In a presidential election so close that no single poll can ever predict — or comfort — experience is paramount. Stuart Stevens, The campaign cowboy, who famously left the GOP to turn his fire on Trump as a member of the Lincoln Project, is nothing without experience.

I first met Stevens 20 years ago when he was a media consultant at George W BushHe oversaw the Republican re-election campaign and helped produce the GOP convention film, which included footage of Bush’s first pitch at Yankee Stadium after 9/11, transforming the flailing wartime president into a confident president Nolan Ryan against a strikeout John Kerry (while Bush’s fellow advisor Chris LaCivita, (now manager of Trump’s campaign, smeared Kerry with the infamous “Swift Boat” ad). Later, Stevens ran Mitt RomneyTrump’s failed candidacy in 2012 was itself a harbinger of Trump’s future and one of the things that triggered Stevens’ departure from the party.

Stevens can be counted on to have a forceful opinion, and usually a damn smart one, his confident command of the facts delivered in a rip-roaring Mississippi accent. Witness his artful takedown of a pro-Trump hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, He used Ackman’s own words to tie him to Trump’s most derogatory comments. “The ballot box is not a cafeteria where you can walk through the line and choose what you like,” Stevens wrote on the same language that National Socialism used to describe Jews.”

Frank Rich, the columnist and executive producer of Veep And Consequence, called it “the most powerful work of moral and political destruction I have ever read.”

On Trump’s narcissism, Stevens is merciless – “You pet him, he follows you home” – and on his own former party’s regression, Stevens is even more merciless: “They sell pagers in an iPhone world.”

Bail bonds are Stevens’ business. And when asked who he thinks will win the most important election of our lifetime on November 5th, he answers right in the middle. Read on.

Vanity Fair: I spoke to a former Bush White House official and he said he believed the Harris campaign was operating out of some sort of panic. That the flurry of interviews she has given recently suggests that the campaign must have experienced poor internal polling and is now freaking out. What are you reading?

Stuart Stevens: I would say this is probably someone who has worked in the White House, but not much on the campaign trail. I think that the Harris campaign is what we will probably, in retrospect, call the best presidential campaign of all time.

Really?

The structure of the race is the same. That’s why I think too Joe Biden could have won. 47 percent of the country is MAGA, 53 percent is not. The Harris campaign has a very simple goal: unite as much of the 53% as possible. How are you doing? Well, we woke up today and Liz Cheney And Bernie Sanders support the same presidential candidate. Not so bad.