The Daily Orange: You have a lot of experience running successful political campaigns. What do you think of the campaigns that the current Republican candidates are running?

Rove: Each election is different, and these ones got a lot of things undercurrenting it to make it very unusual. The fundamental nature of campaigns, it used to be television ads would drive a lot of the dialogue. Now with the 20-some odd debates, that has drawn people into being engaged in this in a way that has made television ads less important and the ongoing dialogue of the campaigns more important. People are paying a lot of attention. When you have six or seven million people tuning into a presidential debate and you have 20-some odd of these, most people watch more than one. A lot of people are plugged into this in a way that’s pretty unusual.

How do you think the Internet, social media and the campaigns being able to reach their audience directly is changing the election process?

Well the Pew Charitable Trust said in 2008 that more people said they got their information about the presidential campaign from the Internet than from their daily newspaper. And the evidence is that that’s simply accelerating. We still get most of our information from television, from network television but that’s been declining. Cable TV has risen and is still pretty high, it’s going up.

But the Internet has gone up like a rocket while newspapers have really slipped. And so the campaigns that are able to use these tools to contact people and communicate with people are finding it very cost efficient and a very powerful way to communication. You’ve got to put it in perspective – like President Obama, I think he has something like 25 million people who like him on Facebook. The problem is most of them live outside the United States of America so, you know, we clog up a lot of the world wide web communicating info to people who don’t have a vote at the end of the day.

Can you talk a little bit about your views on the role of corporate money in politics through super PACs and other independent spending groups?

I think the Citizen’s United decision is going to have a minimal impact. I think what is going to happen is that the idea of giving large personal contributions, or in essence though privately held companies, is going to be the thing, not corporate America giving. If you’re a publicly traded company you’re loath to be involved in politics.

The Democrats have been doing this for years. In 2000 an anonymous donor gave $14 million to run an ad accusing George W. Bush of being a bigot. It didn’t matter to the liberals when they were doing it, but once Republicans started to set up organizations like that and go out and get big contributions that do the same thing to them that they’re doing to us then they got wired up about it.

We’ve seen a lot of outside spending already in the primary campaign; do you think we’ve only scratched the surface of what we’re going to see this fall?

Let’s put this in perspective – we’ve had a lot of outside spending in every presidential election. Four years ago, for example, labor unions spent an estimated $400 million unaccounted. Will it be that big this time around? I suspect on the Democratic side it’s likely to be somewhere north of that figure and on the Republican side somewhere south of that figure. I don’t think Obama will raise and spend $1 billion that he’s thinking.

But he’s still, between him and the DNC, going to spend a lot of money and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this be a $2 billion presidential campaign. On the other hand, that’s about one-twentieth of what we spend on soft drinks. That’s about a quarter of what we spend on hair care products, so I’m not sure I’m averse to spending that kind of money…electing the leader of the free world.

A lot of students probably were first exposed to super PACs through Stephen Colbert. What do you think about Americans for a Better Tomorrow Tomorrow and his treatment of the system?

A: He’s mocking it. He would prefer to have the political discourse in the country unduly influenced by people like him, by people who publish newspapers and write editorials and have TV programs in which they can express their opinions. He’s entitled to that just as his network spends corporate money to give him a venue on which he can pontificate about issues of the day. Everybody else should have the same right.

American Crossroads spent a lot of money in 2010 trying to get Republicans elected into Congress.

$72 million dollars.

What is the goal for 2012?

$240 million.

What do you think of the performance of this congress so far?

I’m deeply disappointed. The House Republicans have passed 30 bills aimed at stimulating economic growth and I think three of them have been taken up by the Senate. Under the 1974 Budget Act the Senate and the House are each obligated to pass budget resolution by law by the 15th of April. Republicans passed one last year; senate Democrats haven’t passed one for three years. That’s a statutory requirement that you lay down a marker as to what you believe the size of the budget ought to be and why they can get away with it is beyond me.

The president has a statutory responsibility under the Medicare law that as the trustees and actuaries in the Medicare system said that at anytime in the next 15 years that Medicare is going to go broke that the president has a statutory obligation to present a plan to congress to prevent that shortfall. 2008 was the first year that the actuaries said that within a 15-year window the hospital part of Medicare was going to go broke. It’s now scheduled to go broke in 2021. Bush presented a plan to fix it. Obama in April of ‘09, April of ’10 and April of ‘11, Obama has received an actuaries report saying Medicare is going broke… and he has yet to present a plan. And how people can have a statutory obligation and avoid it is beyond me but it’s a sign of the dysfunction of the congress. And of the administration. I blame presidential leadership for a lot of it.

There has been a standstill in Congress. Do you think we need more bipartisanship?

We need presidential leadership. We need a president who will step in and say, ‘I want to get something done and I’m going to work both sides to get it done.’ Not a president who says, as this one did, ‘I won’ and dismisses suggestions made by Republicans on the stimulus bill. You need a president whose not going to stand up in the State of the Union address and demonize the political opposition and then expect them to work with him the next day after he basically said…’I understand there’s a different perspective. It is shutdown the government, end all the regulations and tell everybody you’re all on your own. Well that’s not the American way.’ First of all, that’s not the view of the Republican opponents. And he just said you’re un-American. What kind of ground is that for that kind of work? This president of the United States attitude is I’m going to demonize you at every opportunity.

Speaking of the word demonizing, there’s been a lot of negative campaigning going on within the Republican primary. Do you think that such negative campaigning so early could have a negative affect come general election?

A: Well, it’s not all that early. It depends on what it is. If it is an honest disagreement about records and decisions – you supported this and I don’t, I’m for this and you’re not – then it’s acceptable and won’t over the long run hurt. But if it’s a saying that’s fundamentally unfair then it could lead to lasting effects. Democrats have pretty brutal battles and they got past it, I think the Republicans will too.

There have been a lot of prominent endorsements so far in the Republican campaign. As someone who has run campaigns, what do you think about endorsements? Do you think they really hold much sway?

I’m dubious of them. You get half their friends and all their detractors. It is something if the endorsement speaks to something in the candidate. And there are upsides to it. Chris Christie I think, for example, was a pretty effective advocate for Romney. People make up their minds in primaries by looking at the candidates and what they’re saying and doing more than what other people are saying about them. Particularly in this one.

It’s one thing if you’re sitting there and not paying much attention to it and along comes somebody you like and they endorse someone so you say, ‘Oh that’s good.’ But if you’re completely engaged, as people are in this thing, where you’re watching debate after debate after debate and talking about it at the water cooler and visiting in the carpool about it and reading a lot online about it, endorsements tend to have less impact.

A lot of candidates like to attack what they perceive at the liberal media. What do you think of the media’s coverage so far of the primary?

I think it’s been generally poor. For example we see in the debate where the number one issue is the economy, the number two issue is the economy, the number three issue is the economy, the number four issue is spending issues and deficits and number five issue is healthcare. And what do they want to talk about? Abortion, social issues, gay marriage.

I thought John King’s question of Newt Gingrich was the classic example of journalistic overreach. It’s appropriate to ask him, it was a legitimate news item that week. But is that the first question you ask? And do you ask it in such an unsubtle way?… Instead he just comes out there and plays to every Republicans view of what the media’s about.

So I do think the media has not been handling this particularly well. They look at (Republicans) through the prism of their eyes, which is Republicans are an exotic form of weird alien life and have to be looked at through the prism of only social issues, and I don’t think that’s been particularly constructive. It is not an accident that more people are getting more of their information by directly participating in this contest, watching it on cable TV, going to the Internet then they are by reading their daily newspaper.

What do you think the fluctuations in Republican frontrunners shows?

(If it were the case that people doubted Romney) you’d see mitt Romney with relatively high negatives. And instead these guys have all had until recently, including Gingrich, had high positives and relatively low negatives.

What they’re looking for is somebody they have confidence can beat Obama. So that’s why there are sort of weekly anchors. They’ll say ‘This guy sounds great, well this gal sounds great, and I’m going to be for them.’ It has been weird…People keep saying Romney hasn’t been able to close the sale. Well, hell, Barack Obama couldn’t close the sale until June of 2008 and even then it required having the super delegates come in on his behalf.

We’re kind of watching these people not as the typical voter but sort of as Olympic judges. We’re so intent on beating Obama. It’s like Pawlenty. Pawlenty went out on Fox News Sunday and went after Romney on health care and everybody said, ‘Oh yeah, when it makes the first debate he’s going to go after him on health care.’ And then when he didn’t Pawlenty plummeted in the polls. What it because people necessarily disagreed with him? No. It was the disagreed with how he handled the issue. If you can’t do this you’re not up to the big show.

So would you say it’s more that the candidates are surging because they’re doing well, not falling because they’re doing poorly?

Yes, they get their moment in the sun. Something happens that gives them their moment in the sun. Everybody’s talking conventionally and along comes 9-9-9, that starts to fade and people say, ‘You know Newt has been darn good in these debates and he’s been really positive and big-visioned,’ and then that deteriorates and then, ‘Well Romney, you know we like Romney he’s set, he’s solid, he looks like a president, he’s a business guy we like that.’ And then you know, ‘Oh Santorum, he’s fresh and new didn’t he win Missouri, Montana and Colorado? Let’s go for him.’ So it’s serial front-runners.

kronayne@syr.edu 

Published on February 15, 2012 at 12:00 pm