Our political commentary panel looks at the national race – and what everyone in California will be doing instead of meeting presidential candidates. Excerpt from “Week to Week,” July 30, 2012.
LARRY GERSTON, Professor, SJSU; Political Analyst, NBC 11; Author, Not So Golden After All
CARLA MARINUCCI, Senior Political Writer, San Francisco Chronicle
DEBRA J. SAUNDERS, Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle; “Token Conservative” Blogger, SFGate.com
JOHN ZIPPERER, VP, Editorial, The Commonwealth Club – Host
ZIPPERER: You all remember Ted Turner, the media mogul. When he was at The Commonwealth Club a few years ago, he was talking about his business success: meeting people internationally, going to other countries and how he was able to deal even with Communists – in countries in all different areas. He said, Well, here’s what you do: You go to another country, you get off the plane, you meet their leaders and say, “This is a great country; I love this country; this is a beautiful land! Your women are beautiful; the food is great!”
Then there’s the Mitt Romney way. [Laughter.] He is having a trip that has certainly provided some joy to Democrats watching it, but, Debra, this isn’t going to change a single vote, is it?
SAUNDERS: Let me just say that he did do that in Israel, and everyone’s jumping on him for doing that. I’m sort of surprised that Mitt Romney did that, because I don’t think foreign policy is a strength for him with American voters. I think American voters are pretty happy with Barack Obama’s foreign policy. I think they feel good about Iraq and Afghanistan; they don’t want to be too muscular with Syria and Iran. And so it’s a little surprising that Mitt Romney decided he wanted to do this foreign policy tour.
Now, when he went to London, the Brits were going to jump all over him because he’s conservative. It doesn’t matter what he did; something was going to be wrong – OK, he made it easy – but it was going to happen. He bought himself a week where he’s not getting torn apart at home, and that’s a good thing when you’re running for president this year.
ZIPPERER: That’s really a vacation.
SAUNDERS: It is: It’s like a vacation. It’s like going to a spa.
ZIPPERER: The Jerusalem spa, OK. Larry, what do you think about this trip? Has it changed any opinions of him?
GERSTON: I think the Great Britain thing is a bit of a joke; I quite agree. Now, you talk about Jerusalem and the comment he made today about what makes Israel special is the cultural difference – oh my gosh, he has stepped in it. But he stepped in it with votes he wasn’t going to get. How many Muslims are going to vote for Mitt Romney? I don’t think very many in the United States. So he hasn’t really hurt himself, and in some ways, he’s probably beefed up his credentials with the far Right. The Republicans would love to tear away a bit at the Jewish vote, which was 78 percent for Obama last time – 1 percent below the average, so it’s been very strong, and they have a shot. Look, the Jewish vote: It’s 2 percent, 3 percent [of the total voting population], but it’s of course gathered in a couple of states – Florida, New York, and to a lesser degree, California’s important; if the Florida vote changes because of what he said in Jerusalem, he may have done himself an awful lot of good.
The other point I would simply make is, you’re right. Foreign policy? No one’s going to care about this trip in two months.
MARINUCCI: I kind of wonder about that, Larry, because this was a well-planned trip. This was supposed to be the easy foreign policy trip: You go to our best ally; you go to Israel, Poland; what happens when he goes to Pakistan? This is supposed to be a slam dunk. The problem is perception. The leadership is what is being raised here, and from the press point of view, I just say this: When you have, as you had today, [Fox News host] Greta Van Susteren complaining about no access to the candidate on her blog, saying she felt like an animal in a zoo, all the press being put in a bus and not being given any access to him – and he’s had this issue a couple of times on this trip, not answering questions about basic policy – then I think the question is perception. Is he ready? Is the campaign ready?
In the big picture, will this matter? Maybe not. [But] does it sort of solidify perceptions people have about him?
GERSTON: We know that some of us view Romney as a captive.
ZIPPERER: What do you mean by that, a captive?
GERSTON: I don’t think I’ve seen the real Mitt Romney. I think: Who am I supposed to be today? What am I supposed to say? How do I make sure the far Right I’ve been cultivating like crazy doesn’t abandon me, because I’ve had a heck of a time getting ahold of the middle? So much of what he seems to do is so stiff and choreographed. Maybe Obama can be criticized for talking down and lecturing us, but Romney’s problem is that he’s very stiff, and nobody can get their arms around this man. It’s an issue that goes beyond this trip, really, to the construction of the entire campaign.
MARINUCCI: I think you’re absolutely right. As someone who’s watched Romney in person, who’s covered him, I think the single biggest problem is this feeling of not knowing who he really is. You never see the passion or the spontaneity – except when he’s with his wife, I have to say. Everything seems so preplanned with him, and I’m hearing Republicans – solid Republican voters – saying they’re just not feeling a connection with him.
ZIPPERER: That was going to be my question. In 2008, the story was that of all the Republican candidates in that presidential primary, they could all get along to some degree, but they didn’t like Romney. What is it about him that truly is making him unable to connect even with people he should be able to connect with?
SAUNDERS: Politicians are the friendliest people in the world. They really are. It’s their job to court votes and to get as many people to vote for them as possible, and they just deal with people in a very different way than a CEO-type does. He has a corporate structure, and we all wonder what his core beliefs are, though I actually think, Larry, that what he’s talking about now is closer to his core beliefs than when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. Like other Republicans, I don’t feel a real sense of who he is. You knew who John McCain was. It’s not always good when you know who somebody is – John McCain I have a great deal of respect for; I was thinking of Newt Gingrich – but that’s a problem he has.
We saw this with Meg Whitman. When you deal with CEOs, they’re used to having people treat them with a certain kind of deference with which we do not treat politicians, and they’re used to structuring things in a way that makes them look better. Let’s face it: What do we in the press do? We like to make you look silly sometimes, and we like to jump on you for a stupid comment, and why would they want to give us that? With Romney, you have someone who’s not a gladhander; he’s not an affable person; he’s never had to cultivate that except for this chore of trying to be president, and that’s why he didn’t get along with [the other candidates].
He’s worked better at it now. Real Clear Politics has this little e-book out on this election already, and they tell this story about how Tim Pawlenty was talking about “Obamneycare.” Everybody was expecting him to jump all over Romney at the debate, and Romney walked up to Pawlenty and said, Hey, nice to see you, asked him about his family, and Pawlenty didn’t jump on him; that pretty much ended Pawlenty’s campaign at that moment, when he finally had some momentum going.
MARINUCCI: Debra, you mentioned Meg Whitman; that brings up a good point, because we in California have seen this movie probably more than any other state. A wealthy business individual running for high office: Al Checchi, Steve Westly, Steve Poizner, Meg Whitman – we could go on and on. You’re absolutely right. There is a parallel with all of these candidates. They are used to working in the boardroom; it isn’t the same as on the campaign trail. Some of them have made the transition when they run for office at a lower level first and can sort of inoculate themselves, but we’ve seen this numerous times, and with Romney on the communications front, here’s the problem: a 59-point economic plan? How many did Meg Whitman have – a 48-page economic plan? Bring it down to what the voters can understand. He still hasn’t done that.
SAUNDERS: I think people have a pretty clear idea of what Mitt Romney would do as president. People have a pretty clear idea as to how he would work.
GERSTON: People need to feel comfortable with the person they’re going to trust, and the issue with Mitt Romney is, I think, he’s uncomfortable that people know he’s rich. He doesn’t handle this well. He’s almost ashamed that they know he’s rich. I think he ought to say, “You bet I’m rich! You bet I’m rich, and I want to be president so that every one of you has the opportunity to be rich!”
SAUNDERS: You want him to be Donald Trump.
GERSTON: No I don’t. But there’s the old story from decades ago where Roosevelt had a big gathering – hundreds or thousands of people – he gave a speech, and a reporter comes up to this guy in the crowd who’s just beside himself and says, “Do you know the president?” And the guy says, “No. But he knows me.” Clinton does it. Reagan did it. But Romney has none of that. He’s got to find a little bit.
SAUNDERS: He’s got to have some of it, because he did get elected governor of Massachusetts in a very blue state, so obviously he’s been able to convince people before.
GERSTON: It’s a different stage.
SAUNDERS: Let’s face it. This race, it’s a tough room.
GERSTON: Today, it’s a tossup.
SAUNDERS: Gallup poll: 46-46, I think it is, and we’re 100 days out.
ZIPPERER: The economy is not a positive for the incumbent president when you have stubbornly high unemployment, gas prices starting to rise again, our estimated rate of economic growth in the country has come down. So if you were Barack Obama, how do you make a positive campaign out of that? You can’t do “It’s morning in America.” You could say, “It’s dusk, and eventually morning will come in America.”
SAUNDERS: “It’s 2 in the morning and you’re stuck with a whiskey bottle in bed next to you.” [Laughter.] You know, I saw the most devastating graphic on CNN today. It talked about, as you know, Bill Clinton is going to give the penultimate address at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, and now we have Obama pulling out his old best friend – not really – Bill Clinton to introduce him. What’s devastating is CNN had this graphic: By this time in Clinton’s presidency, there were 9.9 million new jobs; Obama, we’ve lost 473,000, I think it is. It’s just devastating. Here’s the other thing: What is the defense that Democrats always give for why Obama can’t really get the economy together and work on this? It’s because the Republicans got in his way. Well, Bill Clinton dealt with Newt Gingrich and still managed to get things done. This president is in such a weak position with this economy.
GERSTON: You know, it’s a funny economy, because we know when generally the economy’s in malaise, no president in the last 50 years has been re-elected when the unemployment rate was over 7.8 percent. We’re at 8.2. On the other hand, you have $2 trillion parked out there. Two trillion dollars. You’re talking about companies with corporate profits that are record-setting. What are they so afraid of here? Excuse me; there’s another side to this story. We’ve got gobs of money out there, and, quite frankly, I think there’s a rolling of the dice here. Maybe I don’t want to try to make the economy so much better right now; maybe I want to help that transition. I’m not so sure that companies are suffering. Their employees are, because of where jobs have gone and everything else. Companies, I’m not so sure.
SAUNDERS: I hear this hint that Republicans are holding back from hiring. I don’t know how to tell you folks this, but there are a lot of Democrats who hire people too. This is California; this is a very blue state. Our unemployment rate is over 11 percent. Folks here aren’t hiring either. They don’t have the confidence. It’s not just these evil Republicans; it’s also Democrats who aren’t hiring people.
GERSTON: I’m not talking about evil Republicans or evil Democrats; I’m talking about evil companies.
SAUNDERS: Evil companies have to feel that there’s a reason for them to start hiring people, and they don’t see it. They’re afraid.
ZIPPERER: Is it uncertainty about where the economy is going to be, where regulation is going to be?
SAUNDERS: Uncertainty/fear.
GERSTON: Our tax rates are the lowest tax rates we’ve had in 80 years. Don’t give me this 35 percent stuff, because we all know that 35 percent corporate rate – nobody pays it, unless they’re nuts. Everybody’s paying a whole lot less than that. Some companies are getting money back: GE got money back last year.
SAUNDERS: It’s not working. It’s not working, and Barack Obama’s not fixing it.
GERSTON: Well, first of all, we both know any president, whether it’s Barack Obama, George Bush or whatever, can’t fix it. They don’t get magic wands when they take control of the White House.
SAUNDERS: That’s right; they work with Congress.
GERSTON: That’s right.
MARINUCCI: But I’m not so sure it’s uncertainty. I tend to agree with Larry: I think a lot of businesses have realized they can make their employees do more with less. I was talking to a dad whose son’s a very wealthy investment banker who went to his work staff and said, You know, I don’t want to hire anybody right now. We all have to work a little harder; you’re all going to have to work 12-hour days. And a working mom said, We’re not working 12-hour days; we’ve got kids. Hire somebody else; you’re driving the Lamborghini home! In a lot of cases, I think a lot of businesses are just saying, Well, we’ve made do with less staff. It’s working out fine; we don’t need to hire other people.
SAUNDERS: But you don’t grow that way. The truth is, if you’re a company and you want to grow, you don’t grow by not hiring people. I get emails from people all the time: They have small businesses. The Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, is an example of something. There are so many mandates in that [for] employers; that’s a huge tax on hiring people and giving them benefits. There are a lot of employers that are afraid they’re just going to keep getting squeezed and squeezed. I mean, Larry, I get your point about the corporate tax rate. I think we should have a flatter tax that people actually pay. We don’t have that, and I don’t see this president trying to get that. All I see him doing is saying, I can’t get anything done; it’s their fault. I don’t think that’s leadership.
MARINUCCI: Brian Williams had an interview with Mitt Romney this weekend and said, What would you do differently to turn around the economy than George W. Bush? I think he had about a four-point answer, which was more energy investment, education, trade – essentially, it was George W. Bush; it wasn’t a whole lot different. I think that’s his problem. I know he has the 59-point plan, but specifically, what would he do different than the last Republican administration? We really haven’t heard an answer from him.
ZIPPERER: Couldn’t you even say, What could he do that was dramatically different from what Barack Obama has done?
SAUNDERS: But I think we do understand. The problem the president has is his solution is to increase taxes on the top 2 percent of earners. That keeps the government going for less than a week. It doesn’t solve anything, and what are we going to do? We’re going to make people who could be hiring people more afraid to do it and more likely to hoard their cash. I don’t hear many Democrats saying, This is going to stimulate the economy; it’s going to jump-start the recovery. They don’t say that. They just want it to be fair. Well, you can have fairness, but you can have less of a pie, too, and that’s where he’s going. It just isn’t working.
GERSTON: Debra, the way I see things, there are two types of policies: substantive and symbolic. When we’re talking about this tax stuff, the Bush tax cuts about to expire, and what happens, raising the taxes on $250,000 families and up, you’re right: It’s about a week. It’s a symbolic thing. But symbolism in politics really resonates with people, and they want to believe that they’re being treated fairly, and they see these huge numbers that people are making – $30 million, $50 million, $100 million – for what? What did you do, walk to the moon from Earth? And they’re saying, “This isn’t right.” So it’s a symbolic thing. It doesn’t solve the biggest problem, which has to be a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. It’s got to be both. You can pick the [spending cuts to tax hikes ratio of] three-to-one, four-to-one – so far, we couldn’t get the Republicans to do ten-to-one in one of the most stupid moments of this whole campaign, and it’s hard to pick one. They have to be grownups, and that goes beyond the president.
SAUNDERS: First, Larry, you’ve got to get the economy back on track, and I agree with you: We need to increase revenue. If you could somehow lower rates but get rid of the deductions in a way to bring in more revenue, that’s the way to go. I just don’t see that we’re going to get that with Barack Obama as president. Things are so ugly right now, we’re at a point of no return for some people who are unemployed. This is not positive. And you can talk about fairness all you want. It’s a symbol if I put a gun to your head and don’t shoot it, right? But it’s a powerful symbol, and if people are not hiring, and they’re not spending money because they’re afraid, all you’re doing is hurting your economy for a gesture. It’s not smart.
ZIPPERER: In the presidential election, of course, California’s not really in play – I don’t think anyone seriously thinks that this state is going to go red, as they say. But we are, nonetheless, playing a big part in the presidential campaign; we’re funding it. We’ve been called the ATM of the presidential election; Barack Obama, Mitt Romney come here, get money.
It kind of gives us the opportunity in California to watch the presidential election but to really focus on some of the state and local things. Carla, one of the interesting stories you broke recently is the state of the California GOP, which was a shocker that we actually still have a GOP in this state. Tell us what’s happening.
MARINUCCI: We know the Democrats run everything here in this state, but the fact is there are a lot of Republicans who want a vibrant Republican Party, and I found out last week that the party here is in such debt – it’s behind in its bills; it’s declining in registration – even the board of directors of the party was so alarmed that it voted to close the headquarters in Sacramento and lay off people and essentially try to get some fiscal control over what’s going on, which is a really tough thing for the party of fiscal responsibility to be dealing with in an election year. A hundred days out, a party is supposed to do things like voter contact, voter registration, get out the vote and other important things, and when you’re talking about House races that are really important to the Republicans, this is a critical thing.
Other people have filled in the gap. You’ve seen Kevin McCarthy, the GOP whip, come in, and he is just all over this state raising money and working with congressional candidates. You see a lot of the party stuff now going to the counties that have a lot of money. In other words, the California Republican Party is sort of withering away, registration withering away, and it’s of concern to a lot of Republicans in this state; there has to be some kind of other voice out there. You talked about the presidential candidates, and you’re right; this is part of the issue with the Super PACs and with Citizens United. Why is anybody going to give to the California Republican Party anymore when they can give to [Karl] Rove or any of these other groups and it’s unlimited and they don’t have to say who they are, and that’s what’s happening. A lot of these parties can’t raise money anymore because people have decided to give to these other committees.
Citizens United has created this whole other situation for political parties. Obama now has been here to California 17 times – 11 times to the Bay Area. It just seems like he keeps coming; every week we have to deal with another visit, and now, when he comes in, he usually has a big fundraiser, and then he has a $40,000-a-head dinner at somebody’s house, and then he has – and this is sort of a new phenomenon – a roundtable discussion with maybe 25 people who pay $40,000 each, and there’s no press at any of these events. We don’t get to see what they discuss, and you should all be concerned about that. What does the $40,000 voter say to the president? He’s our public servant; we should know that. Romney, too, is not great about opening up his events. He did, I think, in Tel Aviv; that caused him some problems. That’s my beef with both of these candidates: This stuff should be open so all of you can hear what goes on in these fundraisers.
GERSTON: It’s a tragedy when you’re down to one party. Our system in this country is a two-party system; a third party rarely gets anywhere because of the single-district plurality thing. It’s a two-party system, and when one party is no longer viable, that’s dangerous; that gives the other party way too much power and authority. I don’t care if it’s a party we like or we hate: It isn’t right.
Now, the question is what do we do about that, and how has it happened? Well, the Citizens United case has certainly sped things along. A lot of people get mad at me when I say this, but I’m not so upset by the Citizens United case by itself; that doesn’t bother me so much. What bothers me is the lack of transparency. Someone wants to write a $100 million check, good; please make it out to me. But if you’re not, please let me know who you are.
So now the parties, which used to gather this money, they’re no longer collecting that money because these various Super PACs and other entities are just circumventing it. That’s leaving both parties rather impotent, much more so for the Republican.
SAUNDERS: The state Republican Party – I don’t think the problem is so much campaign finance as the fact that it’s just becoming more irrelevant. We live in a state where Republicans live among themselves and Democrats live among themselves, and they feed the extremes of each other, and they get further and further apart. As there are fewer Republicans, they become more irrelevant, they become more conservative than most voters; and I think the party has just lost its way. I have to say, I tend to support state parties and want them, but I’m not heartbroken about what’s happening in Sacramento because I feel that the state Republican Party has lost its way, and I don’t see any way back.
ZIPPERER: Let’s look at the race of Dianne Feinstein. She’s running against someone probably most people – [to audience:] raise your hand if you know who Dianne Feinstein’s Republican challenger is.
GERSTON: One out of 250. That’s pretty good.
ZIPPERER: What’s going on with that race? Is Feinstein just going to cruise through it?
SAUNDERS: This is what’s so fascinating, though. The [challenger’s] name is Elizabeth Emken. She’s from Danville. But here’s what’s fascinating. Guess what? Dianne Feinstein got less than 50 percent of the vote in the primary.
MARINUCCI: But she was up against 24 challengers.
SAUNDERS: OK, but so what? There were 24 midgets. There were 24 people nobody had ever heard of, and people were still angry enough – there was enough of a protest vote – she’s like the Shirley Temple of California politics.
Everybody loves Dianne Feinstein. When she comes in under 50 percent, that bespeaks a kind of anger at the establishment that really could be dangerous to the Democratic Party if there were good Republican challengers – and there are some, and there are some races where they exist. Elizabeth Emken’s interesting. I mean, we had Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina two years ago; [but] this woman’s an activist, went out and raised some money —
ZIPPERER: Autism activist, right?
SAUNDERS: She’s an autism activist, and she really worked hard at it, and maybe the fact that she isn’t your sort of moneybags Republican businessperson-turned-to-politics person – maybe that, if she can raise money this time around, would actually make people look twice at her. She is a different candidate; she’s not an establishment candidate.
