Election could depend on voters' comfort level with nominee
— -- With less than six weeks to go until Election Day, Republican strategist Ed Rollins and Democratic strategist Robert Shrum debate the state of the presidential campaign, critique both candidates' TV ads and predict what's next. The two veterans of presidential politics joined a USA TODAY panel Tuesday at New York Ad Week, moderated by Washington Bureau chief Susan Page. On Wednesday, the status of Friday's presidential debate became uncertain. Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
On the debates
Q: What role will the debates play this year?
Shrum:Obama has an extraordinary chance to answer the experience question. If he stands up to McCain, does well in that debate, people think he can handle national security, he then potentially will hold the high ground, the commanding high ground of the economy and block off from McCain the capacity to slip away the national security into the White House. …
This election might be a lot like 1980, where you're not going to see it break until after the debates. If Obama does his job and people feel more comfortable with him and more comfortable with his experience, it will break toward Obama because it's a change election.
Rollins:I think this is very much like '80. The test there was the country wanted to get rid of (President Jimmy) Carter. … (But) there was real serious doubts about Reagan. Who was Reagan? He was a movie star, governor of California. …
He (Carter) debated just Reagan a week before the election. And after that night there was a segment of the electorate that was floating up here and it just dropped and it was over. It was literally over the day after the debate because Reagan had met the credibility test, that he wasn't the crazy that Carter had portrayed him to be, and the race was over.
If he (Obama) has the knowledge and appears calm and collected, and people walk off the stage and say, 'You know, I feel comfortable with him in the Oval Office,' then you may see a shift. …
On the election's closeness
Q: The political landscape favors the Democrats. So why is the presidential contest so close?
Rollins:My sense is that there's serious doubt about Obama for two reasons. One is he's very inexperienced and he's totally undefined. And it's the untold truth that no one ever wants to talk about, and that is this certain … segment of America that is just not going to vote for a black person. …
If he had a longer record, this may have gone away because he had been more exposed. But the fact he wasn't known and fact of a lot of questions and a real smear by the Internet — being a Muslim, where do you come from and all the rest of it — I think there is a segment out there that is making the race close.
Shrum:The interesting thing is — and I don't think McCain intended this when he put Sarah Palin on the ticket — he gave people who might be reluctant to vote for an African American (a chance) to vote against that person and say, 'Of course I'm not prejudiced. I voted for a woman.'
Rollins:This is also the third rematch — exactly the same geographical campaign turf. No matter how many people talk about 'we're going to expand it,' it's going to be the same (states as) your target list from 2000 or 2004. And the margin may be very close. I can certainly see one winning the electoral vote and one winning the popular vote.
Shrum:The fundamentals of this election strongly favor Obama, just as the fundamentals strongly favored Reagan in 1980. I think that if Obama does his job in the debates, he'll win.
On Wall Street's impact
Q: How does the Wall Street meltdown affect the campaign?
Rollins:Any of us who sat here a year ago, and we were still in Iraq and Afghanistan, we said this war is the issue, the issue, the issue. The war is barely mentioned today.
This (economic situation) is not going to get better in the next six weeks. It's going to be more confused than ever. The market's going to bounce up and down. Ordinary people are going to be more insecure and there is nothing these two candidates can do.
The person who basically can convince voters 'I am the lifeguard and I can get you to shore,' at least understand the problems, may have the advantage here.
Shrum:Well, I think that's what Obama is setting himself up to do.
Look, all through the Sarah Palin mania, he campaigned on the economy, he campaigned on the economy, he campaigned on the economy. He had a hard time getting to the top of the news or sometimes even getting into the news, Biden couldn't get in at all, and he just persisted on the assumption that the campaign would come back to this as a big central issue.
On campaign ads
Shrum:Well, I think there's actually been a long-term secular trend in which advertising, especially outside the primaries, is becoming less and less important and real news, big stories, the Internet is becoming more important. I think that's in part because … there has been a buildup of distrust in political ads, a healthy distrust by people.
Rollins:There had been such a glut of commercials, viewership is down, viewership is diversified. It's not like the old days: You sat there and watched the commercial and the commercial was something new, introduced a new idea. Now it's just part of the clutter.
On McCain and the GOP
Rollins:McCain won this nomination without hard-core supporters of his own party sort of as a base. Our primary was a NASCAR race. Theirs was a marathon.
I ran Mike Huckabee's campaign. We knocked Romney out in Iowa. Fred Thompson knocked us out in South Carolina. …
John won by his persistence, but he won that without Republican majorities or conservative majorities. It wasn't until he picked Palin that all of a sudden he cemented that conservative side.
So there's still a lot of doubt. You can have a lot of rhetoric about firing Chris Cox (as chairman of the SEC), and no one in the country knows him outside of Newport Beach, (Calif.). But he was a Republican leader in the House and a very respected leader in the House. (For McCain) to all of a sudden scapegoat him and then to say on 60 Minutes, 'I am going to put Andrew Cuomo in there.' Republicans said, 'You're going to fire Cox and put in Andrew Cuomo? What kind of administration are we talking about?'
On the final weeks
Shrum:If McCain re-establishes himself in this debate and somehow finds his footing on the economy … the negative ads you have seen here are nothing compared to what I think McCain and sort of some of the independent groups on the right are going to start doing, and then the Democrats are going to have to fight back.
Rollins:I think they (McCain's strategists) have crossed the Rubicon and they feel they can destroy Obama.
(For Obama), there is a real temptation if he starts getting hammered, 'Don't let us get swift-boated again,' … and the people that have been there before are all going to start to yell and scream, 'You've got to respond; you've got to take him out.' So you could end up in the last six weeks with an Ali-Frazier battle.