BoCo

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Who's Looking Out for Him?
Lots of people, which is why Bill O'Reilly is a political factor

For one brief and blessed moment, the only sound inside Bill O'Reilly's radio studio at Fox News headquarters is the insistent scratching of pen on paper. The big guy is writing a note to a fan on the inside cover of his recent book, "Who's Looking Out for You?" and as his hand hovers over the page, he mumbles bleakly, "I just sign my butt off."

The grand plan, he explains, is to surpass "Hillary." No last name given. That would be the senator from New York, whose autobiography has sold 1.6 million copies. His book, published in September, has sold 908,064 copies, so - you do the math - that's a lot of ballpoints he still has to go through.

O'Reilly is tall (but you knew that) and slightly stooped. His eyes are bleary. Tired from 12-hour days. From endless promotion. From perpetual battle. The "high plains drifter" (his self-description, page 194) looks like he needs a place to bunk down for the night.

Then he begins a discourse on one of the more intriguing subjects in these United States - that would be Bill - and the illusion of tranquillity and fatigue is shot to hell. First, there's the matter of his critics, who are "trying to destroy my credibility," and of The New York Times, which refuses to review his book, and of CBS' dumped miniseries, "The Reagans," which "The O'Reilly Factor" played a central role in helping to dump. (A campaign "not driven by ideology, but because it was cruel.")

There's also the matter of his own personal Moriarty, one Al Franken, whose "Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)" is No. 3 on The Times' nonfiction bestseller list ("Who's Looking Out for You?" is in fourth place.) "I can't allow some of the stuff to go unchallenged . It's not in me to do that. In Levittown, when I was a kid and you were walking down the street and someone said, 'Hey, O'Reilly, you -- liar,' you punched him. It was like, WHAM!" - he smashes his fist into his hand - "I can't imagine someone calling my father a liar to his face. He would have killed him."

And, yes, also the matter of Fox News' much-ridiculed (and quashed) August lawsuit against Franken for trademark infringement. There were published reports that O'Reilly forced the lawsuit, but those are "absolutely false.... I had nothing to do with that lawsuit." Instead, "I had my guys look into defamation [and] they said you can win, but you won't get any money." (Nevertheless, multiple sources say O'Reilly did, in fact, force the lawsuit, which became a public relations debacle for the network.)

But the most interesting thing about O'Reilly isn't "The Reagans," or Al, or even the train wreck of a lawsuit. It's this little question: Bill O'Reilly for president?

Speculation about O'Reilly's political future has been around for years, but it's still tempting to think that all of this - the show, the books, the radio, the tchotchkes on billoreilly.com, the entire money-printing Bill O'Reilly industry, for crying out loud - is part of some manifest design on his part to run for higher office. The new book feeds into this. "Who's Looking Out for You?" - about the failure of American institutions to protect the average Joe - is both thoughtful and blustering, where a flame is thrown on every other page, a past slight avenged in every other chapter. Entertaining, yes, but also (at times) a political reformist's manifesto.

So, White House or bust?

"I may take a look" at running and "certainly the option is open if I want it. But what I want to do over the next few years here is clean up the process. We have the bad guys on the run - no question about that."

While he says there have been "lots of offers" to run against Clinton someday for her Senate seat (there are four years left on his Fox contract), he also quickly adds, "I'd lose.... It'd be a fun race [and] I'd drive her crazy, but she would ultimately win." Besides, he has no interest in the Senate: "I'm not a quid pro guy" who'd have to play at pork-barrel politics to bring "goodies" back to the state.

The prize would be the White House, but "the country's not interested in an independent candidacy. Maybe in 10 years they will be, but right now, you have 50 percent of Americans who don't know anything - they're totally disengaged from the process, the 'Mall People.' They don't know anything, don't watch the news or listen to radio or read the newspapers. The other 50 percent - and there was a recent poll on this - are a third crazy left and third crazy right and third in the middle. So the pie you're going for is a very narrow pie."

Yeah, maybe he "could mobilize a certain number of independent thinkers who think, 'This guy could be a ... Teddy Roosevelt kind of guy, who could come in and clean up the garbage...'" but "I'm not a vanity player, I'm not gonna go out like Al Sharpton, to get on 'Saturday Night Live' to run for president, so unless I'm convinced I could pull it off, I wouldn't do it."

Meanwhile, there's the book (and yes, fans, he's written a new one for kids, ages 9 to 16, due out this time next year).

Don't forget to mention, he says, that he'll be signing copies of "Who's Looking Out for You?" at the Book Revue in Huntington Sunday from 12:30 to 3. "I'd hate to be the only one there."
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He's got my vote.

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