John Dean on McCain, the economy, the Bush White House and more

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He was White House counsel to President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal years. John Dean blew the whistle on the administration's misdeeds. He testified, was convicted of a felony charge and disbarred.Dean went on to become an investment banker and author of several politically charged books. Dean retired from investment banking to return to writing. His most recent book is "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush."On Sunday at 8 p.m. (EST) he talks to Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne during the airing of "All the President's Men."Q: You've written and talked about this new single-minded conservatism that has come to define the Republican Party. What kind of Republican is John McCain?A: I wasn't sure until he ran this race and wooed that element of the party to get the nomination. He has run a campaign that plays to that base. He has added to not only the social conservatism that is dominant in the party, but also the neo-con foreign policy. This is certainly not in the Goldwater conservative tradition or the Reagan conservative tradition. So I say he is very much the base of the party right now.Q: So the "maverick" moniker?A: It's theater. I don't think he's much of a maverick. There were sort of opportunistic departures from the party ... so he could rectify some of his earlier sins by doing so.Q: You were an investment banker. What is your take on the state of the economy?A: I was what I call a private investment banker. To distinguish what I was doing, I wasn't selling securities. I was in partnership with a few other players. We would buy and sell industries here in Southern California. We would fund them and build them up and then sell them off. Anyway, I really wasn't playing with the Wall Street guys. We were playing below the radar.Q: They were, too.A: They were doing that, too, but they were also buying and selling paper. It was basically mortgages that they were securitizing and then peddling them off to anyone who was sucker enough to buy them. ... It was just incredible junk. (Laughing)Q: So is the failure of the financial system a result of deregulation?A: Well, it was a combination of several things. First of all, there was a total lack of transparency into what they were doing. Sometimes they were buying and selling paper and they didn't even know what they were buying themselves. (Former Federal Reserve Chairman) Alan Greenspan had been the great champion of these derivatives, thinking that the market was self-correcting. He has been forthright recently to acknowledge that human nature and the markets didn't work as he hoped they would. Greed exceeded wisdom and caused the problems that we have.Q: How can we control the intoxicating and damaging effect power seems to have on our elected leaders?A: I think it's a consistent problem with government. They (the Founding Fathers) found the confederation didn't work and that is why we wrote the Constitution. It was written with the checks and balances and the separation of powers to play to the very fact that human nature is less than angelic. It's when there has been a breakdown of that, that I see the problems we've had. I have written several books about the Bush administration, because when I was in government, I thought we wrote the book on what not to do. The Bush people came in ... and pushed presidential powers way beyond any boundaries that Richard Nixon could have dreamed of as to an imperial presidency. Just a whole attitude that the law is irrelevant when it comes to the executive, when he is wearing his commander-in-chief hat.Q: Did Watergate ultimately help Americans by making them more aware of the fallibility of their leaders or did it hurt?A: Watergate today is ancient history. In fact, I can tell you people in the White House press corps who can't tell you which came first, Teapot Dome or Watergate. They are young. There has been a new generation of reporters and it's kind of spooky to talk to some of them sometimes, because they really are incredibly unaware. I can also point to some members of the House and Senate who are equally as naive about what Watergate was and was not.Q: Have you ever thought about the kind of man you would have turned out to be had Nixon never been caught?A: I had never planned to make a career out of government. I look back on the experience as a great experience. I still have an awful lot of friends in government. That's why when I retired from investment banking I decided I would return to writing.Q: When you realized you would be the scapegoat, did you break into a cold sweat?A: I'm not a cold-sweat type. When I realized what they were going to do, I sent a blast back across their bow by having my secretary call the newspapers. If they thought I was going to be their scapegoat, they picked the wrong guy.Q: Did you think your life was over when you became a convicted felon?A: That's a hard question, because I decided myself to plead and come forward. I knew the consequences of that, but my lawyer was very unhappy when I did that. He thought I was a fool not to beat the rap. You reach the point where rather than live the lie you have to come forward and tell the truth and take the consequences.(Patricia Sheridan can be reached a psheridan(at)post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)