Good Afternoon everybody, its just afternoon now, I think its 11:59. Welcome to the Key School Book Festival. We are so excited to have on our campus. I am Iris Krasnow, the author of four books and the mother of four Key School sons and I am really excited to introduce this distinguished panel of people that you should know about, see on television and are here to cast light and some wisdom and insights on what promises to be a very interesting election year. Before I give very brief introductions of these panelists who you come to know through their dialogue and conversation I just want to ask that when you ask questions of these panel and Evan Thomas who is the moderator will tell you when, we ask that you come up here and speak at this microphone because you are being televised for Book TV on C-SPAN, hope that's okay. So tell your mothers and fathers. Okay, our moderator this afternoon is Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor at Newsweek. Evan is one of the most politically savvy, I am sure you all are, I know Evan personally so I can speak from my heart here, he knows everything about everybody. And he is the author his latest book is called Sea of Thunder, Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945, it has been a best seller, he is speaking on the book later. Our next panelist is Byron York. Byron is the author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of the Democrats' Desperate Fight to Reclaim Power, I think we know where he stands on this. Joe Klein is the author of Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You're Stupid. Now if the name Joe Klein also sounds familiar he is the anonymous author of Primary Colors, he is a Time Magazine pundit. We have Tom Schaller here with us today; Tom is the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, he is a University of Maryland, Political Science professor. Welcome to all of you, I wont take anymore time and we are in for a treat. Thank You Iris, its going to be an interesting election, its certainly going to be the longest and the costliest but its going to be interesting too and I want to start with a pretty broad question to my panel that will give them a chance to sell their books as well as educate us and that is arguably we are coming to the end of a long period of conservatism in the country. Two three decades where conservatism was in the ascendancy and then my question is, is that about the end? Are we entering some new age, new progressive age or new what? It's a little murky but we have some experts who can look at the tea leaves for us and I want to take on that that broader question, is this election going to be a turning point from one political age into some other some has yet defined new age? Byron, why don't you start off? Well, I think we are certainly seeing a new age of energy among democrats and liberals, there is just no doubt about it, when I is that better? Okay, I think we are certainly entering a new age of energy in organization among liberals, there is no doubt it. When I wrote my book it was it came out in 2005, I was writing about these things that were quite still new at that time, one the net roots, and the first chapter is about MoveOn.org and how it got started. Another is the use of new and unconventional media in campaigns. There was Air America Radio which hasn't done very well. But there was Michael Moore's documentary, we will see one of those pretty soon. The rise of guerilla documentaries like Outfox, the attack on Fox network that has gained a lot of efficient orders out there. And the other thing was that you could see the energy in 2004, but this enormous these enormous amounts of money that were being poured into the democratic side of the Campaign. Richard Nixon's biggest supporter, a man named W. Clement Stone gave I think $2 million to the Nixon campaign in 1972. And the contributions so scandalized good government types that it helped be the basis of some of the campaign finance reform loss, we saw afterwards. You know in 2004-2005 dollars that have been about $8 million, George Sorrels gave about $27 million in the effort to beat George Bush and just five peoples, Sorrels and his giving partner Peter Louis, Steven Bean the Hollywood producer and Herbert Mary Ann Sandra gave about $80 million between them which is significantly more than the $75 million dollars that the Federal Government gave each campaign to conduct its entire - full campaigns. So there was this enormous amount of energy and I think what we are seeing now is kind of a version 2.0 of all that. The net roots are far more sophisticated, far more energetic than they were and they have also won, they have contributed to a number of the candidates who won in 2006. So I will speak later perhaps about the troubles of the Republicans but we are clearly seeing a huge ascendancy on the part of democrats. Thomas -. I I thought you were going to Joe next, I mean that's okay. You know between 2000 and 2004 only three states changed in the Electoral College. New Mexico and Iowa went from Al Gore in 2000 to George Bush in 2004. And New Hampshire, the one state that Al Gore lost and prevented him from winning the Presidency went from Gore excuse from Bush to Kerry in 2004. Three states changing in consecutive Presidential elections has not happened that or fewer since George Washington ran the table and got all of the Electoral Votes in both 1788 and 1792. Excuse me. And there wasn't even popular voting then. Elites basically pick the President and we only had 13 or 14 states, we have 50 today, only three switch. So you just lived through from an Electoral College stand point, the two most consecutive stable elections in American Presidential history. Just think about that for a second. I have an on going battle with Charlie Cook I am sure everybody in the panel knows and many of you know he writes a Cook Political Report, you see them on Hardball and so forth, that the that next winner of the Presidential race will not get above 315 or 320 Electoral Votes whether he or she is a Democrat or a Republican. I think we are in a time where the country is strangely bifurcated, blue red segregation still prevails, when John Kennedy beat Nixon by two tenths of a percent of the popular votes, there were 14 states decided by 10 percent or more sort of comfortable wins and of those six were blow outs, won by 20 percent or more, blow out wins, fast forward to 2000 when Gore and Bush ran against each other, arguably a closer election, the winner won by negative half of a percent of popular vote, George W Bush. There were 28 states decided by 10 percent or more, of which 14 decided by 20 percent or more. So the map has shrunk and we can limit that fact and we can complain about you know the reality of only 10 or 12 or 15 states at the most and then towards the end being seven or six or five states being in play and most of the rest of the country in our Electoral College system being written off. But the fact of the matter is that strategic targeting is at a greater premium than ever in American politics and the penalty for not targeting strategically is greater therefore than ever. I think the map will be very rigid, I think you know as I argue in the book that the fight is to be found in the Midwest states and in the South west states. And the party that can, at least in the short term, convert voters in those two sub regions the Midwest and particularly the Latino growth oriented South west will have an opportunity, not necessarily to dominate politics in a permanent overwhelming way I mean but I think in short term can build a workable majority and then the question is what they do with that majority moving forward. I think Byron is right, I think the Democrats have a slight built in advantage heading into 2008. I don't think that's a guarantee that they will win the White House. And the question is whether they can build on that. At that point of course they would have unified control of the National Government assuming they hold the House and the Senate as well as a majority of Governors, State Legislators and State Legislative majorities which is quite a phenomenal turn around given the fact that they had none of that just a few years ago. They captured majorities at every level of government except for the Presidency in 2006 and as the one plug for my book they did it largely by winning outside the South. They won 85 percent of of their seats in 2006 at every level outside of the South including five of six Governors, five of six Senators, 24 of 30 House Members and more than 90 percent of their State Legislators and all ten of the State Legislative Chambers that they picked up were outside the South and I think a (non southern) majority is in the offing in the very near term for the Democrats heading into '08. Joe. Well, to get back to the original question - I think that there are cycles in politics and that we are at the ragged end of the cycle that began when Ronald Reagan stated the proposition that government is part of the problem not part of the solution. The British corollary to that was Margaret Thatcher saying there is no such thing as society. At that point when Reagan said that, there was an appropriate correction to be made after the 30 or 40 years of the Democratic dominance since the new deal. The bureaucracies of government the industrialist bureaucracies of government had gotten moldy and difficult. And it was time for a correction. But now after 28 years of this cycle we find that the Bush administration were you applauding the Bush administration? No, it's the voice - the volume. Turned up the volume. Oh the volume. I would have - I would have shouted if I mean you know, I am not shy. But I think that now you know what - what we found is an administration you know the Bush administration which really represents the ragged end of that - of that cycle. An administration that has beliefs but doesn't believe in government and doesn't believe in management and so you find that it's okay to appoint the - the head of the Arabian Horse Association as Director of FEMA and Donald Rumsfeld who was at least 30 years out of date as Secretary of Defense. I don't know what's going to replace that, I do believe though that as I travel around the country the public is far more serious now about having a government that is managed well which ironically is a kind of conservative principle. The other big change and so I think that there is - I think that this is a big change election that's about to happen. The other big change and I wont shy about promoting my book, I - I wrote about it in Politics Lost and it's this. For the last 40 years since the Nixon campaign of the 1968, we have lived in a television dominated era of politics in which the politicians had to turn to pollsters and consultants to navigate them through this new torrent of information where you know, people in New York used to say all politics is local. Well all politics is now national. You can say a stupid thing to a farmer in (indiscernible), West Virginia and within 15 minutes everybody in the entire world is going to know you have said this stupid thing. And I think that over time I also think that at the end of that cycle as well. That we are moving from an era where television was entirely dominant to an era of television/internet dominance. And when you add in the internet factor it means a change in style. There is no accident that Hillary Clinton who is one of the old paradigm candidates in this race started off by saying I want to have a conversation with the American people, because having a conversation is interactive. And I think that what has happened is that the American people have become inured and they know what market tested poll you know, focus group political language sounds like. They know that if a candidate comes to you as I think I heard John Kerry say in 2004, if he says something like "instead of a policy of family values we need policies that value families." People know that no one on this earth actually talks like that. And I think that what - people and - and also the other factor here is that people - the polls tell us and when the polls tell us something like 70-30 you can pretty much trust them, when they say when it's 55-45 not so much, but by 70-30 people think that country is moving in the wrong direction. And so my gut sense is that in this next election they are not going to trust politicians who only tell them things that they want to hear. They are going to - they are going to want it hear from politicians ways we could change the direction of the country, to move it on to the - on to the right track. And as a result, the thing that Byron was talking about before and that then a often lot of people who follow politics take as you know, the gospel threshold indicator of whether a candidate is serious which is the amount of money raised. I suspect it isn't going to be as - as important as it was in the past. Sure, you are going to have to raise enough money to get your message out. But if you look at the 2006 election people didn't buy into the negative ads in most cases. And also you know, the candidates who were the recipient of those ads came back and responded with alacrity and with real competence. So I think - and also there has been this fabulous invention - the clicker. And so when people see ads that say liberal, liberal, liberal or I love that the announcer who can really do George Bush and make it sound as if Satan incarnate. I think people have - have reached the point where they mistrust those ads. I think that this is a moment when people are looking for something else. Joe, let's push off for that, looking for something else. Another way of looking at it would be political courage. Let me ask a question. I am going to walk through the six front runners, three on each in each party with the panel. And ask them to rate each of these candidates for their political courage. What's the chance that these candidates will do the politically risky thing for the sake of the nation? Would make that hard choice to do the right thing for the country at some political risk to themselves? Let's let's start with the Democrats let's start with Hillary Clinton. And I will start with Byron - Byron what's the chance that Hillary Clinton is going to show political courage? Zero, that's not the one that comes to mind I think. But let's I will want to do one candidate after another. Just going to march through the - march through the candidates here. Zero, Byron votes just - nothing more - needs no elaboration? No, zero. I would give her higher - I would give her a higher grade than that because at this moment she is doing something that's vaguely courageous in the Democratic Party where the base is vehemently anti war, she hasn't repudiated her vote for the war. I think her reasons for that are calculating rather than - rather than idealogical. But I do believe that she has a far more nuanced and moderate view of National Security Policy than the bulk of the Democratic Party. But at the same time I do believe that she is the most managed and calculated candidate in the race - the one who is running the campaign least like the one you know, what I wrote about in Politics Lost. Tom. My take on Hillary - I am obviously the most liberal person in the panel, I think she really damaged herself by voting for the Iraq resolution and at this point I don't think she can apologize or pull an Edwards or anything like that. It's sort of too late and I think there is some truth to the fact that she just doesn't believe that it was the wrong vote and that's fine. So I didn't see much political courage there. I think the real litmus test for courage for Hillary Clinton is to tackle the Health Care daemon that her and her husband in the 90s and that would show an incredible amount of political courage. She knows it's a liability and if she can turn that liability into an asset that would take some skill and it would take some courage. So I give her probably the same grade as Joe but may be for different reasons. What was the grade by the way? What's the scale? I mean is it on a 100 or -. I am really so upset about a scale. Let's we will do A, B, C -. I don't do scales, I mean you know it's - I will do vague and I be - do emanations and auras. Nothing like contrarian journalists who won't to follow the panel moderator. Let's - let's do Barack Obama, and Byron you - another zero. No I think he is actually in kind of uncharted territory and it seems to me to he is - he is a cipher in many ways but he has, I think, shown an inclination to address values issues in a way that, I think, showed us some courage and also addressing faith issues as well. So I would give him a higher grade than Mrs. Clinton. Joe you want to emanate on Barack Obama. Yeah well let me lay down the general principle first. For me, telling a bunch of Democrats that we should have Universal Health Insurance isn't - is as much pandering as it is, you know, it's pandering in the primary and maybe courage in the general election. I think the telling people thinks that they don't want to hear, telling people things that are going to require sacrifice is what real courage is about and by the way I disagree with the President on an awful lot of things but I would never say that he wasn't courageous in that regard since his Iraq policy right now was what practically nobody wants. As for Obama, I think, that this is going to be his real test. I mean, it is a really visceral personal thing for him because as he has written, he is half white, half black in his whole life has been about reconciliation. This is a moment where he is going to have to propose things in order to have credibility with me, that in which he is willing to take some people off. I think, Tom is, you know, Tom's test here of a detailed Universal HealthCare plan is something I will be looking for from him. He has promised, he delivered and there were a bunch of other specific issues as well where I'd like to see him become more specific. Well conservatives and talk radio people are saying that Barack Obama is being courageous because he is sort of giving the Bill Cosby, you know, we have problem in our community and we are working on them and we need to call out, gang bangers and not make it a popular to be bad in school and so forth, but, I think, for him to show courage as the first major black candidate from the major party and if he is certainly, if he is the nominee, the top of the ticket for the Democratic Party is before he is elected, not after he is in office to also have the conversation in the other direction and say there are some systemic problems and we can call them class based and we call them race based but they exist and they need to be fixed and on that count I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, I think John Edwards has actually articulated this better than Obama. So it will take some courage for an African American to have a very candid conversation on race far more than what sort of Bill Clinton did which was thought, in some sense, as mostly theatrical. By the way can I just say that Obama's position, its I don't think that its all that courageous. I mean, I think that the vast majority of black people at least the ones I know and live with him in the neighborhood in Brooklyn are middle class people who believe in the Bill Cosby position. The people who don't believe in the Bill Cosby position is the Hollywood left. So, I mean, you know, it maybe courageous in that regard that he is defending his potential funding base but in terms talking to black people about the needs for responsibility and the dangers of anti-intellectualism I think that that, you know, the vast majority of the black people would agree with him. Byron if John Edwards called for a tax increase, that's pretty brave. It is, he has also actually gotten a lot of attention for doing things like attacking Fox which are very popular. I think he has appealed a lot to netroot supporters who like him a lot in that. It seems to me that Edwards has been, I mean, it took some courage to come out and be one of the first to say look my vote was completely wrong. I made a mistake I made a mistake, I was wrong, vote for me, my vote on the wall was wrong. So I think he gets some points there because it is hard to admit that you - you know, you screwed up if you indeed believe so. Joe. Edwards. Well I wrote a column a couple of weeks ago in praising Edwards. I think that he comes the closest of anybody so far, wrote to running the sort of campaign that I was hoping for this time and one of the things is just the very plain spoken way in which he says things like I was wrong. Another is the detailed universal healthcare plan which I disagree with the details but at least he put one out there and the third one which is potentially the most courageous of the all is the positions he has taken on global warming which is very similar to Al Gore's. you know it is an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions with - by 2050 using a capon trade, I am not going to go into all the weeds but it's a courageous position and I think just the way has been handling himself on the stump and on TV as I have seen him indicates a level of candor that politicians usually don't indulge in. Tom. You know, just as Obama my point Joe was that you know, it is politically expedient to sort of be the public voice of the cause we position and it's a lot more politically risky to say well the other side of the coin and I use that not just as a, sort of the follow-up on that but as a jumping off point to the thing that I think Edwards has been most courageous on. The first time I saw him was in a Town I think it's Cedar Falls, about 70 miles north of Des Moines in Iowa and I never seen him before and he does this sort of event in circling in the round and I was like realized I will stop taking notes at a certain point, I was really just floored by him and mostly he's talk about poverty. And the reason that's courageous is because the poor don't vote for the most part and so to go after that as an issue is sort of a - is an electorate less issue. Anybody can say therefore income tax cuts because we all pay income taxes and we want to pay less of them. To say we have serious intractable problems in the wealthiest country in history of civilization with poor people it is not really a vote getter. So I think that's both in 2004 and less so this cycle, I would like to see him talk more about it. I think, that's been the most courageous I would give him the highest grade of three. Yeah so would I. Byron let's turn to the Republicans. Here, I guess, Giuliani is front runner at least in the polls right now, why don't you take him first. Well the thing he is doing right now is defying a large significant portion of the Republican electorate on the issue of abortion. I think pollsters say that roughly between 9 to 13 percent of the electorates are single issue voters on the issue of abortion and majority of those are on the pro life side. And Giuliani, unlike Mitt Romney who changed his position on abortion a couple of years ago has basically said I am what I am, I can't change and I think he is right on that. I think he is unwise to not extend more of a hand of friendship to them but on the other hand he is running himself on the issue of abortion and on guns. I was speaking to an officer of the NRA yesterday about this who is very unhappy with Giuliani on that issue. So, I mean, Giuliani is trying to run for the Republican nomination and being completely opposed to some very, very important parts of Republican coalition on to big issues. So I give him a pretty high grade. Joe. Well I am a New Yorker, he was a terrific Mayor for reasons that aren't usually mentioned in that he was just a great manager. He shouldn't be at a book fair, and not talk about someone else's books. So let me mention Fred Siegel's books about Giuliani, the Prince of the City in which he lays out the details of what, of how serious a governor Giuliani was as Mayor. Having said that I would say that the tap dance that he is doing on abortion right, now is not only hurting him with the people whose position he disagrees with but also the people who agree with him because he seems so millimouth about it. I thought his performance in the debate the other night was disastrous because he didn't just say I am pro-choice. You may disagree with me but that's where I am. On Giuliani, I won't, I agree on the abortion things. So I won't waste time repeating and echoing Byron and Joe on that one. I think what's interesting, I write a weekly account for the Baltimore Sun as many of you know, because you live in the state, one of my first columns I wrote was about how Giuliani is positioning himself as a candidate of 2002. 2002 was this moment after 9/11 before the Iraq war where the Republicans were really at their zenith and I think Giuliani wants to talk about Islamo-fascism and he wants to talk about 9/11 position himself but he doesn't have any articulated position on how to solve the current intractable problem in Mesopotamia and until and unless he offers that I think put abortion aside, you know, I don't know that a Mayor who put his command post in the World Trade Center when he was not told not to, is necessarily going to be the best person to fight that war and he just hasn't convinced me. That he has any solution to that and so I don't think he has shown much courage on the sort of primary issue of our time right now. McCain obviously showed physical courage as a POW, is he going to show political courage as a candidate or a President, Byron? Well I think the last year John Weaver who is McCain's top closest aid I guess, said to me look if George W. Bush and John McCain are last two men standing in favor of bringing democracy to Iraq, so be it. And he is stuck with that. And he is stuck with that at a time in which he has lost a lot of support among some of the independents who were very attracted to his candidacy in 2000. I don't know how this is going to turn out, he doesn't either but I think that McCain in the republican field gets the - the highest score. Now clearly the Republican primary electorate supports the war and supports the - in particular the surge much more than the general public. So he is - he is going after particular audience. But he wants to be president elected nationally and he is way, way out on the Iraq issue. So I give him a high grade. Joe. Well I - I would agree with what Byron just said to - to up to a point. I mean, the McCain has been completely honorable in his position on Iraq. It's just wrong. And - and you know, then it was right for a long time, I thought that there was a - there was a long period where McCain in battling against Rumsfeld, the single worst Secretary of Defense in American history and trying to increase the troop levels and introduce counter insurgency would have been the right thing to do. But after the attack on the Mosque in Samarra last year, the war changed into a civil war and McCain hasn't adjusted to make that change. Real courage in a Republican candidate for president would be to acknowledge as John Warner has, as Chuck Haggle has as others privately do, that we need a different strategy to - and a strategy that removes us from the center of the civil war now. I also really - you know, John - this John McCain I covered in 2000 would never have flip-flopped on Bush's tax cuts. He voted against them and now he is for him, he says because there would be a tax increase if we are to impose the old levels. If we don't re impose the old levels it's going to be a tax increase on our kids. So you know, I - I admire McCain but I - I would give him a lower grade than Byron just did. Well I would give him lower grade than both of them and for couple of reasons and not just because of my ideological orientation but let me start with the one issue that I think John McCain should get a high score for, which is immigration because - and not just because of what my position is on it, but because it's clearly what is costing him. I was with Bryan at the - Byron at the CPAC convention, this year and Conservatives just hate McCain over McCain-Feingold but more to the point I don't know I'll let Byron. He knows that - right a little better more to the point hate him about immigration and allying with Ted Kennedy on that issue. I just agree slightly with Joe on the war, I mean, when buy a pair of shoes, you either buy both or neither and what McCain did with the surge vote was say, I really want a lot more troops but I will take 20000, a half measure. And this war started as a half measure and General Shinseki told us that and he was right. So if you continue to do it by increments is foolish. You either all in or all out in the era of high stakes Texas no-limit poker. We keep sort of you know, buying into the pot even though and getting suckered into - into a really bad pay out. And I think McCain has not shown courage in that regard. He backed up the President in 2004, he risked that strategy, electorate, I think he was just as - a I think he was just as calculating as Hillary Clinton was in that regard, and he thought there was going to be a Bush base to inherit and there is nothing to bequeath there. So John McCain is the loser of the mid term elections. He wasn't on the ballet, neither was Bush. But Bush doesn't have to run for election. Joe - Joe Lieberman lost the primary and John McCain lost the general election and ofcourse they were the two people on meet the press, this Sunday after the election, I thought that was interesting. But so lastly to Mitt Romney and then I am going to open it up to questions from all of you but Byron. I would give Romney the lowest score in the Republican field, in part because of his flip- flop on the abortion issue. We know that in 1994 he runs for the senate again Ted Kennedy. He is - he is adamantly pro-choice but also in 2002 when he runs for governor of Massachusetts he is adamantly pro-choice. I talked to the Executive Director of NARAL pro-choice Massachusetts who interviews him in 2002 and he says - says he is very, very adamant in making his point. I am pro-choice. He says that in late 2004 they are having a big stem cell debate. He talks to a couple of experts from MIT. They are talking about embryos would be created and then discarded within 14 days and he has kind of revelation and it changes his mind on the, on the sanctity of life and he becomes solidly pro-life. I think a number of Conservative Republicans find his conversion on this the timing of it a little too convenient. So I would kind of put him lower on the scale in the Republican field. Yeah, I agree - I agree and I would gay rights which didn't involve a couple of stem cell experts. He just flip-flopped on that. But having said that let me say that, of this Republican field, I think that he is probably the most skilled candidate and he is that kind of Reaganesque head bob awe you know, and that kind of shucks! Quality when he answers questions, he is very slick. Too slick? Well you know, the republicans kind of like televangelist candidates and - and it may well, you know, it may well turn out to be too slick in the end. Especially if - if I am right. But who knows if I am about the need for more courage and authenticity in a candidate in 2008. I don't know how I follow that, that's why I chose a pro on the panel. I agree with Byron and Joe. I rank Romney the least. I think for him to have had a courageous moment he could have said look. We are having this cultural war and I am going to stick with where I was in '94. I am pro-choice and I am pro-gay rights and I help to move the Republican Party and convince people to be a little bit more tolerant and if I go down in flames then so be it. And I am running for president and that would have been the most courageous move of any of the candidates on either side but he didn't do it. And so he gets a zero
member. 
