The cable TV anchor was in a car, somewhere in New York, talking into a cell phone. The topic of the moment was drug abuse, but he quickly shifted gears. In a 20-minute chat, he would touch on immigration, Iraq, the war on terror, immigration, corporate malfeasance, public education, immigration, the 2008 presidential election, political parties and immigration.
On one side, you have the American people. They're right - and they side with Dobbs.
On the other side, you have elites with power, position, money. They include virtually every elected official, most corporate leaders, prominent educators and high-powered media figures. They're wrong - and Dobbs is gunning for them.
In his new book, "Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit" (Viking), the newscaster argues that contemporary politics is a sterile exercise in ideological maneuvering, where partisan agendas trump the national interest. The solution? Americans must abandon the hidebound Republican and Democratic parties in favor of a middle course that benefits the middle class.
"Most Americans live at the center," Dobbs said, "and they think and they feel at the center of society. Independents ... are focused on what is good for the country, on what is good for America."
The center vs. the fringes, good vs. evil.
Nothing complicated about that, is there?
VILLAINS GALORE
Along the U.S.-Mexico border, this once-apolitical business journalist is probably best known for his views on immigration. In this debate, he's a key figure, but not a central one. His seal-the-borders, deport-the-illegals stance places him within the conservative camp on that issue.
But it would be a mistake to see Louis Earl Dobbs, 62, as a doctrinaire, across-the-board conservative. He's pro-choice and anti-school vouchers. He may describe himself as an "independent populist," someone who is as apt to blast the Bush administration as the Pelosi Congress. He's labeled his views as those of a "Rockefeller Republican," an "advocacy journalist," or simply as a "commentator."
Critics prefer "demagogue" and - perhaps most viciously - "entertainer."
"He's not a journalist," said Jon Garrido, a Tucson, Ariz.-based activist whose Hispanic News Web site often skewers Dobbs. "He's theatrical. He has a theme, which is bashing Hispanics. ... He uses that theme to energize his audience to think that the Hispanics are to blame for everything that goes wrong in America."
Actually, in Dobbs' world, there is no shortage of villains. They include:
- The ineffective "war on drugs" waged by presidential administrations, from Reagan on: "'Just Say No' is a rube response to a complex social issue."
- College professors: "They are mostly now in the pay of think tanks and corporations."
- Presidential candidates, for failing to address our public schools' woes: "This is a crisis, not a political game to be played around No Child Left Behind."
- The White House, for its Middle Eastern strategy: "Without any sense of incongruity, President Bush defies the will of the people while at the same time asking that we be patient with him, his discredited policies and the generals who've failed for all these years in Iraq."
In fact, throughout "Independents Day," almost all of America's problems are traced to influential elites jockeying for power and conspiring against the common good.
"On one side of this issue are the people of the United States," he writes in a typical passage. "On the other side are special-interest groups ..."
Who are these nefarious figures?
"The elites are those - for example, this was illustrated rather well in 2004, when the presidential candidates, selected from a population of more than 300 million, were two men both from families of privilege, both graduates of Yale, both members of Skull and Bones.
"It's an absurdity."
RADICAL CHANGE
This Harvard graduate and handsomely paid cable TV anchor may seem an unlikely champion of the middle class. But Dobbs was born in a small Texas town, Childress, and served a long apprenticeship in the news business, beginning as a Los Angeles Times copy editor. His career has been intimately tied to CNN, where he started as chief economics correspondent for "Moneyline" in 1980. A favorite of CNN founder Ted Turner, Dobbs quickly became a star.
His rise was not without controversy. In the 1990s, the network scolded Dobbs for filming promotional videos for Paine Webber, Shearson Lehman Brothers and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. His now-defunct Lou Dobbs Money Letter, a $199-a-year monthly publication, recommended that readers buy and sell stock in several corporations his CNN show had excoriated for shipping jobs overseas.
"Actually, Dobbs only acts like an anti-trade zealot in public," James K. Glassman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in Capitalism Magazine. "In private, where he is appealing to subscribers to the Lou Dobbs Money Letter, a 'private and confidential market report,' he carries a different tune entirely."
Dobbs has consistently denied any conflicts of interest. In retrospect, though, he admits that he was too trusting of corporate America. The 2001-02 scandals at Enron and WorldCom shook his faith in Wall Street: "The worst cases of corporate corruption in our history." At the same time, his views on the federal government - and "elites" in general - were also undergoing a radical alteration.
"On Sept. 11," he said, "we had a failure of our government to, first, understand the threat to our existence that had existed for a decade. That led, second, to this global war on terror that the government is conducting so haphazardly and with, I think, the shallowest of thinking."
The disillusioned newsman soon found his signature issue, one that fused his critique of both America's corporate chiefs and political leaders.
TOTAL CONTROL
"Lou Dobbs Tonight" is broadcast in color, but the anchor's views on immigration are strictly black-and-white: "We need to control our borders and our ports."
When Dobbs says "control," he means total control. Today, he maintains, only 5 percent of all cargo entering the U.S. is searched for contraband or, more importantly, biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
"It should be 100 percent," Dobbs said. "Why not?"
Because of the cost? "We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on what is described as a war on terror," he replied. Failing to scrutinize all incoming cargo is "absolutely irrational."
How about concerns that stepped-up inspections would bring cross-border trade to an economy-crippling halt? "What the administration has chosen to do is accept a trade-off between national security and public safety and the flow of goods and commerce."
Incoming people, too, need to be tracked and inspected. National security, Dobbs said, demands as much. So does our economy.
In "Independents Day," Dobbs cites a Georgia congressman, Republican Phil Gingrey, who argues that "each newly approved illegal alien could bring in as many as 273 relatives." If you accept the book's estimate of up to 20 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., and if each brought in an additional 273 family members - large ifs, admittedly - that means our population could grow by as many as 5.46 billion people.
In other words, more than 80 percent of the world could move here.
As unlikely as that seems, Dobbs insists that the vast majority of the current American population seeks tighter borders and stronger leadership. Will they find the latter from Lou Dobbs, political candidate?
"Absolutely not," he said. "I have been asked by lots of people, believe me, to run for president. But my role is as an advocacy journalist. I am fulfilling my role now."
Simple as that.
