Bill O'Reilly Says He'd Consider Presidential Run
"I may take a look, certainly the option is open if I want it,"
the Fox News star told Long Island's liberal Newsday. "But what I want to do
over the next few years here is clean up the process. We have the bad guys on
the run - no question about that."
But all that's way off in the future, he said, noting that, "the country's
not interested in an independent candidacy. Maybe in 10 years they will be, but
right now, you have 50 percent of Americans who don't know anything - they're
totally disengaged from the process, the 'Mall People.' They don't know
anything, don't watch the news or listen to radio or read the newspapers. The
other 50 percent - and there was a recent poll on this - are a third crazy left
and a third crazy right and third in the middle. So the pie you're going for is
a very narrow pie."
Though O'Reilly's many liberal critics say he is one of the most outspoken
voices of the "crazy right," O'Reilly steadfastly declines to identify himself
as a conservative.
It's possible, he told Newsday, that he "could mobilize a certain number of
independent thinkers who think, 'This guy could be a ... Teddy Roosevelt kind of
guy, who could come in and clean up the garbage...'"
But, O'Reilly quickly adds "I'm not a vanity player, I'm not gonna go out
like Al Sharpton, to get on 'Saturday Night Live' to run for president, so
unless I'm convinced I could pull it off, I wouldn't do it."
In the immediate future, O'Reilly has been urged to take on Sen. Hillary
Clinton when she comes up for re-election in 2006.
O'Reilly has shots down that speculation by predicting that it would be a
lost cause. "I'd lose.... It'd be a fun race [and] I'd drive her crazy, but she
would ultimately win," he said. Besides, adds Newsday, he has no interest in the
Senate: "I'm not a quid pro guy" who'd have to play at pork-barrel politics to
bring "goodies" back to the state.
Fueling talk that O'Reilly may have political ambitions is O'Reilly's lastest
new book "Who's
Looking Out for You?" which Newsday calls "(at times) a political
reformist's manifesto."
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