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Jim Lehrer: Conversation with Whit Ayres & Donna Brazile

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Partner:: Chautauqua Institution
Location:: Amphitheater, Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua, New York
Event Date:: 07.03.12
Speakers:: Whit Ayres,; Donna Brazile,; Jim Lehrer
Tags:: barack obama; mitt romney; presidency; 2012 election

Summary

Laurence Léveillé ' Staff Writer

The 2012 election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney has often been compared to the 2004 election.

The line between Americans' dissatisfaction with United States politics and the trust the public has in Obama compared to Romney leads to a close race.

"There are people who will never like President Obama, there are people who will never like Gov. Mitt Romney," said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist and founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates, during Tuesday's morning lecture.

Brazile and Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, had a conversation with retired "PBS NewsHour" anchor Jim Lehrer as part of Week Two's programming on the theme "The Lehrer Report: What Informed Voters Need to Know." Ayres and Brazile discussed why they believe each candidate should win the election and the recent Supreme Court health care decision's role in the 2012 elections.

Ayres, who is also president of Ayres, McHenry & Associates, was the first to explain why he believes Americans should vote for Romney as president.

"You should vote for Mitt Romney because four more years of what we've had would be a disaster," he said.

Compared to 2008 and based on what voters are saying, Ayres said, a substantial majority of Americans think the economy is worse, the federal government's fiscal standing is weaker, the government's ability to solve problems is worse, and that the U.S.'s standing in the world is worse.

Re-election campaigns become a referendum of the incumbent. Looking at the president's record and the increased partisanship, Ayres said he does not believe Obama deserves to be re-elected.

"It will be close, but I think most Americans will agree it's time for something different," Ayres said, "and that something different is going to be Mitt Romney."

Brazile agreed that an incumbent's re-election is a referendum.

"However, unless the president is wholly unpopular, the other candidate must be an acceptable choice," she said.

The U.S. will re-elect Obama so he can finish the job he started, Brazile said. She said he would bring the economy to fiscal health, improve American lives, strengthen national defense and keep the country safe and secure.

Though she agrees the public is dissatisfied with the politics of the country, division and partisanship, she said Obama still possesses the traits of a leader.

"I think that he will win the re-election," Brazile said, "and he will continue to tackle some of the most pressing problems we have in this country."

Ayres responded to Brazile by telling the audience to remember three numbers: 77, 47 and 8.2.

The first number, 77, is the percentage of people who told Gallup Organization last week they are dissatisfied with the direction of the country.

"It's a truism in my business you can't get re-elected if a majority of the country is dissatisfied," he said.

The second number, 47, is the percentage of Obama's May job approval average, according to Gallup. Usually, presidents who are re-elected have a job approval average of almost always 50 percent or higher, Ayres said. Obama is hovering just below that percentage.

And the number 8.2 represents the most recent unemployment rate. Previously, the highest unemployment rate during a re-election campaign was in 1984 during Ronald Reagan's re-election. At the time, it was at 7.4 percent, Ayres said.

If those three numbers remain as they are by Election Day, it will be difficult for Obama to win the re-election, Ayres said.

Brazile agreed that the numbers Ayres shared with the audience were legitimate, but she also said Romney should be seven or eight points ahead of Obama based on those numbers.

"But we're not dealing with a national election, ladies and gentlemen," she said. "We're dealing with an election that will be fought in about eight to 10 states."

In those states, she said, Obama is in a strong position. The election will come down to a handful of states that make a difference in the Electoral College, she said.

The 2012 election is also expected to be similar to the 2004 election between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

"It's going to be close," Brazile said. "It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people who don't like to stay up and watch CNN until 3 in the morning."

She said another aspect of the election affecting the numbers Ayres shared is the level of uncertainty there is among Americans.

"Uncertainty sometimes breeds fear, and that fear is what's driving consumer confidence," Brazile said.

Though the economy will be the main issue around which the election revolves, the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act could also play a role.

When the health care legislation was introduced to the public, Obama did not explain the bill in a way that could be understood, Brazile said.

Ayres said the fundamental issue with the health care legislation is that many people don't believe what Obama said about it. Rather, an overwhelming majority believes the law will increase health care costs, premiums and the federal deficit, he said.

"It's not that he hasn't tried to sell it," Ayres said, "it's that the credibility on the issue is not sufficient so that he can sell it."

Now that the Supreme Court has made a decision, Obama has the opportunity during his campaign to have the conversation he did not have before, Brazile said.

Just before the conversation on health care shifted, Brazile made a final point that Romney had difficulty fighting against Obama during the primaries and will continue to have trouble during the campaign.

The decision on the health care legislation will ensure that this year's election is a referendum on Obama, Ayres said. But both he and Brazile agreed that the economy is still the top issue.

"It's still the quality of our lives and our future as it relates to health care itself," Brazile said.

Bio

Whit Ayres

Whit Ayres is the president of North Star Opinion Research, chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants, and co-founder of Resurgent Republic. He was honored as the Republican Pollster of the Year for 2012 by the American Association of Political Consultants. In addition to periodically appearing as a guest on FOX News, CNN, and NPR, his comments and analysis appear in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and numerous regional newspapers.

Before establishing North Star Opinion Research, Dr. Ayres served as senior executive assistant for budget and policy to South Carolina Governor Carroll Campbell. He has also served as a tenured member of the political science faculty at the University of South Carolina.

Dr. Ayres earned a B.A. from Davidson College, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An active private pilot, he is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He is the Virginia State Racquetball champion in his undisclosed age division.

Donna Brazile

Veteran political strategist Donna Brazile is vice chair of Voter Registration and Participation at the Democratic National Committee and former chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. She also served for a brief time earlier in 2011 as acting chairwoman of the DNC. She is a former member of the board of directors of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, responsible for leading the state’s rebuilding process in the aftermath of two catastrophic hurricanes.

A New Orleans native, Brazile began her political career at 9, when she worked to elect a City Council candidate who had promised to build a playground in her neighborhood. The candidate won, the swing sets were installed and a lifelong passion for political progress was ignited. Four decades later, Brazile has worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2000, when she served as campaign manager for former Vice President Al Gore, becoming the first African-American woman to manage a presidential campaign.

Brazile is author of the best-selling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a syndicated newspaper columnist for United Media, a columnist for Ms. Magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine, and an on-air contributor to CNN and ABC, where she regularly appears on “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.”

In August 2009, O, The Oprah Magazine, chose Brazile as one of its 20 “remarkable visionaries” for the magazine’s first-ever O Power List. In addition, she was named among the 100 Most Powerful Women by Washingtonian magazine and the Top 50 Women in America by Essence magazine, and received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s highest award for political achievement. Brazile is founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a general consulting, grassroots advocacy and training firm based in Washington, D.C.

Jim Lehrer

Since he wasn't a very good baseball player, he turned to sports writing, then writing in general. As a member of what he's called "the Hemingway generation," he decided to support himself as a newspaper writer until he could make a living as a novelist.

After graduating from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism, Lehrer served for three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, then began his career as a newspaper reporter, columnist and editor in Dallas. His first novel, about a band of Mexican soldiers re-taking the Alamo, was published in 1966 and made into a movie. Lehrer quit his newspaper job in order to write more books, but was lured back into reporting after he accepted a part-time consulting job at the Dallas public television station. He was eventually made host and editor of a nightly news program at the station.

Lehrer then moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as public affairs coordinator for PBS and as a correspondent for the National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT). At NPACT, Lehrer teamed up with Robert MacNeil to provide live coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings, broadcast on PBS. It was the beginning of a partnership that would last more than 20 years, as Lehrer and MacNeil co-hosted The MacNeil/Lehrer Report (originally The Robert MacNeil Report) from 1976 to 1983, and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from 1983 to 1995. In 1995, MacNeil left the show, but Lehrer soldiered on as solo anchor and executive editor of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

When he wasn't busy hosting the country's first hour-long news program, Lehrer wrote and published books, including a series of mystery novels featuring his fictional lieutenant governor, One-Eyed Mack, and a political satire, The Last Debate. Lehrer surprised critics and won new readers with his breakout success, White Widow, the "tender and tragic" (Washington Post) tale of a small-town Texas bus driver. He followed it with the bestselling Purple Dots, a "high-spirited Beltway romp" (The New York Times Book Review), and The Special Prisoner, about a WWII bomber pilot whose brutal experiences in a Japanese P.O.W. camp come back to haunt him 50 years later. His recent novel No Certain Rest recounts the quest of a U.S. Parks Department archaeologist to solve a murder committed during the Civil War.

Across this wide range of subjects, Lehrer is known for his careful plotting and even more careful research. Clearly, this is a man who cares about good stories -- but which is more important to him, journalism or fiction? Lehrer once admitted that he's known as "the TV guy who also writes books. Someday, maybe it will go the other way and I'll be the novelist who also does television."