thumbnail of Elections '78: Prelude to '80; Prelude to '80
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<v Speaker>Election 78 wrap up. <v Speaker>This program is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. <v Speaker>Good evening, I'm Marilyn Berger. We've had a little over a week to consider the results <v Speaker>of the election, an election we said at the start of the series of programs would be one
<v Speaker>of the most unusual in America's history. <v Speaker>It's not with any special pleasure that we can report tonight that we were right. <v Speaker>We said voter apathy would mean the lowest turnout in any off year election since World <v Speaker>War Two. And it was we said regionalism would triumph over broader <v Speaker>national concerns. It did. <v Speaker>We said the candidates who looked to what the country could do for their constituents <v Speaker>would win over those who campaigned on what they could do for their country. <v Speaker>For the most part, they did. <v Speaker>With me again tonight to assess the meaning of the election, to analyze what it's told us <v Speaker>about where this nation is headed, are Kevin Phillips, author, political analyst and <v Speaker>former Republican strategist, and Ken Bodey, former Democratic strategist and <v Speaker>political editor of The New Republic magazine. <v Speaker>We'll look at who won, who lost. <v Speaker>And we'll try to rate the contenders in the next election. <v Speaker>The 1980 presidential election. <v Speaker>We'll also be retracing our steps around the country, talking directly with Rollan <v Speaker>post in California. John Callaway in Illinois.
<v Speaker>John Siegenthaler in Tennessee. <v Speaker>Ken Auletta in New York. And Carolyn Bato, who's just a few miles away from us <v Speaker>in her office at the Dallas Morning News. <v Speaker>But first, let's take a look at the statistics of this election. <v Speaker>In off year elections, the party out of power, that is the party not in the White House <v Speaker>usually picks up seats. <v Speaker>This year was no exception, but Republican gains were smaller than the out of <v Speaker>power party usually makes. <v Speaker>Look at the Senate. Here's a list showing the last six off year elections. <v Speaker>This year, Republicans picked up three seats, that's better than 1962 when they <v Speaker>lost two seats. That's when Democrat John F. <v Speaker>Kennedy was in the White House. <v Speaker>But it's a long way from the Democratic gains of 15 seats in 1958 <v Speaker>when Dwight Eisenhower held the White House for the Republicans. <v Speaker>Here are the numbers in the House for the last six off year elections. <v Speaker>The Republicans picked up 12 seats. <v Speaker>A poor showing compared to 1966 when they won 47 seats. <v Speaker>That's when Lyndon B. Johnson was president in 1974 during
<v Speaker>the Watergate scandals. The Democrats took 49 seats away from the Republicans. <v Speaker>Well, what are those figures mean to you, Kevin? <v Speaker>I don't think it's too good from the Republican standpoint. <v Speaker>In the House races, the Republicans fell well short of the estimates they made earlier in <v Speaker>the year when they thought the tax revolt would really help them. <v Speaker>A number of their pollsters and strategists are a little bit concerned about that, too. <v Speaker>But in the Senate races, they did pretty well. <v Speaker>Most people expected it would be more or less a wash and the Republicans wound up winning <v Speaker>three. I think perhaps the thing of note is that two races that went Republican, <v Speaker>which nobody expected, were the victory of new right. <v Speaker>Republicans in New Hampshire and in Iowa. <v Speaker>And in that sense, perhaps it's fair to say that the trend this year was more <v Speaker>conservative than Republican. <v Speaker>Probably the most important public policy issue that the new Senate will face will be the <v Speaker>Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. <v Speaker>And most observers agree that with the defeat of senators like Dick Clark of Iowa, <v Speaker>Haskell Hathaway MacIntire, the retirement of AB risk and the defeat of Andersen <v Speaker>of Minnesota, all of whom were regarded as important salt supporters, that will be
<v Speaker>a little tougher without those fellows on the cutting edge. <v Speaker>For guys in the center like Jim Sasser of Tennessee or Jim Exxon of Nebraska, <v Speaker>people who need a little room to make a decision. <v Speaker>It will also be important that Senator Brooke of Massachusetts, in case of New Jersey, <v Speaker>are both gone moderate Republicans who gave a stamp of bipartisanship to Jimmy Carter's <v Speaker>last foreign policy effort, the Panama Canal trees. <v Speaker>Well, do you think the conservative liberal split you spoke about is reflected <v Speaker>in the states, for example? I'd like to. <v Speaker>No, I don't think so. I think the statistics don't bear that out well. <v Speaker>But look, let's just look at who won, who lost in the states. <v Speaker>The Republicans also had modest gains in the states in the elections last week, <v Speaker>Republicans picked up six governorships, the most since 1966 when they won <v Speaker>eight statehouses from the Democrats. <v Speaker>But the Democrats hold the recent record. <v Speaker>Having picked up 10 governorships in the off year election of 1970. <v Speaker>In the state legislatures, Republicans picked up 275 seats, a <v Speaker>relatively small gain, especially when compared with the last off year election.
<v Speaker>When the Democrats took six hundred and sixty three seats away from the Republicans, <v Speaker>the Republicans had a poor showing only once before in these years in 1962, <v Speaker>when they gained just one hundred and fifty nine seats. <v Speaker>Doesn't look that good for the Republicans, does it? <v Speaker>Well, I think the big question is whether the Republicans have indeed made a recovery in <v Speaker>this election. I think everybody can agree that they more or less held their own. <v Speaker>But we debate the recovery question a little bit. <v Speaker>And I think it's interesting that a number of the conservatives are among those that are <v Speaker>saying there wasn't indeed very much of a recovery because they think that the <v Speaker>opportunity was so much greater in 1978 for conservatives <v Speaker>than they were able to succeed within the Republican framework. <v Speaker>This point was even made by the only announced Republican presidential candidates so far. <v Speaker>Congressman Philip Crane, who said that in essence, the Republicans blew it in 1978 <v Speaker>and they haven't made the bounce back that they need at the grassroots level or at the <v Speaker>congressional level. Now, I think this leads to a very significant question in the sense <v Speaker>we've had the conservative trend that's apparent in 1978.
<v Speaker>It's enlarged perhaps the number of conservatives and conservative sentiment in the <v Speaker>Democratic Party. It's made a number of Republicans feel and a number of conservatives <v Speaker>feel that perhaps the Republican Party can't really take advantage of this. <v Speaker>Now, I think it's because of that, it plays into a cocked hat. <v Speaker>And we see two developments on two sides that are interesting. <v Speaker>Kevin, I think that you look at the numbers historically and you can overstate the case. <v Speaker>It seems to me that the question for the Republican Party this year was one of survival <v Speaker>and that Bill Brock comes off the national chairman looking like one smart fellow. <v Speaker>He recognized that problem. He developed an outreach program, a base building program. <v Speaker>He focused at the state legislative level. <v Speaker>He gained back enough seats there to be sure that the Republicans have some handles <v Speaker>on the question of reapportionment after 1980. <v Speaker>Brock deserves a lot of credit. And what he's going to get is a kamikaze attack from the <v Speaker>new right. <v Speaker>I don't know whether it's gonna be a kamikaze attack because kamikazes die in the crash. <v Speaker>But I think he will be attacked. I think it's clear that's already happened. <v Speaker>Several of the new right people have called for his resignation.
<v Speaker>But I think the larger dimension of 1978, which is fascinating, did it lay the groundwork <v Speaker>for the Republicans to come back in 1980? <v Speaker>And here we have a longstanding pattern for a party to come back in a presidential <v Speaker>election. It has to lay groundwork in the off year elections. <v Speaker>It has to win a majority of governorships and come close in Congress. <v Speaker>The Republicans haven't laid that groundwork, but the withering of the Republican Party <v Speaker>has been arrested. Let's go back to the states for a minute. <v Speaker>Those of you who watched the part of the series that we did before the election may <v Speaker>remember that we went to five states to look at the issues and the candidates. <v Speaker>We were in California, Texas, Illinois, South Carolina and New York. <v Speaker>And tonight, we're going to go back to those states with the help of satellites and long <v Speaker>lines and. The other wonders of television to look at what happened. <v Speaker>You may recall that in Chicago we polled our audience to get a fix on national concerns. <v Speaker>John Calloway of station WTT W, who ran that poll, is back with <v Speaker>us tonight in a studio. <v Speaker>John, moderate Republicans won governorships all across the Midwest. <v Speaker>Your own governor in Illinois ran for reelection and won.
<v Speaker>But everyone knew that he was also running for the presidency. <v Speaker>How did his chances look from there? <v Speaker>Maryland, his chances look a little better. <v Speaker>He ran well, he got 60 percent of the vote, which was a little worse than he <v Speaker>did last time when he ran two years ago for the first time and got 65 percent of the <v Speaker>vote, 60 percent of the vote or six hundred thousand vote margin means <v Speaker>that he won by the biggest percentage for reelection of any governor in the <v Speaker>history of Illinois. So Republican Governor James Thompson is in good shape. <v Speaker>His major problem is that he hasn't been in elective office long enough. <v Speaker>And as he himself said after the election, when somebody asked him about the presidential <v Speaker>politics of 1980, he said that you've you've got to act like a president before <v Speaker>you can run for president. <v Speaker>And he said he's got to be in office longer. <v Speaker>How much longer, of course, is the question. <v Speaker>John, this is Kevin Phillips. If you look at Jim Thompson's victory, what room does <v Speaker>he leave for the other liberal Republican presidential candidates? <v Speaker>Are possible candidates Chuck Percy or John Anderson?
<v Speaker>Well, I think he leaves a great deal of room for other liberals. <v Speaker>I'm not sure about Percy, however, because Percy had <v Speaker>an uphill struggle. He was way behind in the last days of the election. <v Speaker>He finally turned it around in a very bitter contest with Alex Seath. <v Speaker>He got 54 percent of the vote in the end. <v Speaker>But most of the political observers here feel that Percy wasn't really in presidential <v Speaker>politics, frankly, before and that he definitely after this humbling <v Speaker>experience is not. <v Speaker>And as for John Anderson, the reports coming out of Washington, as you know, Phillip <v Speaker>Crane's going after John Anderson already in terms of his leadership position <v Speaker>in the Republican conference. So I think Thompson, compared <v Speaker>with either Percy or Anderson, looks pretty strong. <v Speaker>It's just that Thompson, except for holding down the taxes, isn't known <v Speaker>for anything except winning elections big. <v Speaker>Well, that's the great asset that Jim Thompson demonstrates electability. <v Speaker>And in being reelected, he demonstrated once again a great ability to draw above <v Speaker>the Republican base, to attract independents, to attract Democrats, to attract black
<v Speaker>voters to the Republican ticket. That's gonna be very important if Republicans consider <v Speaker>electability and a moderate or conservative here. <v Speaker>I'd like to ask one more question. <v Speaker>The Republicans did very well among Midwest governors who and winning eight of nine <v Speaker>governors that were up this time. This is the heartland of progressive Republicanism, <v Speaker>moderate Republicanism. Do you think that any one of these Republican governors, <v Speaker>Thompson, perhaps, maybe Bob Ray of Iowa, who is in his fifth term, or Milliken of <v Speaker>Michigan and is part of his fourth term now that any one of these fellows can persuade <v Speaker>all arrest to get behind them and make a go for it in a unified way? <v Speaker>I just don't see any move whatsoever in that direction so far. <v Speaker>I mean, it seems to me that people came out of so many Midwest governors, came out <v Speaker>simply lucky to be alive. And I think it's much too early to predict. <v Speaker>And there's nothing there's nothing here from Chicago or Illinois that indicates that <v Speaker>Thompson has made a move, for example, to try to get that kind of Midwest unity <v Speaker>behind him.
<v Speaker>How about Thompson's strategy? Most people believe that the best way for him to start is <v Speaker>to start at home in Illinois, which has an early and early primary state, but a couple of <v Speaker>months before Illinois or the Iowa caucuses, anything going on that you can see in terms <v Speaker>of movement for Thompson in the Iowa caucuses? <v Speaker>Absolutely nothing yet. It's there is just no indication yet that Thompson <v Speaker>has made that move. And I'm really convinced he hasn't made it yet. <v Speaker>I'm not convinced at all that that we're simply failing to report something that we don't <v Speaker>know. <v Speaker>Jeralyn, take a quick, very quick look at Minnesota. <v Speaker>That was an extraordinary election up there. <v Speaker>What's going to happen with the moderate Republican governor there, for example? <v Speaker>What's going to happen to the farmer Labor Party? <v Speaker>Well, I think what's going to happen to the Democratic Farmer Labor Party really is the <v Speaker>question, because this may have been a special situation in each instance in both <v Speaker>the two U.S. Senate races and in the governor's race, they lost. <v Speaker>They are in a serious and serious disarray up there. <v Speaker>And the question is, was this a one time only situation? <v Speaker>Where are they really in bad trouble?
<v Speaker>And I think the fact that the people who were in office were not elected to office. <v Speaker>Wyndal Anderson, when he was governor, really had himself self-appointed. <v Speaker>I talked to Walter Heller today, who's an old hand up there and in politics, and he said <v Speaker>he thinks that went extremely against the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. <v Speaker>And also there is the whole question of Robert Schwartz winning the <v Speaker>nomination and then the Democratic labor farmer, Labor Party simply <v Speaker>abandoning him. <v Speaker>Thanks very much, John. In our discussions earlier in the series, we saw California <v Speaker>as the future state because what happens there tends to suggest the direction the rest <v Speaker>of the nation will follow later. <v Speaker>Rowland Post of station KQED in San Francisco has a report on the California races <v Speaker>and what the results may move. From 1980. <v Speaker>The story from California was the reelection of Jerry Brown by the largest margin a <v Speaker>governor has ever won in this state is one point three million vote victory over <v Speaker>ever younger, easily top. The previous high set by Earl Warren in 1946 <v Speaker>and Ronald Reagan in 1966.
<v Speaker>As a result, talk of Governor Brown as a presidential candidate has increased. <v Speaker>But in spite of this enormous personal victory, two factors ought to be considered. <v Speaker>Polls taken on Election Day by both the Los Angeles Times and NBC <v Speaker>showed that only 18 percent of the Democrats who voted for Brown listed him as <v Speaker>their choice for president. The other problem for Brown is that the Republicans managed <v Speaker>to take over the lieutenant governor's position last week. <v Speaker>Democratic leaders here in California are going to be reluctant to support, if not <v Speaker>actually hostile to a Brown candidacy if it means turning over the statehouse <v Speaker>to the GOP. But none of these facts seem to deter the governor, who sounded <v Speaker>like a presidential candidate from the very moment he claimed victory. <v Speaker>Brown still sees the major issue of the day as Proposition 13 and has <v Speaker>declared his only interest in the coming year is to cut state government another 10 <v Speaker>percent and not raise any state taxes. <v Speaker>He obviously wants a record that shows he has one Democratic chief executive <v Speaker>who can also be the most fiscally conservative in the country.
<v Speaker>Fact, Brown said, quote, I think now the Democratic Party is ready <v Speaker>for a new historic mission, and that is to control inflation and control <v Speaker>government spending. Well, Paul Prioleau, the Republican leader in the California <v Speaker>legislature, said how far he can go without incurring the displeasure <v Speaker>of the liberals in his party. That's his decision. <v Speaker>But he has our support. <v Speaker>One interesting sidelight on Proposition 13. <v Speaker>Oregon's voters turned down their version of that initiative while at the same time <v Speaker>electing a conservative Republican as governor. <v Speaker>And two ballot issues of interest in California showed that while the voters here are <v Speaker>fiscally conservative, they're still socially liberal. <v Speaker>They overwhelmingly rejected an initiative prohibiting the employment of homosexuals in <v Speaker>the public schools. They also turned down the measure restricting where people could <v Speaker>smoke. <v Speaker>Well, it turned out in California pretty much the way Mervin Field told us it would, <v Speaker>didn't it? <v Speaker>Didn't they? I don't think that it's entirely clear that Governor Brown's presidential <v Speaker>aspirations were served by this big win, because not only is it true what Riley
<v Speaker>just said, that he has to turn the statehouse over to the Republican Party if he runs for <v Speaker>president every time he leaves the state, in fact. <v Speaker>But it's also true that there's a number, another number besides that one point three <v Speaker>million margin that Democratic Party professionals are going to be looking at. <v Speaker>And that's the even larger number of votes that separated Jerry Brown and his two running <v Speaker>mates, Yvonne Braithwaite, Burke and Mervin Timely, both of whom lost <v Speaker>and no party professional wants to see a candidate for president who simply has no <v Speaker>coattails whatsoever has to be in trouble. <v Speaker>Well, I think the real key with Jerry Brown is the man's ego is bound to have been fed by <v Speaker>this huge win. And if his ego is fed by that and he thinks he beat Jimmy Carter and the <v Speaker>bulk of the primaries, he opposed him in 1976. <v Speaker>Will he do it again? Will he make a stab at those early primaries? <v Speaker>And if he does, then even if he isn't too successful. <v Speaker>But if he were to beat Carter and wanted to, especially in the Northeast, where Brown can <v Speaker>appeal to his fellow Catholics, he can pave the way for Teddy Kennedy. <v Speaker>It's also how he decides to run rallies. <v Speaker>Assessment was very interesting in that regard because what he was suggesting is that
<v Speaker>he's going to run to the right this time. And if he runs to the right, he'll be running <v Speaker>straight at Jimmy Carter, straight at Jimmy Carter's constituencies, and he'll leave <v Speaker>plenty of room on the left for somebody else to run, which is what Kempinski, I guess, is <v Speaker>adoption of late adoption of Proposition 13 proved that he would do that. <v Speaker>Well, let's go to Texas when we were last in Texas. <v Speaker>We talked with Carolyn Bato, who's political editor of The Dallas Morning News. <v Speaker>We talked about the politics of energy and what it would mean for this election. <v Speaker>This is barters in her office for the postmortems. <v Speaker>Carolyn, to the results of the elections, suggest to you a widening of the rift between <v Speaker>the Sunbelt and the snowbelt. <v Speaker>Absolutely, Marilyn. I don't think there's any question about that. <v Speaker>Texas elected for the first time in one hundred four years, a Republican governor. <v Speaker>And this was Bill Clements. The cornerstone of the Clements campaign was energy. <v Speaker>He said repeatedly that he would not stand for the North-Eastern plundering <v Speaker>of our oil and gas. And he said he would turn off the valves, in effect, shut <v Speaker>down the pipelines rather than see federal authorities allocate Texas oil and gas to <v Speaker>other states without just compensation.
<v Speaker>He repeatedly called for the firing of energy secretary has lessened Jr.. <v Speaker>And he also said that he, as governor, would make his voice heard in <v Speaker>Washington. And I believe that he will on the Senate side. <v Speaker>Senator, Republican Senator John Tower, who won that election very closely, <v Speaker>also campaigned that he would be more of a Sunbelt senator than the <v Speaker>Democrat Bob Krueger, that he would go back up to Washington and fight those Crossville <v Speaker>senators. <v Speaker>Carolyn Clements, is not the governor a surprise? <v Speaker>John Powers want a third term. <v Speaker>Just who is the head Republican in Texas these days? <v Speaker>Well, I think Clements Babbitt, by virtue of his position as governor, should be probably <v Speaker>the titular head of the party, if not by virtue of his powers, his position, <v Speaker>by his sheer personality. <v Speaker>He's a very tough talking, tough acting person who does not <v Speaker>understand the meaning of the word impossible, which was shown by his election. <v Speaker>He came up from 33 points down in the polls earlier in the summer.
<v Speaker>I think that he might have to do a little elbowing, though, the little senator, to just <v Speaker>sort of shove him aside, because John Tower is used to being the Republican kingpin in <v Speaker>Texas. On the other hand, Tower might have been humbled enough by the closeness <v Speaker>of his own race to realize that indeed it was Clements, <v Speaker>his strength, that brought him across to another term in the U.S. <v Speaker>Senate. <v Speaker>Let's look at the presidential picture in Texas for a minute. <v Speaker>As we looked at last time, Texas has two Republican presidential candidates, George Bush <v Speaker>and John Connally. And then there's Ronald Reagan in the background. <v Speaker>Who was Bill Clements going to help? Who is he for? <v Speaker>And all of us. <v Speaker>I think that Clements will have to be torn in several directions with the bottom line <v Speaker>being that he will not take any overt position <v Speaker>in the presidential race. But he formerly served in the Ford administration as deputy <v Speaker>secretary of defense. Many of his top strategical advisers in this <v Speaker>campaign before people, on the other hand, the very guts of his <v Speaker>volunteer effort was provided by the Reaganites in the state.
<v Speaker>And with the popularity of Reagan in Texas, he would be very foolish <v Speaker>to come out against Ronald Reagan. <v Speaker>In addition, he has a rather laidback connection with John Connally. <v Speaker>Connelly had to have been instrumental in getting Clements to serve in 1972 as state <v Speaker>cochairman for the committee to reelect the President. <v Speaker>How about the other side of the picture, Carolyn? How about Jimmy Carter? <v Speaker>This election in Texas was at least a referendum on Jimmy Carter's energy policy. <v Speaker>How is he doing in Texas for 1980? <v Speaker>I think it was a referendum on Jimmy Carter as well. <v Speaker>That's what Bill Clements tried to to make it. <v Speaker>And I think that as of today, that Jimmy Carter. <v Speaker>Is not in very good shape in Texas at all. <v Speaker>It had to be a severe blow to the White House to not only lose the Democratic governor <v Speaker>shape in Texas for the first time in over a hundred years, but also to not win that <v Speaker>Senate seat where the Democrats thought they had one of their three best chances in the <v Speaker>nation to pick up a Senate seat. And the White House pulled out all the stops, it said. <v Speaker>Cabinet officials down here, the first lady, the vice president, all to help
<v Speaker>the Democrat Crigger campaign. And it just got them nowhere. <v Speaker>Thank you, Carla. We'll come back to you in a little while. <v Speaker>I want to turn to New York, where Ken Auletta, political columnist there, comes up with <v Speaker>a special twist on politics and pundits that even though he suggests we <v Speaker>may not know what we're talking about. Stay tuned. <v Speaker>We do. <v Speaker>From a journalist's point of view. This election was inconvenient. <v Speaker>Journalists like to pigeonhole things, to draw neat little boxes and segregate candidates <v Speaker>and results into each. <v Speaker>The taxpayers revolt is perfect. <v Speaker>So a box is labeled liberal and conservative. <v Speaker>Well, the so-called anti incumbent mood. <v Speaker>But this election, the citizens of the Northeast seemed to engage in a conspiracy to <v Speaker>confound our neat formulas. <v Speaker>Remember the anti incumbent post Watergate mood? <v Speaker>Well, the incumbent governors of New York, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island were <v Speaker>reelected. So we have a pro incumbent mood sorry, the incumbent <v Speaker>senators of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire were defeated. <v Speaker>The conservative tax revolt. Well, big tax cutters like Jeffrey Bell lost to Senator
<v Speaker>elect Bill Bradley in New Jersey. <v Speaker>Wasn't Massachusetts the only state to vote for George McGovern in 1972 <v Speaker>trending conservative? Yes and no. <v Speaker>They did elect Edward King, a conservative Democrat, over a moderate Republican for <v Speaker>governor. But no, they also elected Paul Zangas, a liberal Democrat, to <v Speaker>the U.S. Senate. Confused. <v Speaker>Take heart. You are no less baffled than most of us journalists. <v Speaker>The difference, of course, is that we're supposed to understand and explain patterns. <v Speaker>Even if there are none. So here goes first. <v Speaker>This election strengthened President Carter by demonstrating that the Democratic Party, <v Speaker>which stole the Republican Party's rhetoric, is not now the party of liberalism. <v Speaker>Teddy Kennedy's liberalism may excite George Meany or the A.D.A, but like hula hoops, <v Speaker>it's no longer in, which leads to a second conclusion. <v Speaker>The New Deal is dead to many voters. <v Speaker>Government is now the enemy. What replaces the New Deal is unclear. <v Speaker>Third, it is exceedingly difficult to tell the difference between a Democrat and a
<v Speaker>Republican in New York and Connecticut, for instance. <v Speaker>All the candidates for governor favor tax cuts. <v Speaker>Budget cuts. Encouraging private sector growth. <v Speaker>The trickle down economic theory, as was true elsewhere. <v Speaker>The differences were more personal than ideological. <v Speaker>And if the truth be told, we pundits, like most candidates, only sound <v Speaker>as if we know what we're doing. Wait till 1980. <v Speaker>What do you make of that one, Ken? <v Speaker>Well, there's one very sad statistic that comes out of the area that Ken Auletta reports <v Speaker>from the Northeast. And that is the with the defeat of Edbrooke. <v Speaker>There are no black members in United States Senate. <v Speaker>And it goes further than that, because if you look around the country, you find that the <v Speaker>highest elected statewide black official is at the level of control <v Speaker>or now in the country. And you have enormous talent among black political leaders and <v Speaker>growing talent. People like Maynard Jackson, mayor of Atlanta, Tom Bradley of Los <v Speaker>Angeles, for Dick Hatcher, for example, all of whom would aspire to statewide office, <v Speaker>none of whom believes he can make it at this point. <v Speaker>The catcher says, I'm afraid I'm a permanent mayor.
<v Speaker>That's very sad. Barbara Jordan probably retired from Congress in part <v Speaker>because she knew that would be very tough to make a statewide race here in Texas. <v Speaker>Parent Mitchell, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, a congresswoman from Baltimore, <v Speaker>and probably gonna be a congressman from Baltimore. <v Speaker>I think it's a rather sad reflection. <v Speaker>I'm going to get a word in edgewise there. <v Speaker>Oh, I think the Northeast is a political mess, more or less. <v Speaker>Like you said, you look back to 1970 to the one state to vote for George McGovern in <v Speaker>Massachusetts now has a conservative Democratic governor on the Republican side of the <v Speaker>Democratic Party, is now the Conservative Party, and they're virtually kaput. <v Speaker>What can you make of a region like that? <v Speaker>All right, let's leave it and then go to the south. <v Speaker>There were a number of elections in the south that are likely to influence the 1980 <v Speaker>presidential race. John Siegenthaler, publisher of the Nashville, Tennessee, <v Speaker>reports regularly for public television station WDTN, is in the studio in Nashville. <v Speaker>John Howard Baker, the minority leader in the Senate, had a tough race, but a <v Speaker>surprisingly easy victory. <v Speaker>Does this give him a real boost toward the presidency in 1980, in your view? <v Speaker>Well, Marilyn, I think Howard Baker himself has often, given the complex understatement,
<v Speaker>said it simply and best. He said it didn't hurt. <v Speaker>It was tough campaign. Jimmy Carter came down Tennessee to campaign for the Democratic <v Speaker>candidate running against Howard Baker and Anita Bryant. <v Speaker>And in TV commercials endorsing a baker's independent conservative opponent, <v Speaker>Labor tried to beat Baker. <v Speaker>But he won a substantial, safe, secure victory with <v Speaker>55 percent of the vote to 40 percent for Jane Esq and the Democrat. <v Speaker>It wasn't the stunning or startling Howard Baker never is. <v Speaker>He says now that he first must get reelected minority leader before he can decide about <v Speaker>whether he wants to make a presidential race. And he says he'll wait till next summer <v Speaker>before he decides about that, because that doesn't mean he won't be thinking a good deal <v Speaker>about. In the meantime, as a matter of fact, Maryland, he's thinking about it right now. <v Speaker>Well, nobody wants to be the front front runner at this time of the year anyway. <v Speaker>That's right. John is Minority Leader Howard Baker became the special nemesis of <v Speaker>organized labor. Not only did he beat them on their own special interest legislation,
<v Speaker>Common Situs, Picadilly and labor law reform, but also their entire electoral reform <v Speaker>program, instant voter registration, direct election of the president, public financing <v Speaker>of congressional elections. He was very effective as a minority leader. <v Speaker>It might be that Baker has effectively united a major sector of the Democratic Party, <v Speaker>which is a bit unhappy with Jimmy Carter behind Mr. Carter. <v Speaker>If Howard Baker is the nominee, what do you think? <v Speaker>Well, my impression of it, largely from talking to him about it, Ken, is that that <v Speaker>that he is going to make a move in the opposite direction. <v Speaker>He indicated to me that he knows he has a problem with organized <v Speaker>labor. He is looking for a broad base of support as he thinks about running <v Speaker>for the presidency. And I would suspect that he would move in that direction. <v Speaker>He said to me that he thought that he had to convince <v Speaker>organized labor in some way, that despite that opposition on labor reform and <v Speaker>those other measures that you've talked about, that he really has the working man and <v Speaker>woman. And he said the unions at heart.
<v Speaker>John, what you're suggesting is that Howard Baker figures that he doesn't have to move to <v Speaker>the right, that he'll move the other way. That's. <v Speaker>When you look at the results of the election where the independent conservative <v Speaker>candidate, Anderson, running on a Panama Canal platform drew five percent of the <v Speaker>vote and became a rallying point for some of the right wingers. <v Speaker>Doesn't that suggest that Howard Baker has a big problem with the right wing and is he <v Speaker>wise to write them off? <v Speaker>Well, I think he I think he does have a problem with 'em. <v Speaker>I suppose that he analyzes it and says that with people like Ronald <v Speaker>Reagan and Phil Crane and who knows who else preempting <v Speaker>that area of the spectrum, there is more room for him in the middle. <v Speaker>And as a matter of fact, he cleaves to the middle of the road as if the Holy Grail were <v Speaker>there. I think he's very comfortable with what he perceives to be a moderate position, <v Speaker>Kevin. <v Speaker>John, when John when Robert Kennedy was attorney general, you were part of his team <v Speaker>at the Justice Department. Let's look at Ted Kennedy in the region that we're talking <v Speaker>from now, the south. If Ted Kennedy makes a go at the president- the presidency in 1980,
<v Speaker>how will he do in the south? <v Speaker>Well, I'm. Let me try to be objective about it. <v Speaker>I would say. <v Speaker>Not as well as Carter, but perhaps I would say better than Jerry Brown <v Speaker>or any other Democrat that I can. That comes to mind. <v Speaker>John, thanks very much. Let's let's just go back to Chicago for a minute, because you <v Speaker>mentioned Phil Crane. <v Speaker>John Callaway, what do you think is going to happen to Phil Crane now? <v Speaker>Now that Jim Thompson had such a big win. <v Speaker>Well, it's interesting, Phil Crane, I think Marilyn is generally regarded in <v Speaker>Illinois. You should know, first of all, that he wins reelection big in his suburban <v Speaker>northwest area, Chicago suburban area. <v Speaker>But he is regarded by most of the political commentators that I <v Speaker>know as a national figure without any great following statewide <v Speaker>in Illinois. And so Governor Thompson is much more popular statewide than Crane <v Speaker>is and Crane spends an awful lot of time outside this state appealing to his
<v Speaker>constituency, which I think it's fair to say is considerably further to the right <v Speaker>than this profoundly middle of the road state of Illinois. <v Speaker>And he is still the only announced presidential candidate. <v Speaker>That's right. We're still waiting for Thompson to say whether or not his <v Speaker>his great victory here in the last election motivates him to want to move ahead <v Speaker>really into presidential politics. <v Speaker>And I don't think he's going to say for a while, John, a quick look at the Democratic <v Speaker>side, at the local level in Illinois. This time, the results prove that the Daley <v Speaker>political machine is still pretty much intact. <v Speaker>Look at Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy. <v Speaker>Which of these three do you think that machine would like to pull behind for a 1970, <v Speaker>1980 presidential contest? <v Speaker>I don't think there's any question that they'll stay with Carter. <v Speaker>If Carter gets things together and doesn't get in a heap of trouble and <v Speaker>I may disagree a little bit with Kevin Phillips on that, I don't think he's in as much <v Speaker>trouble as Kevin says he is. So I'd say they would go very much with Carter. <v Speaker>If Carter didn't run for some reason, I think Kennedy has always had because of the close
<v Speaker>attachment with Richard Daley and those around Daley, <v Speaker>Kennedy would be very, very attractive. I don't think Brown would be regarded in this <v Speaker>bread and butter state as a very attractive candidate at all. <v Speaker>Can we go back to Nashville for a minute, John Siegenthaler, this time? <v Speaker>Let's go back over President Carter's general position now in <v Speaker>the South. How would you judge it? <v Speaker>Well, I think that probably very good. <v Speaker>I think the South, like every other segment of the country, has <v Speaker>gone through that period of disaffection. <v Speaker>The romance ended. He had trouble getting problems through his programs, through <v Speaker>Congress. He had difficulties <v Speaker>with the leadership in Congress for a time. <v Speaker>No energy bill. I think the South reacted to that as much the rest of the country did. <v Speaker>Now, I think that Camp David behind him, some congressional wins behind him. <v Speaker>I think some of that supports coming back. Of course, he this was always his strongest
<v Speaker>region. I think it still is. I think he's strong right now in the south. <v Speaker>John, speaking of President Carter's situation in the south, one of his pivots has always <v Speaker>been will be the black vote. Howard Baker has always made a considerable bid for the <v Speaker>black vote. But yet if you look at the election statistics of his three races in 1966 <v Speaker>and 72 and 78, he's going downhill with the Blacks. <v Speaker>Does this hurt Baker? His loss with the Blacks? <v Speaker>I think he made a conscious effort to get a substantial black vote this time <v Speaker>six years ago. You remember George Wallace came in and campaigned against him and that <v Speaker>drove about 35 percent of the black votes to him this time. <v Speaker>He made a conscious effort with Francis Hooks, the wife of Benjamin Hooks, as <v Speaker>cochairman of his campaign. He made a conscious effort to get black votes, but <v Speaker>it was a very difficult thing for him. Congressman Harold Ford of Memphis, who is <v Speaker>black and who has literally control of that inner city vote <v Speaker>there in Memphis where most blacks in this state live. <v Speaker>He put on a big drive for the Democrats.
<v Speaker>And he cut substantially into Howard Baker's margin there, I think, <v Speaker>and and undercut Frances Hook's efforts in Howard's behalf. <v Speaker>It was a campaign in which Howard actively sought to get support from blacks. <v Speaker>But this time just couldn't cut it. <v Speaker>Thank you. I'd like to come back to Texas. <v Speaker>Carolyn can vote. He has a question for you, Carolyn. <v Speaker>For a long time, the Democratic Party of Texas has briefly made this <v Speaker>state a one party state from the statehouse level below. <v Speaker>That's meant that anybody who's wanted to do business with the state has pretty much had <v Speaker>to operate inside the Democratic Party, leaving the Republican Party pretty much in the <v Speaker>hands of the conservatives. Do you think now that Clements is the governor, that some of <v Speaker>these pragmatic Torri Democrats will move to the Republican Party, <v Speaker>making Texas a bit more of a two party state and perhaps giving both parties in Texas <v Speaker>a little bit more of a liberal tilt? <v Speaker>I don't know about giving a more of a liberal tilt at the not the Republican <v Speaker>Party. Maybe the Democratic Party might have more of a liberal tilt, as
<v Speaker>the conservatives are. The Tory Tory Democrats move out and vote for Republicans. <v Speaker>But I think that Texas certainly is looking more and more at <v Speaker>a two party state than it ever has before. <v Speaker>And part of the reason for this is that we have had a number of out-of-state has <v Speaker>come in. Seventy six thousand between 1970 and 1977. <v Speaker>Who, if they voted in this election, for example, could have made the difference. <v Speaker>Well, you know, Texas may have become something of a two party state, but across the <v Speaker>country, we've been seeing voters ignoring party lines. <v Speaker>Now, the labels, Democrat and Republican, mean much less than the words liberal and <v Speaker>conservative. And on both sides, there are people who are dissatisfied that the party is <v Speaker>no longer stand for anything. <v Speaker>On the liberal side, the machinists union is in the vanguard. <v Speaker>And on the conservative side, the new right is pushing controversial single issues <v Speaker>and abandoning party regularity. <v Speaker>Yesterday, Kevin Phillips spoke with Paul Weyrich, a spokesman for the new right <v Speaker>conservatives and director of the Committee for Survival of a Free Congress.
<v Speaker>Paul, what's the new ride trying to do? What are your goals? <v Speaker>Well, I think to put it simply, our goals are to elect conservatives <v Speaker>in a bipartisan context, both Republicans and Democrats, and defeat liberals. <v Speaker>And there is a difference. <v Speaker>Well, a lot of what you're doing can be described as populist or radical as opposed to <v Speaker>conservative, especially your attitudes against the Republican Party and institutions. <v Speaker>How do you react to that? <v Speaker>Well, right now, the Republican Party is rooted <v Speaker>in the big corporations. <v Speaker>The Republican Party is not representative of the middle class, nor is the Democratic <v Speaker>Party, which is rooted with the education welfare complex. <v Speaker>All we're trying to do is to give voice to the sentiments of the middle class, which <v Speaker>frankly reject big government and big business and big labor and <v Speaker>as much intensity. <v Speaker>It looks to me like the new right is moving away from the Republican Party. <v Speaker>Is that true?
<v Speaker>Well, the Republican Party doesn't acknowledge what the new right is doing. <v Speaker>When Bill Brock held his press conference on the day after the election, he never <v Speaker>mentioned the victories in Iowa and New Hampshire because, of course, these senators <v Speaker>aren't his cup of tea. <v Speaker>Frankly speaking, I think we are moving into the Democratic orbit more and more because <v Speaker>what we're interested in is a coalition which will govern America and this coalition <v Speaker>will be conservative regardless of political party. <v Speaker>Let me back up a minute. You said you're moving into the Democratic orbit more and more. <v Speaker>Are you backing a lot of Democrats? <v Speaker>Well, I would say fifteen of the new House members have new right <v Speaker>connections. I think you will find us into increasing <v Speaker>numbers of primaries for United States Senate and gubernatorial elections. <v Speaker>Certainly, the election of Mr. King in the state of Massachusetts <v Speaker>was a new right victory. <v Speaker>Bob Short speeding Fraser in the Democratic primary in Minnesota could be described as a <v Speaker>new right victory. <v Speaker>Let's look at 1980 for a minute.
<v Speaker>Is a new ride going to be active in the presidential campaign? <v Speaker>On the Democratic side? On the Republican side? <v Speaker>What are you gonna do? <v Speaker>I'm not sure what we can do on the Democratic side, although I wouldn't preclude backing <v Speaker>a Democratic candidate. <v Speaker>But on the Republican side, the one candidate which is show who is showing <v Speaker>interest in the new coalition and by a new coalition, I mean, the anti <v Speaker>bussing groups, the anti-gun control groups, the right to life groups <v Speaker>and so on is Congressman Phil Crane of Illinois. <v Speaker>He seems to be reaching out to this new coalition. <v Speaker>All the other Republican candidates don't seem to be interested. <v Speaker>The new right is not for Ronald Reagan. <v Speaker>I suppose there's division in the right of it in the ranks of <v Speaker>the new right on the question of Ronald Reagan. <v Speaker>Right now, it's a wait and see attitude at this point. <v Speaker>Reagan just doesn't seem to be interested in these groups. <v Speaker>Looking at this thing realistically, though, there's practically no chance that Phil <v Speaker>Crane can get the Republican nomination if the No right is confronted with a moderate <v Speaker>Republican nominee, Gerald Ford.
<v Speaker>Howard Baker, Jim Thompson and George Bush. <v Speaker>What do you do then? <v Speaker>I think we concentrate on the House and Senate elections. <v Speaker>I think we sit out the presidential election. <v Speaker>Well, if you set out the presidential election, isn't that the same as giving covert <v Speaker>support to Jimmy Carter? <v Speaker>Well, you know, there could be worse things. <v Speaker>Jimmy Carter's election was the greatest thing to help conservatives. <v Speaker>If President Ford had been reelected, he would have done essentially the same things <v Speaker>as Mr. Carter has done, including give away the Panama Canal. <v Speaker>There's only one difference, and that is we can get opposition to Carter's programs. <v Speaker>I think we'd have a great deal of difficulty if George Bush or somebody of <v Speaker>that ilk represent. <v Speaker>Ken Bodies' spoke with William Limpus, singer, president of the International Association <v Speaker>of Machinists, a union that once gave strong backing to candidate Jimmy Carter <v Speaker>but is now disillusioned with President Carter. <v Speaker>You said the machinists have written off Jimmy Carter for a second term. <v Speaker>This is the first time since Truman that a major union has broken so openly with a
<v Speaker>Democratic president. What do you intend to do to get a president that better reflects <v Speaker>the policies that you believe a Democratic administration ought to be following for this <v Speaker>country? <v Speaker>Well, I think first we'll go try to find a Democrat. <v Speaker>I've often said that Jimmy Carter is the best Republican president since Herbert Hoover, <v Speaker>and I believe that. And that's why we've severed our relationships and our support. <v Speaker>And we'll be actively looking for alternatives. <v Speaker>And we're keeping all of our options open over the course of the next two years, as a <v Speaker>matter of fact. <v Speaker>I think that if Jimmy Carter takes a couple of shellacking in the early <v Speaker>primaries, that that be the only alternative the party has to get a candidate <v Speaker>front and center that can win, because at that point, it would seem to be clear that <v Speaker>Carter cannot. And remember, it was a trade union movement of this country that <v Speaker>launched Jimmy Carter on his meteoric rise from obscurity to the front of the <v Speaker>presidential sweepstakes. And that same group can certainly turn that performance <v Speaker>around. <v Speaker>The right wing of the Republican Party has come to the view that the only way to make the
<v Speaker>Republican Party as conservative as they think it needs to be is to begin to knock off <v Speaker>Republicans who are too liberal. <v Speaker>Are you and other unions ready to begin to adopt the same strategy with the Democratic <v Speaker>Party? <v Speaker>I would certainly be the last one that whatever I object to that there's one tactic. <v Speaker>Again, we keep all of our options open. <v Speaker>I would go further and say that I have thought for a long time that the only institution <v Speaker>in our society that has the ability to crystallize or polarize <v Speaker>party views and get some differences created so that you do <v Speaker>the voter goes to the polls with an honest to God choice is between a liberal and a <v Speaker>conservative. Is for the trade union movement to do something akin to what you just <v Speaker>stated, to take positions based upon principle and even some injection <v Speaker>of pragmatism and pick out the issues and identify the candidates and opt for candidates <v Speaker>who are to the liberal side of the equation so that there is an honest to God choice. <v Speaker>Because given that kind of a choice, the American people don't make too many mistakes. <v Speaker>Our history is replete with those kinds of elections and where we get the kind of
<v Speaker>political scene we've had for a long while now, where he who successfully preamps the <v Speaker>center first gets elected. We have a headlong rush for the center. <v Speaker>The voter loses every time because it doesn't make any difference who wins. <v Speaker>I think we've got to get back to the old definitions and party labels and some <v Speaker>allegiance to principles, some allegiance to policies, some allegiance to a platform and <v Speaker>some allegiance to election promises. <v Speaker>If Jimmy Carter's only challenger in 1980 is Jerry Brown, in <v Speaker>your view, within the American labor movement? Pull behind Jerry Brown or fall into line <v Speaker>behind Jimmy Carter. <v Speaker>I am unable to say I would speak only for me. <v Speaker>Individual John Q. Citizen Bill with the schlager because our union has <v Speaker>a test to make a decision, obviously, and I can't make that along. <v Speaker>But for my part, I would back Jerry Brown to the hilt. <v Speaker>Given that scenario, I'm fairly confident I remember as well, too, by an overwhelming <v Speaker>majority, if in fact, not unanimously, if Jimmy Carter is the Democratic <v Speaker>nominee in 1980.
<v Speaker>Would you and the Machinist be prepared to back an independent candidate for president or <v Speaker>a third party candidate? <v Speaker>So neither one of the options that we're certainly keeping open. <v Speaker>I have not given up the notion that if the liberal element in this country, <v Speaker>which includes a big chunk of the American labor movement, can't begin to crystallize <v Speaker>political opinion in a more meaningful way than we've demonstrated in the past half dozen <v Speaker>years or so in the last eight years or maybe even twelve now. <v Speaker>And that's an option we certainly have to look at and make an honest assessment about it. <v Speaker>I wouldn't give up its potential for one minute. <v Speaker>A couple of other things. Marilyn and Kevin came out of my conversations with a woman <v Speaker>singer. One of them is that, in his view, probably Edward Kennedy be the strongest <v Speaker>candidate and the American labor movement today, particularly among the members of his <v Speaker>union. Also, as you remember, the machinists union was the union <v Speaker>that this year decided on a single issue litmus test for the 1978 elections. <v Speaker>They said that no candidate that backed President Carter's compromise <v Speaker>on gas deregulation would get their support in this election.
<v Speaker>Now, the outcome of that is that senators like Hathaway and Dick Clark of <v Speaker>Iowa and MacIntire of New Hampshire lost. <v Speaker>I asked Bill Clinton, singer, how he felt about that. <v Speaker>Would he do it over again if he felt that his support might have made a difference with <v Speaker>these fellows? He said, yes, he would. That it's time for the American labor movement to <v Speaker>begin to bite the bullet on issues like this. Was it that that did make the difference? <v Speaker>And I have my doubts. Judge, I doubt it in any one of the three cases. <v Speaker>I think it's quite clear that there were many other factors involved in each of these <v Speaker>three cases. But the point is that you've got the leader of a million member union <v Speaker>who is willing to be very, very tough on not just the direction that the parties are <v Speaker>taking now, but. The direction that the candidates are taking and the results of the kind <v Speaker>of mishmash of issues that we saw in this election, the important thing is what these <v Speaker>groups represent. <v Speaker>It's obvious that you have on both the left and the right, people that are out to make <v Speaker>trouble for the existing sort of centrist party system. <v Speaker>But I think it and measuring the new right. The Republican National Committee on a number <v Speaker>of centrist Republicans would say that they can't put much muscle where their mouth is. <v Speaker>They did not in 1976.
<v Speaker>But I think it's important to note Weirick in his interview stressed that they they <v Speaker>weren't setting aside the third party or independent candidacy option just as what <v Speaker>the singer did. And I think it's quite important these people mean business and in some <v Speaker>respects, they're not being taken sufficiently seriously by the party establishment. <v Speaker>Well, there's quite a difference between the two parties among Democrats. <v Speaker>They really believe that they can challenge an incumbent president, maybe dump him and <v Speaker>still win the election because the party is big. And that's right. <v Speaker>The party is big enough with Republicans. You know, it's a question in a two party system <v Speaker>or whether you're going to have a viable opposition party. <v Speaker>It's very important to note in this election that the Republicans just did hang on as the <v Speaker>opposition party. And if this time the radical right or the new right <v Speaker>decides to drift off on its own again, it may be that we don't have a solid opposition <v Speaker>party in this democracy. <v Speaker>Ken. Kevin, you've both been talking about the blurring party lines. <v Speaker>But these gentlemen have been staring down at the over my shoulder here do represent the <v Speaker>two parties and they bear the labels, Democrat or Republican. <v Speaker>And I'd like to run over these fellows and see how they are going to fare in the next two <v Speaker>years going toward the 1980 election.
<v Speaker>Can take the Democrats for us. Tell us which way they're going. <v Speaker>We'll start with President Carter for 1980. <v Speaker>It matters most how Jimmy Carter looks midsummer next year more than it matters how <v Speaker>he looks right now. By then, we'll know whether he's really gotten a handle on inflation, <v Speaker>whether it's next year's budget. It's going to be very hard on the core Democratic <v Speaker>constituencies or not. Still, he has time. <v Speaker>He has the initiatives, the presidential initiatives he can discombobulate. <v Speaker>His opposition used to be that an incumbent president really couldn't be denied <v Speaker>renomination if he wanted to. Too many primaries for that to happen again. <v Speaker>Now, he can't be challenged and probably will be challenged. <v Speaker>His main problem is that he's never really had a strong base in the Democratic Party and <v Speaker>he really hasn't built one pulls in his disparate estates as Iowa and New York in <v Speaker>September indicate that Democrats either didn't really want him to run again <v Speaker>or they wanted somebody to challenge him. <v Speaker>Still, he's the incumbent president, Maryland. <v Speaker>So I think you should put him on the top line all by himself and move Jerry Brown down. <v Speaker>Take away Jerry Brown. All right. Well, while he's in our hands, let's talk about Jerry <v Speaker>Brown. All right. We mentioned his coattail problems. <v Speaker>There's no doubt, I think that he wants to wants to run.
<v Speaker>His performance on Proposition 13 in California probably merits George <v Speaker>Muni's private assessment that he's the most talented politician in America today. <v Speaker>He's got a great capacity to get back in step with the electorate. <v Speaker>His big problem may be the enormous scrutiny that a presidential candidate has to has to <v Speaker>bear up under when he runs and whether his personal style is really in step <v Speaker>with what you might call a civic religion or the rest of the country or just or just <v Speaker>California. Still on his election night victory statement. <v Speaker>He said that he had no intention of running again for governor of California, hadn't <v Speaker>decided what he was going to do. To me, that means either Jimmy Carter should look out <v Speaker>for S.I., Hayakawa should look OK. And my choices, that is probably Jimmy Carter that <v Speaker>he's aiming. <v Speaker>And that's all right. <v Speaker>As a candidate, where do you place a second line and move back to Kennedy and Moynihan <v Speaker>off? All right. He's the first out of the blocks as a challenger. <v Speaker>You have to remember about Jerry Brown, though, is that even if he is not very plausible <v Speaker>as the Olivant nominee, he can play a tremendous role as he goes in the early primaries <v Speaker>and opens things up for Edward Kennedy.
<v Speaker>I think that's right. I've got Kennedy right in my hands. All right. <v Speaker>The conventional wisdom is that Ted Kennedy probably won't go first. <v Speaker>He probably won't be the first to challenge President Carter. <v Speaker>I think that's right. He's got the virtue that he can wait. <v Speaker>Time is on his side. He does have a very strong base in the Democratic Party. <v Speaker>A personal base in the party remains even after Camp David. <v Speaker>The first choice among Democrats is their nominee in 1980 with Kennedy. <v Speaker>Democrats believe they can dump Carter and still win in 1980. <v Speaker>And I think that's a virtue that Jerry Brown doesn't have. <v Speaker>So let's change our mind. Put Jerry Brown down to third place and Ted Kennedy on the <v Speaker>second shelf. <v Speaker>Let's think about what Teddy Kennedy, of course, as the 10th anniversary of <v Speaker>Chappaquiddick is coming up in 1979, while the people are going to look at that again. <v Speaker>So that could either help him or it could take him right off the floorboard. <v Speaker>Well, I know I have Brown. You want to put it right? <v Speaker>Put him on the third on a third shelf. And let's talk about Pat Moynihan, the senator <v Speaker>from New York. His strength is with the right wing of the Democratic Party, the <v Speaker>neoconservatives. They're small in number. <v Speaker>They brought us Scoop Jackson in 1976. <v Speaker>It didn't really work out too well. And I doubt that Moynihan would work out very well
<v Speaker>either. But people like George Meany prefer his foreign policy <v Speaker>kind of get tough with the Russians line on salt. <v Speaker>To Ted Kennedy's foreign policy. <v Speaker>Jimmy Carter's foreign policy and whatever Jerry Brown might have to offer. <v Speaker>Still, it's a small group of people. And if Jimmy Carter does, as many people expect <v Speaker>more. Right. He squeezes Pat Moynihan not just down to the bottom shelf, but perhaps even <v Speaker>off the board. <v Speaker>But you're going to put him on the bottom shot himself. Well, the same people who would <v Speaker>support Moynihan supported him. <v Speaker>Jackson. He didn't do very well. <v Speaker>Exactly, exactly. <v Speaker>So I think that's the way the Democrats shape up. You can't install anybody ahead of an <v Speaker>incumbent president at this point. <v Speaker>Ted Kennedy is very strong. Jerry Brown will be the first one to challenge him, probably. <v Speaker>And Pat Moynihan fortunes depend on what happens in the early primaries. <v Speaker>All right. Let's move over to the Republicans, Kevin. <v Speaker>Well, I think at this point, the danger of them having to do with a dozen is first take <v Speaker>out Gerry Ford and Ronald Reagan because they go on the top rank and the other <v Speaker>people can be moved down. <v Speaker>In the case of Gerald Ford, he's ahead in the polls.
<v Speaker>He typically runs about five to four ahead of Ronald Reagan among rank and file <v Speaker>Republicans. And these are all the polls that say this. <v Speaker>But most people, most professional Republican politicians don't believe that Ford is <v Speaker>going to run. They don't feel he wants to get back in the primaries. <v Speaker>And most of all, he's given a lot of signs that he won't be in the early primaries, <v Speaker>especially New Hampshire, where he seems to have lost most of his organization. <v Speaker>Go to George Bush. So I believe Ford up there because he runs so well in the polls and <v Speaker>rights as an ex-president. But I don't really think he's to be taken terribly seriously <v Speaker>as a nominee. Now, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan as the first choice of all <v Speaker>the Republican activists, and he's widely regarded as the front runner for that reason. <v Speaker>However, Ronald Reagan does have a few problems. <v Speaker>Ronald Reagan is going to be 69 in 1980. <v Speaker>I think most people think that's too old. A lot of people think that's too old. <v Speaker>The second problem he has, he's been getting a bit ecumenical with Republican liberals. <v Speaker>And this is heresy in the eyes of the right. <v Speaker>And they're unhappy with him. On a number of Republican conservatives, a new right <v Speaker>activists are beginning to rally around Congressman Phil Crane if Crane really
<v Speaker>gets in motion. Then Reagan could fall between the increasing <v Speaker>strength of Republican moderates and the increasing strength of the new right. <v Speaker>So I think Reagan could be vulnerable with all this talk of Reagan as a front runner. <v Speaker>It seems to me that what all of his Republican opponents are trying to do is drape the <v Speaker>mantle of Ed Muskie over the shoulders of Ronald Reagan. <v Speaker>And the Reaganites respond to that by saying yes. <v Speaker>But when Muskie stumbles, it demonstrated he had no base. <v Speaker>We have a base in the party and we spent the last two years cultivating that base with <v Speaker>newsletters, appearances, political columns, political commentaries on the radio and so <v Speaker>forth. <v Speaker>But you pick a card, any card where you've got the next six that we have to deal <v Speaker>with would be Howard Baker and John Connally and Phil <v Speaker>Crane. <v Speaker>I'm keeping up. Yeah. <v Speaker>And Jim Thompson. <v Speaker>George Bush. <v Speaker>And by Dortch six.
<v Speaker>All right. Here we go. Not Helms, not Helms. <v Speaker>Jesse Helms doesn't right up in that second row. <v Speaker>All right. I'll take all of these people, the one that you have to begin with as Howard <v Speaker>Baker, who ranks typically number three in the Republican national preference polls. <v Speaker>He's got a couple of problems, though. <v Speaker>He's antagonized the right wing over Panama. <v Speaker>They don't like him. They'd like to beat him. <v Speaker>He's also got to operate from his base as Senate minority leader. <v Speaker>And what we've seen there is that he has to compromise. <v Speaker>He has to do things that offend people. <v Speaker>And it makes you sort of think of Henry Clay, the great compromiser of the 19th century, <v Speaker>who couldn't make it from that base either. <v Speaker>But I think Baker has the right as a serious one among these six, Kevin. <v Speaker>His position as minority leader also is another problem for him, and that is because it <v Speaker>takes so much time to run for president these days. <v Speaker>It's now said that if you want to run, you should buy a jet plane now and not get off <v Speaker>except the drought, the dry cleaning out for two years. <v Speaker>You can't do that and be a leader of the opposition. <v Speaker>And let's not do it in part. Precisely right. <v Speaker>Well, you've got six equally on all the six aren't equal.
<v Speaker>I think you take George Bush now. George Bush seems to represent the <v Speaker>candidacy of the Ford people in the New Hampshire primary. <v Speaker>He's got most of the Ford organization. He could be strong in Iowa, too. <v Speaker>His family comes from Connecticut. So he'll stake his all, I think, on the early New <v Speaker>England primaries. And he's either got to do pretty well there or he's out. <v Speaker>But a lot of people think he may do well. So leave him up there in that second. <v Speaker>Right. John Connally has a lot of problems, starting with his image as a wheeler dealer, <v Speaker>a man who changed parties, his indictment. <v Speaker>But he's a very strong political personality. <v Speaker>He's a dynamic man. And he just got a boost when his associate Republican ally, <v Speaker>Bill Clements, was elected governor of Texas. <v Speaker>So I think that while Connally has a lot of difficulties, he also is the type <v Speaker>character that could come out, couldn't make a long haul. <v Speaker>I believe John Connally up there in the second. Right. <v Speaker>Kevin, John kindly represents two things, big business and Watergate. <v Speaker>Those are the two things that seem to be dragging the Republicans down with the people. <v Speaker>I think if the Republicans want to nominate a winner, they should drop John Conley down
<v Speaker>to the bottom. <v Speaker>Again, one of our earlier programs, Reagan, said that he would have won in the last <v Speaker>election if he didn't have the Watergate tag, if he had been nominated. <v Speaker>As a matter of fact, as a man who didn't always work right and Ford was drawn down by <v Speaker>Watergate only by having been. <v Speaker>Well, speaking of heavy handed imagery, I think another fellow on the second, Ryan, who <v Speaker>has to be put there but suffers from it, is Bob Dole on the surface. <v Speaker>Bob Dole ought to have an awful lot going for him. <v Speaker>He's sort of midway between the Ford people and the Reagan people. <v Speaker>He's a moderate conservative. He comes from the Middle West, which is probably the <v Speaker>Republican pivot. But I think people, when they think of Bob Dole, think of his more <v Speaker>abrasive side. And they remember that a very unfortunate vice presidential debate in 1976 <v Speaker>with Walter Mondale. So I leave Dole there. <v Speaker>But I think Bob Dole is a guy that could very easily drop from the second rank into the <v Speaker>third unless he shows a little bit more of a statesman like quality. <v Speaker>Now, as for the others out there, Jim Thompson of Illinois winning such a strong <v Speaker>gubernatorial reelection victory this year, he has to be up there, <v Speaker>even though the moderate Republican governors rarely get their act together.
<v Speaker>Thompson has been taken seriously as a presidential candidate. <v Speaker>He has to be there. I kind of suspect he'll wait and maybe he's more interested in 1984. <v Speaker>I want to leave Crane there, too. <v Speaker>How about these other four, Phil Crane we take down, I think, to the third rank because <v Speaker>he doesn't have a chance at the nomination, but he can play a very, very important role <v Speaker>in the Republican sweepstakes if he becomes the rallying point for the new right. <v Speaker>And if they do well enough in the early primaries that they helped knock Ronald Reagan <v Speaker>off. And I think a lot of them would like to do that. And that could be Crane's role. <v Speaker>Now, as far as these others, the other four Republicans take Jesse Helms and <v Speaker>put him down on row four because Jesse Helms is essentially the one of the <v Speaker>candidates. Richard Viguerie new right fundraising operation. <v Speaker>He doesn't have a prayer of nomination. He's just somebody who could influence the race. <v Speaker>Jack Kemp, I think, lost some ground because Kemp Roth didn't score well in <v Speaker>the 1978 elections, his tax program and his protege, Jeff Bell, lost <v Speaker>in New Jersey. So I'd take Jack Kemp and I'd put him down in row four to Chuck Percy. <v Speaker>I think Chuck Percy did poorly enough in the Senate race that we can put him down in row
<v Speaker>four or we can almost drop him off the presidential picture. <v Speaker>And the same goes for his fellow liberal Republican from Illinois, John Anderson, because <v Speaker>John Anderson, I wouldn't take him off, but he's gonna be so overshadowed by Jim <v Speaker>Thompson in Illinois. But it's hard for me to see how John Anderson can get in <v Speaker>motion presidentially. I'm going to take him with me. <v Speaker>What are the issues you think people ought to be looking for during the next two years as <v Speaker>we move toward 1980? <v Speaker>I think in terms of issues, the real things to watch for inflation and cynicism, because <v Speaker>together that's a very volatile and explosive combination. <v Speaker>I think among the Democrats, the most interesting three characters are going to be Jerry <v Speaker>Brown with this time. Can't start late, as he did in 1976. <v Speaker>He's got to start early. He's got to decide who he is and which side of Jimmy Carter he's <v Speaker>going to run. Ted Kennedy, no Sherman like statement from Ted Kennedy this time, as he <v Speaker>did in 1974 when he took himself out unequivocally. <v Speaker>This time, his political future could be very much clouded by Jerry Brown for Jimmy <v Speaker>Carter. You run for president best by being president. <v Speaker>President Carter knows that. And he'll campaign from the White House.
<v Speaker>Well, let's not forget that Carter is going to have a lot of opportunities. <v Speaker>He's go- he wants to have a summit with version of if he gets his sole treaty, he'll have <v Speaker>it. Maybe he'll find a way to have it. Without that, he may want to go to China, as Nixon <v Speaker>did. There are lots of possibilities. <v Speaker>Any dark horses that you would like to give us a hint about on either <v Speaker>side? Possibility. <v Speaker>Anything we haven't talked about? <v Speaker>Possibility in Iowa. Governor Robert Ray, if he decides to run Republican, decides <v Speaker>to run in the Iowa caucuses and did very well and somehow showed Spark in other early <v Speaker>primaries, he could be a moderate Republican rallying point, not on the Democratic <v Speaker>side. <v Speaker>I think we've got him on the board and I think we've got him in the right order. <v Speaker>We're not going to have to remind you that that you forgot someone. <v Speaker>I invite you to do it. All right. <v Speaker>Well, that just about wraps it up for elections 1978. <v Speaker>We said it would be an unprecedented election. <v Speaker>And for us at least, it was an unprecedented series of programs. <v Speaker>I hope Kevin Phillips and Ken Bodey will agree with me that it was for all of us an <v Speaker>education in the politics of America. <v Speaker>We hope it was for you. And we hope that in the next two years, as you watch the
<v Speaker>candidates declare and the issues develop, you'll be able to say you heard some of <v Speaker>it here first. <v Speaker>I'm Marilyn Berger. Have a good evening. <v Speaker>This program was produced by KERA-TV, which is solely responsible for its content
<v Speaker>and was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Series
Elections '78: Prelude to '80
Episode
Prelude to '80
Producing Organization
KERA
Contributing Organization
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip-526-6h4cn7009p
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Description
Episode Description
This is a portion of the one-hour analysis special. The host goes over the statistics of these elections and how they compared to other off-year elections, and the panel discusses these statistics and what they mean. They also discuss the state elections, giving statistics of the governors and state legislators elected, and they talk about the impact these elections might have on the 1980 presidential election. The program goes back to the states they covered before the election, and correspondents from those states weigh in on the elections and what they mean for the 1980 presidential race. First they check in on Illinois, then California, and Texas. After that, this portion of the program ends, and the rest is not included.
Series Description
"'Elections '78: Prelude to '80' was an unprecedented off-year election series on PBS designed to help the American voter better understand how the issues and candidates involved in the November, 1978 elections would [affect] the 1980 presidential election. The seven-part series was comprised of five 30-minute regional specials (aired nightly Oct. 30-Nov. 3, 1978), a one-hour wrap-up (Nov. 5) and a one-hour post-election analysis (Nov. 15). The series marked the first cooperative venture among several stations within the PBS system. Each regional show originated via satellite from a different station and focused on the key issues and candidates in that state or region. In addition, two polls were commissioned prior to the series for background material. A trio of political specialists with contrasting points of view -- Marilyn Berger (former NBC White House correspondent), Kevin Phillips (syndicated political columnist and author) and Ken Bode (political editor of The New Republic) -- served as correspondents for the series. "Two programs representative of the series are submitted. The half-hour special from the South Carolina Educational Television network focuses on the key U.S. Senate races in the South as well as the proposed labor law reform and right-to-work bills. In the one-hour analysis program, produced by KERA in Dallas, the outcome of key issues and personalities detailed in the early part of the series is presented, along with political projections for the next two years prior to the 1980 presidential election."--1978 Peabody Awards entry form.
Broadcast Date
1978
Asset type
Episode
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
01:00:48.682
Embed Code
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Credits
Host: Berger, Marilyn
Panelist: Bode, Ken
Panelist: Phillips, Kevin
Producer: Cherkezian, Nazaret
Producing Organization: KERA
AAPB Contributor Holdings
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia
Identifier: cpb-aacip-90855d6b8a9 (Filename)
Format: U-matic
Duration: 0:20:44
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Citations
Chicago: “Elections '78: Prelude to '80; Prelude to '80,” 1978, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-6h4cn7009p.
MLA: “Elections '78: Prelude to '80; Prelude to '80.” 1978. The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-6h4cn7009p>.
APA: Elections '78: Prelude to '80; Prelude to '80. Boston, MA: The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-6h4cn7009p