Kellerman: Campbell Rhodes

'Transcript of TV interview program Kellerman'', hosted by Nathan Kellerman, aired on GBC-TV on Monday, 4 August, 2008. Guest: Campbell Rhodes

NK: My guest tonight was Prime Minister of Georgeland for nearly ten years and at the time was one of the youngest political leaders in the world. He has since served as an ambassador and a presidential candidate, and has also become a blossoming author and commentator. Can you rehabilitate yourself from politics? Let's find out. Ladies and gentlemen, Campbell Rhodes.

APPLAUSE

NK: Welcome back.

CR: Thankyou, Nathan. Nice to be back.

NK: I suppose the first question everybody would want me to ask you is - how does it feel to lose an election?

LAUGHTER

NK: Because the presidential election was...correct me if I'm wrong, the first one you had ever lost?

CR: Apart from a few internal party ones, yes, that's right.

NK: How did it feel, to sit there watching the returns on a Friday night and realising that you'd lost?

CR: Well, on Friday night we didn't know who'd won. I went to bed at about...two am, maybe, and got up a few hours later and someone told me the projections were that it was over and that we'd lost.

NK: How did it feel? Were you angry? Sad?

CR: Sort of, but I mean it's the nature of the game. The more elections you contest the greater the chance is that you're going to lose one. And in a democracy we don't have the right to complain when we do lose elections. There can only be one President, after all!

NK: You campaigned strongly against an elected Presidency.

CR: Yes.

NK: Do you think you were wrong?

CR: I think I was right about what an elected Presidency has the potential to do. Four years ago I was arguing very strongly that an elected President could claim a mandate to govern and undermine the government of the day. I still believe that.

NK: So why did you run?

CR: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

LAUGHTER

CR: No, the truth is that I felt I needed to air some views. I thought there were things that needed to be done in this country that nobody was saying, nobody was doing. I didn't feel they would ever get done unless someone stood for a position where they would be able to advocate for them. And that was the theme of the campaign, after all, that I would be the President who used the office to lobby for people, rather than as a power in its own right.

NK: If you'd been elected President, would you have been able to? Or would the power have been too tempting to not use?

CR: There was one great lie being spun about the press during the election campaign, Nathan, and that lie was that I would be in direct opposition to the government. If you think about it for a second, you know that's not true. Yes, of course, I would be politically opposed and I would have represented the opposition party, but no President can survive if they directly block what a government does. It could...it would lead to absolute anarchy. Breakdown of government...it would be a catastrophe. No Governor does that, and no President with even half a brain would contemplate it. If I'd won the Presidency the dynamic would have been one of negotiation, of compromise, of dialogue. Not of confrontation - that would never have worked.