Singer: Hillary came back with the argument that implicitly says the bigger issue is not necessarily the $2,300 lobbyist check - or maybe I'm reading into it more (than was there) - but it seems to me the bigger issue is the 50 or 100 $2,300 checks that come along with it, or the 20 or whatever it is that's bundled together.

Dodd: Generally speaking, I think we'd all be better off if we had a public financing system, which I've advocated for years. And I think we missed an opportunity in '93, when we had both Houses of Congress and a newly elected President to make a difference on it and recommended that to Bill Clinton 14 years ago.

And again, people have to make judgments. If you're so weak that you feel threatened by a contribution from someone, then you've got a problem. If you don't have enough presence of mind and enough conviction about what you stand for and believe in here and that you're likely to have your views swayed by that, you don't have any business running for the presidency.

Singer: Hillary also said, though, (paraphrasing) "When I'm President I'll introduce a constitutional amendment to change this." You're a Senator, she's a Senator right now. Senator Obama is...

Dodd: We've done both different ways. I've supported them off and on. It's a long process and you have to go through all of the states. Fritz Hollings introduced it years ago and I supported it on a number of occasions when I did. You can certainly look at that. You're not going to introduce it as President. You're going to have someone introduce it for you.

You're right. I'd suspect she may be willing to do it again, to introduce it and at least have something on paper. But it's a long process to get two-thirds votes out of both Houses and then of course have two-thirds of states ratify it. But it's a cleaner way of doing it. The other way, of course, is public financing. That was you had, from 1976 on, the presidential campaigns accepting public contributions then limiting, as a result of accepting those monies, the amounts. And that worked through Democratic and Republican administrations for basically 30 years.

Singer: But there's a flip side argument, and I think Jerome Armstrong who writes for MyDD, who owns MyDD has brought up a number of times, that as a result of the public financing regime that we're currently in, candidates are basically forced into the 8-state strategy rather than campaigning everywhere. $70 million is a lot of money, but with a finite amount of money you can't campaign everywhere. But if you raise $500 million or $1 billion during the general election you can actually run everywhere, and it help the Democratic Party to be able to run a 50-state campaign. What do you think about that argument?

Dodd: I don't disagree. But I think Hillary... You don't design your campaign, you've got Electoral College votes, you've got time and resources. Assuming you had no question about resource allocation...

But I thought Howard Dean was right in the sense of building parties. It's what Lee Atwater did. He went into places people told him he couldn't possibly convince them to be Republicans and he did so beginning with college level students. I believe very much in a strategy that builds parties in these places and builds a farm system for people to run for the state legislature and the city council as well as for Congress and other constitutional offices in those states. And those people become candidates for national office as a result. So you constantly do that in my view.

The allocation of a candidate's time for nine weeks between September 1 and November 7 next year... having been the general chairman of the Democratic National Committee when Bill Clinton started at 35 percent in the polls in January 1995, I have somewhat of an idea about how national campaigns are run, what you have to do running the party. As the only chairman of the Democratic Party to reelect a Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt, I have some idea how this works. And I'd be careful about any candidate saying, "I promise to campaign in all 50 states." It's a nice thing to say. But if by doing so you don't spend enough time in Ohio and Florida and states we've got to win to win this race coming up, then someone's going to look back and say, "Why did you ever make a commitment like that for if another two or three visits some place might have actually made a difference in winning a national election?" So having a campaign in these places, putting resources out to do what you need to build and so forth. But in the final analysis, I wouldn't want someone going off the last week in the campaign because they made a promise in Chicago to be in South Dakota, with all due respect to South Dakota, and, say, Mississippi, because there are three states they haven't gotten to and we need you.

Singer: I thought there was an interesting point brought up during one of the prior candidate panels by Scott Kleeb, who ran for Congress in Nebraska, that the last Democratic presidential nominee to visit Nebraska was Lyndon Johnson and not coincidentally in his mind the last Democrat to carry the state was Lyndon Johnson. There is a value in going to these states?

Dodd: Wait a minute. "Coincidentally." Johnson carried... It wasn't because he was there, it was because he was going to carry every state against Barry Goldwater.

I certainly think you can try to get around. But I just think being honest with an audience instead of pandering to an audience... Be honest with them. Tell them that we're going to win the presidency. Tell them what you'd rather do, campaign in all 50 states or win the presidency.

Singer: You saw some pandering out there. Do you feel that perhaps... Some people have argued that going on Bill O'Reilly and ratcheting that up right before the convention, that that's pandering. Some people would argue that.

Dodd: It was attacking this organization. No other presidential candidate had gone on the show. It wasn't just one night. It was over several nights. And my view, he was getting away with something that shouldn't be tolerated. This is a bully, and was suggesting this was all about some tasteless postings rather than ideology or difference of political point of view. And so we had a good thorough discussion of it and made the decision that this was worthy to respond to. There's an audience out there that if you don't respond to them and if you let them have the floor to themselves are very convincing. And most people aren't going to know whether there are 500 postings a day on Daily Kos or whatever else is going on. So the assumption that it's all tasteless pornography or something that's on the site, that's the perception that sinks in.

Singer: Terrific. Thank you very much for your time.

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