An hour with Newsweek's Eleanor Clift

within two thousand twelve elections just nine days away at our prisons an hour with political pundit eleanor clift i'm kate mcintyre eleanor clift as a regular contributor to newsweek and the website the daily beast where she covers politics and policy she has covered every presidential election since the nineteen seventy six race between jimmy carter and gerald ford she's the author of several books about politics her latest is selecting a president co authored by matthew spieler close spoke with bill lacy of the dole institute of politics and september twenty third as big two thousand twelve month the journalism and politics writer for a while back to those two great to be here you know it's great that we can get you back to hear i'll let startled by graphical information to tell everybody about you know year ago during portions of your life and how you ultimately decided to pursue a journalism as a career well i was born in brooklyn new york and i grew up in queens my parents

were immigrants from now little tiny islands in the north sea off the coast of germany and denmark and my father had a delicatessen first in brooklyn and then in sunnyside queens was were lost delicatessen r o e l l double episode frank yes isn't saying and that's why it's or in every time i fly my maiden name say whoa i never too far from those iranian side they went to public schools in newark and down i went to hostile college for one year i dropped out when the hunter college at night for several years i i never dreamed that i could be a journalist because as a product of my generation and women were secretaries or nurses we're at a high school in a home daycare if you were really daring maybe

you join the services of the military and so i went to work as a secretary and i my aspiration was to the way or what i typed was interesting and i was lucky enough to walk into newsweek located then on madison avenue between forty ninth and fiftieth streets in the national affairs editor i was looking for someone who would stay as a secretary he didn't want someone who wanted to be a reporter writer and he had interviewed a string of women who are all graduates of the finest colleges the seven sisters colleges and when eleanor role us came in he could see pretty clearly that i had no idea what i want to be a reporter right or might be and so he hired a dna after year i became a researcher and down then my first husband was in the advertising business he was transferred to atlanta i was in the atlanta bureau of newsweek recovered seven states set tail end of the civil rights movement and it was really an exciting period and

three men in there in the office were traveling all the time and so these assignments would come in and i didn't know any better so i just didn't know and i but basically looking back it was like an apprenticeship but the women's movement was beginning to emerge and the women in new york where the lawsuit games the magazine for gender discrimination in march of nineteen seventy nine they initially called me and told me to stop recording that i was being exploited and i said but if i stop being exploited them out as the secretary and so i continue to be exploited the women pressed their losses and eleanor holmes norton was the wire she represents congress today the district of columbia and i they wind up a number of things including our internships for women at the magazine so i like to do an internship they assigned me pretty early on it after i completed the

internship to cover jimmy carter's campaign the great minds in your washington thought this peanut farmer one term governor george it would never win so assigned a junior reporter so i covered the carter campaign he won a movie a washington i've been there ever since i put my cinderella story that's a great great story yacht the mclaughlin group has been on now thirty years which is really hard to believe an early on president reagan called the political version of an animal ah what's been lobbying on the mclaughlin group well i remember the first time i was invited to be on the show and i felt like i had been dragged into a parallel universe there was pat buchanan but nowak who is known in washington as the prince of darkness jack your mind they were sitting there working

on the racing form of why we went on the air and andy and i think quite polite initially but then they got on the stand and the red light would go on and bob novak would be you know once again in his chair and waving his finger in my face and saying eleanor clift and people of her tail look i'm my initial concern when john invited me on the show was i i told them i was a reporter and i didn't have strong opinions and he said if you want to be on my show you better get some strong opinions well sitting opposite buchanan the novak i found it was very easy there was no problem at all and you know twenty years it's all pretty much an end and good find at the un and i learned i think as a woman sometimes we take

these political stats were personally that i've watched guys go at it hammer and time and then ten minutes later they talk about the redskins and so i learned how to develop a thicker skin and i figure you know they they knock me down but then i'm like one of those inflatable doll say pop back up and occasionally i land of low to sell it and a sense that in the end you can and in particular he's now the longest serving panelist he did take three sabbaticals to run for president twice as republicans once as a reform candidate i think he knows a life he's lived through a lot of political history and he's actually a gentlemanly debater and it will often say you know eleanor is exactly right now i get all puffed up there for a minute and then and then he will proceed to eviscerate makes art

but this show it's an iconic show and and as you said earlier in the reception it really was the first of the kind of political comeback chosen another so many imitators and in many ways where were gentle compared to some of the other shows in and our weekly we don't descended to the tabloid and that we dont do you know michael jackson or the missing women and remove or that sort of thing we have the jon can spend a whole half hour audio should nato be enlarged and he can make it entertaining soho it really does have an interest in public policy in there or are living in the presidential election there seems to be pretty widespread feeling in a while the mainstream media that the president has issued at this point what's your assessment of the campaign as of today well i think democrats really have to guard against overconfidence because we live in such a fast paced world where outside events can come in overwhelming them the media move so i rapidly but if you

look at the overall match at the national match it's still pretty pretty close the president's couple points ahead but if you look at the battleground states and you look at the payout to that magic to seventy two and seventy electoral vote most analysts give president obama two thirty seven so he would be short thirty three am i doing right here is your thirty three votes and that the analysts look at the states that are leaning toward are solidly republican and they range from nineteen ninety one to two ten which leaves mitt romney with sixty or seventy to go so if obama can take ohio florida virginia almost any one of those and then a couple more states he's he's checkmate in miami and some other states i think that the republicans thought they could move back into the republican

camp like colorado now seem to be trending towards obama so i think that as of now romney has a very steep climb to get to the two family that it is not impossible but it's close to impossible how would use us i mean the president's away campaign was historic in many ways is really i would argue one of the best run presidential campaigns in history on how would you assess his campaign and the sheer given the fact that there's so much bad news against it well oh it was a crusade that have a pollster peter hart puts it away it was a crusade for democrats this is almost just another election fight but if you look at how they've run the campaign they front loaded the spending they they looked at what happened to john kerry in all four way or call rove at the swift boat veterans for truth undermined carries a military credentials over the summer

kerry didn't respond he thought nobody would believe this ii and it a number of analysts look back and think john kerry was the election over the summer well the obama campaign was very aware that they were going to let it happen to them that they were going to do it to mitt romney and they spent the bulk of the ball they saw that lot left of the front loaded their advertising spending over the summer and they really dismantled on romney's reputation as a businessman they went after bain they hammered out that the tax returns and they did enormous damage and well the romney campaign responded in part they didn't respond as vigorously as they should and then the conventions happened and the republicans used the convention to boost romney's likeability which they did marginally but they did nothing to really very little to layout what he would do as

president of the next four years and so they came out of that convention with that most memorable part of it the ladies were talking to the end here and that the democrats had a very successful convention bill clinton has now achieved statesman status he framed the arguments i think the republicans very well democrats got a substantial fund which clinton is leading but then seemed to be bolstered by some of the romney this day the steps the speaking to politically and prematurely on libya and then the forty seven percent tape and so that's when i think the numbers the numbers began to shift the after the conventions and picked up some philosophy here in the last week as it surprise you that the romney campaign hasn't seemingly run out more effective campaign says the joke in washington is they should quote bain to turn around the

campaign is it's it's done and that guy is supposed to be so david griffin and i will ascend to control that they gave out bonuses this month for what i don't know maybe that's just what they do in the corporate world but iran the campaign has not distinguish itself but you know in the end it's the candidate and then everybody looks for everything else to blame and i'm sure you know if obama had lost in la week we look back on everything he did and said set was wrong so i'm reluctant to say it's any you know any for campaign analysts say for fault in the end i think that mitt romney was running is something i don't think he is and whenever he is american people either broad acceptance of what they like in a candidate but i think they want to believe it's real and at this stage of a campaign

i think romney is still trying to convey who he is and there is a certain sense of desperation emerging from the campaign went when the candidates feel as lost then sometimes they reach within themselves and they deliver a speech everybody says oh what were they like this for the whole campaign has been saying that about my caucus about john kerry i think you could say that people on the republican side as well and over here you know i think there's some magic to this and you know that the strategist or get their heads together and that's what comes across about romney that he's been told to do too many things by too many different people in his head is spinning it just isn't right you need to do to get back in this race to

make it it's competitive nationally like he said there seems to be a trend where the president's open the wettest basis of battleground states he's got the debates coming up what else could go wrong thing to do to get back in this yacht is people are kind of hanging everything on the debates and in their model for the campaign is nineteen eighty when all the objective measurements for jimmy carter were were poor but he was doing well in the national polls against reagan kiss people for ronald reagan was this you know cowboy from the west you couldn't be trusted wondered a week before the election and you know corridors aides did not want to debate but carter had one and seventy six and gerry ford had debated and carter felt like an ikea not debate and i remember sitting in the hall for that debate and i think it was over before it began carter came to the podium first and he had some notes and he had dropped a

pen he'll be leaning over to pick up a pen and across the stage strikes this hollywood collide and so carter comes up i'm picking up and looks out there is radiant smile and an extended the body language was of course that the un that debate davis the famous line even today four years ago so i think the debates are important for romney but it's hard to think that that's going to turn it around the other thing you hear people say is that he needs to really come clean about what he wants to do as president you know and he has made you know he advocates tax cuts low regulation and magically the economy is going to get their closing of legal loopholes and everybody is now suspicious what are these loopholes who's going to get hurt if he's serious about this and it is the only chance he has left is to really be specific and show he has a plan and how it how it would work he's he's

he's tried to just be the man on the wedding cake stands there and looks good while president obama and clothes and that the economy is not yet enough people like obama enough haha but that strategy hasn't so really really get specific and then say that the heck with it and i'm really going to be who i am and see what happens with a lot of conservatives are surprised the lack of content and the campaign especially given that was paul ryan is vice president what does that tell you in england when when he made that selection everyone on the right claimed that that was a very bold choice and clearly was saying no the intention of the way he would seek the presence of the rumor that hasn't turned out now everywhere and the right to it was a bold choice anyone unless it will be as much as we all know medicare and everything needs to be reformed it's still all of that is still the third rio it's not not it hasn't shown any ability to win elections and so

they made this bold choice and then they back away from everything and ann romney says oh well when i'm president and it's the romney plan is that the ryan plan that the ryan plan is a lovely is widely respected when everybody associates with and so again i think it's just it's another symptom of a campaign that doesn't know what it wants to be and he's trying to be all things to all people and ed can't it can't do that mclaughlin group always ask it's panelist tonight vacation you know to make it on the presidential race the idea i think about is that when i'm tempted to say you know over three hundred electoral votes will happen though the senate senate is fascinating because i've certainly six weeks ago even a month ago the assumption was that the republicans will likely to gain control of the senate they're twenty three a democratically held seats

that only ten republicans the republicans only need four seats to gain control they would've gained control it two thousand ten if it weren't for a couple of tea party candidates who are really over the top and then that then hugo race by race and down massachusetts elizabeth warren scott brown scott brown was holding an edge over elizabeth warren democrats were thinking she was going to be able to take that kennedy seat back since romney romney's difficulties now brown seems to be losing virginia where tim kaine was in a dead heat with george allen run these problems coming to the fore suddenly opened up a lead potentially and then missouri todd akin i don't think i have to go into details but that turned to race them as almost certainly republicans into at least a fifty fifty shots were heard for democrats even in wisconsin and tammy baldwin an

openly gay female running against the former progressive governor tommy thompson she's now opened up a lead now these may be ephemeral but a lot of these were seats that time people didn't think it was any contest and not so i think now you have a name analysts in washington charlie cook and stu rothenberg each saying that fifty fifty but a number two on the side of the democrats holding on by a secretive and republicans will hold the house that's their conventional wisdom is that the democrats will win some seats narrow that margin but are unlikely unless a wave suddenly develops which usually doesn't happen this late in the game and so then you thank you have a president obama at the democratic narrowly held senate the republican house and like what we have today sets up my neck question of the president has been

very vocal about sign that he believes republicans in the house will and won't try work with om and bob woodward recent book made clear that john boehner was trying to work arrangement with the president and it didn't work out but do you see any hope that things will be better in the second term of the president says quote stever will break that if he is removed a somebody today and work to defeat that they will work with him i that may be overly optimistic and i think i'm actually working on a story along these lines and that is how'd this president's going to have to reorient himself and his white house to work differently with capitol hill and they did the first four years and if the republicans do not win the presidency in a race where if they should have when the economy this they agree with that many opportunities is going to be some infighting now some people at nsa

romney wasn't conservative enough but others they say we went too far with the tea party but whenever that opening is within the republican party is why the president has to exploit color divide and conquer he's got and he's going to move some republicans that they are while keeping his democrats together and he's got to get people in his white house know how to do that whether it's the schmoozing part of the legislating part and he's going to do more of that himself and now i think there's a recognition that he wants to get anything done in the problems are significantly he had some second term presidents coast along without dealing with congress anymore they just pay attention to the rest of the world but that the economic difficulties here is that we're going to face right into the election can't coast by them it's going to take some serious work of that i think this president is he is capable of making deals on entitlements wasn't letting

democrats are not below it showed that you could see that in the woodward book so i think he'll be ready to deal maybe they will if this law says this hearing as it looks like it and honestly gallup reported that this past week that sixty percent of americans have very little faith in the media anymore what would you think that is well i think the media is i think people are now looking to find a segment of the media that agrees with them and then they find that little home and then they think everybody else is not doing a good job and i think some of the more thoughtful journalism that was done by news magazines and newspapers it's still there but you have to have to get cancelled blogs and soundbites to get to it i dance so i think people are you feel an election just he said this and he said this in the back and for a minute think its disillusioning forever and they blame the messenger

so amy is going through a huge transformation obviously and it's a very reflexive medium now and that you know often it is rumors take hold and were not always entirely reliable as it turns out when the facts catch up with as it gets that's because it's also you know back in the day we weigh information they'd be time between news cycles not only reporters to think things through politicians could to now everything is instant reaction and now everybody's kind of looking to define the film the weak point of that politicians in i think i admire people go into politics it's a it's a it's a courageous things so you knew you can succeed at that you can also fail very publicly on a big stage and that i sympathize with him romney the other day when she was asked about all the

criticism that supposedly their republican friends were walking publicly and she cut off the question and she said enough of this as far as you know people to get in the rain and try so yeah we're aware where i am in a twenty four seven media environment and i in a race as intense as this and in a political climate is part of partisan as this its it's not pretty and i think everybody dozens of little regard among the american people you've been covering an observing president so closely what he said since president are really give your assessment of some of the presidents we had starting with president carter the ones that they didn't really think that he really admired him for what reason i admired jimmy carter and i still do and i think his presidency will look better over history the only lasting peace treaty between israel and egypt the panama

canal treaty which a number of senators lost their seats over that he happened to make that theory he also tried to get the energy situation in this country could on his cardigan sweater any luck the thermostats in the white house in when reagan people came and they unlike the thermostats remove the solar panels on the west wing serious flake and said i think president reagan said there is no more well under second base it at yankee stadium we don't have to worry so we must about their years in confronting our well addiction president reagan i admired the force of his personality i think in some ways he put the economy back despite believing in it and i would say those press conferences and i would sometimes watched him kind of struggle to remember what he was supposed to say and he was not allowed to say it and that even though i disagree with many of his policies i always felt a tug of affection for him as a human

being and i actually kept in touch with his wife nancy reagan over the years and greatly admired her and she was quite maligned it's the first lady that she was a force for good if you define good as i do by being pragmatic and be in the middle and not getting pulled too far in either direction i didn't know either of the bushes all that well bill clinton i did cover his campaign from the start and that i think about the two of them today bill and hillary clinton i can't think of another woman who has been in the sustained spotlight as long as hillary clinton when you think you know eight years as first lady then senator and then secretary of state and she's i think a potential candidate in two thousand sixteen and top clinton has achieved a

statements like status among republicans and democrats and i had to lay out a letter republicans look back quickly years now how wonderful it was real work together they can actually get that little impeachment but there's no one better than clinton that framing an argument he can take an anecdote and then a bunch of information and boil it all down and as he might put it you can put it down there with a goat skin dead and he really talks to ordinary people and if you talk to anybody who's teaching college today and i know you do that will tell you people remember the clinton years and they have no idea what all that personal stuff was about it took to this one college professor ethan and i really don't want to go there so anyway so quiet visit is a force of nature and i think it's astounding that the clintons

and president obama could come together and overcome whatever that they had feelings they were from those from the primary race and come together for the good of their their political party and for the good of the country and and when our president obama and hillary clinton received the bodies home in libya the other day how many of you saw television footage hillary spoke and then the president spoke in the wind presents that backed away from the podium hillary day she reached behind the podium and took his hand tears to my eyes that that that was very funny and if you were everybody out here is going to be watching the presidential election or for the next thirty plus days if you're telling them to regroup our authors are pundits or commentators they are really pay attention to other than eleanor and would you tell him to read in and

really come try make a point every day or couple days to come out to touch base with in terms of the writing her commentary i'm i like shields and brooks i'm kind of pbs and i think they're both good natured like and and mark shields david brooks and mark shields is a more traditional liberal david brooks is a conservative but really sees a gourd a picture and i think david brooks this column is always worth ian and i his comments about mitt romney after the forty seven percent tape a really quite devastating that's what i thought boy this is really taken blind eye and then in terms of commerce i like eugene robinson with her washington post skip around it's not like i'm wedded to any them and obviously watch msnbc and not

fox but sometimes i even feel like running from the room as you know like too much and i think chuck todd i like him he's a good year he just he loves a politics that is it doesn't matter what political happy winners because he's looking at the numbers and the trends in i think he's good and then i think the two prognosticators i mentioned earlier charlie cook and stu rothenberg they're both in a nonpartisan but surely comes from where the democratic side and still more republican side i mean i think they run downs are pretty dispassionate an invaluable the next my last question goes back to mclaughlin group thirty years ago it started out when he first appeared on that show could you ever imagine that showed still beyond when you know and now you know john was ruminating the other day about how retirement homes no interest for him and he said you know you

got to keep reminding gauged he said some people you know to get that from golf i never could get them from the catholic services will have that miniature golf so anyway as why is john keegan key doing it you know we'll keep showing up close the no question it that way though has only at the head one thing it's been so successful lasted so odd because he brings together and quick commentary from people who were not all reporters anymore but at the beginning we were all reporters who actually covered this stop and down he puts it together with people he turns into personalities i guess and he keeps it moving and he surprises he doesn't always come out we think he's

going to come out and i i think he's mellowed over the years and he admires the political arts and because of that even though he's nominally republican he's a real secret admirer of bill clinton brought obama because he thinks they think they do they do if they do well and he gets frustrated that there isn't anybody since ronald reagan on his side that can perform to that level he's not the only questions from the audience what do you see this coming for a rant oh when i flew here this morning there was a really interesting piece in the washington post alex with us a section and head out the headline was why if israel bombs on iran and they had the perspective from washington and tehran and tel aviv and the perspective from washington

was can we get him to pull the planes back and we shoot down the planes and by this is all kind of fictional in their device provide say no we can't shoot down the planes get netanyahu on the phone a netanyahu says you know i could wait any longer mr president point being they do not give the white house advance warning and then the white house goes into this huddle today that they can't disavow it so they say they respect israel's right to defend itself they don't exactly say they supported and then they wait a couple of days later that they didn't get advance warning but they monitor very carefully are the attacks successful ri in tehran and the air are out scenes with than a thousand people killed at one five years hospital stretchers going to hospitals it is satisfaction among our people

watching it that their main nuclear facility which is buried under a mountain is not touched the people rally and the responses more than ever we reconstitute this programme were not going to let them and this program and they retaliate with missiles and rockets into how israel in tel aviv the reaction is i will do anything as an existential threat even though the defense sector defense i believe as opposed to the attack once it's under way everybody is for it and we're here next to it they don't know how successful it is it can only set back their nuclear production for maybe even a period of months because the main facility was saved and they're

now going to be bracing for a tax and has the law so that we have these three reporter slash writers writing that they expect is going he carried out i mean i would i would strongly hope and the president certainly is conveying his wish to netanyahu that no attack take place and the sanctions are really hurting in tehran and you have to give those a chance to work and i think the president just wants to get this the election and he very publicly stood up to netanyahu couple of weeks ago and frankly i've never seen a foreign leader so openly you know advocated course of action in the middle of a presidential campaign so that's not telling you what's going to happen that it's giving some scenarios of what people are likely to expect that question to my friend and i both have this question for you last year the united states lost its aaa rating and

it was due to congressional intransigence this year we have a fiscal cliff that we are set to go off no matter who becomes president before the next inauguration and i'm wondering what you think is going to happen to that fiscal cliff and whether you think that there will be that we will pull back from the precipice of the fiscal cliff and i think that on the record prices not doing anything are greater are so great that congress will act i think if romney is elected likely they will use the word phrase kkk him until he's in office if it's obama i think he moves very quickly to try to put something together and he he wholesome high cards here the bush tax cuts do expire even have to sign anything they just go away they solve a lot of the problems and so he has that as a bargaining tool the socal seacrest

racial which is the quest of the word ah cuts was designed to be so painful that it would force action and you have the republicans in particular are really anxious about the fact that defense budget would be cut to the extent that it is so that maybe i am still a foolish optimist but i you know i think there is a deal to be made and i think the president reelected will run again is the one to make it a question here in this presidential election season both presidential campaigns are utilizing social media outlets to connect with their supporters what sort of impact you think this will have on young voters and both campaigns are communicating differently and ap your present obama really needs to get young voters added and they support him by a margin to one hour but they are notoriously fickle when it comes to turning out there turning their bid numbers were good in a way that is

the president often says on the campaign trail and not as sexy as it was four years ago you know we got a grind this out and that and so i and i think the way you read you reach people with social media i know it had democratic convention when the big can the can the big acceptance speech was canceled in that big stadium i'm the reason that the dam democrats were upset about that is that they really captured by these data in that stadium i mean that's the magic of these campaign rallies you get people to just put in their information and then you have them forever on your fundraising with and then i think he had the obama campaign has been very successful in and cultivating some small donors i mean they're there and that used to be the strength of the republicans actually that obama has has as one that's so you know this is how a lot of people communicate today especially young people so in campaigns have have learned

how to do it doesn't make the white house press corps all that happened they feel they feel like they're just props a lot of that get your question yes wonder what effect you think the voter id laws will have on the election and then which are his i have the voter id laws and if the polls bear out an obama really does win pretty handily then who cares least that would be the reaction to the moment but if we do go into a very close election we get into chance of hanging chads and all that i had the voters michael voter suppression laws new voter id laws because they really are i think over there they're looking for a problem that doesn't exist there maybe voter lists that are going to use the word fortunate though those those people don't vote and that you look at the govett kind of government id that is required older people younger people who are obese don't have quest

lighty get them they don't away birth certificate is you have to go and a place to get them and i think to its credit the obama campaign has not spent a lifetime so the whining about it instead they've been out there organizing like crazy killing people what kind of documents they be where they need to go to get them organizing transportation pennsylvania of course the only member of the legislature there when that id law went through said oh snap this will carry the state for romney i gave away the motivation but that's still in the courts in pennsylvania so it's still being challenged and you know i hope i hope it doesn't amount to much because you know we should be making voting easier in this country not not setting up more hurdles very questionable so if you will well i guess if it's theoretically

possible is in all those reds red states like everyone in wyoming gets out votes for you wertheim and really dries out there that the republicans though i guess that that might that might happen but i do see obama as having the engine the electoral college i think it's unlikely that question over here election coverage by the media to cover so on the pitch at the democratic convention and instead of all the size that actually stepped forward they were attracted to say a person who had not seen me for the campaign the actual convention believe that now does the other does raise the media roll to call out the people who allow actual lies to go out into the public well i think you know and satire an irony is always difficult

to pull off in the media i remember when the new yorker during the la campaign did a pitcher did a cover of michelle obama looking like a real radical and they got a lot of blowback from you know democrats think a new yorker report you're not so this does it and they put people would get but they were making fun of the way michelle obama was being portrayed as a radical when she was ironing i'm a mosque leaders of the national review understand that it's a publication from the right and that they were trying to make a point i wish that in the point they were trying to make is that virtually every speaker at the democratic national convention to talk about abortion rights to the point where some are female commentators who were normally sympathetic to the democrats and notably cokie roberts said on on this week going on that's the following sunday that she thought all the talk

about abortion was quote over the top in that thirty percent of democrats were pro life saw that wanted needed to to actually do a story and if you go to daily beast and google me an abortion probably find it and so i called the people but the convention together and hi geoff garin a poster said to me first of all the only people who watch the convention from beginning to end and are committed political junkies are people were paid to watch so if you want to get a point across yes you have to repeat it and he said i don't know what she means by over the top he said i didn't i didn't think the language to his stride but it was repeated over and over and he said that's because the republicans have gone so far to the right on reproductive rights issues with again todd akin being centerpiece but also the the debate in virginia about mandating transnational probes which

made it on to saturday night live as a joke and amy poehler said transnational sounds like an airline and so white it was lots of sudden it was like a room in the in the middle for democrats to talk about this issue more room than they had been in the past in this would say after you know twenty years of the bill clinton era rhetoric that abortion should be safe legal and re air and now the democrats felt comfortable to say safe and legal and so there was no political method to this and so that's what the national review is with with was getting out there will question about emanuel cleaver is stated that the civility in washington is damaging everything in congress and insulin what do you think you've been there for so long has it worse errors it just a ridiculous or what tradition now he said the incivility you know i think actually they're still pretty sale on the floor of congress

you know my my good friend from here in my good friend from there but the refusal to compromise at where you're compromised has been seen is seeing now is the dirty dirty word and that the tea party really took it to extremes at a year ago in the summer over the debt ceiling five and here we are here at the dole institute and i'm a sentimental was a master dealmaker mean that's what legislators do and suddenly it's considered the un american if you give it at all and so i think we are in a different place when it comes to how this is being treated on capitol hill and i guess i want to say it's going to take leadership leadership of both parties to find places where they could come together to face up to some really serious financial challenges you know beginning november seventh re election of time for a couple more questions anybody has won that one right here

he's the other that they let that jimmy carter and ronald reagan and we value at the bay on october third between romney and obama but what impact do you think will happen that voting public and i'm frightened what you think they're gorgeous will be october third is the first of three debates and it will be about domestic issues and ideas so the readership to readership the dealership will be very hot and so the stakes are enormous i think for both the candidates and it's ninety minutes the moderator will be jim lehrer whose done a number of these debates in fact he's got a book out about all the debates he's he's moderated and they have a ninety minutes divided into what the coalition pods and it will be all about domestic issues issues and the economy and so i think it's it's a very important is it's romney's best chance to transform his image from a likely

lose their into somebody who's more competitive and it's obama's chance to seal the deal it can do and it's a chance for viewers to really hear you know more of an extended discussion from these two men about what they would do if they're in the oval office for the next four years about the the economic challenges facing this country and the fact that an ant and the pain that a lot of people are and because of the weak economy it we have time for one more question right here the name joe biden has not been mentioned yet what is your assessment on him as vice president serve with obama and what's his impact on the campaign and future of the democratic party and obama ok actually did mention in connection with the real question because in this scenario and the post they have vice president biden very much they are saying we can shoot down the israeli planes get netanyahu on the phone i think he's been a good vice president he

relates to a segment of the population that obama does the least well within its kind of working class people then in particular line comes from that background in scranton pennsylvania i think biden probably entertains i thought so running for president president himself in four years because they say the only thing that curious about the wish to be president is embalming fluid but i i i know he's tried before and that he's really he's a good soldier he's been very loyal to this this president he i talked earlier about how obama's going to have to organize his white house to relate to capitol hill or differently in and biden to be helpful there ed and in the woodward book they will buy them on a whisper because he gets

and anyway so i'm not so i think you know there was a lot of talk all this year about how biden would be replaced with hilary that would've been seen as an act of desperation although i would love to be secretary of state to ensure his boundless energy he's just interested in everything i find to be an all around good guy and when he was in the senate he was one of the poorest members of the senate which i think speaks well for him to write it over like uber you've just heard eleanor clift political pundit for newsweek magazine and public television's the mclaughlin group clift spoke with bill lacy director of the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas on september twenty third two thousand twelve clift appeared at the dole institute as the monthly lecture on journalism and politics in doubt by betty muncie who was the owner publisher and editor of the doubts to the daily globe

this event was co sponsored by the k u school of journalism and mass communications audio of this event was provided by lawrence bush cliffs talk is just one of many events the dole institute has sponsored leading up to the two thousand twelve presidential election tomorrow evening monday october twenty nine at six thirty the lacey will host a panel discussion on the election at a k u edwards campus this event will feature political strategist cynthia weil er becca rahm steve glorioso and mike shanahan again this event is at a k u edwards campus located on quote error road in overland park back in lawrence the election two thousand twelve wednesday afternoon study group will meet at four o'clock october thirty first dole institute fall fellows nancy polite and steve hildebrand will be making their electoral book predictions again dad and then it's four o'clock wednesday afternoon october thirty first

and the dole institute's final election two thousand twelve event before election day at seven thirty thursday evening november first goal institute director bill lacy will discuss and forecast that presidential election jenny lacey for this event will be political strategist mark sump richard martin and david can sing her that event is seven thirty pm thursday november first the public is invited to all of these events and there's no charge for more information about these events and a complete list of all dole institute events visit their website debuted debbie debut that dole institute dot org well you're at the dole institute's web site you can read a statement from senator bob dole on the recent death of senator george mcgovern and senator arlen specter again that website is daddy daddy daddy you bob dole institute dot org kansas public radio's website is k pr that k u die edu there you can listen to many previous k pr

presents programs you can also sign up for our e newsletter access the k pr news archives and make a financial contribution again that's ok p r k u that e b u k macintyre if you have comments or suggestions about tonight's program i'd love to hear from you my email address is kate mcintyre educate you that the eu that hey mac i n t y r e e k u that the eu or leave your comment on kitty arts based kbr presented the production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas they

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