A nest of ninnies

Literary giant Gore Vidal gives his verdict on Republican America.

Gore Vidal, American writer

GORE VIDAL: I think a lot of people in the Party, Democratic Party thought that the real problem in United States is that we're a racist country, always have been. They never took into account we're misogynistic too.

And we don't want women to get uppity.

I was telling a joke that she found out that when she was about to run for the Senate that the one group that hated her were middle class white men of property.

And so I said "Did you ever find about that?" you know "Why do they?"

She said "I don't know what I've done to them or what they think I've done to them". And then she said - this is where I really quite like her.

She said "Well" she said you know "apparently I remind them of their first wife".

ANDREW MARR: So she can make a good joke against herself ...

GORE VIDAL: Oh she can.

ANDREW MARR: ... and that's worth a bit. That's worth a bit.

GORE VIDAL: It's worth a hell of a lot. I didn't hear many jokes coming out of Mrs Thatcher.

ANDREW MARR: No. It's all good news for John McCain. A big admirer of John McCain I imagine.

JOHN MCCAIN: If I have to follow him to the gates of hell I will get Osama Bin Laden and I will bring him to justice.

GORE VIDAL: I don't think anyone admires him. He's, you know, he's a real fool. As is Bush himself. And Bush's father before him. I mean it's a, it's a, a nest of ninnies.

ANDREW MARR: And any glimmer of hope with Barack Obama from your perspective?

GORE VIDAL: Well you know I think he, he makes a lovely speech. He seems well intentioned. I have never been able to grasp anything there the way I can with Hilary. I mean I know what she wants for health care. And I know how it can be done.

And she's very good about explaining it. She's more professional as a potential president than he is. Poor woman to go all of her life wanting to be the first woman president and she has to take on an entire race which is coming alive in the United States.

ANDREW MARR: And this business of comparing Barack Obama with the sort of Camelot moment of JFK and all the rest of it. What do you, how do you regard all of that?

GORE VIDAL: If I were he I'd feel insulted by it. You must remember Jack, for all of his charm - was even greater than Obama's - really did nothing useful and quite the contrary.

He begins his regime with an invasion of Cuba which wrecks his whole foreign policy from that moment on and then he goes on to enlarge the war in South East Asia. This is hardly anything you want to emulate.

ANDREW MARR: And yet America has this extraordinary capacity or sort of public America to forget all of that and to, to ... .

GORE VIDAL: Well that's why I call it the United States of Amnesia. Nobody can remember anything anyways.

ANDREW MARR: You tried over a long period of time I suppose to educate America in its own political history through the novel. Do you think that that was largely futile?

GORE VIDAL: No. I think I, my work bore fruit as they say. I'm quite sure of that. What happened was, when I turned pamphleteer, books like Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace, these are pamphlets in the eighteenth century sense.

And I think they've had a terrific influence, much larger than I ever suspected they would. And they keep cropping up. People keep quoting them and I have done what I could do but I can't do a miracle.

ANDREW MARR: When you went back to, to live in America after your long self exile I suppose I could call it in, in Ravello and Rome, what surprised you? Did anything surprise you about actually being there and living in the midst of it?

GORE VIDAL: The fact that nobody gave a goddamn about the country. Nobody does. The press can't handle it. The, the judges on the benches are no good. They certainly don't respect the liberties of the people which we carefully crafted in the late eighteenth century.

And they don't care about anything. Well I think to lose in a couple of years Magna-Carta, due process of law and one by one the, the Bill of Rights has been eroded, I don't think that's a small thing.

ANDREW MARR: People in this country perhaps much too easily point the finger at what's happened to America.

Those who object to the Iraq War point the finger again. To what extent do you think New Labour, to be brutal about it, is also culpable?

GORE VIDAL: Well they certainly were you know colluding with the little mad man. I mean this guy is certifiable.

ANDREW MARR: By "this guy" I think ...

GORE VIDAL: I mean Bush.

ANDREW MARR: ... referring to the President George W Bush yes.

GORE VIDAL: Yes. And McCain was quoted yesterday in the New York Times as having said when he, you know early on, six, seven years ago, he says "You can't talk to this president about anything because he wants to talk about baseball scores". So you try the economy and he doesn't know what it is. He's not suited for this.

And is it due to a lot of rich people who wanted their taxes cut which he did for them. And to a very sinister vice president who likes the idea of torture, renditioning people to foreign lands, holding them without charges.

He tore up the Constitution. The Brits have never had the slightest interest in the Constitution of the United States because they have none and they are perfect as we know so they don't need one. They seem to think only you know mental defectives need a constitution.

ANDREW MARR: I mean that does at least suggest that things can only get better as far as American politics are concerned.

GORE VIDAL: Well let us pray.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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