Q: At the end of he flim. McKay is in the Senate. If you were to make a film The Sena or how do you think Mckay would act?

A: There's a range of possibilities, I think you would then show him as a much more consciously cynical person. I don't know that that would make a good film. I've never considered it.

Actually, I don't think people like Bill Mckay should run for high offices. People who are cleaner.-

Q: What's an example?

A: You may be asking that to find out something about what I'm like as a person, but that doesn't reflect much in The Candidate. The people I'd like to see in office are not necessarily the ones that would run for office or the ones I'd like to make a movie about. The best senators are not the most glamorous people, and the best people in the country aren't senators.

Q In what sense are you political

A I'm a writer. As a political person, that's a different story. First of all. I have a higher obligation as an artist, that in no way cuts against my political obligations, and that's to tell the truth. That's a simple way of saying something that turns out to be very complicated. As a political person, my point of view is expressed by Nobody Knows, the book I wrote about the McCarthy campaign, which is that there are very fundamental changes needed in this country, and it's very tricky matter how we go about getting them I'm against a violent revolutionary approach on grounds that it's dangerous, counter productive and immoral. I believe in democracy for one thing I think as long as there's any chance whatever, you've got to try to persuade people. I think the McCarthy and McGovern campaign is hopeful, though I'm not pieased with the route his campaign has taken in the last three weeks..To me, there's a big distinction between socialism and communism.

Q After the McCarthy experience do you see yourself getting directly involved with a political campaign again"

A: I get involved in these things now and then out of a sense of obligation. I just try to make sure that I'm effective. Mostly, for the last two years. I've been working on a novel I got involved with the McCarthy campaign by a fluke. He needed someone, and I was free. It was a responsibility I couldn't refuse, he was he most hopeful thing happening in this country. (I was known in certain literary political circles as a "radical," and a friend of mine knew McCarthy and showed him some essays I had written on education in impoverished schools. McCarhy liked them..)

I was going to quit after the California primary, but stayed on because McCarhy was all we had left. After California I didn't feel any justification in saying that, with Bobby Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy, one was beer than the other, In retrospect, I'm sorry that Kennedy didn't win and get to be president, though I didn't like how he behaved in the campaign.

Q: You think he would have been president?

A: Oh, I think McCarthy would have, if he tried.

Q: Did you Robert Redford, and Michael Ritchie share similar political concerns?

A: Human concerns, yeah, but Redford and Ritchie are not very political people. Redford is like McKay in that he distrusts politics and prefers to stay away from them; he's endorsed McGovern, but you won't see him going out and doing the sort of thing Paul Newman did.

Q: Same incidents in the film have obviously come out of Nobody Knowns. How much came out of Ritchie's experience with the Tunney campaign.'