Growing up in Ohio and just being kind of an average guy from flyover country - my dad was a factory guy - I try to put things on a screen that reflect reality. I don't mind if people want to argue with that, or think that's crazy.

I think it's unrealistic to believe that somewhere in outer space two big rocks crashed together with a bang and now I have a wonderful family, freedom, and opportunity." We're gathered here with love and fellowship and friends. You can bang rocks together all you want; you cannot create what we have here. Maybe God can create life from big bangs, but rocks can't.

They [candidates] say, "I don't want to say anything controversial." And so nobody covers them. Then they blame the journalists, saying "Why don't they write down what I said?" In congressional races, 90 percent of the time the answer is, "Because you are boring and you don't have anything that makes me interested in listening to you. Why the heck should somebody write it down? There's nothing here worth hearing."

Taking on the media is something I would never tell a candidate to do. I'd advise him what I would do in that circumstance, but that's about it.

It also has to do with how you look and how you sound. If you look like a mean SOB who's putting the other person down, that's different than if you're inquiring about the process they go through to make a decision on behalf of the public.

I grew up in the era when Dan Rather hated Richard Nixon. He was a newsman, but you knew what his opinion was.

You've got to find a difierent approach. You've got to create some interest in your language, in the words and pictures you create. If a candidate can't give a 10-minute speech and have reporters reaching for their pens in the first 90 seconds, he probably shouldn't be running.