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Excludes restaurants. This is Jane Pauley. When you get a best-selling author and a former president together to write a political thriller for the third time, there's a lot to talk about.
As Sunday morning's Tracy Smith found out when she sat down with James Patterson and Bill Clinton. Let's talk about this relationship. So back when you wrote your first book together, the New York Times said that the two of you complete each other in the Jerry Maguire sense. Okay. Well, we kind of do. You know, I have this thing that's been driving me for months now, which is, my time here is short.
What can I do most beautifully? And in this case, doing another book with my friend is a beautiful thing to do. And that's a big piece of it for us. I've been an avid reader of mysteries, thrillers, police procedurals for 40-plus years. Except mine. He doesn't read mine.
That's not true. I've read a lot of your books. But I've now read a lot more. And so we had the same lawyer and agent, Bob Barnett, and he said, you guys ought to do a book together. And I said, Bob, why would he ever do a book with me? I said the same thing.
Yeah. You both didn't think that the other person would want to do it. No, no, no. I wanted to do it right away. I wanted to do it. I said, I'd love to do it. But you weren't sure that Patterson would want to do it with you.
No, because you know how politics have been the last 20 years. I mean, he had people who liked him who are Democrats or Republicans who are on the right, on the left, they love his books. I thought, but he said, okay. And then so we started on this book. What I thought, which I always loved and it's been true in all of the books, especially the new one, is, among other things, he reads everything and he's a great storyteller. But in addition to those, to the talent of being a storyteller, he brings authenticity to this.
So a lot of times you write a thrill. You're just making stuff up, you know, no offense. But in this case, everything that we do, yeah, this could happen, or if this happened, here's what the secret service would really do. Or here's what, you know, in terms of the White House, here's how it's really, there was one little scene there where I was writing the scene and I had all these people in this room. He said, you cannot possibly fit all those people in that little room. In that particular room. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stuff like that. I was just going to ask you, so in The First Gentleman, in this book, is there a scenario that you wouldn't have been able to write without President Clinton's help? I couldn't have done any of it without him.
Couldn't, yeah, I would have been lost. But the other thing, you know, look, I mean, he's the expert on The First Gentleman. He almost, he was almost The First Gentleman. Yeah, I thought about it for years. And it's the only political job I ever wanted that I didn't get.
First Gentleman. Yeah, because I really thought Hillary should be President. And so I thought about it a lot. I said, if this happens, there had been, on one of the TV shows, a woman President whose husband had been President and was serving as her Chief of Staff.
And there's also all kind of crazy stuff about people getting killed. And I thought, that's not right. So he wouldn't let me write stuff like that.
There can only be one President at a time. And so how could I do this job in a way that I would be on call to help if she needed me, but I wouldn't get in the way? That's the way I feel about this relationship.
How can I help without getting in the way? I'm kind of the First Gentleman of our relationship. Can you believe that?
I got some land in Arizona, I want to tell you. How did the two of you come up with the idea The First Gentleman goes on trial for murder? I'm not really sure where it came from, but it came probably when we were doing the outline. But that was part of, you know, and we go back and forth.
We go back and forth on the outline again and again and again. He said, you know, it's going to be better if The First Gentleman gets in trouble than if the President does. And I said, in a way it is because the one thing that you learn when you're President is that life goes on. And no matter what happens to your family, you still have to show up for work every day.
There's no family leave law that will cover the kinds of decisions that a President has to make. How has your relationship evolved over these three books? We've played a lot more golf. Well, more golf. I think it's gotten better. I think it's gotten better. He's been President more times, but I have more holes than one.
Is that true? Oh, God. Jim's a better golfer. I wouldn't say a better golfer, but I do have a lot of holes than one. I have one. He has nine. How many Americans have nine holes in one?
That's sick. Yeah. Remember, I'm a fiction writer.
No, I do actually have nine. You know, you bring up an interesting point about the President's dilemma. Did you ever have that in office where here you are having to deal with these very important legislative issues or the President's side of things, and then also there's a family thing going on, and how do I balance these things? Sure.
I mean, it can be anything from wondering if your young daughter has a crippling case of allergies that affect, you know, her ability to fulfill her dreams as a taking ballet or anything like that, or, you know, the Congress trying to run you out of office. You still have to show up. You still have to deal with them. I love that notion. Are you still going to show up for work? Do you feel like in the face of your impeachment you're like the President in the book in that you just had to keep showing up to work every day? I did, and they were amazed by it. You know, they'd come and do business with me as far as they knew. I couldn't remember what was going on, and we would try to hammer out deals.
In the midst of all that. Because that's what I got hired to do. The American people don't pay you to have personal feelings.
They pay you to deliver for them. One of the things about this book is, and I think we succeed on some level, is really making the President very human, making this first gentleman very human, and making the journalist very human. Flawed, not perfect.
We care about them. And one of the things with this book is, I got about halfway through, and it wasn't working. It wasn't working?
Why not? And the President said to me, he said, I don't like any of these people. You didn't like the characters? Nope. It was so depressing. We were slogging along, and it was weird, because we knew he had a good theory, a good framework, but we hadn't brought them alive. I said, I don't like these people.
I don't care what happens to them. Yeah. And I agreed. I knew it, too. He said that's right. I knew it, too. Yeah.
I mean, you know, he sold more books than anybody. He knew that... And I knew we could fix it, and I knew we had to fix it. And we did. We did fix it, I think. It was very humbling, because I was concerned about it, because I had nowhere near the experience he did. He said, we can fix it. I said, okay, let's talk about who's going to do what.
And I got my assignment, and we went back to work. And it made me unusually proud of this book, because it was hard to put together. Yeah.
Also, I don't want to give too much away, but some people in this book, some of these politicians, are really ruthless. Did you at any time think... What a surprise. Well, this is the real world.
Really? You don't think it's too far-fetched? Is this the real world? Oh, no. No. No, this is mild, I think. Absolutely. Yeah.
You think it's mild? Yeah. The only thing I ever wanted from my adversaries was for them to tell me the truth in private. I considered it a great gift when I had conversations that Erskine did with Newt Gingrich, and he just told us the truth. Is impeachment justified?
No. We're going to do it anyway. Why?
We want it to be in the first paragraph of his obituary. We want to show the Democrats we're going to destroy anybody they elect if we can. So, I said, okay, I got it. Those are the rules of the game. I have to suit up and figure out what I care about, which is passing all this stuff we passed.
How can we do it? And once you know what the playing field looks like, you can suit up and play your game. Yeah. And one of the problems is a lot of people think it is a game. They think it's a game. And you see that in the book, too.
Yes, you do. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview after this break. You've talked about how with Jim's books, it's a safe space to say things that really need saying. So, what needs saying now?
What does this book say? Well, one of the things is just the approach to Social Security and Medicaid. And there's a plan in the book. There really is.
I mean, it doesn't get in the way of the story, but it's essential to the story. Yeah, the grand bargain is at least there's enough relationship to the problems that we had before this new bill passed, which had been dramatically amplified, which is too much debt, an aging population, declining workforce, anti-immigrant feelings, keeping people out of the workforce, which we need. There are half a million open manufacturing jobs today in America, for example. And it's got enough of that in there that we show at least how I think we could go about beginning to address the problem. Now, the numbers are so big, we probably can't fix it nearly as quickly as happened when I was president, and we had three surpluses in a row. But we've got to get a hold of it. Otherwise, more and more of our taxpayers' money will be spent just paying interest on the debt.
And then there won't be enough to fund Social Security, Medicare, national security, much less the growth drivers, research and development, and new technologies. So it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. And at least you get a feeling in this book of the kinds of things you have to do to try to turn that engine around before it crashes. And the solution that you guys present in this book, that's not pure fiction, pure blue skies? Not to us. It is.
With this Congress, they would never adopt it. That's the thing. There's so much political drama in the world today, real-life political drama.
Do you think that there's an appetite for political thrillers, for fictional political- I think so, 100 percent. I mean, one of the nice things here is you escape, but you don't totally escape reality. It's like, yeah, I love this, I can't put it down, or I keep reading, or in some cases, to me what's even better, which is you don't want it to end, so you keep saying, oh, I'm not going to read anymore because I'm going to read more tomorrow or the next day, stuff like that. And I think that's healthy for people. I think it's useful. Because so many people are wandering around and going, oh my God, oh my God, please make it stop. This makes it stop for a little while. It makes the craziness stop for a little while for people. To answer your question, one reason I hope- I didn't want to answer your question.
One appetite is, oh, he explained why it's important. But I hope that people will still believe in our democratic system enough to stick with it and keep pushing to make it work. Keep in mind, this is our 250th birthday coming up. And we are already the longest lasting continuous democratic republic in history.
Everybody thinks we're a young nation. There are a lot of nations older than America, but they didn't have constitutional democracies. So we had constitutional democracies before, and they quit. And President Eisenhower once said he was so alarmed when Senator Joe McCarthy was riding high because he said it takes a lot of discipline to maintain a democracy and to believe in things like due process when clearly either innocent or not proven guilty people are being deported and put in gulags in El Salvador.
It takes a lot of discipline to say no. There just has to be some proof, some process by which other people can challenge what the government says. And a lot of people who get sold on whatever the issue is at the time say, I just do it. And once people say just do it, that somebody else's rights don't matter, then soon their rights are in danger and democracies disappear. That's how it happens.
Everybody has rights or nobody has rights. So do you think that people on both sides of the aisle will enjoy this book? I do.
Yeah. I don't have any idea. I never know. My experience, and I don't get political.
I try not to anyway. And I find I have readers all over the place and they want a good story. And the story, it's not political. It doesn't take sides.
It just lays out the story of this president and what goes on. And she tries to be a more ethical person, as difficult as her choices are. I don't think anybody should have a problem with that. Some people probably will.
Yeah. And I think if you go out into the country, there's much more willingness, even eagerness of people, to have conversations across party lines. I mean, in the last election, when I went out, I said, you know, let other people go to the big cities and the places we're gonna win and try to get the turnout up.
Send me to the country. That's where I grew up. I was a product of what is now commonly called Trump country. And I like being there.
And I got to the Georgia State Fair in Deep State, South Georgia. And these two guys in MAGA caps came up and asked me if I'd take a picture with them. So I started talking to them. And one of his wife came up and said, you're the last real Democrat. You balance the budget.
Interesting how she defined it. And so I looked at her husband and I said, well, can I tell you why I'm here? He said, no, it's a waste of time.
I'm too far gone. But the point is we were talking. You talked to them. We were civil to each other. So do you think guys in MAGA caps will read this book? I hope they do. Because, you know, we're a lot more alike than we let on.
There was just a big national story done talking about how many issues that there was 70 percent or more of the people agreed on. And they just don't know how to get from where they are to where they can embrace each other again. But we need to. So on a personal level, what has been the greatest joy of writing this book together? My thing is always it's a friendship, honestly. That's what drives me more than anything else. I have a lot of choices in terms of writing more books or people.
I'm doing one with Viola Davis now novel, which I love. But I just love working with the president. My greatest joy is Jim and his wife Sue. I just love being with them.
Sue made cornbread for them today. I've learned about writing novels that are both thrilling and have substance. And I never would have had this chance before. But I really just like being with them and talking to them. And Hillary and I go out to dinner with them when we can. We just, I didn't know we'd become real friends, what we have. We trade Christmas and birthday presents. He gave me a humidor one year. And I call him up. I said, you know, you know I don't smoke.
So what do I put in the humidor, chocolate or bubblegum cigars? And he said, oh, at our age, bubblegum, because you've got to exercise your gums and stuff. We're almost exactly the same age. I'm a little older. He's a lot older, five months or something.
What? Five months older, that's a lot. Do you gripe about aging together? Yeah, we tell old people jokes.
Yeah, I don't think about it too much. I just, you know. You know, I noticed in Florida now, I've stopped asking people, how are they? Because you say, how you doing?
And they'll tell you that they're doctor appointments for the next month. So from now on, I just go, hi, how are you? That's all. No, not how are you?
Hi. We call that the organ recital. All right. My nose hurts, the organ recital, my kidney hurts.
It's all part of the deal. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. My body has been in fight or flight every second. The Showtime original series Couples Therapy is now streaming on Paramount Plus. What are you avoiding? Watch for new couples as they face new crossroads. Why are you so scared of monogamy?
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