A GOP Never Trumper's Advice for Hollywood Dems
Mike Murphy, the veteran political consultant, calls for 'adult supervision': 'Celebrity can be a weapon, but only when it’s wielded by pros, not narcissists'
Throughout the '90s and early '00s, Mike Murphy reigned as one of the leading gurus for Republicans of a maverick bent, having advised the 2000 John McCain campaign through its Straight Talk Express and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s upstart victory in the gubernatorial recall campaign.
However, in more recent years he has been one of the loudest voices on the right against the Republican Party’s Trump-era drift, as a leader of the ragtag Never Trump faction. He currently dispenses his wisdom on reclaiming the party and the country on the Hacks on Tap podcast, which he co-hosts with Obama strategist David Axelrod.
He also is an L.A. resident, having moved here some time ago in an attempt to escape the sedentary, placid life of electoral politics in search of some real excitement as a Hollywood screenwriter.
I reached out to him yesterday as one who knows the Hollywood Democratic community well as to what advice he’d give our hometown activists as one of our own, Vice President Kamala Harris, runs for the White House, and who should be the team’s number one draft pick out of entertainment.
Richard Rushfield: In the lead-up to President Biden’s decision not to seek reelection, some Hollywood Democrats were very prominent in that process. What does that say to you about Hollywood’s role within the Democratic Party right now?
Mike Murphy: Well, politicians — when a glass of bourbon is in their hand and they’re talking honestly to other politicians, particularly on the Democratic side — look at Hollywood like an ATM. The Hollywood people tend to think politicians ‘really want to know my view on the Fiji accord and nuclear arms talk.’ I wrote a piece for the old Weekly Standard about my admiration for Dick Gephardt who would come out to Hollywood for two days and meet Barbra Streisand’s psychic nutritionist and keep a straight face.
But there are exceptions. I think Jeffrey Katzenberg is a great story of flying a little close to the flame.
RR: How much do you think the George Clooney op-ed made a difference?
MM: I joke that the New York Times got Carville to do an op-ed, then they got Clooney, then they got me, so I was clearly handsomer than Carville and more of a political operative than Clooney. But seriously, I think the Clooney thing had a lot of impact. Clooney is very smart. Of all the Hollywood people I’ve met — other than my old client, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a natural — Clooney in many ways is the most capable of being a successful modern statewide or national politician. He just has the toolbox, because he grew up around it, his dad being in the TV news business and everything. So he’s smarter than the average bear in terms of political skill.
The op-ed was well written. I think he had a little rewrite help from the paper, probably because they’re not shy about that with everybody. But it made an argument, not only that he had some love for Biden, but it cut through all the BS and said, I was standing there with him, and let me tell you what I saw. And Clooney is very credible, because he’s worked in the center-left political space for a long time. So it was what I would call expert testimony.
What Carville said was powerful. Clooney saying it was powerful — it was kind of a building crescendo. I don’t think it drove Biden’s decision, but it helped drive an environment where Biden was forced to confront the situation.
Biden was late, but to his credit he’s the first national politician I’ve seen in a while who — and I’ll give Pelosi this too — put the country’s interest ahead of his own. Because once you go through the humiliations it takes to be President of the United States, the years of the slippery pole and suffering endless insults, it is a damn hard thing to give up. The formula to get it is never give up. But Biden made the right decision in the clutch, but he had to be put in the clutch.
RR: That’s something Hollywood knows about: No one willingly steps down from a studio chief job.
MM: Right? They can grind. I mean, who’s telling Rupert, you’re too old to run the empire? They go out feet first. Once you get it, you fight the death to keep it.
RR: What would you advise a Hollywood democratic activist right now? Just write checks everywhere and keep your mouth shut? Or how can they be most effective?
