Al Franken Opens Up on His Recount Battle, Rush Limbaugh and Recession Politics

By Mark Green, Air America Media. Posted February 21, 2009.

AF: Well, you know what? I've already been doing that. I don't know what they've been saying. I really don't. I haven't been paying any attention. That is the great thing about doing this. You really stop paying attention to that.

On Air America, part of the three hours a day is debunking the right and that kind of thing. But, when you're faced with actually trying to help folks, you know, the past couple of days I've been going around talking to mayors in Duluth and Two Harbors, Minn., the mayor of Champlain, the mayor of St. Paul, the mayor of Rochester, county commissioners, etc., trying to figure out how they can get access to the stimulus package and what they need.

That's seems much more productive than trying to listen to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly and hear what they think about me. Actually, that was one of the nicest things that happened to me once I left the radio show -- I stopped paying attention to them.

MG: Now that you're paying more attention to [President Barack] Obama than Limbaugh, what do you think about the stimulus law and the proposed new bailout proposal?

AF: Well, the stimulus and the bailout are apples and oranges to me. You do hear some Republicans now say: "Well, we favor a stimulus package, but not this one." That is, I have to admit, something I said about the bailout. I really didn't like the [original] bailout, because it didn't have oversight, it didn't have transparency, and also it didn't seem to do anything about the foreclosure crisis. There were just all kinds of different reasons why I didn't like it. I think I was kind of right about all of that.

But, nevertheless, the stimulus package is something that I definitely would've supported and voted for. We need this. We need to jump-start the economy. We're in a classic, deep recession where the government, in a very "Keynesian" way, has to be the spender of last resort. I think that if I had been there, there would've been a different dynamic [because he would have been another Democratic vote for it].

MG: Should Obama, in your view, be playing the bipartisan card as hard as he is -- or should he be more partisan and legislate based on his Democratic majority?

AF: Well, I think there are two things going on. One, obviously, the votes were very partisan. But I think, at least, the rancor isn't as bad as I've seen.

And I think that as long as this president continues to reach out -- I think the American public pays attention -- maybe there wasn't bipartisanship in the Congress, I think there is in the American people. I think there's some bipartisanship among Republican governors. I don't know how long these Republicans in Congress can continue to do this.

I think the president is right to do this. I mean, I think that there are going to be bills that are harder to pass than this one, and we may need to work across party lines to get their votes. Now, if every Republican in the House is going to vote against everything and then throw a party afterwards, then I don't know what to do about that.

Certainly the Senate is a different thing, a different kind of body. My intention when I go there, and Mark, you know, I'm in this recount because I only got 42 percent of the vote. So did Norm Coleman, and then there was an independent who got 15 percent of the vote. I'm going to have to work on behalf of everybody in Minnesota. My plan is to try to solve problems and help the people of Minnesota, so I'm going to be working across party lines.

MG: The president this week said that he's sending another 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. Is that something that you would favor? You were an early supporter of the invasion of Iraq, but then became a vociferous, eloquent critic of the war. What about Afghanistan?

AF: Well, first of all, as far as an early supporter of the Iraq war, I was really on the fence in a way where I neither spoke out for or against it, which I regret. I wish I had been one of the wise people who had spoken out fiercely against it. But as soon as it became evident that there were no WMD and then as we were conducting the war and the boneheaded way we were doing, I was, as you say, a daily fierce critic on Air America of the way the war was being done, that it was a horrible mistake, and that we were essentially lied into this war.

As far as Afghanistan is concerned, part of the damage from Iraq was that we took the focus off Afghanistan, and obviously, that is where the attacks on 9/11 came from. Afghanistan/Pakistan is now an incredibly difficult problem. We're changing our policy there. It looks like we're putting less stock in [President Hamid] Karzai and taking a different approach there which has to do with paying more attention to the tribes and hopefully doing some kind of Afghan version of counterinsurgency doctrine that we adopted during the surge in Iraq.

I support putting more troops in there, but this is not going to be solved very soon, and this very difficult. I'm glad we have [special envoy Richard] Holbrooke there. We obviously have to combine Afghanistan with Pakistan. This is going to be a long, long deal.

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Listen to Al Franken's first national media interview since November, conducted by Mark Green, on Air America this Saturday at 3 p.m. PST and re-airing Sunday at 6:00 a.m. PST.

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