perfectly -- all of one piece with his previous performances, which have included two stories about amy fisher, so i have a feeling that if he winds up in my business, he's going to wind up on a tabloid paper. c-span: now you haven't had any influence at all on him, have you, on this kind of stuff? >> guest: i don't know about on that. i've had considerable influence on him, but i would have urged him to pick something a bit more newsy. c-span: you write a column in here about lee atwater and robert mcnamara. >> guest: right. c-span: why? >> guest: oh, boy. i just was so struck by two pieces that came out at the same time. there was a piece about atwater in life magazine when he was sick, maybe six months before he died. the pictures were dreadful to look at because from the therapy for his brain tumor, he was so bloated. he wasn't even recognizable. and in the course of the piece, he expressed really profound regret about some of the tactics that he'd used to get candidates elected. he talked about how he wanted to apologize to michael dukakis. and he said that sometimes when his little daugh