An hour with Scott Horsley

as national public radio's white house correspondent scott horsley has a front seat to the issues and politics that confront the president every day i'm j mcintyre and today on k pr presents you'll have a front seat to an hour with scott horsley and bill lacy director of the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas worsley was invited to pay you as part of kansas public radio's sixtieth anniversary celebration useful physical institute on march twelve two thousand thirty goal is to old great that here tonight thank you great to be here a great to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary restoration here yup that's awesome tom let's start with their talk a little bit about what it means to be able come out to kansas for the sixtieth birthday of one of the local affiliates or course we spent a lot of time here in kansas during the campaign baskerville your territory now that that was a real strings i think of the national public radio is that we try to be

national public radio ad bedrock strength of that is our partnership with member stations or whether it's right here in kansas or just a big state at random ohio and florida iowa and jam but what we always rely on on our member stations to do to kind of be our eyes and ears or the country where some of the big television networks and you don't have a big presence and since i came up through that system as is damon tonight i started out working for commercial radio stations but it i gravitated the public radio system and i work for our member station in tampa and now california has had the privilege in him both of those areas are contributing to our national news magazines now whenever i hear reports from somewhere outside washington i'm glad i work for inflation that has that kind of roots all over the country that harbored us work out where my colleagues used to tell the story of the early

days of public radio going up to alaska and taking a bush plane into some remote village and a landing on skis and getting out of play it on a plane and i'm going up to one vote for leaders in the village in interviews himself and saying i'm howard curtis i'm from national public radio and then getting re begin his usual spiel when he would get to explain what national public radio was so who might not be familiar with that he says that the head then the village that looks over shoulder of the airplanes susan stamberg at i believe we have long had a wide region and we have that we have an important place in communities like mike morrison and all over the country great let's start by going back to mosul but about us or your early years your education how he got interested in journalism looked at our swap in store and i got i came up the traditional route which was i was a radio station rap you know i would think is a high school

kid i was a little bit of a ham and i was interested in being on the radio and jamison i started my professional career at morning edition what that means is it i asked that he believes are working for morning edition by the new radio for a long time before that on a monthly basis and there were when i was in high school there were some some commercial stations in denver that got the crazy idea putting young people on the radio that one was i could be in a day and evening talk show is like a regular call in show today to be hosted by some public teenagers and i addition for that didn't get the job but around the same time in a rival radio station start up a newsmagazine hosted by teenagers that erica great hour five am on sunday morning sky and what are the lessons of radio is the producing a newsmagazine is much more labor intensive than producing a talk show so they need a lot more people they couldn't be a select well i got that gig and even at five am on sunday mornings i would

friends and my boy scout troop would so i heard you were going hunting or you know my neighbor would say oh i have my insomnia was acting up when i heard you know so that was a russian it i enjoyed it in so i went to college i want you're the college radio station and never thinking i would make a career of this because i couldn't make a career radio was an honest you do it thinking one they'll have to go get a real job and luckily twenty three years later i'm going to get a real job that sounds familiar path to talk about how you landed and npr you are doing no account of business be diverse and then how that because this is the one hundred best and how that transitioned into covering presidential camp yeah i don't exactly know the lockout a way out a restaurant i don't answer that question but when i was still in high school in denver i had an after school

job working for a bookstore but some young men of tattered cover bookstore it's kind of a famous bookstore in denver and i was a shipping clerk i would package up books to send the people in florence or anywhere in the country you might have chosen order from the air cover and that was the first time i had ever heard this thing called national public radio in the shipping office of the bookstore we always had a radio and the women that worked there would always be listening to all things considered in the afternoon which was partly just to pass the tedium of unwrapping books and wrapping them up and shipping them off and stuff but also it was strategic because every time there would be an author or book mentioned on all things considered you could be sure that within a few hours or a few days you'll be coming in the bookstore asking for that book and often they would've been busy doing something i didn't catch the name of the book but it was about a cottage in the wilderness or whatever so the women or to the backroom had instructions to write down the name and author of

any book that was mentioned in course in those days you didn't have the internet's you couldn't go back in retreat the story of the misfits of this as a sort of a marketing advantage for us and i discovered this thing called public radio so when i was interested in finding an internship i were brazenly rode off to washington dc and said do you have any openings for a summer intern and there again in that chuck bailey who was running a newsroom in those days set out that will require an idiot chance that we didn't they didn't have really a formal internship program in those days like we do now but i got to come in just observe how they did morning edition was fascinated by and that was kind of my first thinking that maybe this is something that could be more than just a high school passed on and i i was always sort of unrest in business and i i i was a general assignment reporter but i'd always be the one who would take the business to sign up that nobody else wanted were reporters don't like math and the likely thing as numbers and and so that was a not

so much of it was that i was critically good it was just no one else was there the competition is there was an easy leap to play an uneasy bracket and and so i became a business reporter and as i thought of rose instances afternoon in two thousand three the governor vermont was getting a lot of press for this kind of upstart presidential campaign did that involved a lot of internet he was he was getting a lot of support on the by the internet which was at that time still a fairly novel political organizing tool and i just dashed off a note to what i had are saying this reminds me this book i read about father khosla in the thirties who had a huge radio audience but was never really able to translate it into active political support it even though he had millions of hours on the radio because listen the radio just isn't the same as really old shoe

leather political organizing and said you know i don't also parallels exactly maybe this internet organizing isn't really going to be sticking power either in an analyst howard they might turn out to be a flat panels will say and you know when your political reporters look at that and this is a lesson don't ever write a memo like that unless you are prepared to have the editor say i was to look at that so i was i began covering that whoever buys thought was gonna be the democratic nominee in the two thousand for election which is howard dean course he wasn't even before the iowa's screen he had yet begun the state and the senator who everyone had written off john kerry wins the iowa caucuses wins an answer primary sweeps the weight runs the table because the nominee and another so they want to follow john care of rusty or so one of them and i went back to being a business reporter had my back my regular day job covered the hockey strike stuff like that ended

four years later they say hey this another new england governor looks like he's going to be the republican nominee for president you a story about mitt romney so i spent six months reading mitt romney's first book i didn't know what it was of course he didn't turn out to be the nominee that time and instead a senator who everyone had written last john mccain comes out of nowhere who performs well in ford's better than expected it is early on and then goes to run the table on super tuesday becomes the nominee and i wanna covering john mccain so on the strength of that they still doesn't come back in from the white house which i did for the first term and the question then was they can have me cover obama's reelection campaign or they don't have to cover the republican challenger because by this

time the horse the curse is pretty well established as i've covered howard dean john kerry run the incarnation one and john mccain not to monitor the white house so the bosses it endures it would have you cover obama would have your colleague ari shapiro cover the republican challenger and i thought oh that's it for obama and it's a testament to his skill as a campaigner has cracked that if you whether the horse that person forget a percent unemployment he managed to win reelection even with the us team talk a little bit about those of three individuals in their campaigns it you spent so much time with just some observations what were they like to be around how well organize were the campaigns he added to the campaign toward media those kinds of things well john kerry's campaign you know had come back from the grave that he had

he had literally mortgaged his house in order to keep body and soul together so he did not have a big campaign apparatus when he we won iowa new hampshire pretty quickly the the democrat the democratic establishment rallied around him and he he had a he had all amid all the kennedy machinery in and his own senate experience and so forth so he had a pre professional campaign and some of the old clinton ban came back together and helped out he was on the he was a but reasonably effective campaigner but i also would have the experience of going into a union hall or of airplane hangar where the loud springsteen music was blasting out and everyone was really excited and then senator kerry would get up to start to speak and finally arun and with

with john mccain he was really given up for data mean he was loving his own suit bag on southwest up to new hampshire to campaign he was really operating on a shoestring and even after he started the show oh renewed life it wasn't as if the whole republican establishment rallied around him he was on a shoestring right through super tuesday but of course his strengths was he loved talking to reporters and reporters loved doctor naomi it was he was the uncaring is as gardeners kerry was that's open john mccain was of course i had been how he'd almost sees the brass ring in two thousand and he's got a dry and it had that happen again and in two thousand seventy thousand eight and that i ran a cross country flight onetime from somewhere on the east coast out to california they had to press conferences during the course of white press conference answer all of our questions the candidate went back to the front the plane we'll start running your stories we fly for another hour to guns but

questions does it work so he was no access to the point of toxicity which was which was which was right but also a little bit painful diseases that were gonna write my story you know would you go sit down stop talking and let me write my story and finally in this or the summer of the way there as as he's the nominee now as steve schmidt that the kai watch on that's at center you can't you can't just roam around in this winnebago with the reporters in the back you know you look like grandpa in the captain's chair and you know some reporter asked to buy agra question in that wood torpedo whatever the message of the day was and so suddenly try to turn the mccain campaign this very button down traditional presidential campaign and taxes were out the window and then surveilling arrived and all of that all the sudden that

the rallies got enormously lively i mean so that was a i was an amazing phenomenon that the early days the surveillance act because mccain's rallies were never real boisterous until till should show and then covering obama was you know a cover rock star it was not the same as governor in two thousand made it as the little the time with obama and his in his first go around that was really like a rock star you know there was a little of the roses and this in his reelection bid it was it was it was like i'll be a roadie with the rolling stones or something and the the rallies were always boisterous an exciting the carrot was rarely accessible week we rarely saw a candidate it was a very controlled very tightly orchestrated campaign but very professional their profession people want people are wary feel that traveling around with the president all times roll glamorous role that

covering campaigns a real grind it yes it definitely has it sounds as as long long days and nights a travel all the lasso with obama than it had been in my earlier campaigns in an earlier two campaigns those designating else to do so they would just campaign for weeks at a time especially john kerry campaign nonstop from january through november of of two thousand for john mccain once he locked up the nomination took some time off but there in the end he was campaigning nonstop for the obama still had to go home to be president part time at least and also mitt romney didn't campaign that much this time around so that it was not as intense but it was it because it's a it's a grind has a lot of trials what i wasn't home and in the inside the endgame that's ok because you are the stories you're you know you're on the news every night every morning and if you're

going to work hard it's ok if you're on the radio all the time that really tough times when you're staying long time away from home working hard in people and nobody was paying attention what job on principle differences from our coverage on tv from your job in covering a primary vs joe action well you know early on when you're covering a primary you're really do have shoppers when you when you go to a town hall meeting you really talk to people who work for making up their minds and you can end and they're they're literally still undecided voters in the later writing about a later primary that's less true but certainly the timing of the general election you know that a lot of shoppers and we saw this with this is reflected the polling that is also reflected in my experience in talking to be born into it if we had ended the campaign

six months before we did i'm not sure the result would have been dramatically different i don't know very little change their mind in the last last six months the campaign event even after the denver debate when that when there is a that the previous swing in the polls what about the boys said after the fact in an you take it to the grave assault i suppose but i think it's not entirely self serving the people who tilt away that they're convinced that the people that tilted away from the nafta first the denver debate were never really in their camp to start with that they didn't lose their sour supporters after denver the people they lost with amy that floaters who were really turned off by romney's forty seven percent remark or something that i can about artificial high after their own convention of the democratic convention and they lost those people but i went back to to where they thought they'd be all so but undercover in the general election

electorate minds are largely made up and it takes a real would take something like the forty seven percent or the denver debate even move the neil just a little bit whereas early on you know these are large user officer unknown quantities to a lot of voters and their they're discovering them as you are and when you tell stories about the candidates people or oh that's interesting i didn't know that i i did know that you know john mccain decides and spending all that time the other the camp also commanded this squadron for a time what what can that tell us about his leadership abilities or you know i did know that obama had worked they are in the financial world for a little while so you can steer started telling new things to people in a campaign strategy manipulate correspondents and reporters in the current air campaign more fairly more and i was fairly gina was a fantasy world

but the us military says week we try to avoid a fair fight which ratified on our terms that's what that's what campaigns try to do it's manipulative maybe sounds more more sleazy that is but every day the campaign goes on a show and only minutes of fiction but it's a show it's a it's a it's a demonstration of some mass as they wanna get across and we can cover that message we can cover that message and provide some context or we can ignore that message altogether uncover something completely can be the fiat historians that whatever john mccain won but every day they they put on a show and the better they are putting on a show you're finding a show that's compelling telling a story thats that's newsworthy the more successful they are projecting their message in a controlling the controlling the message but of

course even the best campaign gives curve balls thrown out you know a candidate himself goes off message which romney did frequently but obama didn't do occasionally the private sector's doing fine writer without it you know you know at when when mccain said the fundamentals of the economy are sound when he was your first american of over one of those economy were sound a candidate off message bin ladin can send a videotape which happened to carry in the waning days of the low four campaign i mean that even the most well orchestrated well script did campaign is subject to events beyond their control there must be long periods of time when you're covering a campaign when you're bored stiff what he did entertain us sleep

great wreckage catnap whenever possible why i have all called for by campaigns i kept a diary and so i would often use that momentary lapse is to have a catch up on writing up what had happened there in a more exciting time from the three or four days before something like that and some people drink i did occasionally not too often and i'm not as young as are the people that are with him think that it's it's the it's funny you know when i when i cover the kerry campaign i was sort of in the middle of the age range of course was doing it and as i got older the people covering campaigns to getting younger right now they're fourth graders are at an weekly poland otello eleven o'clock at night on one knows you're where's the bed and they say where's the bar and then in the hotel lobby where the bar down the street but it is it is long periods of tedium interrupted by but

moments those who transcend excitement for sure and and you don't ever know for sure we which are going to be and so you can ask you can't get checked out completely yesterday's keep one eye open for the possibility the use of force or something interesting we knew that might be something worth remembering i was as necessary as an average day in the campaign but what was your what was a typical day like for you when the jet to get up and get to have your luggage out all those times of the year well as i say with obama it was it was you know we we didn't do a lot of extended trips until pretty late in the game told august september october by which time some expect to be in full bore mo dj mention my dog rufus and rosie so i you know i haven't met my dog sitter who stays with i'm i'm on the road is a very important person in my life and yeah i did i drove a bulldozer

got much dominated but but august september october i could be on the road nonstop and that baby baby before then and it really only in the last big campaign we really travelling all the time but it can't it very with the candidates you know mccain was not an early riser so we didn't usually start that early obama's desk without early riser someone has to do with the time zone erie and they would try to stress that based on the east coast work their way way just sometimes then sit back to the east coast and start over again the next day but it was it was not terribly inhumane in the earliest you might start to be on five or six am load up time but often you would load till seven or eight and you'd be on a bus or a van or some sometimes a plan that i think is easily mccain always like to fly someplace first thing in the

morning he would sleep in the city where his last event was then fly someplace else the first thing in the morning obama would prefer to have a late event and fly some flight with the first place he was five the next place of the meat start the next day obama always works out the morning so that would buy some time you could sleeper work on yourself or he was working out unless you're in the pool which was er every day a small group of reporters is a subset of reporters asked to tag along with the president everywhere egos and that rotates of every third fourth day maybe even the pool if you're the pool you have to go the gym with him in the exercise you just have the van outside while he exercised so if you were in the pool you didn't get exercise if you're not we would stay back at hotel exercise the ashes go at the accident often does president would an exercise in the hotel chia a point that

it has a bit of a kind of equipment was and yet i would have had to have the secret service which case the gm or whatever and some gems that let him work out in some that sometimes ago off site to another gem occasion he would look around the hotel gym and that the camera where we were but i it was not to let those i was down the treadmill doing my little timeless work off the beginner that it was the night before and that i go i leave and as i'm going out by hans nichols of from boomers coming in and out he said i saw him later says oh yes the left or so the president came in with workout jam sorry i as he pans as the past the present or questions was working out so the next time we're in the hope that the presence there were couple killed him and down there on the treadmill and i see the secret service guys come in the goal is the presence of a common so i kind of luckily this time i keep forgetting

about half an hour on the treadmill that's forty five minutes he has been in that i go another fifteen und die and i get it is not common and so i leave sure it comes after and so finally wary and now that were in charlotte at the convention and i'm down there in the gm and no no secret service even coming this time with the president of walks in dressed in his workout site under their early warning sign it so happened that the next day i was going to that i was going to break i had been out for ten days or something like that size they go home i kyle you done done it replaces me that i don't really look very much alike but we both have i say salt pepper some people say silver hair we both wear glasses in our world these gray haired white as for npr i guess and so that night they huddled dinner for the press corps and the

president was overdone it and says they're so you know belgium yesterday i luckily done immediately recognize what's going on and just plays along with small talk to the emmys present kept asking me about my work out pretty i guess it is and so that's a group on duty carl kasell is this is mixed up to undergo season in the hallways i've done what i want to do in its coral castle iraqis say this guy is not a girl but the grouse road boys on the bus about covering the seventy two presidential campaign and you've obviously reddit most of those who have a religious baltics have how you know having read then and now having done three of these have campaigns change coverage of campaign change and how it's covered three minus and yeah i read that i think i read that

they do with i was in college or something and when when i took the assignment to cover the oh four campaign the court asked our all can do what i should have how to prepare what way to bone up on and people should read that i had read our razor wire re read it as of course is a great story and there's another story i've got a follow on that david foster wallace wrote about the two thousand john mccain campaign for rolling stone which is kind of an updated version of the victims that was it was adapted from a rolling stone piece across a gun and david foster wallace's piece about the mccain campaign it was sort of the you know twenty year anniversary remake it's amazing how little history engaged in terms of what you'd do that and yet the technology has changed dramatically and then that and that's that even in the years i was doing it was that i was the first person in the arctic get a an air car to slip into my laptop that

allowed me to get internet access when i wasn't tethered anything wireless internet access on the road and i got it well it was i was doing the campaign and also because i lived in san diego which was the home of qualcomm's an early test market for an early days didn't work very many places that worked in a lot of big cities bit prickly not work and it did work very fast anywhere but at least at some point he might get to where you could transmit could send email but also you could transmit sound over the thing and it was a revelation to my colleague i could send the new spot from a moving press bus in the middle of wisconsin and that we're not in two thousand for that was a novelty course by two thousand at it was it was old hat and by two thousand twelve was like no it was well why do only filed five spots in the moving boxes so as the technology has gotten easier to

file more frequently the expectations are ratcheted up that your you know supposedly filing constantly and you know in the uk and that in that crosswalk other boarders would go to an event and then they would write their stories on a portable typewriter and so we would come around and gather up the copy people copy a western union or something and send it back and then once the copper was our reporters and that was their right until the next event and that meant they could think and they can look around and they could talk to each other and them and that's all gone now that familiar costly why so on the one it's great because you're here you can talk your editors all the time you can talk your family all the time about your dog center and i was terrible because you can talk your orders all the time you thought your family all the time or is planning a wedding altar in the campaign you told the whole bus knew all

about her wedding plans but so it's you know it's great that we're more connected but we we've lost a lot of the reflection which is editor of so much of the media and honest however that number into across borders it's david broder you know he's he's the guy type away and johnny apple and the stars of political reporting now is you know the i mean and what a ford workers at risk and then the stars of political reporting sit back to new york and they call this into i didn't write the books or whatever i'll tell us so tell us your favorite story or two stories from the campaign trail well that this has zero political significance but it was just gunfire we were in them you at one point

that the president had that we'd stopped at the west side market in cleveland which is a big out that covered market like it's like a farmers' market under permanent cover and has lots of the stalls and shops and so for that he'd gone to michelle's bakery because the shell cause of karzai and he bought some zucchini bread and that caught my attention to my mom always make zucchini bread and outside joking i write all sorts of iowa presently city rednecks dominance i'm a monkey bread and isaiah five or so a few weeks later we're on the one the east coast to coast marathons we did a couple of these but that that's what it was like thirty six or forty eight hours straight or something where you hit five or six days no sleep lots of coffee five thousand miles on the unit on the airplane or something like that and one of the stops was in was in denver my hometown and my mother had never been to a political

rallies for the no surrender never took presidential political rally end and we were this was getting family the campaign as a want to come to come to rally come november and you know i don't know what will peel away but they actually say hi and you know you should see its historic it's well yeah and so she's she has over bodies came was itsy bitsy park the big park in central denver and she brought the zucchini bread is a homemade zucchini bread and you know you when you go this route i have to go through an airport style metal detector and but i don't know they didn't say anything i guess they'll work of august brings a keen every get ringside you bring scissors that can bring the kenya red and done it i guess i guess when she was going through the metal detectors and she happen to take that the paper ticket that she had you get a gun out here democratic officer know how to get tickets paid pass out tickets before even so she talked to get

in the bag with the zucchini bread and that it's so i mean we're on the cellphone course think it's over and i think that's as she's going into hole i'm i'm on the bus coming over the rally site has landed somewhere here we're standing or by the big flag rate was only seven hundred big flag somehow in this sea of ten thousand people and i find her and she gives me the zucchini bread so i think that my bag and to rally happens and we go off and we go on to las vegas and somewhere new mexico and we're heading heading back to the east coast over you know thirty hours and or forty eight hour cross country marathon and that i say i'm a breakout the zucchini bread serve after that press core there the backup plan and i slice it up and just and the president come back and the press cabin which doesn't do very often and that so was the president elect a deep red lights on mom's homemade zucchini bread and heat

somewhat to my surprise takes the peace and as a result is a great i guess in your mama know so i happen to have a ticket that she had talked in the bed with the year with the deadly roadside i just gave the note that the ticket and he wrote you know you're maybe great city red rock about it so i thought that back in my pocket and she says paul was visiting her gun he says he's always worried that was great great to be reading so i took a picture of the year they get with the signature and i think in like the last pieces of the bridge before someone a photographer us senate often possess a zero political significance but it was it was kind of fun and then they are there the night before election night though the last night the campaign the monday before

election tuesday that obama had his last rally again in the morning which of course had been the kind of scene of his his first big win in the iowa caucuses in two thousand eight and they got in talking about all the way you know it's worth having a great never great rally and outdoor rally in downtown des moines sat for springsteen's that applies to be great and you know and as i say every day to try to put on a show their their shtick this day was it really sentimental because this is where it all began for brock obama emory university of reporters are yet we're all began very i mean i think even they have we all knew he'd like violates that a lot of time they're campaigning four years ago but they waited it it was it was a beautiful night was really good with a great christmas

cold clear a fall night in iowa right in downtown des moines at its outdoor the outside the original headquarters of the obama campaign they're from four years earlier huge crowd of course bruce springsteen plays out of a big springsteen fans of that was that was fun and it was one of those one of those events that actually to live up to its cinematic buildup have a vague kind of describe it the way you can imagine like that the movie director and a new survey finds that really hokey but it was it was it was it was very nice and i say that not you in it in a partisan way because you know i've covered i've covered both republicans and democrats and not always at the end of the campaign all year whether we're winning candidate were losing candidate there's something about those so the last frantic days and even if you're losing its heroes pretty big is still get big problem you still are still not quite half the country's on your

side and they'll come out and it's it's it's it's it's kind of inspiring to him to see that ghana turnout especially on a cold night people standing there wrapped up in blankets awful to look if they bring a little kid you know to see history in the making and as i say it was it this does happen when that really lived up to its source and although those never get old and not know even you know even having done it three times and is a exhausted as you are by that point the campaign is sort of say wow that's that's pretty special and you know i asked i remember john kerry said it is in his concession speech which course came a day later be all the states so it says you know you you are you know nobody loses on election day in america because we all we all wake up and we are americans and as as cynical as we get is political reporters it's it's a pretty impressive sight that you know once every four years that's how we die which is early years and

it's got a wondrous thing to have a front row seat or not really a front row seat and the back underneath the camera riser speaking out some newsletters but that was a ceo it was there with that ok i have one more question there and open up to your questions and answers on the take a few minutes to describe the difference between being a correspondent a reporter on a campaign in and work at the white house think the white house corps and it's you know it's funny hat which i i get asked a lot of obama staffers about this because a lot of people who worked on the first campaign then can work the white house on wet wet left the white house to go back and work on the second campaign and i would ask them what's the difference and and they would say you know you're in a campaign it's very black and white it that the goal is is very well defined and every every day they'd say i

have a very clear mission you know i get up every morning and on that my job is to do something that's going to help the president too and so apple's an hour if what if what i'm doing doesn't contribute about that i shouldn't be doing it and so they have a very focused idea what they need to do and its and its opposite is a real television which is you know just very limiting balls of or clarify and that's almost completely different at the white house mean there's nothing at the white house that is that tunnel vision there's nothing that that's that that is that black and white there's nothing it's not that well defined end for a lot of people that when you're frustrated and so our staffers was would say oh i love my time at the white house but i'm so glad to be back where i actually know what i need to do everyday then there's of course but of course as

this it's distinct as if it's never my job to advance whatever their their agendas but it i kind of well i certainly understand the complexity that makes it more frustrating for the staffers but for my point is also much more interesting name those though shades of grey especially for ows us in public radio we we love the shades of grey right that's all we do for minute two through five in the story the first thing is the black and white net two three for the arts shade the grail a complicating factors and why you know why whether you say yes the keystone pipeline is not a simple was regular you'd lose the union vote in ohio or when the environmental vote in colorado you notes it's a it's a more complicated question and as a as the president's opposite there are no simple questions when you're sitting in the oval office of the question was simple somebody way down the food chain would've answered that got to his desk it's causes a complicated question in some ways going to be unhappy with the answer but if you're writing about that makes it much more interest you

ok let's open up your questions and answers we have chris you're listening to npr white house correspondent scott horsley on kansas public radio scott did you talk about what the correlation that if there is any between poll results and how things actually turned out to be during these campaigns we we're poles all the time seemed like a campaign can always find a boulder say whatever it is it was a so how do you as a reporter filter out which polls to pay attention to an alto other not the results you're saying has any significant you know well that this campaign was it was very interesting in that respect it was almost like there were two universes the polls and npr we used to have a guy whose whole job was to analyze polls for us and tell us what would the short with a poultry could trust him oh it was a lot a methodological shortcomings and so forth i didn't go nine with some budget cuts

but you know that may sober perform pretty well it is in this last go around and business losses it's just aggregate all the poles you know the roof was obviously each other out and that adam all out and yes and secret sauce in the way of them all out and it's pretty hard to argue with his results on it obviously there was a a lot of teeth gnashing on the other romney camp in the end and and they profess to have these be flabbergasted it at that results and i was flabbergasted that they were flabbergasted because you any objective reading of the polls a few days out or even a month out from the election day showed the president at a header tied in more than enough states to win the election so unless the polls were wrong

it looked as if he was going to win and it turned out the bold write these very simple to write so i still like not entirely sure they were smoking in the romney camp but that compares workers are pretty far off back we were joking a week we had this of the storm that hit your baby has a different storm but we we were all raising in washington for a big snowstorm last week they close the federal government every school district was closed we got about an eighth of an inch of snow in turn uranium and i said is the worst for gazans romney's pollsters at as that is not right i've seen any campaign for morale purposes there something to be said for hoping for the best but you know as the obama camp said you know you don't do a poll to make yourself feel good if you do a poll to find out what the world looks like and they seem to be recent polls of a reporting

team to beat for the redesign i can feel that as opposed to what the world where the question back here scott in your role as a white house correspondent you watch a lot of years of plot congressional back and forth to go on pretty discouraged when i watched the impasse has developed that a stream that has a congress in their inability to him get off the ground zero and move towards the conclusions can you offer some of your insights there and pretzel ray of hope for the future which would reveal it incites a very raw and i you know i hope hope springs eternal an end you know that there are there are certainly some encouraging side of it was things that that obama said in the waning days the campaign was and i think he

sincerely believe this is a developer if i get re elected with unemployment as high as it is republicans are going through some soul searching and other necessary have a weak how we lose in this environment when when the race was was winnable at least you know if he if you subscribe you'll hear that one of their high that the present can be very vulnerable and he's counting on that soul searching on their part to to help him make some make some progress on his book his agenda items in particular the fiscal items in and also after newtown the gun control items and answer lay immigration it in terms of immigration i think you're you're absolutely saying it's not soul searching at least babies instinct for survival moving republicans but

i've yet to see a lot of soul searching on on fiscal matters and in fact you know the budget that came out from the house republicans today is like hashtag and we have an election in november that said you know the republican house republicans their argument is that while we all want to end and that's theirs that's that there's a certain logic to that and so in that sense i'm not sure i have a whole lot to offer in terms of and in terms of hope that that they're going to reach some kind of compromise that it still a very it's still a very divided congress and that's reflective of nothing other than a very divided country in the same vain may be redundant of last week you ended a report on the events at the white house with the president's scheduling dinners both at the white house and that restaurants in washington dc with senators and other legislators and you ended up the report saying

in the long run the president's going to have to find some senators who will be willing to do want more with him and go out to dinner either any is there anything possible in that realm thanks for listening and i thought well an end that that that the dinner that he had with a dozen senators i think was probably more encouraging than the ones that he had with congressman ryan i think i think in the senate it is i think it's easier to make cocoa i said progress i mean isn't endorsing that that goal but it is progress in terms of reaching some some some compromise without regard to whether it's where they all end up or not that in the senate it's easier to get to some compromise because the senators have to run statewide and that

means their little bit more subject to today's who's a lawyer lacks a result of november and you know there are certainly so some senators on that list of twelve we can count and an animal whether the writing is that's no less true in the house where that allows those house members just have to run their own districts and most of them are are pretty safe and they're more worried about obviously a challenge from the right in the republican primary than they are losing in a general election so yeah among those gazans there and i think i mean i remember in the summers two thousand eleven there were forty plus senators who were willing to adopt again a six proposal which was to last or you know over more taxes than what the president's going for now majority but forty points talking to stop a filibuster and that i matter what they can do what

they can do on the house unless john boehner is willing to willing to bring something the fore again without it without a majority of his own and his own membership and you can do that too many times you might find yourself not being speaker him or i was in the camp that was surprised when the president didn't drive a harder bargain that at first the year over the fiscal cliff you know it i said there was never going to be another opportunity like that when the president could get not because of republican large us but because we the deck was stacked in his favor that if the us republicans didn't want anything he was gonna get all the tax revenue he'd ever want he didn't push that hardens the time the white house decided that by saying well we're going to get more tax revenue and some future around and if they do that will be that'll prove to have been in a masterstroke if they don't have been a lot of second guessing and

we'll see how that goes on in that they didn't get other things in the fiscal cliff deal they got an extension of sin some tax breaks for the poor the report made an extension of unemployment benefits and they would not that neither of those things through default the way they would've gotten a tax revenues so that the idea that is worth considering in and it was big in their calculus but that deal will look a lot better for the president if he is successful as he projected he would be in getting more revenue and some dudes around as a look wess good at the missile strike that we're going to have a question about on the brief much time the candidates actually do get entertain themselves or with others on the iowa campaign tour how they do so and secondarily do you ever suspect that we will see very moderate republican candidate searches on all played on the west wing series anytime soon i mean saddam's army is the first part your question

yes they have the candidates entertain themselves out of that how they canas entertain themselves and scan a time they have to do so on when when their campaigns and well whatever they did they didn't tell him i say it i can imagine the worst the worst way to spend with sorrow at me sideways about moving it is to be in the crowd ten thousand thing of the future i can't remain suspend to spend a hot summer tracing across the midwest standing outside addressing proud one after another of those outside of it as an ideal summer so there are members of the same especially for the kerry campaign and teresa heinz kerry had all the money in the world couldn't you think of something better to do with their fortune oh i'll be and i'll be in the south of france john cullum in november and i'm the storyteller you know that i think that's the tennis soul searching that the president was talking about

you know after they are after the democrats took a drubbing in a nineteen eighty eight which was sort of the latest in a series of drop things they did some soul searching and you know that's what produced a centrist democrat like no question and that's i think what the what the democrats would like to see happen the republican party i haven't seen any evidence of it happening thus far but it it's also true that china make a projection at this point again what's going to happen in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty is is this is a fool's errand and i i say or that i certainly remember well in nineteen eighty one when no serious democrat one of john's the first president bush because after the first gulf war arming the wisdom to be young solve serious candidates is by their time in you know the so the second tear it

came out and of course that that prediction journalist as romney's those that happen so you're good who knows maybe maybe maybe we'll be saying about a northeastern moderate maybe not pro choice but not very ugly anti abortion republican who favors immigration rights and in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty that they've made it out i will say you've just heard the national public radio's in white house correspondent scott horsley speaking with bill lacy director of the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas this event held march twelve two thousand thirteen was sponsored by kansas public radio as part of our sixtieth anniversary celebration for a complete listing of other sixtieth anniversary events visit our website at our back at ooh dot edu and j mcintyre

dr present is a production of kansas public radio university of kansas he's been next time and kbr presents another familiar voice from national public radio i've always felt it's no coincidence that some basketball powerhouses duke kentucky kansas and indiana get a few better players sports fans are jealous of sportswriters because it's a dream job where you get paid to watch and a great social quest in american sport right now is to have one prominent back gay male athlete step forward and identify himself sportswriter frank to ford is heard every wednesday morning on morning edition he spoke at the university of kansas earlier this year where he was awarded the

prestigious william allen white national citation the first sports writer to do so join us for an hour with frank to ford eight o'clock next sunday evening and kansas public radio