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Monday, March 19, 2007
Penthouse, Littauer Building, 9 JFK Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts


B E F O R E:

JEANNE SHAHEEN
Director, Institute of Politics
Kennedy School of Government

ALEX JONES
Director, Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy
Kennedy School of Government

MARK HALPERIN
Fellow , Institute of Politics & Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy
ABC News Political Director

MARK MCKINNON
Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy
Kennedy School of Government


P A R T I C I P A N T S:

For Senator Clinton:
Patti Solis Doyle Mandy Grunwald Mark Penn Mike Henry

For Senator Edwards:
Jennifer Palmieri Jonathan Prince Nick Baldick

For Senator Obama:
Mark Alexander David Axelrod Betsy Myers


P R O C E E D I N G S

(2:02 p.m.)

MR. JONES: Good afternoon, I’m Alex Jones, I’m Director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and it is my great pleasure to welcome all of you to the Kennedy School of Government.  This program, this series of programs is jointly sponsored by the Shorenstein Center and the Institute of Politics, and you’ll be hearing from the Director of the Institute of Politics, Jeanne Shaheen, in just a moment.  My only real role today is to say that we are very glad to have you, we are especially glad that you Obama people were able to get through the barriers to travel entry that seem to be ever with us this time of year.

We are very glad to have the opportunity to have this conversation at this stage.  We thought, as I’m sure you’ll hear, that this was going to be very early in the process, we find that we are already in the middle of the process, or at least it feels that way, which makes the conversation all the more important and all the more, we hope, lively, and constructive and illuminating.  I thank you for coming, I thank all of you who have gone to pains to be here and please, you all are welcome.

I would like to also underscore that it is very important that the rules of engagement be observed, I’m sure that you’ll be hearing more about that, but I think that it’s very much important, from our perspective, that those of you who are here as observers recognize that there is an embargo on the conversation that’s going to be taking place this afternoon.

With that, let me pass it to my colleague at the Kennedy School, Jeanne Shaheen.

MS. SHAHEEN: Thank you, Alex, and I will echo Alex’s welcome, both to our participants from all of the campaigns, we are excited to have you here.  As someone who has spent a lot of years working in politics and doing campaigns, I especially appreciate the time that you are all taking to be here today, so thank you very much.

Also, I want to welcome all of the guests in the audience, all of the students who are here, we hope you are not going to leave here without signing up for somebody’s campaign to work during the ‘08 Presidential Race.

For all of the reporters and media folks who are here, we are delighted that you are here as well, and I will just echo again Alex’s concern that everyone respect the embargo that we’ve asked you to agree to in participating today.

This idea to do this series of events with the top strategists for everyone running for president on both the Republican and Democratic sides was really the brain child of our moderators today, Mark Halperin and Mark McKinnon.

As some of you may know, the Institute of Politics has, since 1972, done a retrospective of the presidential race with all of the top strategists from the campaigns, but this idea to look at the race in the beginning is something new and I think it’s a very exciting idea.  This is our second session, we will have two more sessions in April with the rest of the candidates and we hope all of you will come back for that.

Now, let me introduce our moderators this afternoon.  Mark Halperin is a joint visiting fellow with the Institute of Politics and the Shorenstein Center, he is the Political Director of ABC News and the Founder and Editor of “The Note”.  He is also a Harvard graduate and was active at the Institute of Politics when he was a student here.

Mark McKinnon is an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School with the Shorenstein Center, he was Chief Media Advisor to President George W. Bush during the 2000 and 2004 Elections and he is Vice Chairman of Public Strategies and President of Maverick Media.

So we are delighted that you are both here to moderate today’s events.

MR. HALPERIN: Okay. Thank you, Governor and Alex, and thank you all for coming.

We want to spend the better part of the next three hours talking to all and listening to you all. I told really funny jokes at the beginning of the Republican session, I would urge you to look at the transcript and reread them, I’m not going to spend time telling them again.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: We do appreciate you coming, it’s great for all of you to be here. We did, in deciding when talking about putting this together with Governor Shaheen, we said don’t endorse any candidate in the New Hampshire Primary before everybody agrees to come. So, at 5:00, anything can happen.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: If you look in your packets, there’s information about the rules Governor Shaheen will use to endorse 50 percent attendance, so the Clinton people here are in good shape, thank you for sending four representatives.  The rest of it is on how open you are in response to our questions.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: We want to have a conversation.  As Alex said, we thought this would be a slower time than it is, it’s obviously a busy time and we’ll talk about that. In some cases, we’ll call on one of you directly, we want everybody to talk, not all of you have expertise across a full range of every area, so we’ll try to direct questions to people we think can best answer them, sometimes, we’ll just address the campaign generally and you all can defer to your colleagues or take it.

In general though, we want to cover a lot of ground and there is always going to be a tension between trying to exhaust the biggest topics and moving to a lot of different topics, so we may interrupt you at times, but please give us as direct answers as you wish and as you can. And if you are not called on either by name or by your campaign, but you have something you want to add, feel free to jump in.

These microphones work, you must toggle them on when you talk, just hit the button, the light will go on.  When you are done talking, hit the button again.  I have a special blue button that allows me to do that, to tell you there is a sale in aisle three.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: Or to bring back everybody to the conversation.  So let me just say one more thing.  This is embargoed until April 9th. On that day, for the journalists and others in the room, that is when we will release a transcript of this conversation, as well as the earlier Republican  conversation. Once you get that e-mail with the transcripts, you are free to write about them or, if you are student here, blog about them.

So, with that, we are going to get started and I want to—

MR. MCKINNON: Mark? MR. HALPERIN:  Yes, sir. MR. MCKINNON: Would you mind if I just jumped in on the introduction?

Thanks. Thank you all for coming and thank you to all the participants especially for coming, I suspect you may have had other priorities than taking your top strategic management of the campaigns out for an entire day, but we really appreciate it and we hope that there really is some value to this long-term for observers and participants of this process.  We recognize that you are not here to divulge strategic imperatives for your campaign or to  make news, despite Halperin’s efforts all afternoon to do just the opposite.

But we do think it’s an opportunity to, as Governor Shaheen said, look at the campaigns ahead of the time and not just in retrospect.  I mean I think that that archaeologically or anthropologically will be sort of interesting to see what we view now as happening and what ends up actually happening.  And as you all know, every presidential campaign is different, so this is an opportunity for us to look at this campaign now, really talk about what we think it looks like now and we’ll see how different it is a couple of two years from now, I guess, as we look back.  So thanks again for coming.

MR. HALPERIN: Just two more things I forgot, just to identify, the Clinton campaign is on my right, the Obama campaign is straight ahead and the Edwards campaign there, for those who need to be on my left, my hard left or my populist left. And just to be clear, as I said, you may answer or not but feel free to jump in, if you are not called on.

Let me start with directing a question to Mark Penn and ask you 2004 is generally considered to have been a national security election as the big issue, do you think

2008 will be a national security election and how much of that will be driven by September 11th and the country’s attitude towards it?

MR. PENN:  Look, I think 2000, I think in 2004, you know, at the end of the day, the voters on the margin I think were two groups, the Latino voters and women voters, and with particularly the women voters, I think security was the central issue that made them go one way or the other.  And I think that wasn’t the case in the Latino community, I think it was more of a connection, so you could say that both of those things were factors. The fact that Bush got 40 percent of the Latino vote and the fact that women, mostly 50 to 64, changed their mind pretty much towards the end, after the Republican Convention, suggests that they bought security as the issue.

I think that, as you look forward here, we don’t actually know what the situation will be. I mean part of doing this far out is that we don’t really fully know it, but I think that it’s very, very different from 2000.  I think in 2000 the country was in a mode where they said, look, whoever we elect president, it’s relatively peaceful times, it’s relatively good times, I’m not sure we can make a mistake, and I think that they didn’t value their vote as carefully, in retrospect, as I think they should have.

And I think they go to 2008 with the notion of, boy, this is a really important election, that’s why we are showing up early and now, it’s really critical in terms of our standing in the world and sort of what happens with Iraq, what happens with terrorism, what happens with the global economy.  I think they have big issues confronting them and I think this, to them is guaranteed to be a very serious vote, and I think that’s the critical difference.

MR. HALPERIN: Okay. Jonathan Prince, is 2008 going to be a national security election?

MR. PRINCE: I think voters clearly indicated that they are looking for a massive change in course in Iraq. So to the extent that Iraq is on the table, which I think we all have every expectation it will be, I think, and to the extent that voters continue to be displeased even with the change in power in Congress, there has not been that kind of course correction, I think it will be an enormous issue.

But I also think that voters are looking for a change in course in a whole range of issues and I think the economic issues are going to play a very big role.  So I think yeah, sure, it’s going to be one of the major voting issues in the election but I certainly think that, like I said, voters are looking for a change in course across the board.

MR. HALPERIN: David Axelrod, if it is a national security election, what will that mean for your candidate?

MR. AXELROD: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for having us here and I mainly came to give Mark an opportunity to associate with Democrats again.

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: Well I think, first of all, security is going to be one issue that is going to be on people’s minds as they vote. I quite agree with Mark, I think people understand that this is a profound election and not just in terms of security but in terms of a whole range of things.  We are being buffeted by a lot of forces, whether it’s globalization, climate change and any number of other things that will determine what kind of century we live in. And people I think have this sense, that’s why you see these huge numbers of people who say they are already paying attention to this election.

I think every candidate is going to have to stand up on all these issues, you were asking specifically about security, I think, and I think there is an underpinning to the question, if I, unless I ascribe motives to you that don’t exist, but I’ve never, ever ascribed motives to you that didn’t exist before, so I don’t believe that I am now.

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: I believe that whoever is elected is going to have to persuade people that they are ready to take this on and that they are going to exercise good judgement in the face of these challenges.  One of the things that I think has distinguished Senator Obama is that he was very prescient back in 2002 in analyzing what our needs were then and suggesting that we ought to be focusing on Afghanistan, that this war in Iraq was really a dangerous diversion from security and that it would lead us into what he said then, a war of undetermined length, undetermined cost and undetermined outcome, and that’s where we find ourselves today.

So I feel good about his standing on that issue and on his familiarity with the world. He grew up, as many of you know, for several years in a different part of the world, it gave him a perspective I think on the global nature, and that’s something that has been missing, with all due respect to Mark [McKinnon], has been missing in this administration, I think people now understand that.

On the Foreign Relations Committee, he has been very active, he went to South Africa and confronted the government there on AIDS, he went to Kenya and confronted the government on corruption, he has worked with Senator Lugar on arms control issues, so I think he has got quite a few bona fides on this issue, I think people will feel comfortable with his as president.

MR. HALPERIN: We’ll come back to other security questions, but why don’t you go ahead and move on.

MR. MCKINNON: Okay, thanks.

Let me direct this to Nick and Betsy and Patti.  As one of our hosts here suggested, when this was originally anticipated, we thought it would be well ahead of a lot of activity going on in this campaign and we know what’s happened on that front. So the question is do you think that the early start of this campaign with the extraordinary volume, pace and number of scheduling requests, including debates, inhibits your campaign’s ability to develop through a period the candidates would normally have at this time?  And what are the implications of this long-term, early intensity?  And are the candidates being asked to do too much too soon?

MR. BALDICK: I’ll start with yes.

(Laughter)

MR. BALDICK: I think that the only thing that these three campaigns all agree on is this issue. I mean, four years ago, we focused first quarter on fund raising and setting up some policies, second quarter you start developing, it’s meant to be making no mistakes and raising money.  This time, we’ve already had five forums that I think some of us have been invited to and some of us have attended, you know, and we’ve got 48 total invites, Patti, if I’m not mistaken, already going for this calendar year, that doesn’t include next year.

So I think it leaves very little time for people to actually talk to voters, so I think the pace is unbelievable and I think that we need to focus on figuring out a way to talk to voters. I assume the other campaigns will do the same thing.

MR. PRINCE: I just want to jump in on it, after you guys have your say.

MS. MEYERS: I think for, particularly in the Obama campaign, we just kind of got going and so we’ve kind of have a little less time and ramping up, the speed of which we’ve had to ramp up and hire people, and get our space and organizing the states has been mind boggling.  But also, I think, in our campaign, Barack is getting 500 requests a week for his time, on top of all the other requests for debates and other things for his time, while trying to be a senator and being in Washington three or four days a week.

So, yeah, it’s tough. I mean when you look at all of the incredible requests that come in of things that we could, should and want to do, versus where we have to spend our time raising money and other things that just are realities of campaigns, it’s been, it’s difficult.

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  Yeah, I think Nick is right, I think this is the one issue that we all agree on.

MS. MYERS: We also all agree that Jonathan’s hair is too long.

(Laughter)

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  I don’t want to go there, you know, I’m not going there.

(Laughter)

MR. MCKINNON: The first shot and it comes campaign on campaign.

(Laughter)

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  But you know, as Betsy said, we’ve been at this for seven weeks, we’ve just gotten started.  We’ve been to Iowa three times, been to New

Hampshire a handful of times.  Our goal is to talk to voters and when you have all of these requests at your desk which, yeah, 48 debates, we’ve been to a couple of forums, you know, it’s difficult.  For Hillary in particular, who has not been to the State of Iowa, she wants to spend time there, and the time she’s spent there has been incredible and she wants to spend more time there.  The time she’s spent in New Hampshire, need to spend more time there.

And it’s not that we don’t want to debate, of course we want to debate, we just, you know, I think time with the voters probably takes precedent at this time and place.

MR. MCKINNON: Okay, well I’m going to offer, oh, Jonathan, you wanted to say something.

MR. PRICE: Yeah. All I wanted to say is that, look, and I think everyone probably agrees with this too.  It’s not that we don’t think debates are good and it’s not that we don’t think a healthy exchange of ideas is good, but it’s also important to keep in mind what these debates have become in these crowded fields.  If you put eight or nine candidates on one of these stages for a 60 or even a 90 minute debate, each candidate gets seven minutes, eight minutes.  There is no ability really to draw the message, there is no ability to really talk about details.

Debates, which used to be the answer to sound bites, have now turned into exchanges where they can only be about sound bites and it’s just a problem.  And I know organizations like yours, Mark [Halperin], and other news organizations, like all yours out here, have worked and tried to work with formats and things like that to make a difference, but they are really not a great, productive exchange of ideas anymore.

MR. AXELROD: But they are an opportunity for programming, which is basically the question is to what degree do you submit yourself to those demands, understanding that, ultimately, everybody wants, you know, everybody wants to have a debate, every news organization wants to have a debate, every state party wants to have a debate. It’s sort of the equivalent of what straw polls were a few years ago, it’s become kind of a fad.  And so, given the extraordinary demands on the time of the candidates for all the reasons that these guys underscored, it really is a problem.

MR. MCKINNON: Well, since I agree with that and I thought maybe we could offer a solution to that today, we’ll do a little lightning round and how about we get a compact from all the campaigns to shut down all debate requests until August of this year?  We’ll get a yes/no around the table.

Nick?

(Laughter)

MR. BALDICK: Like we don’t, we can’t go to a single one?

MR. MCKINNON: Not one until August.

MR. BALDICK: Or any kind of forums?  What’s the difference? MR. MCKINNON: We’ll go debates for now.  Go for it. MR. BALDICK: Yeah, sure. MR. MCKINNON: Betsy? (Laughter)

MR. MCKINNON: Or David?

MR. AXELROD: The fact is that I think the Democratic Party is trying to rationalize this right now, so I don’t want to jump out ahead of the party and I’m not going to. So, if candor, complete candor, is the price of getting the Governor’s endorsement by 4:00 today—

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: --I want to congratulate Nick on --.

(Laughter)

MS. SHAHEEN: Well I assume you are going to New Hampshire though, right?

(Laughter)

MR. MCKINNON: Patti?

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  I’m with David, I think the DNC is really trying to—

MR. AXELROD: You know you’re with us.

(Laughter)

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  I think the DNC is trying to, you know, put some order and we’ll wait and see how that works out.MR. MCKINNON:  Would the DNC be wise to reflect an armistice until a later date?

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  Yeah. Well, yes.

MR. AXELROD: Actually, Mark, it is a question back to you here from your recent prior experience.  I think your other part of your question didn’t relate just to debates, it related to the pace at which the whole campaign is going and, if you go back to the 2000 Bush campaign, you had lots of candidates dropping out immediately after, your version of the Iowa straw poll, and I’m afraid that we are getting the same thing here, that we are going to end up with, you know, it may be the people at this table but we may have a smaller field post Labor Day and it may become like your party’s last contested primary.

So, you know, it would actually be interesting to know what you think could be done to stop it because you’ve actually experienced it more recently than we have, and ours tend to draw out and we kill each other for a long time.

(Laughter)

MR. MCKINNON: I think it’s a big, fundamental problem and I hope the party steps in and creates some order out of the chaos.  I don’t think it serves voters well.  It serves special interest well but not voters.

MR. HALPERIN: Just to remind everybody to please toggle your mic on and off when you’ve got something to say, even if it’s a two word quip.

I want to go back to national security and ask about Iraq, which is obviously a big issue and a difficult one to talk about in the context of the nomination fight and the general because it is such a moving target.  But let me ask you first, Mark Alexander, what’s something about the influence of the Iraq War on this presidential election nomination and potentially in the general that you think is under-commented on or is fundamental?

MR. ALEXANDER:  Well, under-commented or fundamental?

MR. HALPERIN: Either one. MR. ALEXANDER:  Or both? MR. HALPERIN: Or both. MR. ALEXANDER:  Well I think it’s I guess the fundamental is it has changed our perspective on the presidency and the way in which this president has approached this war. And what we know from, and this is perhaps repeating a little bit of what David was saying, but I think that when we look at this, we see that Barack Obama said, a long time ago, he said what he predicted would be happening during the war, and what would happen if we went to war and went to war in the way we did. And I think that what is essential is to think about that maybe what’s under-commented is how we can judge the lessons from what we were looking at before the war started and apply them today.

What did we think was happening back then? And then how do we apply it going forward today?  So how does a candidate say this is what I saw in 2001-2002, and what am I going to do, having seen the experience of the last several years of war, we are about to hit our 4th anniversary, and then where do we go from there on? And obviously everybody in this room, the candidates came from different positions in terms of their past experience, but I think we can ask everybody what is it that you saw back then?  What are the lessons you’ve learned in the last four years? And where do you go forward?  And so I think that’s perhaps the frame we really need to think about.

MR. HALPERIN: Mandy Grunwald, there is I think a pretty widespread perception that, a little bit of what you just heard now, but that Senator Obama’s initial opposition to the war, Senator Edwards’ repudiation of his war vote gives both of them an advantage over Senator Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest, do you agree with that perception?

MS. GRUNWALD:  No.

(Laughter)

MS. GRUNWALD: I think the, shockingly.  I think the question that voters will have certainly by the time of the primary, we don’t know as much by the time of the general, is who is going to end the war, because it sure doesn’t look like George Bush is going to. And when we look at the field, we understand the differences of where people were in 2002, there are similarities all along the way in terms of voting records since then and really, there are similarities in the plans going forward. We think the difference is the experience people bring to the job of president and how they are going to bring a coalition and the world together to help end the war, how they are going to deal with the military.

And we think that Senator Clinton, because of the unique experience she has had, eight years in the White House, traveling to 82 countries, you know, when you talk about bringing the parties in the region together, she actually knows the parties in the region, we think all of that is experience, as well as her work on armed services, that’s going to make a huge difference in making her the person who people look to to end the war most effectively.

MR. HALPERIN: Do you think that the other two campaigns, to the extent they continue to make an issue in contrasting their record on Iraq and their statements on Iraq with Senator Clinton’s, are making a mistake?

MS. GRUNWALD: I can’t speak to their strategy, you have to ask them about it, they obviously think that their strategies are effective because they keep pursuing them.  So we each have to do what’s best for ourselves, but we feel very comfortable focusing on the future because that’s really, in the end, what people are going to want.

You asked a question earlier about whether national security and Iraq would again be the issue heading into this election and I was reminiscing with somebody earlier that, as we planned senate races in ‘06, looking in January, and I don’t know if you guys had the same experience, we assumed troops would start coming home before the ‘06 election, we thought there is just no way they are going to be dumb enough to, like, not start that process and to into the election this way.

And you know, we had to keep changing our plans because, low and behold, they didn’t change course at all, they doubled down.  So, you know, we can make any guess we want about what ‘07 is going to look like and what ‘08 is going to look like, but we really don’t know.  And it’s just as likely that they will continue without any change and that the questions are going to be forward looking about who is going to stop this and who is going to do it in a way that protects our country’s security interests.

MR. HALPERIN: Jennifer Palmieri, you are an experienced, long-time Clinton watcher.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: What do you think is going on inside the Clinton campaign as they talk about how to deal with the Iraq issue?  And then how is that reflected in the senator’s statements and strategies on this issue?

MS. PALMIERI: What was the part, what are they thinking?

MR. HALPERIN: What do you think they are actually, how much—

MS. PALMIERI: What I think that Patti, Mark, Mandy and Mike are actually

thinking?

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: And maybe the Clintons.

MS. PALMIERI: And the Clintons?

MR. HALPERIN: What kind of conversations do you think they are having about

this?

MS. PALMIERI: I do think that it, I mean there are times that Jonathan and I will have the same reaction to something that we think we should do and we think why, you know, why is that? Why do we think that?  And we think because we think like them, you know, and I think that there is some sort of advantage that we have that

Patti knows how I work, I know how she thinks and—

MR. HALPERIN: That’s exactly what I’m trying to take advantage of here.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: And as they were doing, she is ducking.

MS. PALMIERI: Patti is like, Jesus Christ, she went to 82 countries when she

was First Lady, we are damn well going to get credit for it now, right, Patti?

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: I’m going to stand pat on that.

MR. AXELROD:  Mark?

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: Mark, can I just get in here for a second?

MR. HALPERIN: Please. Toggle on.

MR. AXELROD: Yes, I’m toggled.

I just want to say that I’m happy to discuss what our strategies are but I want to make sure that the strategy is what the strategy is.  We are not, I have no interest in sitting here and passing judgement on either of these folks, as to what happened when they voted on this in 2002, all we’ve talked about, all I’m talking about is what Barack Obama did.  The truth of the matter is, and this is probably --.

When you said April 9th embargo, did you mean 2007?

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: I mean I think that there are a lot of people, a lot of Americans who are going to be very forgiving about that because there are a lot of folks who went down that same road in 2002.  So I don’t think, I think this is overstated as an issue, I don’t think either candidate is going to get punished so much.  I do think that, you asked me a question originally as to, you know, the essence of which was what are his, what are Senator Obama’s foreign policy and security bona fides.

All I’m saying is that the fact that he analyzed it a presciently and as acutely as he did I think gives you some sense of how he evaluates these issues.  It is not meant as a pejorative commentary on anyone else.

MR. HALPERIN: Right. I want to try to tease that out a little bit because I think—

MR. AXELROD: I was afraid of that.

MR. HALPERIN: I think there is probably some incredulity on the part of the Clinton campaign when you all say you repeatedly restating, reminding people of Senator Obama’s initial opposition, when the Edwards campaign repeatedly talks about how it’s up to Senator Clinton and her conscience about whether she wants to apologize or say she is sorry.

Let me ask Mike Henry, do you take David Axelrod at his word or Edwards’ people at their word when they say this is not meant to highlight Senator Clinton’s initial vote or refusal to repudiate—

MR. HENRY: Can you divide the question?  I’ll talk about the Obama campaign and then the Edwards campaign.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: Sure, absolutely.

MR. AXELROD: And actually, I want to get in on that too, Mark.

MR. HENRY: I really do believe David at his word when he says that.  I think this primary is going to be just as much about our positions and where we want to take the country as much as about being critical of the other candidates.  When I’m out in Iowa and New Hampshire with the senator, what I see out there is I see a broad range of issues, the Iraq War being one, but health care being another, jobs and the economy.

I think, to kind of latch on what David said, this election is, the energy that I see in this campaign right now is because our party is ready for change, so we are anxious, we are ready to get moving, we are ready to get to ‘08 real quick.

MR. HALPERIN: So when you see Senator Obama or people on his behalf saying, reminding people that he was opposed to the war initially, you don’t take that at all as an attempt to harm Senator Clinton’s candidacy?

MR. HENRY: I see that as a way for Senator Obama to kind of state his position and just like we are going to state our, or she is going to state her position on where she was and how she came to her decision.

MR. HALPERIN: Okay, Jonathan and then we should move on.

MR. PRINCE: Yeah, and the truth is, and you guys are going to, I’ll get the same incredulity from you folks, but maybe not from the Clinton people that you suggested David was getting.  John Edwards talks about Iraq because the voters want to talk about Iraq. He says he made a mistake because that’s what he thinks, he says people need to have the courage to change course and admit their mistakes when they are wrong because that’s what he thinks and that’s what he thinks George Bush has not done.

You folks want to make it about the Clintons all the time and any time he has ever said that’s up for her, that’s in response to being pressed by a journalist, it’s not something he offers, it’s not something he ever says because that’s not where it comes from.  He thinks he made a mistake, he thinks he was wrong and he thinks that, you know, the American people are looking for a president who is willing to take responsibility when they are, and that’s a contrast to this president.

MR. AXELROD: But I do think that the focus of people is where we go from here. Senator Obama introduced a plan to get all our combat troops out of Iraq, he did this in January, based on the study groups’ recommendations, it’s now become kind of a model for where the party position has been.  I think that’s where people’s concerns are now, we’ve got kids dying every day.

I don’t know if any of you, some of you I’m sure did see that heart breaking Bob Herbert column this morning about the young man who came back and committed suicide. There is a tremendous, tremendous cost to this and I think people are very serious about that. They are less interested in seeing us get into spitball fights about what happened in 2002 than they are in how we are going to get out of this thing.

MR. PENN:  I just want to underscore I think that it’s clear to understand what the senator’s position is, going forward.  I think she went to Iraq, she came back, she was the first, I think at this table, to come back with a cap on the troops, to oppose vigorously the escalation, to put forward a plan for, that she supported for a long time on phased withdrawal.  She has a complete program for both phased withdrawal, fighting the escalation. And as she says out there, look, she doesn’t think the 60 votes are going to happen, she is fighting as hard a possible to get them.

She thinks that, right now, we should be following a policy of phased withdrawal and if the president doesn’t end the war, she will, and that she will implement the kinds of policies that she thinks will move us in that direction as soon as she becomes president.  And I think she really thinks that that is the best way, at this time, to end this war.

MR. MCKINNON: This is for Mandy, David and I guess Jonathan. Would you all address what is the role of this election going to be of traditional broadcast media?  And what’s the role of new media and new technology going to play in this role?  We saw an example of the YouTube impact I think over the last couple of days about an ad that’s been produced against your candidate.

So, Mandy, do you want to take that on?

MS. GRUNWALD: That ad has been out there for a while actually, a couple of weeks.

MR. PRINCE: My guess, by the way, is that I will agree with what they say.

(Laughter)

MS. GRUNWALD: Well there is the news part of that question and there is the advertising part of that question.  I think advertising in a president campaign, we hate to admit it and I think you would too, it’s just less influential than it is in a congressional or a senate race because people have so many other forms of information.  In a senate race, 80 percent of what people know or 70 percent of what people know they learn from ads because there isn’t as much broadcast and news coverage. In a presidential election, they have just a ton of sources of information and the Internet has multiplied that exponentially, which I think is great.

And you know, it’s hard sometimes to pick through those, and you don’t always love what you see on YouTube or on a blog, but the more people know, we think the better it is for our candidate, so we think all of that is good.

And it is harder to communicate a single message than the days when there were three networks.  I mean when I was working for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, you know, some of you were around then, cable was really just in its infancy, and that was cable, that was, there was no Internet and there were still the three major networks still dominated everything.

I’m sure, Mark [Halperin], you think of that as the good old days.

(Laughter)

MS. GRUNWALD: But now, to send a single message across all media is a lot more difficult and it’s a lot harder to be heard and to make sure you’re heard.  But I think, in general, it’s all for the good because the more information people get for themselves, the better it is.

MR. AXELROD: Well I would agree with everything that Mandy said, you know, I’ve always said that media is, you can view its impact as sort of a bell curve, it’s not very effective in small, local races because people can’t afford it, it is a principle deliverer of message in state races because they don’t get covered to the degree that a presidential race would get covered, so people get most of their information, as Mandy said, from these ads. And then in presidential races it becomes less important, not unimportant, I mean it is an augmentation of a message that people get. And if there is dissonance between what they see in the ads and what they see every day, then I think it’s problematic for a campaign, it either enhances or detracts.

In terms of the, everybody here is a student, to some degree or another, of the Internet, the growth has been exponential, the opportunities are great, but one of the challenges is that when you, you know, you have this sort of infinite channel and people can express themselves, sometimes they express themselves in ways that you, as a campaign, wouldn’t express themselves, that YouTube ad being an example of that.

And it’s difficult to control those things, it’s impossible, and so that’s a challenge.  But the upside is great which is the involvement of hundreds, and hundreds and hundreds thousands, millions of Americans in a way they weren’t involved in recent years, and it’s a great democratizing force, and so I think you have to embrace the challenges with the opportunity.

MR. PRINCE: I’m happy to hear myself talk, but I think they kind of covered it.

MR. BALDICK: One thing though on the media, just to expound on Mandy’s point, which is absolutely right, for these two primaries, it’s exponentially more true. You have five candidates with above 80 percent national name recognition, unless I’m wrong, Mark, that’s about right, so you don’t have, four years ago, the front runner was at 32 percent nationally, John Kerry, you had this huge undecided, our candidate had to be introduced by Iowa voters.  This time, I don’t think a lot of the candidates need 8,000 points of introduction.  So, you know, I would say what Mandy is saying is absolutely correct and it’s exponentially more true because of the unbelievable high number of well known candidates in this field.

MR. PENN:  I just want to say I wouldn’t conclude that name recognition is the same thing as knowledge about the candidates, and in fact, it’s kind of, I notice in politics there is a law of unintended consequences now every time there is a change in the system. So, for example, campaign finance was supposed to take money out of the system, it seems to have doubled or tripled to me.  And so the question you have is, when you have well known candidates, we find, with Senator Clinton, seeing her is knowing her far different from images that are thrown out there, and you’ve got more people operating on image.

I think the most important thing that this campaign can do is to move from image, from what I call the pizazz phase, to the ideas phase, to the clash phase, to the test phase, to really take everybody through. And I think media could wind up actually more important because everything done has been counterintuitive and everything that we say something else is going to be important has been wrong.  I think it’s very important that the most important thing of what these guys can do or that we can all do is make sure that everybody goes through that process properly so that there is a nominee who is chosen who can win this election based on having been fully reviewed and fully tested.

MR. AXELROD: I just want to add to that because I would agree with Mark’s point in this way, our candidate has obviously been on a bit of a rocket ride in terms of name recognition.  But I think that there are a lot of people who think that he was born whole on the stage in Boston here in 2004, and they have no idea about his eight years in the Illinois Senate, they have no ideas about his ten years of teaching constitutional law, they have no ideas about his years as a community organizer and all of those things --.

Well I mean the point is that that is valuable to know, as I’m sure there are things that Mark [Penn] would like people to know about Hillary that they don’t know and Nick would like people to know about John Edwards.  So, to that degree, I think Mark [Penn] is right, but I do think that, ultimately, those messages are going to be carried by a lot of vehicles and not just broadcast.

MR. HALPERIN: We are going to come back and talk quite a bit about the media after we break in just about half an hour.

But let me go back to a political question, and I’ll ask you about two things that your republican colleagues said when they were here two weeks ago and start with you, Mark Alexander. Bill McInturff, who works for Senator McCain, said you can’t worry about winning the general election now, you’ve got to just focus on winning the nomination, and you make all your decisions in order to win the nomination. And then once you become the nominee, if you are lucky enough to be the nominee, then you start focusing about the general election.

Is that, in terms of your policy positions, in terms of scheduling, in terms of the rhetoric, is that your philosophy or do you think you need to be looking towards the general now?  I would argue that both Bill Clinton in 1991-92 and George Bush in ‘99-2000 very much was focused on the general election, even as they were running for the nomination.

MR. ALEXANDER:  I guess I wouldn’t necessarily put it the either/or, I think the perspective that’s helpful is the example we were talking about before with Iraq, and while we have different, all of us have slightly different positions and where we’ve come from on this, we are all saying this is what people are talking about, and there are things that matter to people, Iraq matters a lot to people.  If you talk to somebody about their health care needs, which is something I think again all of our campaigns would agree upon, that health care is an extraordinarily pressing problem.

And so there are a lot of issues, a lot of policy stuff that we are talking about that people care about and I don’t think that I would separate that out into a primary or general election strategy. I think our real, sincere attempt is to listen to what people are saying and to find a way to feedback to, if we get a group, a small group like this or a large group, we hear what people say and then try to reflect back out to the rest of the country these are the things that matter, we hear what you are saying and these are the things that Barack Obama will do as president to make that happen.

MR. HALPERIN: Not as taking a position for political purposes but just because of what he believes, what’s something Senator Obama is talking about, as a nomination candidate, that you think will be more popular with the general electorate and perhaps even unpopular with Democratic partisans, like Bill Clinton and welfare reform or George Bush and a larger federal role for education?

MR. ALEXANDER:  Well I guess the answer to that will come after he gets the nomination and then we know that he is the Democratic nominee, and then we’ll see how people react.

MR. HALPERIN: But are there things, are there things he is talking about now that you—

MR. ALEXANDER:  I think there is a lot of times where we are talking about, we have talked education is extraordinarily important, and when we talk, we talk about helping teachers in many ways, including increasing salaries, but we also talk about greater accountability for teachers and those are things which are not necessarily popular with the sort of orthodoxy of the way you would run a typical Democratic primary strategy.

But I guess that’s part of my other point. This is what we think are the important things that people want to hear about and offering solutions.  I mean one of the great sort of empowering moments for me in the campaign was, in the beginning, talking with David, with Senator Obama, with our campaign manager at the very beginning and just saying, look, we need to figure out what matters to people and we need to think of good solutions for them.  And being told just figure out some good ways for us to talk about that and let’s not worry about the primary strategy versus the general strategy. And I think that’s really important, people have real big concerns and we need to respond to them.

MR. HALPERIN: Patti, from a practical point of view, message point of view, scheduling, fund raising, spending, are you think about March, April, May, June of next year or are you just thinking about how do we win this nomination and then we’ll reconfigure and figure out where to go?

MS. SOLIS DOYLE: Well, let’s take each issue.  From a fund raising point of view, obviously we are thinking this quarter, second quarter, third quarter, we are just trying to, you know, pay the bills, obviously.

MR. HALPERIN: But on fund raising, there may well be, if you are the nominee, you may be the nominee on February 6th or before, you will need money that will have to carry you through the general election, so are you thinking, do you think there might come a time where you say, you know what? Let’s not spend at all before Iowa or before New Hampshire, we need to save money?

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  We always need to save money at the Clinton campaign.  Sure.

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: How come you have four people here then?

MR. SOLIS DOYLE:  Exactly.

MS. GRUNWALD:  We were told to have four people.

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  In terms of a scheduling point of view, we sort of already touched on that a little bit, you know, now that everything is moving up, we’ve got debates to contend with, we’ve got states moving up to February 5th, how do we spend our time?  From a practical, tactical point of view, we are looking at gaining the nomination, in terms of scheduling, and fund raising and stuff like that.

MR. HALPERIN: Jennifer, your candidate has been accused of moving to the left in order to secure the nomination this time, which he failed to last time, is there a sense in the Edwards campaign that, right now, your message is for a primary and caucus electorate and that there will be time to talk about other issues if you are the nominee?

MS. PALMIERI: This is my favorite question.  Edwards has just a different view of how people, voters, make decisions about who they support, particularly for president. And I think, I mean I can’t speak for most of the media but I think that a lot of the media does, which is that, you know, policy positions inform what they, inform what they think about candidates, and in Edwards case, we have a full health care policy, we have an energy policy, actually we are doing that tomorrow, and how you, and that, you know, and your position on Iraq, these all inform what people take in about your candidate.

But ultimately, and I think this is why President Bush won both times, ultimately it’s a question of is this person, is this a person who is committed?  Is this a person who is principled?  Is this a person who believes in the American people?  Not someone that the American people can believe in but somebody who can believe in the American people.

MR. HALPERIN: Let me ask you the question I asked Mark Alexander, which is what’s something Senator Edwards is talking about now as part of his core message that is hard for Democrats to hear and perhaps more popular with the general election electorate?

MS. PALMIERI: But see, that’s my point, it’s that we just don’t, we don’t see it that was because—

MR. HALPERIN: Forget how you see it.

(Laughter)

MS. PALMIERI: Okay, Christian Science Monitor—

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: Forgetting how you see it, just is a matter of reality.

MS. PALMIERI: Okay. I don’t know that there is one but, if you look at the, the Christian Science Monitor did a story this weekend about Iowa, right? And there was an independent voter that they talked to that said, she was like, you know, I’m really trying to decide between McCain and Edwards.  Well I think that we would all agree that those two are ideologically opposite but because, but it’s that, but we think it’s that sense of they think that McCain is a stand-up guy, he is the committed guy, and they think the same of Edwards.

And in terms of Edwards’s policies being considered to be further to the left, I mean we think that the, he hasn’t changed, the world has moved, and you know, four years ago he was content with having a health care plan that was just about bringing children into the system.  Four years later, the system has gotten a lot worse and that’s not, that’s no longer enough, we have to have a universal health care plan, the same thing is true for an energy policy.  And I think most reporters know him well enough to understand that is not how he thinks in terms of ideological, you know, places.

MR. MCKINNON: I’ll throw this out for anybody to answer and I guess we’ll just go around the table in terms of campaigns but, because the activity is so front-loaded this time, it’s pretty clear that voters will be, and the campaigns will be somewhat exhausted later in this year, which creates an opportunity for some other candidates to jump into this race.  And there is some suggestion that, on the Republican side, somebody like Newt Gingrich could get in late, there is some suggestion on the Democratic side that somebody like Al Gore could get in late.

What do you think about this potential prospect and the dynamics there? And maybe I could ask you to say who in the second tier of candidates that isn’t represented here do you think has some possibility to jump up on the radar screen? And whoever wants to answer that, please feel free.

MR. HENRY: I’ll jump in.  I think the three candidates around the table right now will be the ones from now until then, they’ll be the same.

MR. HALPERIN: As the nominees, represented in the room?

MR. HENRY: I think the three of us will be diving for the tape.

MR. PRINCE: I think the nominee is definitely sitting at this table, I don’t think there is a question about that.  I mean not the nominee but the nominee’s campaign obviously, unless Axelrod is jumping in.

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: Well I think the likelihood is that the nominee is at this table, but I think there is an imperative for everybody here to ultimately articulate a vision and an approach that captures the public mood right now, which has been set as very serious and also I think focused on the dysfunctionality of politics in Washington.

I think people understand that what we don’t --.  Jennifer mentions Senator Edwards’ plans, he needs to be commended for those plans.  But the truth is everybody has a, Senator Obama wrote about health care in his book and some of the principles that he articulated there are very much reflected in the Edwards plan.

Senator Clinton wrote a health care plan in 1993 and some of the principles were reflected there. We are not lacking in ideas but we are lacking in the political will to change the politics of Washington, which is really dysfunctional right now.  It’s so riven by partisan and ideology and so consumed by money that we can’t get anything done. So the real question is does anybody emerge here as a candidate who can challenge those politics and lead the country to a different place?

Mark [Halperin], you are asking about what will appeal to Republicans and the real question is how do we get past that and start thinking as Americans? And who can inspire us to do that?  And if none of us do that, then there will be an opening for someone else to jump in.

But I will pass on the other part of the question which is I don’t know who among Gravel, Kucinich and the others is likely to emerge.

MR. HALPERIN: Well let me just throw it back another way.  Let’s just say hypothetically Al Gore does get in the race, what kind of an impact would he have, Jonathan, on your campaign?

MR. PRINCE: I think he’ll have a constructive impact on the entire campaign.  The guy is, you know, a phenomenal environmental leader, he has got a long, impressive record in government and I think he’ll add a great voice to the debate.  So, you know, I’m not going to take much more bait than that.

(Laughter)

MR. PRINCE: I would quote my friend, Mark McKinnon, that we are not here to divulge strategy or to make news.

MR. HALPERIN: Betsy, how about you, are you going to take it?

MS. MYERS: I was so proud of Al Gore when he got that Oscar, because what is amazing about that is just, in our country, how someone can be so much with their, you know, just be on the floor when people just so disgusted and how he can come back. And what I think is amazing about what just happened for Al Gore is that he was, he became his authentic self and where he got in trouble in 2000 was trying to figure out, well, one debate he is acting one way and another debate he is acting another way, and that just doesn’t got in the American public, they are looking for an authentic leader.  And so when Al Gore started to be the real Al Gore is when he has been successful and so successful lately in his environmental pursuit.

MR. BALDICK: Just for the record, the Al Gore who was in trouble won a presidential election, at least where I was standing in Florida.  It wasn’t that much trouble.

MR. AXELROD: Give Mark some rebuttal time.

MR. ALEXANDER:  This is also just about, we talked before about debates and what they really mean.  To have voices in the entire mix adds to a great debate and we were talking about, I think it was Jonathan’s point maybe before about, you know, just all of us at the table, just how much time we get in this forum here or candidates, the sound bites and all that. Having more people talk about stuff is a fine thing to do, it will get narrowed down.

If Al Gore jumps in, then it adds a different component to it, but I think that that’s ultimately healthy for us all to have a lot of conversation from whoever it happens to be.

MS. GRUNWALD: I think we hope that Al will win the Nobel Peace Prize.  I’m serious, he is nominated for it and he deserves it for the work he has done.

I want to know from Mark McKinnon what’s going to happen on the Republican side, now that you are an expert about Republican primary voters, Mark.

MR. MCKINNON: I think that there is a very good chance that Newt Gingrich will get in the race, I think he’ll really stir it up, I think he’ll change the dynamic considerably and I think he could even win a primary or two.  I don’t think he’ll get the nomination but I think he’ll, I don’t think, I think he can win an early primary state, I don’t think he’ll win big states and California.  I don’t think he is a February 5th candidate but I think he is a January candidate.

MS. PALMIERI: One thing I think about—

MR. MCKINNON: He’ll be the Pat Buchanan of this race.

MS. PALMIERI: If I may.  In previous years, I would have said, I would not have said that the nominee is sitting at this table, but I think that this time, certainly on our side, the voters take this very, very seriously.  And so I don’t think that they are going to be subject to the whim of, like, oh, gee, you know, you know how Dean really caught on last time. I just don’t think that’s going to happen and I think, you know, people are going to want you to be serious and in it from the beginning.

MR. MCKINNON: Can I ask a follow up of Mark on that question?  That’s not just anecdotal right, Mark?  Do you see something in your research that reflects a greater intensity and interest in the election?

MR. PENN:  Well let me just go back to answer your question and tell you a story. While I was a student here, I think it was one of our very first polls ever for the New York State Democratic Party in 1975, and I’m reading through the poll, we are in the field, I run up to my partner, I said we’ve got to stop this poll, we’ve got to stop it, and my partner says why?  I said because we’ve left out one of the candidates in the list of potential Democratic nominees, he says who?  I said Jimmy Carter, he says, nah, forget about it.

(Laughter)

MR. PENN:  So, in reality, there have been surprises.  I think that we are seeing here in the Democratic field, you know, or to answer your question differently, I think the nominee is sitting at this table but that doesn’t mean that all the choices that people will have are sitting at this table, or that all the choices will be here.

We don’t know how people on the outside are going to look at the race.  Right now, people see a pretty full race, a lot of competition, some big candidates.  It’s unlikely that somebody would want to jump in the middle of this pond, but you don’t know what the pond is going to look like in September, October, November and people are going to look at the pond.

MR. MCKINNON: I was struck the other day on exactly that point.  I may not have this exactly right but something like at this time four years ago, there was a guy who led this race for about eight months in 35 national polls and his name was Joe Lieberman.

MS. PENN: No, but where the senator is is pretty high, but where the, you know, I thought the most important question on this was Democrat voters were asked were they satisfied with the choices and I think it’s about 60 percent who said they were satisfied, and Republican voters were asked were they satisfied and they said no.  And I think that is a very good predictor of how people are going to look at this thing. I think, so, ultimately, obviously I think they are going to be satisfied with our candidate, I’ll leave room for everyone to think about their candidate, but I think that’s the way, right now, this is a very full race here but we’ll see what develops.  I don’t think it will be like in 1975 and that poll, I do agree with them.

MR. BALDICK: Mark, on the structural front, there is also, I mean this is Iowa, this isn’t like, you know, this is something that you need some structure on the ground to be competitive, I think these three campaigns, they’ve got the full employment act going right now.  I think we just announced 24 staffers in Iowa in the first week of March, I don’t think years ago, I don’t know, maybe July.

MR. PENN: That’s a great point.

MR. BALDICK: So I just think that when you combine these three campaigns and the other campaigns in the field, if someone got in late, they would have a real tough time structurally setting up, at least in Iowa.

In New Hampshire, the Governor knows better than anybody, I think you could do some catching up faster, but I think in Iowa it would be tough.

MR. PENN: Excellent point.

MS. MYERS: One candidate who I think is interesting who hasn’t taken, gotten much traction is Bill Richardson, and when you look at the experience question and what his background is as a cabinet secretary, congressman, governor, I just find it curious. I don’t know if any of the other campaigns have any thoughts on that, but he just doesn’t seem to be getting much interest at all and I find that curious.

MR. HALPERIN: I want to ask Mandy Grunwald a question about something, again, the Republicans said. Amidst the gloom and doom of talking about Iraq and replacing a president after eight years, they were united on one position which was that Senator Clinton, if she is the nominee, would unite Republicans and get their base jacked up to an extent that they would feel more confident about the general election. In the senate, Senator Clinton has been arguably the most bipartisan member of the senate, while she has been there, she won over Sam Brownbeck, she has won over Tom Coburn, she has worked with conservatives on a lot of issues.

Will we see success in doing that kind of thing in the process of winning the Democratic nomination and in the general election if she is the nominee?  Does she have the capacity outside, in an outside game to win over Republicans in a way that would neutralize the glee that Republicans say they would feel if she were the nominee?

MS. GRUNWALD: Are you asking about what she would do in the primary?

MR. HALPERIN: Well I mean is she doing, is she doing things now?  Can she do things across the fight for the nomination and into a general, if she is the nominee, that would replicate, with the Republican and independent electorate, what she has done successfully in Washington within the senate?

MS. GRUNWALD: I think so and I think you can look to her last senate race, where she won 58 of 62 counties in New York, in her prior senate race she had won 15 of 62. How many, what percent of Independents and Republicans did we win, Mark?

MR. PENN:  Well we won 67 percent of the vote so, by definition, we won a large majority Independents and a large share of the Republicans as well.

MS. GRUNWALD: I mean what we find about, that’s the way she works and that’s the way, you know, she works across party lines, as you say.

You left out Lindsey Graham, my personal favorite.  And I think that gives you a sense of how she would govern as president, which is a very important thing.  But to the question of the Republicans saying that they would, that she would rally their base, I think she would rally our base, what we see is intensity on both sides.  I have no doubt that Republicans will do to any nominee we have exactly what they did to Al Gore and John Kerry and I’m sure, Mark [McKinnon], you and your friends, your new friends, have something in store for whoever our nominee will be, that’s what Republicans do.

There is a lot of power at stake, there is a lot at stake for the country and they will rip to shreds, or try to, anyone we put up.  And the idea that they will be happier to do it to her than to somebody, to either of these guys is just silly.

MR. PRINCE: We are going to introduce the Mark McKinnon amnesty act over here for the rest of the session.

(Laughter)

MS. GRUNWALD: He used to work for me, I take it personally.

(Laughter)

MS. AXELROD: You would teach him the black arts and see what happens?

MR. HALPERIN: Maybe. In the senate, she won over not just Lindsey Graham but Tom Delay by finding areas of common interest—

MS. GRUNWALD:  Absolutely.

MR. HALPERIN: --foster care with Tom Delay, and going to them and substantively working them.  What is the parallel to that though in running as a presidential candidate? How do you—

MS. GRUNWALD:  You mean what kinds of issues will she use to reach out to Republicans and Independents?

MR. HALPERIN: What kinds of issues and how do you do that as a mechanical matter to, while you are still trying to win your nomination, in particular, reach out to Republicans and people who are more conservative?

MS. GRUNWALD: Let me just finish one point on the intensity side, which is I believe there is more, her base, and I think we just saw polling about this, is more intensely positive than any other candidate right now, and some of that may be lack of understanding or knowledge of other candidates who are newer to the scene.  But she has, we have had two presidential nominees who did not have a strong, positive, strong intensity. There was strong intensity for voting against George Bush but not strong, positive intensity, and she brings that, which is incredibly important, people tend to focus on the downside of that but not the upside.

And in terms of reaching out to Republicans, I mean one of the issues, that she has spent a ton of time on, that’s been in the news lately, that I think of as something where she has done most of or a lot of her bipartisan work, is the whole question of the treatment of our military.  And Lindsey Graham and she worked very hard on the TriCare Bill, which gives medical coverage to the National Guard and Reserves.  She worked on death benefits which used to be $12,000 and are now half a million, you know, mental health coverage for returning vets, a lot of things that used to not be considered Democratic issues.

And I think of that as a typical issue, that is near to her heart, that I think she’ll talk a lot about in the campaign.  Walter Reed sadly made it a much more relevant issue and I think that’s an ideal area to reach out to voters of all kinds.

MR. AXELROD: Can I just --.  First of all, let me stipulate something I think, and everybody here would agree that if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, everybody around this table is going to fight hard to get her elected, I trust the same is true of everyone else here. I think that the Democratic party is going to be united behind any candidate and she did do, she has done great work in the senate, her 69 percent in New York was extremely impressive, almost as much as 72 in Illinois, but we’ll let that—

(Laughter)

MS. AXELROD: And she is to be commended for her bipartisan work on some of these issues as—

MR. PRINCE: Can I just point out that it was against similarly strong candidates on both of your parts.

(Laughter)

MR. PENN:  We’re still waiting for your numbers to come in.

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: But I think the real question is do we accept this paradigm that we are stuck in this morass forever in which we are Republicans and Democrats at each other’s throats and trying to win tactical wars of attrition?  That is precisely why people have become disillusioned with our politics, that is precisely why we can’t solve our problems.  And the question is can you be a candidate who can change that dynamic?  Can you get the country past that kind of conflict that’s become so, you know, common in our politics?

MR. HALPERIN: Is it harder for someone with the last name Clinton to do that than someone with the last name Obama or Edwards?

MS. AXELROD: I’m going to, I’m not going there, I’m not going there.  I’m saying that is the challenge for every candidate, every candidate in this race.  And if we don’t, I think if we present that kind of candidacy, I think the American people will follow us. If we don’t, then it’s a dicey proposition.  And that’s really the premise of our campaign and we believe in it, it’s who Barack has been, it’s how he ran his campaigns in the past, it’s how he has operated in the Illinois Senate, in the

U.S. Senate and we think that is where we, as a party, need to go.

MR. MCKINNON: Any successful candidate generally has a clear, concise, compelling rationale for their candidacy.

David, let me start with you, can you articulate in about 60 seconds your rationale for Barak Obama?

MS. AXELROD: I think I just did, but I’ll do it again.

(Laughter)

MS. AXELROD: I’ll take the extra 60 seconds and say that I think, as we’ve all stated, these are serious times, very challenging times.  We have a dysfunctional politics in Washington that has held us, kept us from solving problems, politics is riven by division, politics that’s influenced too much by lobbyists and special interests and we are not getting to the solutions to the big problems that we need to solve.

And Barack Obama represents someone who has made a career of bringing people together around solving problems, of crossing those divides and forging coalitions for change. As he’s said before, he may not have been in Washington for long, he may not be a great student of the ways in Washington, but he has been there long enough to know that they have to change, and I think the American people believe that as well. So we I think offer the greatest opportunity for that change and that is the fundamental essence of why he is running and of our message.

MR. MCKINNON: That was about 55 seconds.

MR. PENN:  Look, I think that we both agree that the world has a tremendous number of problems, I think the question is what’s going to be the solution to those problems?  And having somebody with the strength, the wisdom, the experience, somebody who is ready day one to really step into the White House and the Oval Office and take the job of presidency, and end the war in Iraq, and bring universal health care, and do something about global warming and energy.  We believe that that person is Senator Clinton because she has had the experience in the White House, had the experience working across party lines.  She has had the experience fighting the Republicans, and winning elections, and improving her margin and bringing together coalitions, as people get to know her.

So we think the rationale for her candidacy is really the strength, the power, the wisdom of Senator Clinton, her ability to do it, her ability to really bring this kind of American values that she has been talking about, you know, she has been talking about how we have lost the promise of America, how there was a basic bargain with our people and that basic bargain has been lost.  She’ll restore that bargain, she’ll restore leadership to the White House and I think that’s why she’ll win.

MR. MCKINNON: Very good, about 62.

(Laughter)

MR. PRINCE: The thread of John Edwards’ life, his entire life, has been fighting for people who don’t have a voice or the power to fight for themselves, because he believes that the idea of America is a place where every single person has the same opportunity and also the same responsibility.  And that’s what our campaign is about. Our campaign is about all those people out there who don’t have the power sometimes to enjoy the bargain of America, who don’t always have a voice in Washington right now, that’s what this campaign is about.

I don’t really need a full 60 seconds.

MR. MCKINNON: That’s perfect, that was under thirty and, since you don’t have as much money, you’ve only done thirties anyway, right?

(Laughter)

MS. PALMIERI: More negative attacks from the Republicans.

MR. PRINCE: I think I jumped in there in your defense a little while ago.  We are trying to foster a new ear of bipartisanship here, 30 is better than 60.

MR. MCKINNON: Listen, that was a compliment, the tighter you can do it, the better.

Let me just, if I may say, that those were three very tight, clear rationales that you always see in winning presidential campaigns, very good.

MR. HALPERIN: We are going to close with an important topic, particularly here at the Institute of Politics and for the Shorenstein Center, then we will break and we’ll talk about the rules of the break once we finish, but we want to talk about the youth vote. There is a lot of polling the Institute and others have done that showed that there was record numbers, in the last two elections, that the youth vote has been up and that it is obviously, like with every constituency in a close election, an important one, it is too easy to just say YouTube and FaceBook.

So let me start with Patti Solis and then move around to some others.  What are things that your campaign thinks you can do, again in the nomination battle and in the general election, to reach out to young voters in a different way, both to get their votes but to also get their participation in other ways?

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  In the interest of not sharing our strategy, you know, we want to obviously reach out to young people, young women in particular, as the only woman candidate.  We want to go to college campuses, we are doing a lot of work on the Internet. If you take a perusal on our Web site, we’ve just launched a “I Can be President” and we’ve got a “Women for Hillary” Web page.  We are going to do the traditional things and then we are also going to try some new, innovative, 21st Century stuff, and we are taking it seriously.

MR. HALPERIN: Mike Henry, do you want to add to that at all?

MR. HENRY: Yeah. Obviously the college campuses are going to be critical, so we are going to hit them extremely hard in the four early states and also expand out into California, Florida and other states.

MR. HALPERIN: What does it mean to hit them?

(Laughter)

MR. HENRY: To organize them, the definition of hit is to go out and basically work them.  We want to put organizers out there on the ground but also to engage them in being messengers for the campaign.  I mean the senator has such a great depth of involvement on a variety of issues, whether it’s education, health care, and also to kind of focus on also young professionals, people who are just kind of in that age group that are just beyond college, we feel like we’ve got a candidate who will appeal to them.

And the big thing here is to kind of use old techniques of organizing at college campuses, where people are, but also using the Internet and other new technology to kind of appeal to them.  A lot of that will involve things that you mentioned, FaceBook, YouTube, but to really reach out to people where they are.  And I think that’s the important thing, and the challenge for our campaign and everybody’s campaign is to, no longer is it just to go do the old stuff, you have to also have the new technology involvement and I think we have plans to do that.  And also to be state-specific and the important thing is to really dig into states and kind of have a younger person campaign that focuses on issues that are important to them in their states.

MR. HALPERIN: Mark Alexander?

MR. ALEXANDER:  I guess there is certainly the technology which we are all going to have to find ways to deal with.  We have I think a great opportunity to build on what we’ve seen, it’s just amazing the response we are getting.  We go out and we have 10,000 or 12,000 in Oakland was it, just this past weekend, the response is phenomenal.  I think or challenge, which we are working very hard on, is to find ways to capture people’s conversations and stories back into us.

The idea that you have that many people, and that we had 15,000 at the announcement in Springfield and the thousands who keep coming, and our challenge really is to use these tools so we can hear from people.  And there’s a lot of different tools, we have our mybarakobama.com which we are having people constantly telling stories, we’ve got thousands of people who are engaged in our Web site who are telling their stories and sharing them with us.

And frankly, a lot of what we have to do is just devote the time, the hours of people to be able to pull in the stories, listen to what they say and then to be able to put them back out in the kind of responsive way that I think campaigns haven’t done in the past. It’s not about just telling people what you are going to do if you are going to be president but listen to what they have to say to you.

MR. AXELROD: Can I just add to that, Mark, for a second?

One of the extraordinary things about this, as Mark mentioned, is the kind of energy that we see among young people and it’s important because we haven’t given them a very good example of government and politics in recent years.  And there is an awful lot of reason for young people to turn away.

And so one of the challenges here is to get young people to reengage.  We had a rally in Washington that was completely organized from the FaceBook people, there are hundreds of thousands of kids who have signed up for Obama on FaceBook.  They invited him to a rally in Washington at George Mason University, we expected a couple of hundred kids, 3,500 kids there and this is happening all over the country.  Why?  Because people see in him a way to change the nature of our politics, to make it more productive, to make it less divisive, to make it more focused no solving problems instead of fighting with each other.  And hopefully it will be a vehicle for a whole bunch of young voters who haven’t participated before to come and if they do and if others do, that’s how you change politics ultimately, the impetus has to come from the grassroots and so it’s a very exciting prospect.

MR. HALPERIN: Betsy?

MS. MYERS: I mean that’s one of the things I’ve been most amazed at actually is it’s almost the energy behind this campaign, so much of it the youth.  And what’s going on, as both Mark and Axe said, out in the country in the world is that the organizing is happening even without our involvement in it and so what we are trying to do is just add on top of that. But this amazing groundswell, I mean if we sent an e-mail out that we are going to be organizing a rally in Oakland, we get 500 to 1,000 people just show up to help in the organizing of it and it’s all coming from this young, these young people.

And on FaceBook, we had 60,000 kids put a network together just on FaceBook, so I’ve just been amazed by that.  And then the hundreds and hundreds of resumes that are coming in from young people in college, graduate students, people that want to volunteer, and our whole part of our goal and operations is how are we going to harness all of this energy?  And it’s coming from the youth, which I think, from sitting in academia for the past seven years, is a wonderful thing because a lot of, although voting has gone up, a lot of young people have lost their interest in working on campaigns and they are disillusioned.

And so what I’ve seen with Barak is, wow, this is an incredible statement about what this candidate brings to bringing interest back to our youth.

MR. HALPERIN: Jonathan?

MR. PRINCE: Thanks. Obviously all the technology stuff is important and we do all that stuff, the FaceBook stuff, we are even on something called Twitter that many of you probably don’t even know what it is.

(Laughter)

MR. PRINCE: And I like to kind of fancy myself as kind of part of that young crowd.

(Laughter)

MR. AXELROD: I thought Twitter was where you got your hair cut.

(Laughter)

MR. PRINCE: Very good, that was very nice.

But what I want to say is that a really key part of our campaign is this notion that real change comes about not just when you’ve got a government that’s looking for change but you’ve got a citizenry that is active and engaged for change.  And that’s when you really get the kind of fundamental change that we think the American people are looking for right now. And so a big part of our campaign is actually asking citizens to come along and take responsibility for where we want our country to go and not just, you know, wait for the next president to do it but to start today.

And I think that that actually is one of the really most compelling things you can do to engage young people in America which is to tell them that, you know, you guys have the power to start changing this country today and join us, and that’s why we’ve made such a big thing about One Corps, which is our citizen service organization that has chapters now in all 50 states and on many, many college campuses.  That’s why 700 young people went with John last Spring Break to New Orleans to do clean up there, it’s why we announced in New Orleans again with young people doing some work in areas that were devastated by Katrina.

And that will be, we do these service days of action every month where we’ve got people all across the country, again in all states, through One Corps, who are engaging in citizen action and citizen responsibility.  And that’s a really big, important part of our campaign, and I think it will be, like I said, a really compelling way to reach out to young people and show them they’ve really got the power to bring about the change that we all want.

MR. HALPERIN: Jennifer, anything you want to add? No? Okay.

MS. GRUNWALD: Can I just add one thing?

MR. HALPERIN: Yeah, please.

MS. GRUNWALD: Because it’s not just about young people and I think all three of these campaigns are feeling it, the intensity of concern about the future of the country, at least among Democrats, is palpable.  At town meetings, we see moms, young moms, bringing their kids and the degree of worry about the future of this country is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and the desire among Democrats to do something about it, to get this election right is moving beyond anything I think any of us could have imagined beginning this campaign a couple of months ago.

And I think that’s true, I think all of us, you know, you think you are going to have a town meeting for 800 and 3,000 are there, you think you are going to have a house party for 40, it’s 300 people, it’s happening to all of our campaigns and I don’t see it on the Republican side. I think it’s a very, it’s a very good thing, as a sign to all of us of where the Democratic primary electorate it is.  We want to fix the country, Democrats do, and we are going to do it.

MR. PRINCE: I think Mandy makes an excellent point, it actually is a good way to close this part of the conversation because it leans back to what we were talking about in the beginning. Yes, this campaign has started way faster than we all thought, but one of the reasons is not just us and not just you guys covering it, one of the reasons is that there is this unbelievable hunger for change in the country and they want it to start, voters want it to start.

MR. PENN:  Well, actually, they want it over, they would like—

(Laughter)

MR. PRINCE: You’re exactly right.

MR. PENN:  --have the election tomorrow.  I would say, look, the reason they are here is they are looking to vote next Tuesday.

MR. PRINCE: No, that’s right.

MR. PENN:  And I just think it’s important, with all this talk about disillusionment, look, last campaign, turn out went up, okay?  It was the most negative I can recall in recent history, and all the things about what pundits say and that we’re too negative, no. When there is a possibility for change, people believe in the political system.  The political system is winning in this country, we are getting considerably more people involved in the political system, I think the Internet and modern tools of organizing make it easier rather than more difficult to do that are facilitating that.

But the basic belief is if you want to change things in this country, get involved, and that is a great thing for this country.  We don’t have, you know, mass unrest and upheaval, as we’ve had in the past, we have people focused around, gosh, if I vote, if I get involved, I may have something like the first woman president, something I never dreamed possible in my lifetime or for my kids.  So the way to do that is to vote, learn the issues, get involved, and I think that’s the answer you are seeing.

MR. HALPERIN: Excellent.

Alex or Governor, do you have anything you want to say before we break?  Okay. Amazing, I only counted seven scrollwheel clicks during this whole thing here at the table on the Blackberries, very impressive.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: The Republican number was higher, their corporate clients pay more.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: And I’ve never been to a Democratic event that started only three minutes late, as we did at the top.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: So I would like to replicate that.  It’s 20 after, we’ll start right at 3:30. I appreciate everybody’s endurance.  We are going to talk a lot about the role of the media, so come prepared to continue to be honest and we’ll break now, and thank you.

(Whereupon, at 3:20 p.m., there was a recess.)

(3:38 p.m.)

MR. HALPERIN: Well, nearly ten minutes late, just like the way the Obama campaign staff meetings begin.

MS. MYERS: They are very on time.

MR. HALPERIN: They’re on time, all right.

We are going to get back started and, as I said, we are going to start out talking about the press and some related issues, including the use of opposition research and other things that I know are sensitive but also important.  And from the perspective of the reporters in this room, we all want to do better and what generally happens at the end of presidential campaigns is there is a lot of discussion about what went wrong or what people didn’t do well. And I think this will almost certainly be the last opportunity for so many senior officials from your campaigns to have an audience to talk about these issues.

Rather than just calling us up and yelling at us over particular stories, there is a chance to talk more broadly about problems you see in the system, things you would like to see us do differently. And in fact, the first question I want to ask is to just go around and, again, we did this with your Republicans who gave excellent and thoughtful answers, not all that we’ll hear today, I suspect, but ask each of you, starting with Jennifer Palmieri, and going all the way around and having everybody answer, what is one best practice you would like to see the press adopt?

Think more about the old media, the networks, major papers, news magazines, the AP, what is a practice you would like to see us adapt, something you would like to see us not do in this cycle that you believe is not in the public interest and that we have a tendency to do?  And if you want to pass, you may, and if you want to endorse someone else’s previous answer, you may do that too.

But you may not endorse a previous answer because you are first.

MS. PALMIERI: Apparently not. I think the, I mean it’s sort of obvious to say but I have, I mean I think I have a pretty good radar for when a story is going to blow up and when it’s going to, you know, when it’s going to be bad.  And I have to say that, this cycle, even I have been really surprised at the way things, how stories that are very trivial and process, not even, I mean process oriented may be too, may be giving it too much credit, but how they blow up.  And you know, it’s sort of trite to say at this point that people, it’s a horserace and all they cover is the process, but I think that the, it is, the press is really create, it’s one thing to play up a story, the press is creating stories where I think there really are none.

I mean I don’t think, you know, the voters are paying attention to the what and the way that the press would think on some of the, like, spats, and back and forth and you know, that stuff just blew up in a way I never expected.

MR. HALPERIN: Jonathan?

MR. PRINCE: I’m toying with a couple of different things. I think, and this doesn’t really speak to anything in particular, I think that there is always kind of a rush to ascribe motives to things candidates say, campaigns say, all of us say, that sometimes really does a disservice because you kind of ask about motive, and then decide that there is motive and point out motive and often the motive is exactly what the candidate says or the campaign says it is.  And I just wish there would be, I’m not trying to say, like, why don’t you all just, you know, trust us but—

(Laughter)

MR. PRINCE: --I am saying that, you know, I think everyone at this table and all these campaigns are deserving of obviously healthy skepticism, but also campaigns do get to say what they mean.  What we mean is not always what you say what we mean, what we mean is what we say we mean so, you know—

MR. HALPERIN: Two excellent and thoughtful answers.

Nick Baldick?

MR. BALDICK: No blog confirmations of stories.

MR. HALPERIN: Just taking what’s on the blogs and putting in on?

MR. BALDICK: Well just seeing it as like blog posts something and that’s a confirmation for a story, I would hope that we could go better than that.

MR. HALPERIN: That’s an excellent one and one that some of the Republicans brought up as well.

Betsy Myers, your campaign has been remarkable aggressive in striking back against stories you don’t like so far, what would you say would be a best practice you would like to see?

MS. MYERS: You know, I’m probably not the right person to talk about our press strategy, but what I can say is that I think it would be an interesting time for the press to look at all the positive stories around the Obama campaign, and the people involved and why they are involved.  And it just seems like there is really nothing wrong to find with Barak Obama and so you are trying to find these little nitpicky stories, which I think the America public is looking to, across the board, more positive stories which will then get people even more involved and excited about this upcoming election.

MR. HALPERIN: I know you could write a book in response to this one question, David Axelrod, but choose one, please.

MR. AXELROD: Well, how about a couple?

MR. HALPERIN:  Okay. MR. AXELROD: Just very— MR. HALPERIN: You are the only— MR. AXELROD: I actually was sitting around the room for some of these

discussions I’m sure at one time.  First of all, I do think that the pressure is on, I do have a perspective on this because I was a reporter once and I think the pressure is on all of you now to move quickly is much, much greater than when I was a reporter because of the Internet and because of all these outlets, and the question is how are we going to get beaten? Now the reality is that most of the time what you are worried about getting beaten on ends up being trivial and meaningless, but it gets treated with great seriousness in the time frame in which you are chasing it, as if it’s the Holy Grail.

I would urge you to slow down a little and evaluate the meaning of these things.  And I would just add to that that, you know, everything that everyone said around this table, and I think everyone around this room can affirm it, is true about the seriousness of this election and the seriousness that people feel about the decision we are about to make.  So I guess, you know, at the risk of sounding sort of hectoring, I would try and look at the larger kind of story here and not, and I know, Mark [Halperin], this is a tough one for you, but not focus on tactics so much and focus on some of the larger differences.

And I don’t say, I mean you wrote a whole book that basically spoke to the meaning of the power of tactics in politics, and they are important, but there is something big going on out there and you guys ought not to miss it while you are chasing the small stuff.  I probably should have cut it off a couple of minutes ago.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: Before you plugged and slammed my book?

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: There is a chapter in the book called “Ideas That Matter” that I refer to you.

MR. ALEXANDER:  You didn’t get to slam in on “The Note.

MR. AXELROD: Yeah. I highly recommend the book. MR. HALPERIN: Mark Alexander? MR. ALEXANDER:  I’ll just refer back to Axe. MR. HALPERIN: All right. Mike Henry? MR. HENRY: Definitely less process and more policy.  I think, especially the person that I work for, her understanding and knowledge of the issues I think is very important to be reported on and should be dissected, and that’s what I hope comes forth in this next election cycle.

MR. HALPERIN: Mark Penn?

MR. PENN:  Well this gives me an opportunity to talk about my favorite subject, poll reporting. The way I figure it, there are now a minimum of six organizations, more like ten, doing monthly polls, which means that there is a new poll every couple of days, and every poll wants to be the story so everyone puts out one thing that they think is a little different.  If it’s wide, they want to show it closer and closer, if it’s closer, they want to show it wide.

And really what I found in the polls lately is that, look, it’s very important in this world for people who do a poll to put out all the questions, and that includes the demographics of the poll, and the cross tabs, and to make it actually available.  I had a big polling organization say to me, well, we’ll give you our cross tabs when you

give us yours. Okay, now, they are in the business of public polls, we are not, and I’m called upon to evaluate each of these polls, interpret them.  Frankly, there is a lot of information that professionals could use in terms of interpretation so that it’s not shaped by one or two surface things.

One of the news organizations put out a poll, and they did it properly, they had all the stuff, I was able to call up and say, hey, it only adds up to 89 percent, and so they were able to go back and do it. But if they hadn’t done that, whatever findings they had and whatever they were bringing in would have been taken as gospel.

So I have found that disclosure, and I suspect because the blogs pour over everything, on polls has gone down, not up. The Council on Public Polls, which almost everyone is a member of, the guidelines are not being followed.  And whenever they put out one question on a topic, they are obligated to put out all the questions at the same time because some of them are very contradictory, and they are obligated I think then to show us all the demographics and what they’ve done.  And that if newspapers and news organizations are going to be in the business of polling, they have to do it with the same if not higher rigorous standards that they do reporting.

MR. HALPERIN: I know Mandy doesn’t give much thought to these topics so, to give her a little more time, I want to ask you, Mark, a follow up question.  You did not single out one of the things one of the Republican strategists did about polling which is that the press, they said, is too driven by horserace numbers and the story of the day is just what’s in the poll that day.  To the extent that you agree that that is a flaw in our coverage, is it fair to say though that your campaign has somewhat exacerbated that or reinforced that poll-driven attitude by so frequently e-mailing around to reporters and others, poll results that show Senator Clinton doing well nationally or in a particular state.  It’s not a—

MR. PRICE: Winning the national primary.

MR. HALPERIN: It’s not that—

MR. PENN:  Actually, I find, you see, it’s quite interesting because, you know, and we haven’t talked about it but I always talk about this, the campaign and the campaign about the campaign, which often times has nothing to do with the reality of the campaign, so one of the findings is that she has some, you know, in certain of these polls, substantial leads and people don’t know it.  For example, there were three polls in the last, in the last four or five days, there were three polls that showed her with 15-20 point leads and one that showed her with a narrower lead.  It was only the one that was picked up in multiple stories.

MR. HALPERIN: All that may be true and many of the e-mails you send, all of which I read, have interesting polling information in them.

(Laughter)

MR. HALPERIN: But doesn’t it reinforce the poll-driven attitude that the press is criticized for?

MR. PRINCE: Mark, did you e-mail about that poll that shows John Edwards as the only candidate winning the general election in Ohio?

MR. PENN:  Let me point out that I am not against the press looking at polls, you are not going to get that out of me.  What I really want is full disclosure of polls so that—

MR. HALPERIN: I understand, okay.

MR. PENN:  So if they are going to have a, look, they are going to have a discussion about polls, I would like them to have a real discussion about polls with some of the information and deeper information about what’s going on, and then judge that accordingly.

MR. HALPERIN:  Got it.

Mandy Grunwald?

MS. GRUNWALD: I think, like David, I have a list in this area, but I think top of the list is the desire among many reporters to have the election day now and to say, okay, what are you going to do?  And then, when he says this, what will you do? And when you --. We have a long time to go, and there are plenty of stories to write now and there are other stories that can only be written when the campaign has been run.  And it’s part of the lovely fun of this democracy that you don’t know what’s going to happen, none of us do.  We are all going to have near death experiences, great things are going to happen, horrible things are going to happen, we can’t tell you what they will be and so stop trying to write the story to run the campaign in your journalism now.

I think the most useful thing that journalists can do is not just the day to day she gave this speech, he gave that proposal, it’s look at who these people are and what their lives are, I think each of us in different ways has focused on that.  We obviously each believe that we are working for a candidate whose life and experiences makes them uniquely qualified to be president and most people make their decisions based on who the person is.

We, in our world, are always amazed that no one seems to be interested in writing a biography story about Hillary Clinton and I’m not really sure why, she has a very interesting life, most people don’t know it.  They are more interested in writing about Barak who is new to the world, but probably there are things that they don’t write, policy, other experiences, that they are missing in that coverage.  I think that’s really the lives and the work and then the proposals, that’s stuff that gives voters the tools they need to make an informed decision.

And I know you are not there just to educate voters, but it is part of your job, and that’s the information that’s most useful.  And you are going to have to cover, you know, the day to day back and forth, and we all understand that and we live in that world, but you have an opportunity to really tell people something about these candidates and they all have very interesting lives and very interesting accomplishments, and I would encourage you to write a little more about that.

MR. HALPERIN: Patti Solis Doyle?

MS. SOLIS DOYLE:  It’s bad to be last in this roundrobin, and I wished I had asked Howard Wolfson for his list.  But I am going to echo Mandy and basically say, you know, that I think Hillary in particular is probably one of the most famous people that nobody really knows, and there is often a presupposition or a predisposition, not all of the press but in the way stories about her are written, and I do wish that people would look into her history and her bio because there is a lot that people don’t know.

MR. MCKINNON: This is really, in some ways, more pointed at Halperin than anybody and his colleagues in the room, but I’ll just give you an opportunity to take your shots now at them.

We experienced, in the last presidential campaign, the last couple, I’m sure some of what you are already experiencing, which is that you’ll go out and you’ll do a fairly serious policy proposal and get either zero coverage or end up on the E18.  If you attack your opponents, page one. Now this just testifies towards what I call a bias toward conflict rather than any kind of ideological bias.

But I’ll just ask for the campaigns to reflect on that and say how important do you think that is in this campaign?  And I guess I’m throwing you a big softball.  Do you agree that your proposals and your policies should be important and should be covered?

MR. PRINCE: I mean it’s kind of clear and, you know, look, not much needs to be added to what you just said, it’s true.  Between these three candidates, the three Republican candidates, you are in all likely talking about the next President of the United States, as we all know and as we’ve all kind of said with regard to our side.  So, when one of them puts out a health care plan, or an energy plan or whatever it is, we all know what the big issues are, of course that ought to be major news, it’s just silly to say it’s not major news because it is going to have a really serious resemblance to what the next President of the United States is going to try and do on some of the major issues affecting our country.

And you are right, there is a bias towards conflict and process and not towards content. And you just ought to, you all ought to have a rule that basically says we are going to decide that on the major issues of the day when the major candidates, and other candidates too because debate is obviously important, issue real plans on matters of serious policy, we are going to cover them significantly, I just think it ought to be the operating principle.

MS. PALMIERI: I think the other problem with it is that it’s not just that you lose coverage up front but then your policy is defined by your opponents.  I mean most, when voters then hear about it, they hear about it, they hear about it in direct mail from your opponents and the press has a real opportunity to shape the debate, you know, not in any, without playing favorites but in a way that would inform people more.

MR. HALPERIN: Mark Alexander, go ahead?

MR. ALEXANDER:  I would just say, as a policy guy, I mean I just love this stuff, I mean I love talking about policy and I love to read it on the front page of the paper, instead of on page wherever. And it is important, particularly to the extent we are reflecting the interests and the desires to the American people for them to hear what we have to say in response to them.  There are going to be a lot of similarities, I mean all of us in the room, we are all working for candidates from the same party so there is going to be some similarities, but there is going to be differences too, but those are all responsive to how we think the American people are trying to live their daily lives.

How is it that somebody is working two shifts? They are trying to figure out how to make sure their kids have health care.  There is an answer here, there is an answer here and there is an answer over there, and it’s important for people to know what’s going on with that.

MR. HALPERIN: There is a difference, as we all know, between what is and what ought to be and this is a great example of a time when we have an audience that maybe we can do some good.  Do you all agree with Mark’s initial premise that Jonathan and others have echoed?  Are there ways that we can, in this campaign, try to make it more likely?  You can say the responsibility only lies with us and you all shouldn’t answer, but as a reality, you all need to drive some of this.  So is there a way that you all can operate as Bill Clinton, for instance, did in 1992, as I would argue President Bush did in 2000, they got their ideas heard more, more substantive hearing, not just defined by their opponents.  Is there a way to do that in a presidential campaign or is it just up to us to do a better job?

MR. ALEXANDER: Well I guess I wouldn’t necessarily assume that there is only one way to look at it so, maybe to alienate all the media in the room, let me say that—

MR. AXELROD: Don’t.

(Laughter)

MR. ALEXANDER:  Sorry, David says I can’t do that.  I was just saying that the media is going to be the most important way for us to drive our message.  I sthat okay?

But what I think is important is for us not to look at it purely in a question of how campaigns and traditional media interact.  And we’ve talked about this a lot but I think it is important to remember that what we are doing, and we’ve talked about it before, is we’ve got to find ways to communicate with people in as many forums as possible, and there is a lot of them available.

So to the extent that we can try and do some things, absolutely, we can try and do some things in terms of reaching out with our supporters directly through our Internet, through our Web sites, there are a lot of tools which we can use as well.  So, to the extent that, yeah, the media will define a lot of these questions, the traditional media, we also have a responsibility and we will be doing our part to make sure we communicate in other ways directly with voters.

MR. PRINCE: I also think that we do have, I mean, to your point a little bit, we do, there is a responsibility that is incumbent on all of us in terms of wanting our policies to be covered. And that is at least twofold which is, number one, to be specific, and number two, to be reasonably transparent with regard to talking about it. So I think you have an absolute right to expect that we are going to be out there with details. And then number two, that we are going to be ready to be questioned about them.

So I think if we are all doing that, then I think that it needs a little bit of a shift in thinking on the part of the media, but certainly I think there is a responsibility, you can’t just say I’m not speaking clearly—

MS. PALMIERI: But it is hard when you don’t give specifics, it is very hard.  I don’t know how you would write a, you know, it’s the campaign says it’s this but—

MR. PRINCE: You can’t just say you want universal health care, you’ve got to say why, you’ve got to say, and how.  I didn’t mean why, I mean how.

MR. AXELROD: And they’ve been out there for weeks on that, so you’ve got to give them credit.

MR. PRINCE: Thank you, David.

MR. AXELROD: For weeks. But now, you know, as I said earlier, Senator Obama has written about it, Senator Clinton has worked on it, we ought not to pretend that ideas, there are a lot of good ideas and we may have some variance on some of those ideas, and ultimately, this is going to be about something larger than that, the ideas are very important.

And one of the problems, Mark, with the ideas is that, you mentioned the Clinton campaign, the Bush campaign, but the truth is the way that, and I did it, okay? So I was guilty of this as well.  The way political reporters often receive these ideas is to put it in a political prism, what are they trying to achieve here? Are they trying to position off their opponents?  Are they trying to position off the Republicans? It’s not about the substance of the plan, it’s about the cleverness of the politics.  And so that’s fundamentally different, and it seems to me more focus, especially in an election year like this, I totally associate myself with what Mandy has said, I think people really want more texture and depth.

They really want to understand who these people are, they want to understand sort of, because the fact is ideas are important but it’s also important to look at kind of the history of a person and see if the things that they have done in the past animate what they are saying now, and does it make it more credible and so on?  So there are lots of things to explore that are meaningful, outside the context of, man, the Edwards people