'Crossfire' Host's Political Dish

Tucker Carlson, co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," visited The Early Show Tuesday to discuss his book, "Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News," and share his views on current political headlines.

Carlson says the book is a compilation of his observations as the conservative co-host of CNN's talk show. He was a newspaper and magazine writer before he went into his television and gave up print because he says he can't find time for both.

He tells The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen, "TV is interesting and fun and ad hoc and weird and demented at times and nobody writes about the experience of doing it in television news so I figured I should."

His goal, he says, was to tell the truth and to write a book people would want to read. According to Carlson, readers who are interested in newsmakers and what makes them tick, would find "Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites" a good read.

In it he shares a piece of advice Larry King gave him, Carlson says,. Though it had a bit of profanity, the point is "you can't control TV. It's completely fluid and people get canned a lot, fired a lot. So if you tie the sense of yourself too much to your job, it is a pretty easy way to get wounded. So you should have a little bit of happy detachment."

Noting that every talk show needs guests, the best guest to have is an "easy turn."

He explains, "That is someone who will give up his son's birthday party to come on your show and we appreciate people like that. The greatest guest, maybe ever, was former congressman Jim Traficant, now in federal prison, who, not only had a pretty outrageous toupee, which I liked, but also came on our show drunk quite a bit, which, if you're looking for a great quality in a guest, particularly one who is maybe of congress, you'd have to say drunkenness would be right up at the top of your list."

Some say Carlson is radically conservative and some say he is not conservative enough. Asked how he describes himself, Carlson says, "I don't have a sense of what I seem. I'm conservative about most things. I have a libertarian spirit and not that interested in being told what to do by the federal government. That animates me."

Carlson started his television career one morning in October of 2000 when he got a call from one of the vice presidents at CNN. They wanted Carlson to host a special with Bill Press to comment on the vice presidential debates. Carlson says it turned out well and evolved into a show called "The Spin Room."

The co-host says audiences gave him good feedback about the "The Spin Room," but television critics hated it. One reviewer called the program "The Worst in the History of CNN," which Carlson finds amusing.

"The Spin Room" evolved into "Crossfire," which he says allows him to think critically about the news, do live television and meet many people he wouldn't know otherwise — all of which, he says, make his television job fun.