1xbet online games login , Political Analyst for ABC News
116th Landon Lecture
November 9, 1999
1xbet online games login Will Be the Next President of the United States?
I very much appreciate 1xbet online games login rearranging to come this afternoon instead of this morning. 1xbet online games login can blame USAir. It was one of those nice moments 1xbet online games login arrive at the airport, "Canceled." So it took a little longer to get here than I expected, but thank 1xbet online games login for rearranging it.
I actually am thrilled to be here, because I always wanted to meet Alf Landon. I never did, and I tried desperately hard to. At the Republican Convention in 1984 I was sitting next to Nancy Landon Kassebaum, and at one point they were playing "Happy Days Are Here Again," and lauding Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and this was -- 1xbet online games login know, they had already done Truman and Hubert Humphrey. And I turned to her -- as they were going into all of this praise of Roosevelt, I said, "Can I go see your father right now? This is a Republican Convention, what does he think is going on here?" She said, "Don't 1xbet online games login dare."
But unfortunately by not doing that I missed ever getting to meet him, which is a loss. But Nancy is a great and good friend, and not only have I enjoyed her friendship and company, she and my mother served together in the United States Congress, where 1xbet online games login were often the only voices of reason.
1xbet online games login know, it's a very funny thing to write a book called "We Are Our Mother's Daughters," because for any of 1xbet online games login that might have read it, it is really a book about the continuity of women throughout history and across space, but people seem to have this visceral reaction about it, and actually to the point where I worried so much that the editors, the 40-something-year-old women at the publishing house who were editors, reacted so negatively to this title that I was afraid that 1xbet online games login know, it might depress sales.
And I hesitated for a minute, and I finally said, "What is your problem?" And they kept saying -- well, finally one of them says, "I'm not my mother's daughter." 1xbet online games login know, "1xbet online games login can't make me be my mother's daughter." And I said, "Well, that's really not what the book is about," but 1xbet online games login know in my own case, I'm dying to be my mother's daughter.
And for those of 1xbet online games login who know her, 1xbet online games login know that my mother, Lindy Boggs, two years ago when she was 81 years old, took a new job in a new country as the United States ambassador to the Vatican, and this puts my mother in the extremely interesting position of representing Bill Clinton to the Pope.
Now I want 1xbet online games login to know if anybody can do this, my mother can. She's always been able to do anything, but it is a challenge. She and Nancy Kassebaum, though, do say that it is less of a challenge, however, than it would be to be in the United States Congress today, which is really not a happy scene. I left them this morning happily bickering over the budget which is hardly anything new.
But what they are trying to do is to get 1xbet online games login done and get out of there and go home, which makes a great deal of sense, because after all, what we've learned now in polling over the years is when they are in Washington their approval rating goes down. When they come home, everybody likes them fine. I think there's actually probably a fairly sensible view on the part of the voters, first do no harm. So they are just trying to get done what they need to get done and get out of there.
And one of the things that Republicans in Congress are saying is that 1xbet online games login really need to let George Bush become the face of the party, that that is the best thing that can happen to them, because 1xbet online games login don't want Tom DeLay particularly to be the face of the party, and 1xbet online games login 're still smarting over Newt Gingrich.
I must say it was a really black day for the Democrats when News Gingrich resigned. They really have not figured out yet how to deal with it because it was so handy for them to just, 1xbet online games login know, have him there as a punching bag. And, of course, they couldn't predict that he would resign, I mean, who could predict that he would resign? It's been a tough year for predictors. After all, Bill Clinton did what he did, and Newt Gingrich had to resign.
I mean, does this make any sense to any of 1xbet online games login ? No. But, 1xbet online games login know actually the day it happened, as 1xbet online games login recall, it was right after the election, I was in San Francisco and I was in a car most of the day, because it was California. And I kept checking in with the office and it just got more and more amazing as the day wore on, 1xbet online games login know, there are rumors, then it's fact. Gingrich really is quitting. So the first thing I do is call Bob Livingston and say, "Are 1xbet online games login running for Speaker?" "Yes, I'm running for Speaker and I'm going to be Speaker." Ha. He had another surprise coming to him. But why wouldn't 1xbet online games login be surprised? It was, as I say, a year where every day 1xbet online games login felt like, "No, this isn't happening, this cannot be happening."
The day that, 1xbet online games login know, the Starr report came out on the Internet and live on the air all at the same time, and we're sitting there reading it live on the air and not quite knowing what's coming up next, and, 1xbet online games login know, how can we censor ourselves as we're going, was really one of the most remarkable days in broadcasting that any of us has ever experienced.
Now, I know that people were not interested in the Starr report, that's why it was No. 1 and 2 on the USA Today bestseller list at the same time, but I know that people didn't read it. I, however, was paid to read it, and I'm really glad I was, because it was wonderful. It had some sections in it that I really do commend to 1xbet online games login if 1xbet online games login have not read it. I was frantically reading it before Sunday morning, and there were times when I would just burst out laughing all by myself, because 1xbet online games login see there were moments in it like this, where Monica says to Bill, "1xbet online games login never write, 1xbet online games login never call, 1xbet online games login 're busy all the time," and he says, "Every day can't be sunshine."
Then there's the moment where she comes to him and says, "If 1xbet online games login don't get me a job I'm going to tell my Mommy and my Daddy about us." He doesn't know she's at this point told half the world, of course. And he pulls himself up to his full six feet, whatever, and says, "It's against the law to threaten the President of the United States." So when 1xbet online games login have years like this 1xbet online games login just sort of say, go figure, and of course, the effect of all of that has been to seriously endanger Al Gore.
Now, Al Gore -- I've known Al Gore since he was born. He has been the best little boy, he was a boring child, and he has never done anything wrong. 1xbet online games login know, he went to all the right schools, got all the right grades, married his high school sweetheart, who is terrific, stayed true to her, all of those things. So what happens, he gets, 1xbet online games login know, the fallout from Bill Clinton's behavior.
1xbet online games login know, I keep thinking this guy is probably now thinking, "1xbet online games login know, I could have had a little more fun in college." George Bush did, we know that.
So he's now hired, as 1xbet online games login I'm sure know, because we keep trying to tell 1xbet online games login about it all over the place, Naomi Wolfe, a controversial feminist author. She's controversial because she says things like, "We are really demon goddesses of lust." That's a quotation from her book "Promiscuities," where she tells more.
But it was her article in George magazine last year that attracted the Gore campaign to her and caused the vice president to hire this woman who, 1xbet online games login know, is trying to turn him into Bill Clinton, as far as I can tell, which is an interesting thing. And in the article -- and again I'm quoting here -- she says, "We have a history." She's explaining in this article that Al Gore is really a little bit nuts. Actually she refers to him as a Blakean and that he is a Blakean deep inside, referring to the poet, William Blake, which 1xbet online games login can work that one out yourselves.
But she says after describing how he's not really a normal person, and she says this very admiringly, "We have a history of cherishing our loopy visionaries after we have mocked them hard." And it was that article that caused the Gores to hire her. Again, 1xbet online games login know, loopy visionaries that they are, they decided that this would be a good thing for them.
So, I don't 1xbet online games login what effect that will have on the Gore campaign, but probably not a particularly good one.
He's already having trouble enough, of course, he's got a serious opponent in Bill Bradley, who I know 1xbet online games login 've had here before for a lecture, and Bradley is going about this methodically, the way he did about practicing his jump shots, and he is slowly, slowly creeping up in the polls, particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire and in New York.
Next Sunday, this coming Sunday in Madison Square Garden, anybody who wants to pay ,000 to support Bill Bradley can play basketball with Willis Reed and Dave DeBusschere, and all the old Knicks and plus some young people, some people who actually can still play basketball. I have this awful feeling that we are going to see more middle-aged, fat, white thighs next Sunday than we would ever want to see, as all these men are there. 1xbet online games login 's a brilliant thing for Bradley to do.
But still in 1xbet online games login , regardless of what happens on the Democratic side, what we are certainly seeing at the moment is George W. Bush trouncing either one of them, Bradley or Gore, in the polls.
Now George Bush clearly has problems of his own, Chechnya, where might that be? I actually think Americans have a little -- a lot of sympathy for that. I can assure 1xbet online games login I don't know who the head of Chechnya is, and I've now read this story 400 times and can't keep it in my poor brain. But, 1xbet online games login know, as the reporter pointed out to him, he's not running for President. George Bush is. And 1xbet online games login know what the problem is with a little pop quiz like that is not that anybody really expects him to know the answers, but it becomes such fabulous fodder for the late night comedians. It does, 1xbet online games login know, Leno and Letterman are already having their fun with cocaine. In fact, they keep invoking my name, and it's not something I'm very fond of. And my brother named me Cokie when I came home from the hospital, so it has nothing to do with illegal substances or soft drinks.
But the fact is, this is George Bush's introduction to the American people. Nobody knows him. And so for his introduction to be the comedians making jokes about him not knowing some foreign policy answers is not a good thing for him. Now, I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as it was for his father not knowing the answer to the question of how much is a gallon of milk. Because that is something that, 1xbet online games login know, our Americans really care about as opposed to Chechnya. But I do think that he's going to have some time here where it's going to be very interesting to watch how he responds and how he behaves. He really has not been in unscripted situations, and he's been kept from them pretty emphatically by his staff.
Now, interestingly he has decided to do -- and I think this is very smart of him -- he's decided to do a bunch of debates now. Now, part of this is that the debate chicken was following him around, 1xbet online games login know, that they now every time somebody avoids a debate, somebody dresses up as a chicken and follows that person around. In my home state of Louisiana it just happened with a governor who was miles ahead running for re-election refused to debate, and one of his opponents hired a chicken.
And the governor invited the chicken into the governor's mansion and, 1xbet online games login know, said, "Why don't 1xbet online games login have a seat at my desk; it's the closest that your guy will ever come to the governor's mansion." 1xbet online games login know, brings him in, takes pictures of the chicken.
So Bush was having a few chicken problems. But the main thing is that if he does enough of these debates early, 1xbet online games login will defuse any problems that he might have. If he waits and we're finally all built up to this big debate, then 1xbet online games login becomes a very big deal.
So he's going to do one in New Hampshire in December, he's going to do one in Arizona in December. I think he's going to do one in Iowa in either December or January, and we'll start to get some sense of him better at 1xbet online games login point, and then we'll see about press conferences and things like that and see how he does and how we respond.
The rest of the Republican field is really just waiting. Now, a lot of them couldn't wait long enough to stay in. Elizabeth Dole, who 1xbet online games login probably know well, and who was a very engaging candidate, but who just couldn't keep enough money coming in. Same for Lamar Alexander, Dan Quayle and others. So the person who is sort of falling to as the No. 2 if anything should happen to George Bush, at the moment appears to be John McCain, the senator from Arizona, and as McCain comes up in the polls 1xbet online games login start to see the first stories that are even vaguely negative about it. And there are stories about his temper and/or temperament, and they seem to come mainly from other members of the United States Senate, which is not, as I say, really an organization that works and plays well with others at the moment. But none of them will go on the record.
So I think 1xbet online games login 's unfair right now. If they really think that John McCain does not have the temperament to be president, then they should come forward and say so with their names attached to 1xbet online games login , otherwise I think they should be quiet. But that is what's bubbling at the moment.
Of course, the other person who thinks that he's an alternative to Bush is Steve Forbes, because he's got the cash. 1xbet online games login know, the last time he ran I felt that his daughters should basically say to him, "1xbet online games login spent million trying to be president, I get a Jaguar."
But now I'm beginning to feel sorry for them because apparently he's really going through the family fortune, and 1xbet online games login would be a very big surprise if he became president of the United States, but he would be in there for a while, because he does have the wherewithal financial to stay in there.
But when 1xbet online games login look at it, it really does at this point certainly look like it's George W. Bush, unless George W. Bush does something to himself to stop it from being George W. Bush. And he is, as I said, trouncing both Gore and Bradley this moment in most polls. The U.S. News poll out today has him up by about 20 points.
Now, the interesting thing there is that the reason Bush is doing so well is that he has cut dramatically -- for the moment, now this could all change, 1xbet online games login know -- George Herbert Walker Bush was doing very well at this stage in 1991. Remember after the Persian Gulf War he was at 90 percent approval rating, and I remember there was a cartoon at the time that had him sitting there saying, "Ten more points to go." And then we know what happened, so, 1xbet online games login know, politics -- American politics definitely can change overnight. Just ask Gary Hart.
But the reason Bush is doing so well right now has to do almost entirely with the women's vote. And that is a very interesting phenomenon that I want to take a few minutes to talk to 1xbet online games login about.
Since 1980 the women's vote -- first of all, after women got the right to vote 80 years ago 1xbet online games login was -- women really did not show up at the polls, and then they finally did in 1980 for the first time show up as a vote and as a vote that was discernibly different from the male vote. And what we saw for the first time that year was a statistical difference between the margin of the men's vote for Reagan and the women's vote for Reagan. The majority of each voted for Reagan but women did so by about seven points less than men did. That seven points is what we have come to call the gender gap.
And we talk about it, we throw around this term like it is, 1xbet online games login know, something that everybody knows what it means. It does not mean that women vote for women, and it does not mean that women vote on, quote, unquote, women's issues. It means that since 1980 women have been voting, all things being equal, considerably more Democratic than men have been voting. So that, for instance, by 1996 had the 19th Amendment never passed, and only men were voting, Bob Dole would be President today, and what a relief it might be. But the fact is that it was the women's vote that elected Bill Clinton to office.
Now, what is the women's vote. It has absolutely nothing to do with issues like abortion, equal rights, those kinds of things. In fact, men and women vote precisely the same way on the subject of abortion. But it has everything to do with economic issues, so that when 1xbet online games login do the polling and do the interviewing with women voters, what 1xbet online games login find is a tremendous concern abut job stability, about wages, and when 1xbet online games login 're talking about a minimum wage bill, for instance, which Congress is talking about right now, that is a direct attempt to woo the women's vote because two-thirds of the people on minimum wage are female.
And then, of course, the whole panoply of concerns about education, health and children and old people, because women either are old people -- we wish that the gents lived as long, 1xbet online games login don't -- and therefore, people who are often dependent.
Government programs like Medicare and Social Security, or they are the caretakers of older people, and are concerned about the elderly in 1xbet online games login society as well as being concerned about the children and putting education as a very high-up issue.
All of those kinds of issues play better for Democratic candidates than they do for Republican candidates. So over the years what we've seen is the majority of the female vote -- and this is obviously not every woman -- but the majority of the female vote going Democratic. And Al Gore is not winning 1xbet online games login , so what is the problem here? He talks about all those issues, and yet 1xbet online games login doesn't seem to be working. I think one of the answers is that George W. Bush has caught on very well. That's what compassionate conservatism is all about, is to say to women, "Yes, I'm for less government, but I'm not for less compassion. I do want to take care of people. I want to take care of little children, I want to take care of the elderly." He has been very explicit in his education programs. The Republicans took Congress in 1994 saying they wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. George W. Bush has given several education speeches proposing to expand the Department of Education and to give 1xbet online games login the entire Headstart Program.
So what 1xbet online games login have here is so far a successful attempt of the lead Republican candidate to cut into the issues that have been traditionally Democratic issues, and a tremendous interest on the part of the Republicans to cut into others of them, particularly education, for instance. Where the Democrats talk about more teachers in the classroom, the Republicans are talking about more community control, ability to opt out of failing schools, that kind of thing.
The Republicans are trying to get to other issues of concern to women, like violence on television, or morality. So it is an interesting thing to watch, and as 1xbet online games login hear all of these things talked about both in Congress and on the campaign trail -- and 1xbet online games login 'll see in Congress there's already been an HMO bill that was done because of concern abut women. 1xbet online games login 'll see a minimum wage bill, and all of that again is all looking at the electorate in 2000 and trying to figure out how to woo that vote.
Now, so far, as I say, 1xbet online games login 's working for George Bush, but one of the things that I think is going to be very interesting to watch about the year 2000 is that because we are in essentially a post-ideological time, the end of the Cold War, and the end of strong ideologies in either party, I think that 1xbet online games login 's going to be a more event-driven election than I've ever seen, that that some dramatic event, and particularly because of the way we cover dramatic events now with 24-hour news channels and the Internet and all of that, so events become magnified, I think 1xbet online games login could shift votes right up until election day.
And that can work either way politically. A violent gun battle of some kind could work for a Democratic candidate, and by the way, women absolutely see gun control as a Mommy issue, this odd notion that they don't want assault weapons on playgrounds and 1xbet online games login know, it's very interesting. It's because of the Republican women in Congress that the assault weapons ban was passed a couple of years ago.
I'll just give 1xbet online games login the statistics because it really does give 1xbet online games login an interesting example of how women really can vote differently from men on certain issues. On the assault weapons ban 23 percent of Republican men voted for it, 67 percent of Republican women in Congress and 72 percent of Democratic men, 89 percent of Democratic women. It was a very close vote. It won because of the number of women in Congress.
So, 1xbet online games login get an event like a Littleton three weeks before election day, and it could have a tremendous impact, and it's likely to have a better impact for the Democratic candidate than the Republican candidate, depending on how it's handled.
Some farm policy crisis, now that's sort of an interesting question. Do people say, "Well maybe we better stick with the guy who is vice president of the United States," if there's a foreign policy crisis, or do they say, "That's the administration that got us into this mess," if that's the way 1xbet online games login 's perceived. Or do they say, "Democrats have never really been so great on national security, maybe we're better off with a Republican." 1xbet online games login 's a bunch of balancing acts there and 1xbet online games login will be interesting to see how something like that plays out if, in fact, 1xbet online games login does happen.
The other thing that I think to watch is to see how -- if George W. Bush wins this nomination and is able to keep this kind of lead, because he is trying to stake out a centralist ground, what that means for the Congress. And 1xbet online games login 's my view that the Democrats' best hope of retaking the Congress is George Bush's election as President and vice versa, the Republican's best hope of keeping the Congress would be Al Gore's election as president.
And that's for a very good reason which is, the voters have caught on that the politicians in Washington of each party are not where the voters are. There are some in the Senate who are, but the House is the most polarized House of Representatives in my lifetime and maybe ever. And if 1xbet online games login have a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president, the legislation is likely to be considerably to the left of where the mainstream of America is. And if 1xbet online games login have a Republican Congress and a Republican President, the legislation is likely to be considerably to the right of where the mainstream America is, and the voters have caught on to this.
And, 1xbet online games login know, with great hesitancy in 1992, they turned over Washington to one party with tremendous trepidation. People coming out of the polls -- and we interview on election day through the voter news service really in the 40,000 to 50,000 range of voters in key precincts all over the country -- they came out on election day in '92 and were really nervous about their vote for Bill Clinton and about having turned Washington over to the Democrats. And, of course, it was only 43 percent who did that. 1994 they just said, "Enough. We tried that experiment for two years, forget it," and sent Republicans to the Congress and, of course, have kept them there.
I think that there is now ample evidence that when voters take a look on the ballot and say, "I like that George W. Bush," or "I like that Al Gore," they then look down the ballot and say, "I'm not sure that I want to see the Congress in the same hands." That's only true in a few districts, but there are only a few districts that are up for grabs. We're talking by and large we know who's going to win in most congressional districts right now today, but as we go into the election that number of 10, 20 districts where people are not going to go with the incumbent who's there, or there is an open seat 1xbet online games login will see that calculation being made, and I think that calculation will continue to be made for a divided government.