Q: C-SPAN ran a 1996 interview of Bryan Lamb with David Broder about his book, with Haynes Johnson, called The System, a book about how the Republicans killed health care reform, under the Clintons.

A: I saw that. It was very interesting.

He said that interest groups were as powerful as political parties used to be. They could mount media campaigns, they had field organizations, they had all kinds of money, and they were focused on the one issue that affected them.

It was spooky.

I'd say things are the same now, only worse.

Q: Worse how?

A: The Democrats moved to the right, to get some of the corporate money.

Everything shifted to the right.

The mainstream media certainly shifted to the right.

The left dried up and blew away, like old newspapers blowing down the street.

Q: The subtitle of The System was The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point.

A: It broke. Because people wanted to break it. People broke it in order to replace it with what we have now instead.

It works for them.

Look at who it works for and you'll see why it works the way it does.

People are smarter than the systems we devise to regulate them. They outsmart whatever system you put in place to control them.

They manipulate the system. To their own advantage. And in secret. Among themselves.

It's our thing. La cosa nostra.

Q: Most reporting is about a system that no longer exists.

They're closing the barn door after the horse is gone.

A: I taught myself to do something nobody wants.

I got to be very good at doing something I couldn't get anybody to pay me to do.

Q: That could change at a moment's notice.

A: I suppose. Don't hold your breath and wait for it to happen.