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MODERATOR: Welcome to the Foreign Press Center. Today we have with us Bill Schneider, who's
a leading U.S. political analyst. He's also a professor at George Mason University and
a senior fellow at Third Way. He's going to give us an analysis of yesterday's election
results.
Mr. Schneider.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Sorry I was delayed. I had about three different briefings today, but
I'm happy to be here. It's a little late, but happy to be here in any case.
I've covered - oh, my goodness, someone asked me how many elections have I covered in this
country. I think I go back to 1972, which is a long time. I've seen just about everything,
although I don't think I've ever seen anything like Sarah Palin before, but that was last
time. (Laughter.)
This election was, of course - some people have called this a thumping victory for the
Democrats. I don't think I'd use that word. It was thumping only in the respect that the
Democrats did much better, or somewhat better, than anyone expected. All the battleground
states went Democratic, except maybe Florida, and that probably will go Democratic. Have
they finished counting Florida?
QUESTION: Not yet.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Not yet. It is one of the great joys of this election that we don't have to
wait for Florida, unlike 2000, and we don't really care what happens with their hanging
chads this time. The election is over.
But I like to say that in every election, there's a phantom candidate called "Expected."
It's not enough to win; you have to do better than expected. If you do worse than expected,
even if you win, you lose. Well, the Republicans did worse than expected, because all the battleground
states, including possibly Florida, went to the Democrats, and of course, the Senate races
were a surprisingly large victory. Democrats actually gained seats in the United States
Senate. They weren't expected to, and the reason for that is that the last time these
Senate seats were up was in 2006, which was a big Democratic victory year. That was the
Iraq War election, when Democrats swept into control of both houses of Congress. So therefore,
when you enjoy a big victory like that, the next time those seats are up, you have to
defend a lot of vulnerable seats. Well, the Democrats did defend those seats and made
some additional gains, and that was a big surprise. So the Senate particularly made
this victory for the Democrats better than expected.
It was actually a quite narrow victory. Barack Obama was reelected with a little over 50
percent of the vote, which is just about the same vote that reelected George Bush (sic)
in 1984, and Bill Clinton in 1996 got just under 50 percent of the vote. Presidents used
to get reelected with huge majorities - 58, 60 percent - but the last three presidents,
when they ran for reelection, got barely 50 percent of the vote - 50, 51, 49. Those big
sweeping victories don't happen anymore because the country's very divided. We can talk about
that. And it remains very divided. Of course, the government remains divided, as it was
before the election, with a Republican House, Democratic Senate, and a Democratic White
House.
And that, of course, means the same problems that existed last week, they're going to exist
now. And we're facing a fiscal cliff crisis, which is an artificial crisis that Congress
invented, and a lot of voters don't know where it's coming from, what caused this, why is
there suddenly a crisis in the country. And my guess is they'll figure out some way to
postpone it or delay it. The President says that the sequesters will never happen, because
they do not want to be held responsible for creating another recession, which is what
will happen if the sequesters and the tax increases go into effect.
How did Obama do it? I think it was partly a personal victory. American voters like President
Obama; Mitt Romney, not so much. Romney came across to too many voters as an opportunist.
He was a moderate when that was what was required in Massachusetts, and he was a, quote, "severe
conservative" when he ran for the Republican nomination. And in the end, a lot of voters
really didn't trust Romney. They were facing a difficult choice because they had a challenger
whom they didn't really trust and an incumbent President who many - most - probably most
voters felt really didn't deliver on what he had promised, most notably immigration
reform, but also the turnaround in the economy and the growth in jobs that they thought would
happen under his presidency.
What about the issues? The economy was a huge burden for President Obama. That's why the
election was so close. It was by far the biggest issue to voters. And those who were concerned
about the economy - which was about 60 percent of the voters, said it was their number-one
concern - they did vote for Mitt Romney, but only 51 percent. Romney should've done much
better among voters who were concerned about the economy. He barely carried them.
Obama benefitted from the fact that a lot of voters continue to blame President Bush
for the financial crisis, not President Obama - that was asked in the exit poll - and from
the fact that people are beginning to believe that the economy is turning around. Just a
small plurality, but Americans are beginning to see hopeful signs in the economy, and Obama
sells hope, which is - there's still a lot of hope out there, even after four years.
I like to say this was a victory for the new America. To paraphrase a famous quote about
the 1992 campaign: It's the demography, stupid, not the economy. The economy didn't determine
the election result; the demography did. The demographics of this country are changing,
and they're changing dramatically. Republicans have become the party of older, white men.
That is a constituency where Obama lost support. But he continued to draw very strong support
from women, particularly single women and single working women. They feel vulnerable
in the marketplace because they've only just begun to achieve economic independence in
the last 20 or 30 years, and they want the government safety net to be there. And what
they object to with Republicans is that they often threaten the safety net. That's what
Paul Ryan has done throughout his career, and one reason why the choice of Ryan might
have been seen as very threatening to a lot of voters. He drew strong support from women,
particularly single women who don't have a husband to rely on for help economically.
They have to rely on themselves, and they do feel vulnerable.
Racial minorities, of course, African Americans obviously, but also Latinos and Asians who
voted for Obama in overwhelming proportions, over 70 percent, which was more than they
did four years ago. *** minorities, gays, there were about 5 percent identified as gays
and they voted over 70 percent for Obama. And it looks like his endorsement of same-sex
marriage, which everyone thought might backfire, turned out to be a benefit for him because
he got about three-quarters of the gay and lesbian vote, and that was enough to give
him his margin of victory over President - over Mitt Romney. And there doesn't seem to have
been any obvious backlash.
He got strong support from foreign-born citizens of the United States and, of course, young
people, who remain some of his most steadfast supporters, and they are his core supporters.
We're seeing age differences in the electorate with Obama that we never saw in the past.
All those groups - working women, single women, *** minorities, racial minorities, foreign-born
citizens, young people - they came to power with President Obama in 2008. That year, four
years ago, he had the advantage of a financial crisis. This year's election was on a more
level playing field. You could say that it wasn't even level; it was tilted against the
incumbent because people were so disappointed in the economy. So it was much more of a fair
fight without a crisis impending.
And the new America won. What happened was those constituencies that had supported him
so strongly four years ago showed up again in large numbers this time, not so much because
they adored President Obama - some did and still do - but because they were fearful of
what would happen if the Republicans won. I think the Republican Party was a drag on
Mitt Romney. He was probably more popular than the Republican Party. The Tea Party Republicans
looked like they were threatening to take away the safety net, to challenge some of
the rights of, say, immigrant groups and others. They saw the resurgence of the Republicans
that happened in 2010, and particularly the Tea Party, as a threat. And so it was - a
lot of what was - what drove the new America out to vote was fear, and it was a desire
to protect the gains that they had made when they came to power in 2008.
Republicans may be tempted to say we nominated John McCain, who was a closet moderate in
2008, and we lost. And then we nominated Mitt Romney, a closet moderate, in 2012, and we
lost again. So next time, we have to go for the real thing. You're hearing that now among
Republicans. If they believe that, they're doomed. All you have to do is look at their
Senate losses in Indiana and Missouri, states really that they should have won. Republican
candidates in those states were simply too far outside the mainstream. I think the message
of the 2012 election is the American mainstream is changing.
We're seeing voters approve of same-sex marriage and popular referendums in this country for
them. I think they won in every case. Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington State,
I believe, all supported same-sex marriage. We're seeing that supported in popular referendums
for the first time ever. Same-sex marriage was on the ballot in 32 states before this
year, and it failed every time. This year it succeeded in every one of those states,
and they were all over the country. And of course, we saw an African American president
reelected without the benefit of an economic crisis, and that is something that should
not pass without being remarked upon.
What we heard in the closing days of the campaign was kind of interesting. We didn't hear a
call to arms from both Obama and Romney. We heard a call to disarm. Mitt Romney told his
final campaign rally in Virginia: I'm going to have to reach across the aisle and meet
with Democrats who love America just like you, his supporters that - just like you love
America, and there are good Democrats like that.
President Obama said at his rally in Wisconsin: In the end we're all in this together; we
rise and fall as one nation and one people. Why was there a sudden craving at the very
end of the campaign for unity, which is the point where the country should be most divided?
Because unity was the issue that got Obama elected. He became a star when he told the
2004 Republican (sic) Convention that nominated John Kerry in Boston: There is not a liberal
America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America - the United
States of America.
And unity is the issue of the moment, because unless the President and the Congress can
agree on some kind of budget deal in the next couple of months, the country is going to
go over the fiscal cliff, which is, of course, a crisis that Congress invented. Most American
voters don't know where it came from. Why are we suddenly facing this fiscal crisis?
Congress invented it, and you know what? Congress is going to de-invent it, because they don't
want to be held responsible for throwing the country back into a recession. They're going
to have to reach some kind of an agreement, or else they're all doomed. It's unity or
calamity.
Unity is the promise that President Obama failed most conspicuously to deliver. The
country is more divided now than it was four years ago. He gets 91 percent support from
Democrats and 7 percent from Republicans. That's an 84-point difference, the largest
partisan division we've ever seen. It's bigger than it was when President Bush ran for reelection
in 2004 when it was 76 points. It's bigger than it was when Bill Clinton got impeached
in 1998 when it was 50 points.
You can get into a pretty good argument about why Obama failed to unite the country. Marco
Rubio, the senator from Florida at a Republican fundraising dinner said about Obama, quote,
"We have not seen such a divisive figure in modern American history as we have over the
last three and a half years." It was not Obama's style that was divisive. It was his policies.
Republicans, when he took office and he supported all of these dramatic policies - the economic
stimulus bill, the healthcare bill, the federal bailout of the auto companies and the big
banks, the mortgage rescue plan - Republicans saw all those as acts of ideological aggression
and unprecedented expansion of big government, passed with almost no Republican support.
If a policy is going to succeed and become legitimate in this country, there has to be
at least some bipartisan support, as there was for Social Security in 1935, Medicare
in 1965, civil rights in 1964, as there was for the Reagan tax cuts, the Patriot Act,
the Bush tax cuts. There has to be bipartisan support. Healthcare and these other policies,
the economic stimulus, didn't have any Republican support. And as a result, they've never been
accepted by Republicans in particular, but many voters as well, as true legitimate policies.
Democrats argue with some justification that congressional Republicans simply refuse to
do business with the President. They remember that the Senate - the Republican leader Mr.
McConnell said in 2010: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President
Obama to be a one-term president.
I'd like to point out that the last four presidents of the United States all promised to bring
the country together and they all failed. The first President Bush said he wanted it
to be a kinder, gentler government. He lasted one term. Bill Clinton described himself as
a new Democrat and a third way. He got impeached. The second President Bush said he would be,
quote, "a uniter, not a divider." He was anything but. Barack Obama got a Tea Party revolt a
month after he took office and unveiled his program. There was an immediate backlash against
him. This country has become more and more politically divided for the past 50 years.
The problem is not Obama; the problem is the problem. It's been there for a long time.
Last week's storm, the Hurricane Sandy, gave President Obama a priceless opportunity, really,
to reclaim his credentials as a uniter. He received effusive praise from two Republican
governors - Christie of New Jersey and McDonnell of Virginia. It also got him a valuable endorsement
from the Independent Mayor of New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and he had the opportunity
to say there are no Republicans or Democrats in a storm; we are all fellow Americans.
Romney tried to do his best to compete with that. He stopped using the word "conservative"
in the last week of the campaign. He started talking sympathetically about the working
poor and single mothers and touting his record of working with Democratic legislators when
he was governor of Massachusetts. Of course, Democratic legislators in Massachusetts were
willing to work with him, something that can't be said of Republicans in Congress and President
Obama, and probably not of Democrats in Congress if Romney had become president. Harry Reid,
the Democratic leader, said, quote, "Mitt Romney's fantasy that Senate Democrats will
work with him to pass his severely conservative agenda is just laughable."
Moreover, if Romney had had such a successful record as governor of Massachusetts, why didn't
he even bother to compete in Massachusetts? He didn't even have a campaign there, and
he lost the state by about 25 points. Had he been elected, he would have been the first
president elected since James K. Polk in 1844 not to carry his home state. In fact, he didn't
carry any of his home states. He lives in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Michigan
and California, and he lost all four of those. No one really knew what Romney - what kind
of president Romney would be. Would he be the severely conservative Republican primary
candidate, or the moderate governor of Massachusetts who resurfaced at the very end of the campaign?
So we ended up with one candidate who promised to be a uniter and failed - Obama - another
candidate who promised to be bipartisan, but could not really be trusted. I thought Mayor
Bloomberg summed up the voters' dilemma perfectly when he said: If the 1994 or 2003 version
of Mitt Romney were running for president, I may well have voted for him. Because like
so many other independents, which is what Bloomberg is, I have found the past four years
to be, in a word, disappointing. I thought both parties had a problem. Their candidates
were both elitists.
The United States of America is the most populist country in the world. Next to the United States,
the rest of the world is Saudi Arabia. Here the people really do rule. The government
mints dollar coins. They've done it about three times, and Americans simply refused
to use them. No one can tell Americans they have to use the metric system because it's
scientific and rational; to hell with that. And we can't abolish the death penalty like
European countries who call it cruel and barbaric, because the people demand it. And of course
it was upheld yesterday in a referendum in California.
Both parties, on the other hand - this is a populist country - but both parties came
up with elitist candidates from bitterly competitive elites. Romney was the - represented the elite
of wealth. Republicans call it success. Obama represents the elite of education, which is
a liberal elite, not a conservative elite. Neither of those candidates really has a populist
bone in his body. Romney kept calling attention to his wealth or hiding it, if he could, in
his unreleased tax returns, and Obama often seems disdainful of people who are less enlightened
than he is and who cling to guns and religion.
Democrats at their convention had to trot out their old warhorse, former President Bill
Clinton, to get their populist juices flowing, because Clinton is uniquely qualified to make
the case that Democrats know how to manage the economy. Voters associate Bill Clinton
with good times, probably in every sense of the word. Obama did fail to deliver on what
he had promised, which was - every - both parties agreed was the top priority, economic
growth, good times, what people associate with Bill Clinton.
The basic difference between our two parties is very straightforward. Republicans believe
economic growth is sufficient. If you're president and you control the government, your job is
to keep the economy growing, which is not happening very much right now. It's about
1.5 percent. That's why people are disappointed in Obama. The President's job is to keep the
economy growing. If the economy is growing, Republicans believe, then people ought to
be able to make it on their own, and if they don't make it and they're not doing very well,
it's probably their own fault. But it's not the government's responsibility.
Democrats believe economic growth is necessary but not sufficient. Government has to protect
the economically vulnerable, even in a growing economy, which is why so many groups that
feel vulnerable economically continue to support the Democrats either because they lack opportunity
or they face disadvantage or discrimination. The Democratic Party has always been the party
that protects the safety net. My guess is that's going to be the Republicans' big challenge.
America is changing. The face of America is different. It's a different demography. And
the message to Republicans is: Deal with it. You're going to have to, because if they can't
deal with that, I think they're doomed to more and more disasters, of which 2012 was
not a terrible disaster, but it was a sign that things could get a lot worse as the demography
of this country continues to change.
I'll conclude with that, and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Sure. She'll point to --
QUESTION: Thank you, Bill Schneider. It's always a pleasure to have you over here.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Where are you from? Tell me what country.
QUESTION: I'm Ben Bangoura, Guinea Times, Guinea.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Guinea.
QUESTION: We first met at the convention in Philadelphia.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Philadelphia. Oh, I remember that convention --
QUESTION: Yeah.
MR. SCHNEIDER: -- when people thought I looked like *** Cheney.
QUESTION: Yeah. (Laughter.) When Bush got the note from (inaudible).
MR. SCHNEIDER: Uh-huh.
QUESTION: You're talking about the different coalition Mr. Obama was able to put together
and kept during this election season, which is, as you put it, a big blow to GOP. Is there
any path? Is there any strategy for Republicans to reverse the course, or this is going to
be a doom-day failure forever?
MR. SCHNEIDER: Clearly they have to be friendlier to minorities, particularly Latinos. They
know that. Mitt Romney said during the campaign: We are doomed if we don't reach out to Latino
voters and find a more effective way to do that. The problem with the Republican appeal
to Latino voters is not the issues. A lot of Latinos agree with Republicans on social
issues, on religion, on economic issues, on the role of government, but they don't particularly
take to being insulted and being treated as a whole class of criminals, which is the way
a lot of Republicans regard Latino immigrants, that they either are or harbor illegal immigrants,
lawbreakers. Some Republicans have understood that and have reached out and with some success.
Ronald Reagan did that, but he was excoriated and is still criticized by conservatives for
having endorsed - signed an amnesty bill, which, frankly, did not work very well. And
George Bush and once John McCain supported comprehensive immigration reform.
I believe that President Obama has to and will deliver immigration reform as a top priority.
So it's one promise that he conspicuously failed to keep among a few others, but that
was very conspicuous, and Latinos know it, and they've asked him about it on interviews
on Univision, and he seems very embarrassed about that. It was, of course, a very difficult
thing to carry through, and he had other priorities like healthcare and the economy. But the fact
is it's there, and the issue is not going to go away, and I think now that Latinos have
delivered for him in huge terms in this election, he has simply got to deliver for them. The
question is: Will he be able to pick off enough Republicans to pass this thing? My guess is
he will, because there are enough Republicans out there who know what will happen to their
party if they continue to block immigration reform.
QUESTION: Thank you. Irina Gelevska, Macedonian TV from Macedonia, Europe. During the second
term of former President George W. Bush, Macedonia has been recognized by USA under the constitutional
name. What are the chances, under the second term of President Obama, Macedonia will become
a member of NATO?
MR. SCHNEIDER: That's a question I don't know the answer to. I know that it's a big issue
in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. Is that the official name?
QUESTION: No, Republic of Macedonia.
MR. SCHNEIDER: No, Republic of Macedonia. I know it's an issue. I have not been privy
to any discussions of this particular issue, so I really can't answer that question. Foreign
policy wasn't an issue in the election at all. People like President Obama's foreign
policy simply because he is what most Americans are. He's a reluctant warrior, and they appreciate
that. He will use force if necessary and has done, but he's always reluctant to do so.
President Bush looked like an eager warrior, which made a lot of Americans nervous. But
on this particular issue, I'm afraid I just don't know the answer.
QUESTION: Hi. Thank you very much for the speech, and my name is Li Ping. I am from
China Radio International. In your speech you mentioned that divisiveness is a very
serious problem for the country or facing the party, but yesterday in his victory speech,
President Obama says he would get across the party line to work with the Republican Party.
So will he be successful on this? Or to what extent do you think the Republican Party will
cooperate with him? Thank you.
MR. SCHNEIDER: That's a very difficult question also to answer. That one I'm supposed to know
the answer to, but I don't think anyone knows the answer to that. The question is: Do Republicans
feel chastened by the election result and therefore inclined to, at least some of them,
work with this President to pass things like comprehensive immigration reform? I don't
know. And also, of course, to get over the fiscal cliff, which could involve - the signal
we got from Speaker Boehner was that they might be willing to consider some revenue
increases as long as they didn't look like blatant tax hikes. There are ways of disguising
revenue increases without calling them tax hikes.
So it looks like there's some inclination to reach deals with this President, but that
division is there, and someone like Mitch McConnell has to run for reelection in Kentucky
in 2014, and he could face a Tea Party opponent just because his state is the state that elected
Senator Rand Paul against the endorsed establishment candidate. So he's got to be nervous about
straying too far from the conservative line, as all Republicans are these days. So there's
- since most members of Congress face opposition mostly within their own party, more than from
the other party, look, almost all - except for those incumbents who got badly redistricted,
almost all of them won. It's very hard for an incumbent member of Congress to get defeated.
I mean, they really have to make an effort, like get embroiled in a scandal or something.
But they worry about primary opposition.
So will they work? I think President Obama will make an effort. He claims to have made
and he did make an effort. Remember he had that meeting over here in Blair House to discuss
healthcare reform. It got exactly nowhere. I think he will make another effort, perhaps
a more vigorous effort, to work with Republicans. He should. It's important politically. I don't
know how cooperative Republicans are likely to be, but he's a lame duck president, which
in many ways is good because they can't talk about keeping him from being reelected again.
So they may be more inclined to work with him now.
But the division is there, and as I said, it's gotten worse and worse over the years.
There's statistical evidence of that. The parties are farther and farther apart. If
you look at the Gallup polls, they've been measuring since the 1930s the simple question,
"Do you approve or disapprove of the job the President's doing?" And what we're finding
is that the division, the distance - the difference between the President's party and the opposition
party has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger over the last 50 years, really, since Ronald
Reagan. And it's just grown very fast. Bill Clinton said famously in 2002 a very wise
piece of political analysis. He said, "If you look back on the 1960s and you think they
did more good than harm, you're a Democrat. If you think they did more harm than good,
you're a Republican." Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, same generation, different cultural
values. That division started in the '60s and it's just gotten bigger.
QUESTION: Jose Carreno, Excelsior Mexico. How are you? I have - this is basically (inaudible).
Is there any center left in the United States? Where is it? How could they communicate among
them without the center? And as a consequence of that, is there any room or any wish or
any intention that you have heard about - of a third party?
MR. SCHNEIDER: Is there a center? 40 percent of the voters call themselves moderates, okay?
That's pretty big. They're bigger than either liberals or conservatives. But only about
20 percent, 25 percent I think, somewhere between there, call themselves independents.
The problem isn't ideological division. Most Americans are ideologically moderate, but
they're more partisan. They're more identified with the political parties, and the party
divide has gotten deeper and deeper over the years.
I teach a class at George Mason. I remember a student raised his hand once a few months
ago and said, "Is this the most divided we have ever been as a country?" And I felt compelled
to say, "Well, once we did have a Civil War," and three-quarters of a million Americans
were killed in that civil war. That was pretty bad. But this may be the most divided we've
been since then, and there have been threats from some conservatives that if Obama is reelected,
God knows people could take to violence. I don't think any of that'll happen. I would
suspect that if - when the healthcare bill goes into effect in 2014, some lunatic probably
in northern Michigan will go hole up in a cabin in the woods with a large supply of
arms, with - and a few friends, perhaps, and maybe a family and dare the federal government
to come after him because "I ain't buying no health insurance and I ain't paying a fine."
If the federal government is smart, they won't bother with him at all because they don't
want another Waco. But there are people like that who are driven to those kinds of extremes.
That - the division is there.
There is a center ideologically, but the - when I say divided, the country has become more
- not more ideologically divided - we're still centrists - but more partisan. Democratic
states have become more Democratic and - like California and New York. Republican states
like Texas and Kansas have become more Republican. The number of battleground states has diminished.
In 1960, which was a very close election between Kennedy and Nixon, there were some 20 states
that - where the election was decided by fewer than 5 percent. That number has dropped this
time. There are only eight battleground states that were at issue in this election, and that
territory is getting smaller and smaller simply because so much of the country is now either
reliably Republican or reliably Democratic.
So the answer to the question is yeah, there is an ideological center and it's very large,
but what's happened is the voters have become more and more partisan. There's a book I recommend
to you by Bill Bishop written about five or six years ago called The Big Sort, S-o-r-t,
in which he examines Census data and demonstrates that since 1976, Americans have become more
and more politically segregated - not racially; politically segregated. More and more people
live in places where people vote overwhelmingly for one party. And that has become the rule.
They don't move to a place because of its politics; they move to a place because of
its lifestyle. But politics follows lifestyle more now than it ever has in the past.
QUESTION: Thank you, Dr. Schneider. Kyungrok Kim from Korean Broadcasting System, and can
you identify some of the biggest challenge for Mr. Obama in the next four years and the
ways he can overcome those challenges? Thank you.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Well, if only I were president. I can identify the challenges easily enough.
Certainly very high on the list is Iran, which appears to be - most people believe it is
developing a nuclear weapon, but they're not ready to go to war with Iran and they're not
exactly sure what the President can do to prevent it. And of course, the Israeli Government
is very actively involved in warning the United States that there could be a disaster. That's
probably the biggest foreign policy dilemma we face. And I don't know - I mean, I know
that only the United States can do something about it. I mean, if Israel were to strike
Iran, immediately, the entire Arab world would side with Iran, which is not an Arab country,
because they couldn't possibly side with Israel. And the poor Saudi Arabians who don't particularly
like or trust Iran would end up having to support Iran. That would be a big disaster.
It is a problem which only the United States has the capacity to solve, which is true of
most world problems. The great lesson in world affairs since World War II is unless the United
States does something about a problem, nothing happens. If we hadn't organized a coalition
to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, he'd still be there. Kuwait would be a province
of Iraq. If we hadn't done something about ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, it would
have been - it was a humanitarian disaster and it would have been a bigger one because
the Europeans were just unable or unwilling to take care of it, and I believe that if
the United States had not gotten involved in Libya, Muammar Qadhafi would probably still
be there. And where we did not get involved, like the genocide in Rwanda, of course, nothing
did happen, and a great human tragedy occurred.
Unless the United States acts, nothing will happen, and that's certainly true in Iran.
That's the biggest challenge in the world that the President faces. He faces a number
of issues domestically; I'd say three in particular. One he will act on, immigration reform, for
reasons that I explained, because he feels compelled to as payback to those Latino voters
who supported him in large numbers. The two others are going to be quite difficult for
a specific reason. The two other big problems that he needs to take care of are debt reduction,
which everyone acknowledges is a terrible problem, and we're all going to go to hell
unless we do something about the national debt, but no one - not no one, but most Americans
do not regard it as a dire national crisis. If it were a dire national crisis, they would
be saying, "Do something. Cut spending, raise taxes, but do something to reduce the debt."
And they are not saying that. And if Congress tries to do that, which is what's included
in the fiscal cliff deal, we're going to slash spending on defense and domestic programs,
we are going to cut defense spending, the country will go crazy. They'll just get furious;
why are you doing this? Well, we're doing it to reduce the debt. Don't do it. The debt
is not that kind of impending crisis.
The other is climate change; same issue. Everyone says it's a real problem, and given the hurricane
last week that hit New York and New Jersey, it's become more and more serious, so maybe
it's growing in importance. But the fact is that most voters have never seen climate change
as a threat, as a dire national crisis that demands immediate action. It is a dirty little
secret of American politics that we can't deal with problems unless they become a crisis,
because we have a divided government.
Even if the government's not divided - it wasn't divided in Obama's first two years
- look how much trouble he had getting healthcare passed. It was very difficult because in our
country, members of Congress are not soldiers in a party army. They are independent political
entrepreneurs. They are all in business for themselves. And Democrats would not support
Clinton's - not Clinton either - Clinton or Obama's healthcare plan, even when they were
in power, for the first two years of Clinton and the first two years of Obama because they
weren't sure it would be good for their political careers; it would be bad for business. So
you have to - they have to be persuaded to go along, and they'll do it only if there's
a crisis.
The bad news is we can't deal with problems unless they're a crisis, and the debt is not
yet of that dimension nor is climate change. And the good news is if it's a crisis, we
can deal with it every time. We are wonderfully talented at dealing with crises like 9/11,
we passed the Patriot Act very quickly, when there's - after the last financial crisis,
we passed all of the legislation. It was only one party, but we passed the economic stimulus.
It probably wasn't big enough. We passed the bank and car company bailouts. We acted. We
will act if there is a real crisis, if people see a disaster impending. But at the moment,
a couple of the biggest problems facing this country, debt and climate change, don't yet
have the dimensions of impending crises to most voters.
QUESTION: Hi, Debora Akel, Abu Dhabi TV. Thank you so much, Bill. You're always a pleasure
to listen to and you have a talent for --
MR. SCHNEIDER: Thank you.
QUESTION: -- bringing these things so everyone understands.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Where are you from?
QUESTION: Abu Dhabi TV.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Abu Dhabi, okay.
QUESTION: I have a question about raising taxes on the wealthy. When I look at some
of the literature about this, how we can shore up our Social Security by raising taxes on
the extremely wealthy and how it just basically evens the playing field - it doesn't really
penalize them; it just makes their tax rates more in line with average working Americans
- it doesn't seem like it should be such a divisive thing and that we could get a lot
of benefit from it. So what is the problem, as you see it, with that proposal?
MR. SCHNEIDER: Well, a couple of - first of all, it is popular to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Obama proposed it. If you ask Americans, "Do you think we should raise taxes on high-income
taxpayers over a quarter of a million dollars a year," they say, "Yes, no problem." The
problems are essentially the resistance of Republicans who are - well, they - I'm not
going to say they're pro-wealthy, but they're definitely anti-taxes. They think taxes are
inherently evil because taxes mean big government, and you use taxes to fund government programs
and they don't like government.
That's the definition of their party; they're a party that's in business to limit the power
of the federal government, which actually most Americans support limiting the power
of the federal government. So their belief is that what you have to do is starve the
government by cutting taxes and never, never, never raising them on anybody. And they usually
make the argument that if the President raises taxes on the wealthy, eventually you, the
middle income taxpayer, will pay higher taxes too because they have a way of creeping down.
And even if Americans aren't wealthy, they kind of resent the idea of raising taxes because
they think that most tax money is wasted and pointless and used to fund useless government
programs. Taxes are just not popular.
The issue, the central issue in America, is and always has been the size and role of government.
Right now, the biggest debates are over taxes and tax increases. Do you know what the debate
was a hundred years ago? It was over tariffs. Why? Because before we had income taxes, the
chief source of revenue for the federal government was tariffs. And if you were pro-government,
you supported high tariffs, as most of the north did, and if you were anti-government,
you supported low tariffs, as the south did. The arguments about tariffs in the 19th century
were exactly like the arguments over taxes are right now. It was a kind of argument essentially
over how big and powerful the federal government should be. Only then, the party positions
were reversed. Democrats were anti-government; Republicans were pro-government until the
20th century, when Democrats discovered that you could use the power of the federal government
to promote economic justice - that was the New Deal - and social justice. That was the
civil rights movement. So they became wedded to big government, which they're paying a
price for right now.
But essentially, taxes are a symbolic issue, not - they're an economic issue, of course,
but they're a symbolic issue to many Americans. Raising taxes on anybody means funding big
government, and that's never a popular thing to do. So even though most Americans think
raising taxes on high-income taxpayers would be okay because that's not me, most - 90 percent
of Americans think they're middle class. The definition of the middle class is very simple.
It is as follows: Neither rich nor poor, okay? If I call myself middle class, what it means
is I'm not rich, I'm not poor. It means that they're willing to raise taxes on the rich,
because that's not me. And they're a little skeptical about supporting government programs
to help the poor because that's not me either. My money will go to help somebody else. That's
why everything is pitched to the middle class in every campaign. So the tax issue has some
inherent liabilities.
QUESTION: Yes.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Another question? Okay.
QUESTION: Ben Bangoura. Thank you so much, Bill. Can we talk a little bit about the swing
states? Prior to yesterday's election, Ohio and Florida consistently were set to be (inaudible)
state. We got, with Obama, a new path to White House without those important states. And
also, what is the status of the state of Missouri, which is also --
MR. SCHNEIDER: The state of what?
QUESTION: Missouri.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Missouri?
QUESTION: Missouri, yes --
MR. SCHNEIDER: Okay.
QUESTION: -- which until 2008, used to be called the bellwether. Do we have a new bellwether
now for going to White House?
MR. SCHNEIDER: Well --
QUESTION: And also, I would like you to talk a little bit about the polling. Have something
gone wrong with that --
MR. SCHNEIDER: No.
QUESTION: -- given the --
MR. SCHNEIDER: The second question first. The polling was quite accurate.
QUESTION: Okay.
MR. SCHNEIDER: The polling showed a close race; it was a close race. The polling showed
Obama had a slight advantage in the swing states; he had a slight advantage in the swing
states. The polls moved a little bit but that's because we had a campaign. Obama was doing
very well after the conventions. The first debate really boosted Romney in large part
because voters for the first time realized that there was an election. They had paid
no attention to it until the first debate, when 70 million people watched and suddenly
realized that they were being asked whether to rehire or fire the President. And they
faced that choice, and Romney came across as a plausible alternative. So the polls were
pretty accurate about all that.
Now as far as the swing states are concerned, as I said, their numbers have gotten smaller,
the path to the White House has changed because a state like California - California voted
MODERATOR: Thank you. (Applause.)