Barkley on ‘Brown’

By Jennifer J. Foster

Former NBA and Auburn University basketball star Charles Barkley appeared on CNN’s “Campbell Brown: No bias, No bull” program Monday to discuss his thoughts on the presidential race and his plans to run for governor of Alabama in 2014.

Charles being Charles, the interview was chock full of—um, interesting quotes, both on the state of this state and the presidential campaign.

On the presidential race, Barkley said he supports Barack Obama. But apparently, Barkley doesn’t believe it really matters who’s president.

“Realistically, whoever the president is doesn’t have a huge effect on anybody’s life, to be honest with you ... he doesn’t have an effect on people’s everyday lives. He does not,“ Barkley said. “I mean that sincerely. Whoever the president is does not have an effect upon people’s everyday life.“

I guess Barkley has never talked to a military family whose son or daughter or husband or wife or mom or dad was sent into war by a president, and he isn’t all that familiar with that whole head-of-the-executive-branch-so-he-helps-make-laws-and-stuff thing.

Barkley also said Republicans have used race as an issue in the campaign because “that’s the only way they can win.“

“I wrote a chapter in one of my books about what happens in a race, when things are going bad, everybody kind of goes with their own tribe and the only way the Republican party can make this thing work is they get their tribe to get together and of course they use racial innuendo.“

Hmm ... I guess he’s not counting on any crossover votes in the 2014 gubernatorial election.

But he’s already got his campaign slogan all worked out: “I can’t screw up Alabama,“ he told Brown.

She asked him, “There is no place to go but up in your view?“ Barkley responded, “We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere.“

Whoo hoo! Good relationships with neighbors! I’m sure Mississippians are thrilled by the prospect of a Barkley administration!

From a political perspective, Barkley is making a lot of assumptions about the 2014 race—not the least of which are that U.S. Rep. Artur Davis (D-Birmingham), who has all but announced for governor himself in 2010, either 1) won’t be governor, or 2) won’t be running again for governor.

But Barkley probably won’t need to worry about any campaigning, given the one-liner bonanza he produced in the Brown interview:

“(This presidential election) is really about rich people versus poor people.“

“I am a big pro-choice guy.“

“I am a big gay marriage guy.“

Wow. I don’t envy at all the unfortunate campaign consultant who will eventually be tapped by Sir Charles to manage that mouth. Talk about your losing battles.

Read the full transcript of the interview here.