polls. You didn't know who had won the election until they actually counted the votes. I thought that was exciting too.
In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn't have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out.
I worked for a lot of candidates, in tough campaigns that lost. Most of my candidates lost until Bill Clinton. There was always a point where you look in their eyes and they knew it was over. And there was never that point with Clinton. He never quit. He never gave up.
In 2006 it was a horrible election year, and, you know, I lost. But I lost because I continued to be a constant conservative, and the last six years I was someone who was a national figure in the sense that I was the third ranking Republican in leadership and I had just run President Bush's campaign in Pennsylvania.
I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day.
I recognize that as the guy who lost the election, I'm not in a position to tell everybody else how to win, all right? They're not going to listen, and I don't have the credibility to do that anyway.