Karl Rove on our new (or not so new) political dysfunction
One day we’re talking about the 2024 presidential election being a re-match of the 2020 election. The next day we’re watching the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives being defenestrated through a historic vote OUT of the Speakership.
What is going on here? Is it a new level of crazy, or not that new at all? Karl Rove puts this period of political dysfunction in historical context.
Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush and White House Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. He was architect of both of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, and the 2002 midterm election strategy for the Republicans. He is the author "The Triumph of William McKinley '' and also "Courage and Consequence".
He writes a weekly column for The Wall Street Journal.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] We have the two most unpopular candidates for president on the Republican and Democratic side as front runners that we've ever had. And that's a fact. Just go back and look at the fave unfaves of every candidate going back to the 1930s and no pair of candidates is in a bad shape as these two guys are.
And that, that's unsustainable. Something's going to happen on one side or the other. Whatever party figures out that a new face will give them a better shot at taking or holding the White House is going to be the party that does have a better chance at taking or winning the White House.
So here we are. Talking about the possibility, the probability of the 2024 presidential election being a rematch of the 2020 election. Biden versus Trump. Seems kind of crazy. Although crazier than watching the Speaker of the U. S. [00:01:00] House of Representatives for the first time in history. Voted out of the job by a process catalyzed by only a handful of members of the Speaker's own party.
What is going on here? At times it feels like things are really unraveling. Coming apart at the seams, getting crazier and crazier. I hope at times, at some point, we'll be at peak crazy. Although, if you look at history, maybe it's not that crazy at all. In fact, maybe this kind of political volatility, which seems so Unusual, if not scary at times, was actually the norm for most of U.
S. history. And we've just had this aberration over the last three or four decades, where it was relatively calm, and now we're reverting back to what it was like before the three or four decades of calm. I started to think more and more about this because I read a very insightful piece by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago, where he goes through American political history, and you realize things have been crazier before, much [00:02:00] crazier, much more volatile.
Or at least as volatile as they are now. And he sort of puts it in perspective. We have some kind of a recency bias, he argues, that we think that because things haven't been that unstable the last couple of decades, that the new instability is a new thing. But what if it's not? I thought it'd be useful to have a conversation with Carl about this historical context.
Carl Rove has been on this podcast before. He served as senior advisor to President George W. Bush and White House Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004 to 2007. Carl was also the architect of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns in the 2002 midterm election strategy for the Republicans, which was basically an unprecedented outcome in favor.
of the president's party during the president's first midterm, which almost never happens in the history of American politics. Carl is also the author of The Triumph of William McKinley. Terrific book [00:03:00] of presidential political history and also courage and consequence about his time in the George W.
Bush White House. He also writes an indispensable column, weekly column for the Wall Street Journal. In this conversation, I want to talk to Carl about all this upheaval in Washington. And the presidential campaign trail and whether or not there's a way out for Democrats or Republicans in the presidential primary process.
Who's up, who's down, who has the potential to be up and who has the potential to be knocked down in these presidential primaries. So we cover a lot of territory. Before we get to Carl, just one housekeeping note. As many of you know, I have a book being published in November called, The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World.
I strongly encourage you to Pre order this book wherever you order books. Please do so now. Don't wait for November 7th Saul Singer and I put a lot into this book and it would mean a lot to us if you helped [00:04:00] out with Pre orders, which means listening to this podcast and going right on your favorite online and purchasing it.
And by the way, the book is also relevant to the discussion I have with Carl, indirectly, because it also seems that Israel, like many Western democracies, has devolved into its own political chaos. And one of the things we do in this book is look at other periods throughout Israeli history, long before this one, and show that About every decade, decade and a half in Israel's history, there is a political upheaval or a moment of incredible political and social divide and tension.
And maybe the period Israel is living through now isn't such an outlier relative to what Israel has lived through in the past. So, please order the book to learn more because we go through all that interesting history. But now, on to Karl Rove and whether we are losing our minds watching American politics.
Or If it's always kind of been this way, [00:05:00] this is Call Me Back. I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my longtime friend, Karl Rove, all purpose wise man on all things related to politics, both contemporary and the history of politics and the, and U. S. history generally, which we'll talk about Karl.
Thanks for calling me back and hopping on this, uh, conversation. Yeah, happy to. At least you called me a wise man rather than a wise guy. Or a wise bleep. Right. Yeah, a wise blibble a blah blah. You know, well, you know, this is, this is the PG, you know, this is a family friendly podcast. Exactly. We try not to be too cynical and snarky.
Um, okay, so Carl, I want to, um, You to serve sort of as a therapist for me and my listeners and actually even some of my recent guests, A. B. Stoddard, who you know was just on, you know, expressing despair that the Democrats were unlikely to nominate someone other than Biden and Trump could beat [00:06:00] Biden and so that was her concern and so that was sort of like a therapy session for both of us just talking it through and we ended it.
The end, we ended the conversation with at least as much despair as we began with. Uh, and that's kind of where the electorate is at. I want to start by quoting from a poll. Yahoo News YouGov poll. This is how Andrew Romano at Yahoo News writes up the poll. What's the number one, I'm quoting here, What's the number one feeling that comes to mind for Americans when thinking about the upcoming presidential election?
Dread. The survey of 1, 636 U. S. adults, which was conducted from September 14th to September 18th, offered respondents seven emotions, three positive, three negative, one neutral, and asked them to select any and all that reflect their attitude toward the 2024 campaign. Dread, the most negative emotion, topped the list, 41%, followed by exhaustion.
34 percent. Optimism, 25 percent. Depression, 21 percent. [00:07:00] Indifference, 17 percent. Excitement, 15 percent. And delight, a lonely 5 percent. In total, a majority of Americans, 56 percent, chose at least one of the three negative feelings, dread, exhaustion, or depression, while less than a third, 32 percent, picked at least one of the three positive feelings.
So, Carl, you wrote I wrote this piece for the Wall Street Journal, uh, a few weeks ago on, uh, I think it was in the weekend edition. That's when I first reached out to you because it was like a terrific piece. I felt like it was badly needed history where, where you, where you argued, Yes, there's plenty to be depressed about these days.
The reasons for things being bad are not new to the United States and to United States history. It's just we have a recency bias. We, we don't realize that just because things haven't been bumpy. relatively recently, they haven't been really, really bumpy, if not totally chaotic in the past. And you kind of went through the history to remind us how bad it's been.
So let's go [00:08:00] through some of your history. And I want to start with the 60s and the 70s, which is where you start with the piece. Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. And, uh, the 5 percent delight, it reminds me of that old joke that Ronald Reagan used to tell about the kid who was digging through the pile of horseshit and.
Uh, and, and they said, why are you doing that? And he said, well, there must be a pony in there somewhere. So all those, that 5 percent who delight in what's coming are, are hoping that there's a pony underneath all that, that, uh, horse manure. So, but you're right, my, my point, the point of the piece was to say that it's bad now, but it's been worse before.
And not only in the decades leading into the civil war, and you're right, 60s and 70s, we forget that there are many people alive who lived through it. You know, we have Harlem Explodes in 1964, sort of the first warning signal of the battle over civil rights moving from mostly peaceful demonstrations to, that were met with state, state sanctioned violence to, to bigger things, [00:09:00] and, um, uh, Harlem Exploded in 64, then followed by Philadelphia, 65, we had the Watts Riots, uh, 60, uh, you know, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco in 66, and then came You know, the summer of 67, the long hot summer of 67, in which 163 American cities exploded riots over, uh, you know, the civil rights.
And, uh, then in 1968, we have the assassination of Martin Luther King, brutal murder of him on April 4th. And literally within hours, 130 American cities are in flames and 47 people are killed in the violence. And two months later, Robert Kennedy is gunned down just after winning the California Democratic primary.
And It's not only do we have that going on, we have the nation's most prominent segregationist, George Corley Wallace, governor of Alabama, running for president and winning five states in the Deep South. Then in 1972, he came in third for the [00:10:00] Democratic presidential nomination, 1. 8 points behind the ultimate winner, Hubert Humphrey.
Now, at the same time that this is going on, we got the war in Vietnam. And, uh, you know, we have, uh, the death of four students at Kent State University in 1970 and protests break out within a matter of hours, engulfing 350 campuses and historians estimate that, that 2 million people participated in those, in those demonstrations against the war, that those demonstrations, uh, you know, lead to violence at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, they try and disrupt the 1972 Republican Convention and a number that blows me away.
I In 1971 and 1972, largely connected to the war in Vietnam, but also a little bit some, some of the more violent members of the, of the, of the far left of the Democratic, excuse me, of the civil rights Movement. There are 2,500 domestic bombings in the United States during an 18 month period, and two presidents are drawn, are [00:11:00] driven from office.
Lyndon Johnson gives up ref, you know, in, in March of March 31st, 1968, says, I'm not running for reelection. And Richard Nixon is, is ousted from office in 1974 over, you know, resigns rather than being impeached over a second rate burglary of the Democratic National Committee. You tell me our politics today is bad?
Go back to that era. All right, and let's go back now even farther. Uh, let's go back, for instance, you talk about the Gilded Age in this piece. Uh, and you say the, the Gilded Age was known for many things, but, but fierce disunity and stratification in our politics was not one of them. Yeah, well, look, look, you know, if the 25 year period after the reelection of Ulysses S.
Grant, the one man who could sort of unite the North and the South was still largely, uh, you know, out of the, uh, out of the, the electoral politics of the country, but the 25 years following his reelection is we have five presidential elections, which nobody gets 50 percent of the vote [00:12:00] and two of those five elections, uh, the winner of the electoral college loses the popular vote in large measure because The Black Republican vote in the South is being wiped out on, by violence on a scale that's impossible for us to get our hands around.
In 1896, three states in the South, a majority of the eligible voters are Black men who are overwhelmingly Republican. And the best that, that McKinley can get is 24 percent of the vote in Louisiana. In Mississippi, where 60 percent of the voters are Black men, he gets 6 percent of the vote because by violence, some of it officially sanctioned.
Uh, black voters are being kept from the polls and the Democrats and Republicans hate each other. They're still fighting the Civil War. When the Democrats take control of the House in 1874 for the first time in 18 years, it's called the Victory of the Brigadiers because so many former Confederate officers are elected, uh, to, uh, to the, to, to the U.
S. House, including 56 Former Confederate officers and the vice president of [00:13:00] the Confederacy sits from the, as a member of the U S house from Georgia and they hate each other. Nothing gets done. There's 20 years of divided government, two years with a Democratic president, house and Senate, two years with a Republican president, house and Senate.
And the only things that get done. are the result of a grassroots movement, you know, farmers, both Republican and Democrat, hate the railroads, so we get the Interstate Commerce Commission. The President of the United States is assassinated shortly after taking office in 1881, James A. Garfield, and as a result, the Congress feels obligated to at least do something about Civil service reform because he was killed by a disgruntled office seeker.
So, nothing gets done for 25 years. And, uh, and, and, and, and you read the congressional record, they hate each other, and they, they openly express it. It's like, it's like, you know, fighting the Civil War, time and time again, only on the floor of the House. And there's violence there as well. I, I, there's, my, my favorite era is the era of, of, where the House is governed by, By Thomas [00:14:00] Brackett Reed of Maine, the Republican speaker has a narrow majority in the House.
Uh, and, and, uh, and what happened is, is during this period of time, if you were in the majority of the U. S. House and there was a member of the minority who had won election by a, uh, small number of votes, what you did is you phoned up an election challenge and kicked them out. This happened 62 times between 19, uh, 1874 and 1904.
It finally, in 1904, the fever breaks. There's a congressman, a Democratic congressman from Colorado named Soforth, John Soforth, and, uh, there's an election challenge. And at the end of the investigation that he rises on the floor of the house and says, I paid close attention to the investigation of my recent election.
And I've, I've come to believe that there was a fraud perpetrated in. And more than two dozen precincts by members of my own party and that I was illegitimately elected. I asked the House to join me in voting to expel me from the House [00:15:00] and replace me with my Republican opponent. And that's what it took to end this sort of reign of terror of 62 times we're going to phony up a challenge and kick you out.
Now, he was later elected governor and U. S. Senator on the slogan of Honest John. But, uh, so maybe there was a reward for being honest. Okay, I could geek out on this all day long, but I just want to pick up one more period and then we'll talk about the here and now. But you have to do, you have to walk us through the 1800 election, this is the famous Jefferson Adams election, and what actually happened during the election, how the election was conducted, and then how it actually landed in the Electoral College.
Yeah, well First of all, it's one of the ugliest elections in American history. You go back and read the diatribes written in the party newspapers, the Federalist and Democratic Republican newspapers, and they are vicious. In fact, the sainted Thomas Jefferson behind the scenes helps hire a notorious slanderer to edit the newspaper in Richmond who hurls the most vicious And [00:16:00] nasty attacks on John Adams, which are then repeated by other newspapers, Democratic newspapers around the country, who are set copies of his editorials and they then reprint them in theirs.
So the election ends in, uh, in November, uh, with the final state elections. Elections then were held over a series of months, but the final ones are held in November. And the winner of the popular vote is obviously Thomas Jefferson, and, uh, it goes to the Electoral College, and back then what you did is you voted for, you voted, each elector voted for two people, uh, and the person who got the most votes became president, and the person who got the second most votes became the vice president, and the running mate of Thomas Jefferson is Aaron Burr of New York, who has, in the early spring, uh, Uh, absolutely, uh, masterfully grabbed control of New York politics in the spring elections and he's his running mate and on, uh, and when the electoral college beats.
Uh, there's a tie, and the tie is between Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr. [00:17:00] Aaron Burr is supposed to get some of his New York electors to throw away their votes, and Jefferson thinks this is going to happen. And not only in New York, but he writes his son in law a letter in late November saying, yeah, some of the Georgians are going to throw away their votes, but nobody throws away their votes.
So it is a tie between Jefferson and Burr, and in third place is John Adams. So the election, being a tie, goes to the, goes to the, to the Congress, and the Congress, they're, they're 16 states, so you have one, each state gets one vote, the Congress is dominated, the lame duck Congress is dominated by the Federalists, who can elect one of their candidate, and so what they, what there's an attempt to do is to cut a deal with Aaron Burr and elect him, and so they meet in February of, of, uh, Of, uh, February 11th, 1801 in the midst of a blinding snowstorm, abortion is covered in snow and they vote at noon, and there's a worry that Maryland is gonna swing into the camp of the of the Federalist because while it's got, uh, [00:18:00] four Democratic Republicans and four Federalists, one of the Democratic Republicans is thought to be near death.
He insists upon being carried on a stretcher two miles through a blinding snowstorm in order to be installed in a committee room next to the House floor and taken out to vote. And at noon they vote. And it's deadlocked. Because Maryland is deadlocked. South Carolina is deadlocked. Vermont is deadlocked, and as a result, nobody has a majority.
And so they continue to vote more than once an hour. They vote between noon on the 11th and noon on the 12th. They vote 27 times, each one of them. Yeah, I mean, they literally, this is a wonderful diary of the time, where, where they're, they're literally sleeping, and they're in their sleeping caps and blankets, and lying on tables and chairs on the floor, and then every hour or so, they're awakened and asked to vote again.
And, and it's always the same, same inconclusive result. So finally, they, on the second day, they say, let's, let's slow this up. We'll vote like once a day and we'll continue to meet. And [00:19:00] for five more days, it's deadlocked. And then on the 37th ballot, the deadlock breaks and it's broken by the intervention, the earlier intervention of one unlikely figure, Alexander Hamilton.
He's written a letter to George Baird, the Federalist, the sole congressman from Delaware. Uh, a Federalist, and he has said to him, I hate him, I hate him both, but at least Jefferson has character and Burr has none. Burr, uh, you know, Jefferson's, quote, concerned about his own reputation, but Burr is, quote, a man of extreme and irregular ambition.
And if we vote for him, if the Federalists make him President, we'll be stuck explaining all of the mistakes that he's gonna make. So, take the lesser of two evils, and on the 37th ballot, Thomas Jefferson is elected president of the United States, Baird withdraws from Delaware so its vote doesn't count, convinces a fellow Federalist from Vermont to throw it in so that Vermont's vote is cast by a Democrat, [00:20:00] gets his compatriots from South Carolina and Maryland to throw it in, and on the 37th ballot, Thomas Jefferson's elected president and is sworn in as president 15 days later.
And, and that took as many, according to your count, that, that took some 20 more ballots than were needed. 21. 21 more. 21, 21 more ballots than were needed to make Kevin McCarthy a speaker. The first time, we'll see what happens, uh, you know, now. Uh, but, but, so, so, so, I guess I have two reactions to what you're saying.
One is, you paint a picture of dysfunction throughout our politics, throughout our history, which then makes me think that this period that I sort of came of age in politics, which was Reagan years, George H. W. Bush years, Clinton years, George W. Bush years, and beyond. That that period, while it had some division, even the Trump years, had some division, a lot of division in the Trump years, but it may have just been an aberration.
That our politics were [00:21:00] always messed up, and I kind of came of age during this relatively quiet and less quiet, as we got towards, towards the Trump years, uh, and now we're back in it, full throttle. Yeah, look, there are periods of relative quietude. There's never a period where everybody is lovey dovey, sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya.
I mean, the period of the, that you just mentioned, we had the election of 2000. We had the disagreements over the Vietnam, or it should be over the Iraq war. So election 2000, meaning the recount, the Supreme Court having to step in. Yeah. We, we had the Clinton, uh, you know, the attempt to impeach Clinton. So, but it was within certain, certain, a certain set of guardrails.
And, but yes, we're back in a period where American politics is bitter, divided, polarized, broken, uh, where people's trust and confidence in the government is low, where our trust and interest in politics is low. And yet ironically enough, it's also a period like the gilded age where participation is inordinately high.
In the Gilded Age, you know, 85 or [00:22:00] 90% of the voters, uh, in the north voted, uh, and today we've, we've been in a period since 9 8, 19 96, in which every presidential election, except for a brief dip in 2012, every presidential election has seen turn out increase, uh, over the previous one. So it's, it's an odd situation, but yes, the point is, is that, you know, look, the, this is not the first election that was claimed to be stolen.
In the 19th century, we had the first, the first candidate who claimed that the election was stolen from was Andrew Jackson after the 1824 election. He spent four years saying it was a corrupt bargain that kept me from, from being in the People's Tribune and representing you in the White House. And, and then we had the election of 1876, which the Democrats dined out on for six.
For, for nearly a century in the South, you know, uh, Rutherford B. Hayes stole the election by, by, uh, flipping the votes of, of Louisiana, Florida, and, and, uh, South Carolina. So, you know, a lot of this is familiar territory. My point was, let's not, let's [00:23:00] not lose sight of the fact that it's been bad before.
It'll, it, we, this situation will come to an end when the good sense of the American people expresses itself at the polling place. So what you write in this piece is, so what ended these periods of, you asked the question, so what ended these periods of broken politics? Convulsive events, such as World War II, played a role.
More important, a droid leadership. The kind we saw with Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan clearly mattered. They set a tone that led to healing. So let's talk about the next president we're going to elect, and whether or not there's someone out there who could set a tone for healing.
My first question is, well let me just pick up on where I left off with A. B. Stoddard. Is it too late for another Democrat to challenge Joe Biden and win the nomination? And if not, uh, sorry, if it is, do you think Joe Biden is capable of leading this country into a period of healing? Yeah. Well, first of all, my, my view is, uh, no, it's not too late.
Uh, in part [00:24:00] because, you know, yes, you won't be on the ballot. If you don't declare by the middle of October, you won't be on the ballot and, you know, pick a couple, you know, uh, Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada. But, but look, remember, let's go back, you know, 1968, you know, Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the contest after winning the New Hampshire primary.
He had an unexpectedly strong challenge from Eugene McCarthy, but he withdrew in March. You know, it is entirely possible for somebody to enter this contest and to have delegates elected from some of these early states who play an outside role because they may have voted for They may have been elected as Biden is no longer running, but yes, it's possible.
In fact, I, you go, you, you go out around the country and there's talk amongst some Democrats that what they need to do is focus on who is elected as delegates to the convention because something could or should happen between now and the convention that means that lots of people elected to be Biden delegates will no longer have Biden as a candidate.
But yes, look, [00:25:00] 2 3rds of the American, excuse me, 3 quarters of the American people and including more than 2 3rds of Democrats think that Biden is too old and 2 3rds of the American people and nearly a majority of Democrats think that he doesn't have what it takes, he's mentally not up for the job, uh, that you have nearly half the electorate that think that Donald Trump is too old.
Uh, being two years younger and, and I haven't seen the, the, the poll question, but if you ask him, do you think that Donald Trump is being motivated by rage and anger over having lost the election? I suspect the vast majority of the American people would agree with that. So we have two of the most, we have the two most unpopular candidates for president on the Republican and Democratic side as front runners that we've ever had.
And that's a fact. Just go back and look at the fave unfaves of every candidate going back to the 1930s, and nobody is, no pair of candidates is, is, is in a bad shape. As these two guys are and that that's unsustainable. Something's gonna happen on one side or the other and whatever party figures out that a new face will give [00:26:00] them a better shot at taking or holding the White House, is going to be the party that does have a better chance of taking or winning the White House.
Okay, so just to be clear, what you use McCarthy's example in 68, McCarthy, the, the primary is in March of 68. He, McCarthy loses the New Hampshire primary. He ultimately is not the nominee, but it does force Biden, or it does force Freudian slip. It does force Johnson's hand, and McCarthy was never probably going to be the nominee.
There's a sense that Eugene McCarthy was somewhat of a sacrificial lamb. Do the Democrats need a version of a Eugene McCarthy to jump in to, to, to kind of, to rip open the, rip the Band Aid off and expose Biden's weaknesses for the electorate to see? And, For the, for him to, to kind of force his hand before the more viable Democrats get in.
See what I'm saying? Like, McCarthy was a sacrifice. Well, look, there are two ways to do, go about it. You've got one. Have somebody get in, expose the weaknesses, and then somebody else gets in [00:27:00] who's more, uh, attuned to to the majority sentiment in the Democratic party and acceptable to the Biden white house and they move forward.
Another way is for somebody simply to step forward and say, Look, I, I think our country and our party would be better served if we had a choice. And while I appreciate the the leadership of president Biden. I think that it's time to look to a new generation of leadership and, and here are my priorities.
Here's what I will attempt to do. And, and, and be polite about the sitting president, but look. There's a huge element of the Democratic Party that is desperate for leadership. They see him as, they, they believed that he was going to be a one term president because he promised to be a transitional figure.
And now he wants to be the transformative figure and they know he's not up to it. They see it. And to me, it's amazing to me, how can Jill Biden and Valerie Bideno and his sister, who has, who's been a key part of every one of his campaigns going back to when he was on the, the county council in, in, uh, in Delaware, why can't they [00:28:00] see this?
This is not going to end well for them. Second terms are first of all, not really good for anybody, even if you're in the best of health and at the top of your game. Wasn't good for Clinton. What wasn't good for 41, Reagan's second term was not as good as the first term. You know, obviously, Richard Nixon's second term was nowhere, wasn't good for 43, 41.
41 didn't have a second term. 40 You mean 43? Yeah. I mean, I mean 43. Yeah. Bush 43. And, and, and, and, and Biden just, you know, just to put numbers on this, Biden will be closer to 90 years old than he is closer to 80 by the end of his second term. The idea that we're gonna have a president leaving the presidency at 86.
Given how he's doing right now, and that will be a, a robust, you know, vibrant, successful second term is sort of hard to believe. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, so yeah, you know, either way, but there are three ways to do it. You have the sacrificial lamb who gets in and opens everything up. You have somebody who is a credible challenger who [00:29:00] enters a contest with the right kind of language and does it.
Or the third one is, is that Is it Biden pulls the ripcord or something happens before the convention and a delegation of mostly Biden delegates. Uh, it has to make the choice of who, who to, who to succeed. Okay. So now let's talk about the Republicans. There is a growing sense, I don't share it, but there is a growing sense among many who are directly involved in this race, not the candidates themselves, but whether they're donors or activists or, or party leaders or.
strategist. There's a growing sense, sure, Trump is the favorite. He may not be the prohibitive frontrunner, but he's the frontrunner and he's only gaining momentum. And what we've learned from these two Republican debates so far is that while some of these candidates are impressive, they're intent on destroying each other rather than taking on Donald Trump.
And until candidates are prepared to truly take on Donald Trump, this is, this is just, A primary among people, none of [00:30:00] whom will be the nominee. And Trump is just sort of watching all this, popping his popcorn and enjoying the, enjoying the show. Um, A, do you agree with that characterization? And if not, B, what can one of these Republican candidates do to change the dynamic of the race?
Yeah, well, I don't agree with it. Um, I, I think it's, uh, premature pessimism. Uh, yes, he's the front runner, but take a look at Iowa and take a look at New Hampshire, where they're actually paying a lot of attention and seeing the candidates. His numbers are well below his national number. And, uh, that is a sign of something.
Second of all, I took, uh, I took in, I was very interested in the before and after poll conducted on the first debate by the Washington Post Ipsos poll. What it showed was that everybody, all eight candidates on the first debate stage saw their favorables increase. And every one of the eight people there saw their, uh, the percentage of people that were willing to say, I'm open to considering voting [00:31:00] for them, which is preliminary to actually voting for them.
Those numbers all rose. very much. For everybody, all eight. And some of them pretty dramatically. Nikki Haley, I think it was roughly 30 percent beforehand said they were open to voting for, and 50 percent afterwards. That's a 60 percent increase in the size of the universe that's willing to vote for you.
In fact, there was only one candidate in the Republican race who saw the percentage of people who said they were open to voting for him decline, and saw his favorables decline, and that was The guy who wasn't there, Donald Trump, and I think that I think the sex, the second dynamic was in place in the same dynamic was in place in the second debate, because I think people who tuned in now, granted, it was like 13 million, almost 13 million on the first one and 8 million something on the second, so it's a smaller universe.
But I think people said, You know what? I want to find out if we've got some alternatives there. What's our field look like? And they said, We like it. After the first debate, in fact, in the Washington Post poll, Donald Trump was below [00:32:00] Ron DeSantis in the percentage of people who said that they were open to considering to voting for him.
Uh, so, as I look at it, there's plenty of opportunity yet to go, uh, in Iowa, New Hampshire, in the early states. And we could have ourselves in a situation like 1960, like 1984. Walter Mondale was going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. He was the former vice president, respected member of the Senate.
Everybody was for him. We're generally running over 50% in the national polls. They go to Iowa. The last poll before the Iowa Caucus shows that he's at 49% and it shows in second place Jesse Jackson, followed by John Glenn, and then in a distant fourth and fifth to tied it, well actually there's one more.
Ruben ask you at three per, at like 5% and then at 3% in, in fifth and sixth place were Senators Cranston of California and Gary Hart of. Colorado. And on Election Day, on Caucus Day, uh, [00:33:00] Mondale got his number, 48. 9%. But Gary Hart got 16 percent of the vote, a surprise. And they were off to the races in New Hampshire.
Gary Hart beats, uh, Walter Mondale in New Hampshire. And, and the contest goes on. Now, Waddell ultimately prevails because he, on March 11th, he attacks Gary Hart in a famous debate where he says, Every time I hear you, I'm reminded of that, and where's the beef? And, and, and, and, and Gary Hart didn't have a good answer for that.
But, what we forget is, the contest was finally settled on the 5th of June. When Gary Hart wins California, South Dakota, and New Mexico, but Mondale wins enough votes in West Virginia and New Jersey to clinch the Democratic nomination by 22 delegates. Now, Gary Hart ran a crappy campaign. It's fully possible for somebody to surprise in Iowa, surprise in New Hampshire and run a good campaign because look, Donald Trump is spending most of his money on.
On, um, [00:34:00] legal bills. And second of all is, is to, in my mind, doing this backwards. If you're, if you're way ahead, lower the expectations. If you're 50 points ahead, don't be sending out emails every day saying, I'm 50 points ahead and we ought to end the contest. People want to have a contest. And they don't like front runners who are out there taking them for granted.
And he's taking people for granted. I'm 50, but everybody ought to get out. The campaign today issued a statement saying, You know, every day, everybody ought to get out so that we can, we can focus on beating Joe Biden and keeping the Democrats from stealing the election. Well, if they're stealing the election, where are the lawsuits right now to stop them from stealing the election?
So, uh, you know, I, to me there's, yes, he's strong, but, but everywhere I go, I run into people who say, you know what, I like what he did. I liked how he made his energy independent, and I liked how he stood up to the Chinese, but oh my God, he's got so much on his plate, you know, can he really, you know, is, is he blah, blah, blah.
And, and I mean, there's a weakness there. There's a, he's going to have a [00:35:00] high floor. There's going to be 30 or 35 percent of the vote, which will never leave him. But I think at the end of the day, he's got a low ceiling. I agree. And I'll tell you, and I think to your point that the low ceiling gets lower and lower in the early States.
Cause in those early States. Voters and caucus goers have more exposure to the other candidates than they do in the non early states, so they, they're, they're interested. Yeah, and take a look at the AP National Opinion Research poll on the question of, uh, are these four indictments justified? Sixteen percent of Republicans say that the four indictments, each individually, are, are, uh, justified.
So he's got a problem for the general election with One out of every six Republicans already saying, you know what, he did something bad with classified documents or in Georgia or, uh, business records in New York or, uh, January 6th with the D. C. thing with Jack Smith. One out of six already says that. But they ask the question in a very interesting way.
They said, do you think this, each of these indictments, do you think [00:36:00] this indictment is legitimate and appropriate, legitimate? politically motivated, not legitimate, or do you not have enough information to form an opinion? And between roughly a quarter to just under a third of Republicans, based on, depending on which indictment, said, I don't have enough information to form an opinion.
That says to me, Part of those people don't have an opinion, but I think part of them are people who say, you know, I'm really, this gives me a lot of indigestion, but I'm talking to an anonymous voter who's asking my opinion and I don't want to say to him, I think the former president did something wrong with the classified documents or in Georgia or in the business documents case in New York or in, uh, you know, on January 6th with encouraging people to break up the meeting of Congress.
And that ain't helpful. And that, that, that, that, that group of people, I think over the next several months as these lawsuits. Row in, uh, invisibility are, are gonna be even more problematic for him. Alright, Carl, [00:37:00] thank you for that reality check and that, uh, the little, little dose of, uh, of, uh, little dollop of optimism.
There we go. That's what we call, that's what we come to you for, not only wisdom, but, you know, a little bit of hope, a little bit of therapy. Uh, we, I, I appreciate you, you, you hopping on and, uh, we'll, we'll be calling you back soon to, uh, pick us up when we're down again. You bet. All the best.
That's our cha for today. To keep up with Carl Rove, you can follow him on the website, formerly known as Twitter. He's at Carl Rove, and as I said in the intro, definitely read his weekly column in the Wall Street Journal, which you can find online. You can order his books. And you can pre order my book.
Did I mention that? November 7th is the pub date, but you can pre order it now. Please do. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.[00:38:00]