Bob Shrum - Former Democratic Party Strategist HARDtalk

against online retailers. That's it from me. Time for

HARDtalk. Next Tuesday's US presidential

election promises to be the closest since the George Bush and Al Gore

are race ended in a dispute. Barack Obama could yet join the list of

underwhelming, one-term presidents. My guess today is the veteran

Democratic Party consultant and camping strategies to Bob Shrum.

Why is President Obama struggling to rekindle the enthusiasm he

Bob Shrum, in a New York city that is still recovering from Hurricane

Sandy, welcome to HARDtalk. Glad to be here from across the sea. This

place is still damaged. Let us talk about a political storm, rather

than a real one. Let us talk about the race. You, a man of great

experience, have been involved in a host of presidential campaigns over

the years. Would you agree that the Obama campaign, at least for

several months, has had a bit of complacency about it? I probably

would not. I think it is had more. It has an absolute certainty about

the direction it wanted to take this race. The Mitt Romney people

wanted us to be a referendum. If you feel bad about the economy, why

not give me a try? The Obama campaign from the beginning says

this has to be a choice. We are going to ask a fundamental question

- who is going to fight for the middle class? To rebuild prosperity

up or do we let it trickle down? We have been very successful in Ohio.

That is why you look at the new polls coming out of Ohio, the

president is five points ahead. He has an advantage among white

working men who do not have college degrees. That is because they put

on a series of advertisements that posed this as a choice. They were

criticising Mitt Romney's business record. They are unflappable. If

they have a plan they go ahead and executed. I want to unpick several

of those arguments. You have put a positive spin on their the campaign

is. It is what I believe. If you look at the polls that came out in

the battleground states this morning, the President is in a

strong position. Mitt Romney would have to win many states where he is

currently running behind. He is now spending money in Pennsylvania. He

is spending money in Minnesota. He will not carry the States. Let us

go back to complacency. We will get into the detail of where Obama's

strength lies. You study these polls very closely. I used the word

complacency because it is fair to say that one of the pivotal moments

in this campaign came on 3rd October in that first debate, when

people got their first head-to-head look at Mitt Romney and President

Obama together and they saw a President Obama who appeared to be

disengaged, this -- disconnected and in a sense unprepared for the

fight. I would not go into all the reasons for this. Psychological,

political, whether or not the President likes Mitt Romney,

whatever. But there is something about precedence running for re-

election that weaves them into trouble in that first event. Five

of the last six precedence to face to those first debates have lost

them. -- presidents who. The President clearly lost that debate.

If he had performed the way he had been in the first debate that he

did in the second, the race would be over. But the structure did not

fundamentally changed. There is still an advantage in terms of

organisation. When you referred to the Obama camp wanting to lay out a

clear to us before the American people, how do you square that with

one stunning fact. The Obama team did not actually produce an easy to

digest vision, a plan, for what he will do in his next four years

until 23rd October. How come: you and I will probably disagree on

this. The precedent in his acceptance speech, and some people

who criticised him at more angry about that, he talked about some of

the things he wanted to do in the next four years. New manufacturing

jobs, 100,000 new teachers, moving the country towards energy

independence. The person who does not have a plan is Mitt Romney.

am going to stop you for a second. You are disagreeing with a host of

democratic commentators. A highly respected left-leaning commentator

in the US road very recently that Obama's campaign has been brilliant

at painting Mitt Romney as a hapless plutocrat. But it has been

absent when it comes to promoting a second term vision. I often

disagree with him. I disagree with him in the 2004 campaign when I was

distracted just what John Carey. -- the strategist for her John Terry.

We have a peanut gallery, including be, of all these commentators and

people who have been in past campaigns. They all think they can

do this better. The strength of the Obama campaign, all the way back to

2007, is that it has a plan and it holds to the plan. In 2007 a lot of

his fundraisers were very nervous. He got on the phone and he was way

behind Hillary Clinton. He said, we know what we are doing. It will

either work or it will not work. But we are not changing it. I

disagree with him. It would not be the first time. If you are

convinced that the Obama people have a clear plan, a clear vision

and will stick to what, here is another way of questioning that. I

am mindful you are in Europe city. Hurricane Sandy has generated a new

debate. -- New York City. There is a new debate about climate change.

Barack Obama was the precedent, more than any other in history,

used his inauguration address to suggest he cared a great deal about

climate change. The ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries

and threaten our planet. He made explicit reference to the need to

pursue renewable energy. In this campaign there are certain issues

that Obama has been too timid to take on. One of them has been

climate change. He has not mentioned them at all. You notice

in the town hall debate, nobody asked about it. The Republicans

have done a good job, quite frankly, of creating propaganda casting

doubt on climate change. The President has no doubt about it.

But there is not an issue that is going to get him back to the White

House there. There is a limit to his vision and principle. He will

have the vision. He has the vision and the principles. But he is not

running on it. I was in this business for a long time. I would

not suggest that someone run on something that will not get them

votes. I seem to recall in my days in Washington, you had arguments

with Al Gore about that sort of thing. He wanted to do a very large

event on climate change in Michigan. Just before the election. He

thought that we were crazy for not letting him do what. He got his

most fervent environ mental person on the phone. He told them what he

wanted to do. She disagreed. We did not win Michigan. We could have

lost Michigan. I do not think people should run on issues they

were close on. You are painting an issue of a pragmatic democratic

presidential campaign. There has never been a non pragmatic

successful campaign in either party. You can be principled and pragmatic.

President Roosevelt had a greater sense of the imminence of war than

he let the American people know. But he was trying to get elected.

Obama was the guy who sold us on hope and change. Perhaps a

different style of politics in 2008. Yet here he is, and again I will

quote to some interesting statistics, they have found that

70% of Obama's television commercials were negative attacks

on Romney. When he was running on hope and change, which I believe he

has fulfilled, when he was running on her and changed in 2008, what

percentage of his pants were negative? About 75%. There is

nothing unusual about this. This is a guy who came into office on the

verge of a Great Depression. Things are getting better. We have not

adopted an austerity a policy that has been adopted in Britain. Things

are getting better. The automotive industry has been saved. The past

financial reform. We passed health reform. A battle that went on for a

century. If the President will get re-elected, he will be looked back

on as historical landmark in terms of what he has achieved. And as a

man who knows and respects the polling evidence. You will have

seen the latest poll that shows that three-quarters of voters put

the economy as the number one issue. A clear majority feel that Mitt

Romney is more capable of mansion that economy. -- managing. That is

front and centre. There is a lot of cherry picking. I could find to

national polls were they think President Obama is better equipped.

What we are looking at is the polls and the battleground states. They

are the only ones that count. They will determine the outcome. If you

look at Ohio and Florida, look at those numbers, Mitt Romney has got

a mountain to climb. At this point in 1864 if we had had polling,

people would have said they were weary of the civil war. In the end

they voted for Abraham Lincoln. He was looked back on as a great

president. He wrote a letter to the members of his Cabinet that says

that it appears he will not be re- elected. These kind of snap

judgements are pretty close to useless. I think the reason the

American people are headed towards re-electing President Obama is

because they do believe that he inherited a mess and it takes

longer to get out of it. Some important things have been done.

They believe the President is on their side and Mitt Romney isn't.

But the deficit is clearly an issue that is on the minds of many

Americans. What we have seen during the four years of Barack Obama, a

precedent to has expanded the size of the government. Coming back to

an explicit plan laid out for the next four matches, do you believe

Obama has laid out a plan for Yes, he did it in last year's

budget. He cannot get anywhere with this Republican Congress. If the

President wins, they are going to respond to it. Let's be honest

about the Budget, anybody you talk to, the biggest contributors to the

Budget is not what Barack Obama has done, there were two was fought off

budget and were not paid for. That is what has blown the deficit. Of

course the federal government grew, because when you have a financial

collapse, government has to step in to stimulate demand or you see

things going from bad to worse. We had a great recession, we could

have been in a great depression. you have got a national debt that

has become a monumental mountain of some 16 trillion dollars, you have

got to act pretty fast to deal with it. You cannot act fast. If you act

fast, you'll do what David Cameron and the Tories have done in Britain.

You will send the economy down. You have got to continue to make sure

you are stimulating the economy enough to sustain it. In the medium

and longer term you have got to reduce the deficit. One way you do

not do that is by cutting taxes for people at the top. Surely, you have

got to find a balance. This period is characterised by a complete lack

of communication between the majority in the Congress and the

White House. Why is it, as I understand it, Barack Obama has not

even spoken to the Republican majority Leader of the House, John

Boehner, in the last 5-6 months? John Boehner has no interest in

having a conversation with the President. The President offered a

grant but then last summer. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader

said their purpose was to deny Barack Obama a second term. --

Grand bargain. The President does not want to do to groaning cuts now,

if you do that now, you'll go back into a recession. -- draconian.

What ever you say about the dead, people are buying bonds in US

securities, the interest rate is down to nearly 0%. If there is not

a deal between White House and the Congress by the end of this year,

by early next year, automatically a whole host of tax hikes and

spending cuts kick in because of the rise in the national debt. That

is unavoidable if there is no deal. His Barack Obama the kind of

president who can do a deal and work with the Republicans? Mitt

Romney is the kind of guy who cannot do a deal. If he did a deal

he would do the wrong deal. You are going negative again. In the debate

he said he would not do it 10 of tax increases for every dollar of

spending cuts. They will not tell us what is tax plan is apart from a

five trillion dollars cut. He is going to offset it with things he

will not talk about. The President will go back to try and... He will

try and make a grand bargain, with elements of entitlement reform.

Where there is a balanced approach to phased reduction. Mitt Romney,

there is no evidence. He talks about being bipartisan in

Massachusetts, he vetoed 800 bills. He tried to outlaw stem cells.

are making the point about negative campaigning. Wait a minute. You

said to me, is there any evidence Barack Obama can work with these

people. I do not think he can. I say, Mitt Romney on the evidence

cannot bridge these gaps. That is not negative campaigning. That is a

discussion of who is better suited to do the job. Let's take a step

back and look at America today. What the campaign says about

America today. One thing I am intrigued about, in certain states,

particularly in the battlegrounds of the Midwest, Obama is doing

better than he is nationally with white, working-class Americans. If

you look at the national picture, there are stunning pictures. 15-25%

advantage for Mitt Romney on the national level when it comes to

winning the votes of white, working-class people. Explain why

Barack Obama, from the Democratic Party, which is seen by most people

as being the party which is most interested in shoring up many care

and the welfare net and everything else that many poorer Americans

rely upon, why does Obama have the disadvantage with wide, working-

class voters? I would draw a distinction between whites who are

poor and whites who are working class. There is a lot of racism

left in this country. Harvard did a study after the last election

saying that Obama would have won about 58% of the vote if he was not

African-American. It was a great tribute to the country that we

overcame the original sin of American history and the elected

Barack Obama. If you look at West Virginia, it has received more help

from this administration than any other state. It is economically

depressed but they have received the help they needed, the president

is going to lose it by 30 points. Yes, it is still there. In tennis -

- Pennsylvania as well. It is a fascinating answer. A pretty

depressing one. Surely, it is not the whole story. You are a veteran

Democrat who has fought elections going back to Jimmy Carter. You

know the party very well. No Democratic candidate has won a

majority of the white vote since 1964. It is not just the fact that

Barack Obama is an African-American candidate. The party has a problem.

Yes, the party does have a problem. Lyndon Johnson said to John F

Kennedy, if we do civil rights we are going to write off the south

for a generation. He was more correct than he knew. He wrote off

more than the south. If you look at the 1988 Willie Horton ad against

Michael Dukakis. It did not matter that the Bush administration also

gave... There has always been an appeal to raise coming from the

Republican Party. Richard Nixon called it the southern strategy.

Colin Powell was attacked for supporting Barack Obama. Someone

within the Bush administration said it was because he was black.

choosing to answer in the way you did, you have piled on the

criticism of the Republicans. I wanted to reflect on how America

can find leaders, both Republican and Democrat, who can overcome the

increasing polarisation of American politics. How and when is it going

to happen? Five if the President is re-elected he will go a long way to

doing that in the next four years. I think Hillary Clinton will run in

2016 and I think she will be elected. If we have a long period

of leadership like that, we will have some progress. There is a

natural fear in this country, you see it in Europe, as America heads

towards becoming a majority non- white nation, which we will be in

2050, a lot of people are frightened by that. They say things

like, give me back my country. I think it needs real leadership that

is responsible over a period of 10- 15 years that is going to move the

country on. One thing in defence of my country, this country had the

original sin of racism, had slavery, fought a civil war in which 600,000

people died and ended slavery. Segregation, we fought that in the

50s and 60s. We are not there yet but we have made progress and we

have elected an African American President of the United States.