Norman Mailer--successor to H. L. Mencken as the literary lion of American political conventions--jumps the gun on the Republicans at Madison Square Garden. But then Mailer's prophetic novelist's eye has always run ahead of events, most especially since the classic Esquire piece ("Superman Comes to the Supermarket") of 44 years ago that foresaw, in dread and ecstasy, the triumph of John F. Kennedy.

With interviewer Christopher Lydon, Mailer foresees a "very successful, by their lights" convention next week, and a ruthless fall campaign to shore up a Republican claim to a crusading mission in the world. Mailer's focus is on President Bush in a personal contest with his father's history: "The son's a study in--if you've got a father who's more powerful than yourself, you've got to beat him on the weak link. And the weak link is that the father didn't get reelected as president. There is nothing George Bush will stop at" to get reelected, Mailer observes. John Kerry's mastery as an ocean windsurfer--his expertise at reacting to the faintest puff of wind--is Mailer's key to Kerry's skillful but uninspiring politics.

But Kerry, too, has another fight with history on his hands: "You can always count on the Democrats to do something anemic," that is, to defeat themselves, Mailer says. There are questions here that only Chris Lydon would ask and only Norman Mailer would answer--about the eclipse of hip, existentialist American heroes, about the elusive grace of democracy and the uneasy conscience of a literary revolutionary. With producer Mary McGrath, Christopher Lydon interviewed Norman Mailer at his home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Norman Mailer--successor to H. L. Mencken as the literary lion of American political conventions--jumps the gun on the Republicans at Madison Square Garden. But then Mailer's prophetic novelist's eye has always run ahead of events, most especially since the classic Esquire piece ("Superman Comes to the Supermarket") of 44 years ago that foresaw, in dread and ecstasy, the triumph of John F. Kennedy.

With interviewer Christopher Lydon, Mailer foresees a "very successful, by their lights" convention next week, and a ruthless fall campaign to shore up a Republican claim to a crusading mission in the world. Mailer's focus is on President Bush in a personal contest with his father's history: "The son's a study in--if you've got a father who's more powerful than yourself, you've got to beat him on the weak link. And the weak link is that the father didn't get reelected as president. There is nothing George Bush will stop at" to get reelected, Mailer observes. John Kerry's mastery as an ocean windsurfer--his expertise at reacting to the faintest puff of wind--is Mailer's key to Kerry's skillful but uninspiring politics.

But Kerry, too, has another fight with history on his hands: "You can always count on the Democrats to do something anemic," that is, to defeat themselves, Mailer says. There are questions here that only Chris Lydon would ask and only Norman Mailer would answer--about the eclipse of hip, existentialist American heroes, about the elusive grace of democracy and the uneasy conscience of a literary revolutionary. With producer Mary McGrath, Christopher Lydon interviewed Norman Mailer at his home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.