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"FacebookPinterest\n\nProfuse expressions of enthusiasm are banned around the French household until before 8 a.m. on weekdays\u2014a rule imposed by my wife as a way of tempering my bottomless appreciation for Morning Joe co-host, Willie Geist. The 36-year-old is an ex-jock turned political wonk, with the easy demeanor of a SportsCenter anchor, a characteristic that has allowed him to become MoJo's cultural translator, the guy who decodes all of the program's nuanced political speak. Last week, the good folks at MSNBC invited me up to 30 Rock to hang out with Willie in his office, a clean, dimly lit little nook with a couch and some framed Rolling Stone covers on the wall. He cranked up some M83 and I turned on my tape recorder.\n\nGQ: Politics or sports?\n\n Willie Geist: I'm in politics now. Don't get me wrong\u2014I love sports. I obsess over sports, but politics now for five years has been what consumes my day. I love it. Landing on Morning Joe wasn't a fluke. I was a poli sci major in college. I interned at CBS political unit, covered conventions. I produced a political show before this for MSNBC with Tucker Carlson. I have a sports background, though. The first five years of my career were in sports.\n\nGQ: Can I describe politics as sports for the uncoordinated?\n\n Willie Geist: That's a good way to put it. The stakes in politics are much higher. Obviously. It's why you have a more serious conversation than you would about the Knicks game last night. There are elements of sport, though: Who's up, who's down. Strategy.\n\nGQ: Handicap this race for me.\n\n Willie Geist: Romney is going to win. Santorum just has too much work to do if you look at the numbers. Romney may not get the 1,144 delegates he needs but Santorum would need to win something like 80% of the remaining delegates to do that. If you look at the map, with California and all these huge states, where all of these delegates are that Romney will win, it's hard to make a case that Santorum will do it. I think this will go on a while longer, though.\n\nGQ: I'm really enjoying the long primary. It seems like for once the nomination isn't being decided by the first two or three states.\n\n Willie Geist: I actually totally agree with you on that. It's odd that that that's a strange position to take, that you want to watch the game play out. The argument has always been, 'Well, Iowa and New Hampshire, these are not representative states, why should they be allowed to pick the president?' Now that they haven't picked the president and the race is going on, everybody is complaining that it's dragging on too long and this is ridiculous and Rick Santorum should pull out. I've said many times\u2014I said it on the show today: Why should Rick Santorum get out of the race? He'll get out when it becomes implausible for him\u2014when he runs out of money, when the momentum becomes such that Mitt Romney is gobbling up all the media attention and it's a foregone conclusion. Santorum may get out at some point, but until he feels compelled to do so, I don't know why people in politics and people in media are obsessed being a one-man primary. In 2008, Hillary Clinton got out of the primaries on June 7. That would be another two-and-a-half months of this race.\n\nGQ: So there's a precedent\u2014\n\n Willie Geist: And a lot of people would make the case that a tough race like this toughens up the nominee. A lot of the land-mines that the Obama campaign will use against Romney are already out there\u2014RomneyCare, his tas, his record at Bain Capital. He's had to time to come up with answers for these.\n\nGQ: Romney's essentially been playing in Double A ball. How do you see him making the transition to the Big Leagues when he's really struggled to beat minor leaguers like Santorum? \n\n Willie Geist: I think Romney will make the transition better than he's getting credit for. He's got money ($8 million in cash on hand), he's got organization. He's been running for president for the last 6 years for, as Romney would say, \"Pete's sake.\" He's a serious man and a serious candidate. If he loses, it won't be because he's not ready. It'll be because his own party, and many independents, just can't get excited about him. We'll see.\n\nGQ: Still, all of this time has gone by and it seems like we know very little about Mitt.\n\n Willie Geist: We know how he's governed in Massachusetts, but he seems to have run away from those positions, so maybe that's not his core. He's a very elusive character. I think you see him publicly fighting that all of the time. It looks to me like he's holding back. He's trying to remember the right thing to say at all times, which is not to offend conservatives at all times and to say some things that he believes deeply. He's tiptoeing thought the primary process, trying to survive.\n\nGQ: Can you provide me with your assessment of the Obama presidency?\n\n Willie Geist: I think President Obama has always been a little bit underestimated. Some of the things he's done with foreign policy have been unassailable. Getting us out of Iraq, killing Osama Bin Laden. Personally, I think he waded too deeply into health care too soon. That was a year and a half into his presidency. I understand why he did it: It was a campaign promise and something that was very important to him. But if had turned to jobs and the economy right out of the box he might have had more favorable approval ratings sooner than he did. If you're betting on the election, you'd probably bet on him being reelected, which is pretty remarkable given the economic data that we have. About a fifth of the country is unemployed or underemployed. It's getting better, but it's not pretty. The fact that he's leading some polls probably speaks well of his support.\n\n GQ: One of the big reasons I'm so drawn to Morning Joe is the panelists. You've got some serious people, some smart people on there every day. Steve Ratner, John Heilemann, Mark Halperin, Donny Deutsch.\n\n Willie Geist: Donny's less serious. He wears tight T-shirts.\n\nGQ: Donny gets a bad rap. \n\n Willie Geist: It's all love. But listen, if you're a grown man and you're going to wear a Baby Gap T-Shirt, you're going to get a little shit.\n\nGQ: [Mike] BarnIcle recently wore some kind of sweat wicking Nike pullover on the show.\n\n Willie Geist: There's never a rational for Barnicle. He's not making a point. He's like, 'It was on the top of the suit case. What do you want from me?' He takes a walk in Central Park for the walk, threw it down on the chair. It was just sitting there so he decided to wear it on TV. Mika aggressively chided him for that. We made him class it up with a blazer.\n\nGQ: Do you foresee a dress code?\n\n Willie Geist: [Laughs heartily] No. We're far beyond that dress code. When Joe goes to the Morning Joe fleece or the tattered golf shirt that he's been wearing around Pensacola for a decade, it's hard to enforce a dress code on anybody else.\n\nGQ: I find myself often feeling jealous about Heilemann's wardrobe. He's a clothes horse. \n\n Willie Geist: Yeah. He's pretty good.\n\nGQ: He's got a few $7,000 watches.\n\n Willie Geist: [Laughs] He's big time now. He's Game Change Guy. He's Hollywood. He's got to have the big watch. You can't compliment Heilemann too much because it will go to his head. He's a real prick . . . who I love dearly. But yeah, he's the Brooklyn hipster. He's got the thin ties and the check shirts. He'll undo the top button, the old sort of working journalist look so it looks like he's been covering a story, which of course he hasn't been; he's been doing God knows what the rest of the hipsters over there.\n\nGQ: I think we should create a Morning Joe drinking game.\n\n Willie Geist: There's one. Every time Joe mentions he was in Congress. We have a little ding that goes up. Every time he says, 'You know in 1994, when I was in Congress...' Ding! Drink. Now he preempts us and says, 'Get's your drinks ready!' We have that one. That's a good one. People have gotten shit faced off it.\n\nGQ: Every time he talks about what a star Jeb Bush is.\n\n Willie Geist: Yeah. Chris Christie.\n\nGQ: How about every time Chris Christie comes on the show and filibusters?\n\n Willie Geist: The Mika eye roll. Or every time Mika completely ignores every word we're saying when we do sports. I'd say, every time Donnie says, 'I'm an image guy!'\n\nGQ: Or excessive praise from Donnie.\n\n Willie Geist: Oh yeah. And I think we should hold him accountable for everything he says is going to be great. How about Barnicle? Every time you can see one of Barnicle's old man chest hairs sticking through the mesh of his breathable Nike gear, you should drink. Every time Mike Allen has an awkward moment. Every time Heilemann interrupts Mika and goes on one of his speed ball rants.\n\nGQ: Mark Halperin?\n\n Willie Geist: Every time Halperin makes an obscure joke.\n\nGQ: How about every time Halperin calls the president a dick?\n\n Willie Geist: No, no, no, no stop.\n\nGQ: The on-air discussions, on occasion, can get pretty heated. Do they ever carry over to commercial break?\n\n Willie Geist: We always say that the best show on television would be what happens during the breaks. Often the language is more colorful. If a politician comes on and is spinning wildly, we'll call them out on the air and we'll go to break and say, 'That was some bullshit. You don't really believe that shit, do you?'\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012\n\nGQ Quiz: Who Said It\u2014Newt Gingrich or Stephen Colbert?\n\n\"Take It From Me: Defending Obamacare is Super-Hard\"\n\n\"Doctors, Dogs, Tea Partiers, Feminists, and Rick Santorum: Scenes From the Health Care Protests Outside the Supreme Court\"\n\nFollow @GQPolitics on Twitter."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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