:00:06. > :00:14.against online retailers. That's it from me. Time for
:00:14. > :00:19.HARDtalk. Next Tuesday's US presidential
:00:19. > :00:27.election promises to be the closest since the George Bush and Al Gore
:00:27. > :00:30.are race ended in a dispute. Barack Obama could yet join the list of
:00:30. > :00:34.underwhelming, one-term presidents. My guess today is the veteran
:00:34. > :00:40.Democratic Party consultant and camping strategies to Bob Shrum.
:00:40. > :00:50.Why is President Obama struggling to rekindle the enthusiasm he
:00:50. > :01:15.
:01:15. > :01:19.Bob Shrum, in a New York city that is still recovering from Hurricane
:01:19. > :01:25.Sandy, welcome to HARDtalk. Glad to be here from across the sea. This
:01:25. > :01:31.place is still damaged. Let us talk about a political storm, rather
:01:31. > :01:35.than a real one. Let us talk about the race. You, a man of great
:01:35. > :01:40.experience, have been involved in a host of presidential campaigns over
:01:40. > :01:46.the years. Would you agree that the Obama campaign, at least for
:01:46. > :01:53.several months, has had a bit of complacency about it? I probably
:01:53. > :01:57.would not. I think it is had more. It has an absolute certainty about
:01:57. > :02:03.the direction it wanted to take this race. The Mitt Romney people
:02:03. > :02:09.wanted us to be a referendum. If you feel bad about the economy, why
:02:09. > :02:13.not give me a try? The Obama campaign from the beginning says
:02:13. > :02:18.this has to be a choice. We are going to ask a fundamental question
:02:18. > :02:27.- who is going to fight for the middle class? To rebuild prosperity
:02:27. > :02:31.up or do we let it trickle down? We have been very successful in Ohio.
:02:31. > :02:34.That is why you look at the new polls coming out of Ohio, the
:02:35. > :02:40.president is five points ahead. He has an advantage among white
:02:40. > :02:45.working men who do not have college degrees. That is because they put
:02:45. > :02:51.on a series of advertisements that posed this as a choice. They were
:02:51. > :02:56.criticising Mitt Romney's business record. They are unflappable. If
:02:56. > :03:00.they have a plan they go ahead and executed. I want to unpick several
:03:00. > :03:07.of those arguments. You have put a positive spin on their the campaign
:03:07. > :03:10.is. It is what I believe. If you look at the polls that came out in
:03:10. > :03:15.the battleground states this morning, the President is in a
:03:15. > :03:22.strong position. Mitt Romney would have to win many states where he is
:03:22. > :03:31.currently running behind. He is now spending money in Pennsylvania. He
:03:31. > :03:35.is spending money in Minnesota. He will not carry the States. Let us
:03:35. > :03:41.go back to complacency. We will get into the detail of where Obama's
:03:41. > :03:45.strength lies. You study these polls very closely. I used the word
:03:45. > :03:49.complacency because it is fair to say that one of the pivotal moments
:03:49. > :03:53.in this campaign came on 3rd October in that first debate, when
:03:53. > :03:58.people got their first head-to-head look at Mitt Romney and President
:03:58. > :04:05.Obama together and they saw a President Obama who appeared to be
:04:05. > :04:12.disengaged, this -- disconnected and in a sense unprepared for the
:04:12. > :04:15.fight. I would not go into all the reasons for this. Psychological,
:04:15. > :04:20.political, whether or not the President likes Mitt Romney,
:04:20. > :04:24.whatever. But there is something about precedence running for re-
:04:24. > :04:28.election that weaves them into trouble in that first event. Five
:04:28. > :04:36.of the last six precedence to face to those first debates have lost
:04:36. > :04:45.them. -- presidents who. The President clearly lost that debate.
:04:45. > :04:50.If he had performed the way he had been in the first debate that he
:04:50. > :04:53.did in the second, the race would be over. But the structure did not
:04:53. > :05:01.fundamentally changed. There is still an advantage in terms of
:05:01. > :05:05.organisation. When you referred to the Obama camp wanting to lay out a
:05:05. > :05:12.clear to us before the American people, how do you square that with
:05:12. > :05:19.one stunning fact. The Obama team did not actually produce an easy to
:05:20. > :05:25.digest vision, a plan, for what he will do in his next four years
:05:25. > :05:31.until 23rd October. How come: you and I will probably disagree on
:05:31. > :05:39.this. The precedent in his acceptance speech, and some people
:05:39. > :05:45.who criticised him at more angry about that, he talked about some of
:05:45. > :05:49.the things he wanted to do in the next four years. New manufacturing
:05:49. > :05:56.jobs, 100,000 new teachers, moving the country towards energy
:05:56. > :06:01.independence. The person who does not have a plan is Mitt Romney.
:06:01. > :06:08.am going to stop you for a second. You are disagreeing with a host of
:06:08. > :06:13.democratic commentators. A highly respected left-leaning commentator
:06:13. > :06:18.in the US road very recently that Obama's campaign has been brilliant
:06:18. > :06:23.at painting Mitt Romney as a hapless plutocrat. But it has been
:06:23. > :06:29.absent when it comes to promoting a second term vision. I often
:06:29. > :06:39.disagree with him. I disagree with him in the 2004 campaign when I was
:06:39. > :06:40.
:06:40. > :06:46.distracted just what John Carey. -- the strategist for her John Terry.
:06:46. > :06:50.We have a peanut gallery, including be, of all these commentators and
:06:50. > :06:56.people who have been in past campaigns. They all think they can
:06:56. > :07:03.do this better. The strength of the Obama campaign, all the way back to
:07:03. > :07:08.2007, is that it has a plan and it holds to the plan. In 2007 a lot of
:07:08. > :07:12.his fundraisers were very nervous. He got on the phone and he was way
:07:12. > :07:18.behind Hillary Clinton. He said, we know what we are doing. It will
:07:18. > :07:23.either work or it will not work. But we are not changing it. I
:07:23. > :07:27.disagree with him. It would not be the first time. If you are
:07:27. > :07:32.convinced that the Obama people have a clear plan, a clear vision
:07:32. > :07:38.and will stick to what, here is another way of questioning that. I
:07:38. > :07:45.am mindful you are in Europe city. Hurricane Sandy has generated a new
:07:45. > :07:49.debate. -- New York City. There is a new debate about climate change.
:07:49. > :07:53.Barack Obama was the precedent, more than any other in history,
:07:53. > :08:00.used his inauguration address to suggest he cared a great deal about
:08:00. > :08:05.climate change. The ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries
:08:05. > :08:11.and threaten our planet. He made explicit reference to the need to
:08:11. > :08:16.pursue renewable energy. In this campaign there are certain issues
:08:16. > :08:23.that Obama has been too timid to take on. One of them has been
:08:23. > :08:28.climate change. He has not mentioned them at all. You notice
:08:28. > :08:35.in the town hall debate, nobody asked about it. The Republicans
:08:35. > :08:39.have done a good job, quite frankly, of creating propaganda casting
:08:39. > :08:43.doubt on climate change. The President has no doubt about it.
:08:43. > :08:49.But there is not an issue that is going to get him back to the White
:08:49. > :08:54.House there. There is a limit to his vision and principle. He will
:08:54. > :09:01.have the vision. He has the vision and the principles. But he is not
:09:01. > :09:04.running on it. I was in this business for a long time. I would
:09:04. > :09:09.not suggest that someone run on something that will not get them
:09:09. > :09:15.votes. I seem to recall in my days in Washington, you had arguments
:09:15. > :09:22.with Al Gore about that sort of thing. He wanted to do a very large
:09:23. > :09:27.event on climate change in Michigan. Just before the election. He
:09:27. > :09:32.thought that we were crazy for not letting him do what. He got his
:09:32. > :09:39.most fervent environ mental person on the phone. He told them what he
:09:39. > :09:45.wanted to do. She disagreed. We did not win Michigan. We could have
:09:45. > :09:49.lost Michigan. I do not think people should run on issues they
:09:49. > :09:56.were close on. You are painting an issue of a pragmatic democratic
:09:56. > :10:05.presidential campaign. There has never been a non pragmatic
:10:05. > :10:08.successful campaign in either party. You can be principled and pragmatic.
:10:08. > :10:14.President Roosevelt had a greater sense of the imminence of war than
:10:14. > :10:19.he let the American people know. But he was trying to get elected.
:10:19. > :10:27.Obama was the guy who sold us on hope and change. Perhaps a
:10:27. > :10:37.different style of politics in 2008. Yet here he is, and again I will
:10:37. > :10:38.
:10:38. > :10:41.quote to some interesting statistics, they have found that
:10:42. > :10:49.70% of Obama's television commercials were negative attacks
:10:49. > :10:54.on Romney. When he was running on hope and change, which I believe he
:10:54. > :11:01.has fulfilled, when he was running on her and changed in 2008, what
:11:01. > :11:08.percentage of his pants were negative? About 75%. There is
:11:09. > :11:12.nothing unusual about this. This is a guy who came into office on the
:11:12. > :11:17.verge of a Great Depression. Things are getting better. We have not
:11:17. > :11:22.adopted an austerity a policy that has been adopted in Britain. Things
:11:22. > :11:27.are getting better. The automotive industry has been saved. The past
:11:27. > :11:32.financial reform. We passed health reform. A battle that went on for a
:11:32. > :11:36.century. If the President will get re-elected, he will be looked back
:11:36. > :11:42.on as historical landmark in terms of what he has achieved. And as a
:11:42. > :11:45.man who knows and respects the polling evidence. You will have
:11:45. > :11:50.seen the latest poll that shows that three-quarters of voters put
:11:51. > :11:58.the economy as the number one issue. A clear majority feel that Mitt
:11:58. > :12:03.Romney is more capable of mansion that economy. -- managing. That is
:12:03. > :12:07.front and centre. There is a lot of cherry picking. I could find to
:12:07. > :12:11.national polls were they think President Obama is better equipped.
:12:11. > :12:16.What we are looking at is the polls and the battleground states. They
:12:16. > :12:22.are the only ones that count. They will determine the outcome. If you
:12:22. > :12:26.look at Ohio and Florida, look at those numbers, Mitt Romney has got
:12:26. > :12:32.a mountain to climb. At this point in 1864 if we had had polling,
:12:32. > :12:37.people would have said they were weary of the civil war. In the end
:12:37. > :12:41.they voted for Abraham Lincoln. He was looked back on as a great
:12:41. > :12:49.president. He wrote a letter to the members of his Cabinet that says
:12:49. > :12:54.that it appears he will not be re- elected. These kind of snap
:12:54. > :12:57.judgements are pretty close to useless. I think the reason the
:12:57. > :13:03.American people are headed towards re-electing President Obama is
:13:03. > :13:09.because they do believe that he inherited a mess and it takes
:13:10. > :13:14.longer to get out of it. Some important things have been done.
:13:14. > :13:19.They believe the President is on their side and Mitt Romney isn't.
:13:19. > :13:25.But the deficit is clearly an issue that is on the minds of many
:13:25. > :13:35.Americans. What we have seen during the four years of Barack Obama, a
:13:35. > :13:35.
:13:35. > :13:39.precedent to has expanded the size of the government. Coming back to
:13:39. > :13:49.an explicit plan laid out for the next four matches, do you believe
:13:49. > :13:50.
:13:50. > :13:58.Obama has laid out a plan for Yes, he did it in last year's
:13:58. > :14:07.budget. He cannot get anywhere with this Republican Congress. If the
:14:07. > :14:13.President wins, they are going to respond to it. Let's be honest
:14:13. > :14:19.about the Budget, anybody you talk to, the biggest contributors to the
:14:19. > :14:25.Budget is not what Barack Obama has done, there were two was fought off
:14:25. > :14:34.budget and were not paid for. That is what has blown the deficit. Of
:14:34. > :14:37.course the federal government grew, because when you have a financial
:14:37. > :14:42.collapse, government has to step in to stimulate demand or you see
:14:42. > :14:48.things going from bad to worse. We had a great recession, we could
:14:48. > :14:54.have been in a great depression. you have got a national debt that
:14:54. > :15:04.has become a monumental mountain of some 16 trillion dollars, you have
:15:04. > :15:09.got to act pretty fast to deal with it. You cannot act fast. If you act
:15:09. > :15:14.fast, you'll do what David Cameron and the Tories have done in Britain.
:15:14. > :15:18.You will send the economy down. You have got to continue to make sure
:15:18. > :15:22.you are stimulating the economy enough to sustain it. In the medium
:15:22. > :15:29.and longer term you have got to reduce the deficit. One way you do
:15:29. > :15:37.not do that is by cutting taxes for people at the top. Surely, you have
:15:37. > :15:40.got to find a balance. This period is characterised by a complete lack
:15:40. > :15:47.of communication between the majority in the Congress and the
:15:47. > :15:51.White House. Why is it, as I understand it, Barack Obama has not
:15:51. > :15:57.even spoken to the Republican majority Leader of the House, John
:15:57. > :16:02.Boehner, in the last 5-6 months? John Boehner has no interest in
:16:02. > :16:12.having a conversation with the President. The President offered a
:16:12. > :16:13.
:16:13. > :16:18.grant but then last summer. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader
:16:18. > :16:25.said their purpose was to deny Barack Obama a second term. --
:16:25. > :16:32.Grand bargain. The President does not want to do to groaning cuts now,
:16:32. > :16:42.if you do that now, you'll go back into a recession. -- draconian.
:16:42. > :16:48.What ever you say about the dead, people are buying bonds in US
:16:48. > :16:52.securities, the interest rate is down to nearly 0%. If there is not
:16:52. > :16:58.a deal between White House and the Congress by the end of this year,
:16:58. > :17:03.by early next year, automatically a whole host of tax hikes and
:17:03. > :17:09.spending cuts kick in because of the rise in the national debt. That
:17:09. > :17:13.is unavoidable if there is no deal. His Barack Obama the kind of
:17:13. > :17:18.president who can do a deal and work with the Republicans? Mitt
:17:18. > :17:24.Romney is the kind of guy who cannot do a deal. If he did a deal
:17:24. > :17:29.he would do the wrong deal. You are going negative again. In the debate
:17:29. > :17:35.he said he would not do it 10 of tax increases for every dollar of
:17:35. > :17:39.spending cuts. They will not tell us what is tax plan is apart from a
:17:39. > :17:49.five trillion dollars cut. He is going to offset it with things he
:17:49. > :17:51.
:17:51. > :18:00.will not talk about. The President will go back to try and... He will
:18:00. > :18:05.try and make a grand bargain, with elements of entitlement reform.
:18:05. > :18:10.Where there is a balanced approach to phased reduction. Mitt Romney,
:18:10. > :18:19.there is no evidence. He talks about being bipartisan in
:18:19. > :18:24.Massachusetts, he vetoed 800 bills. He tried to outlaw stem cells.
:18:24. > :18:29.are making the point about negative campaigning. Wait a minute. You
:18:29. > :18:35.said to me, is there any evidence Barack Obama can work with these
:18:35. > :18:41.people. I do not think he can. I say, Mitt Romney on the evidence
:18:41. > :18:45.cannot bridge these gaps. That is not negative campaigning. That is a
:18:45. > :18:50.discussion of who is better suited to do the job. Let's take a step
:18:50. > :18:56.back and look at America today. What the campaign says about
:18:56. > :19:00.America today. One thing I am intrigued about, in certain states,
:19:00. > :19:05.particularly in the battlegrounds of the Midwest, Obama is doing
:19:05. > :19:12.better than he is nationally with white, working-class Americans. If
:19:12. > :19:15.you look at the national picture, there are stunning pictures. 15-25%
:19:15. > :19:20.advantage for Mitt Romney on the national level when it comes to
:19:20. > :19:26.winning the votes of white, working-class people. Explain why
:19:26. > :19:30.Barack Obama, from the Democratic Party, which is seen by most people
:19:30. > :19:34.as being the party which is most interested in shoring up many care
:19:34. > :19:40.and the welfare net and everything else that many poorer Americans
:19:40. > :19:45.rely upon, why does Obama have the disadvantage with wide, working-
:19:45. > :19:49.class voters? I would draw a distinction between whites who are
:19:49. > :19:54.poor and whites who are working class. There is a lot of racism
:19:54. > :20:00.left in this country. Harvard did a study after the last election
:20:00. > :20:05.saying that Obama would have won about 58% of the vote if he was not
:20:05. > :20:10.African-American. It was a great tribute to the country that we
:20:10. > :20:16.overcame the original sin of American history and the elected
:20:16. > :20:21.Barack Obama. If you look at West Virginia, it has received more help
:20:21. > :20:26.from this administration than any other state. It is economically
:20:26. > :20:36.depressed but they have received the help they needed, the president
:20:36. > :20:37.
:20:37. > :20:44.is going to lose it by 30 points. Yes, it is still there. In tennis -
:20:44. > :20:50.- Pennsylvania as well. It is a fascinating answer. A pretty
:20:50. > :20:55.depressing one. Surely, it is not the whole story. You are a veteran
:20:55. > :21:00.Democrat who has fought elections going back to Jimmy Carter. You
:21:00. > :21:05.know the party very well. No Democratic candidate has won a
:21:05. > :21:10.majority of the white vote since 1964. It is not just the fact that
:21:10. > :21:16.Barack Obama is an African-American candidate. The party has a problem.
:21:16. > :21:20.Yes, the party does have a problem. Lyndon Johnson said to John F
:21:20. > :21:25.Kennedy, if we do civil rights we are going to write off the south
:21:25. > :21:35.for a generation. He was more correct than he knew. He wrote off
:21:35. > :21:36.
:21:36. > :21:44.more than the south. If you look at the 1988 Willie Horton ad against
:21:44. > :21:49.Michael Dukakis. It did not matter that the Bush administration also
:21:49. > :21:59.gave... There has always been an appeal to raise coming from the
:21:59. > :22:02.
:22:02. > :22:12.Republican Party. Richard Nixon called it the southern strategy.
:22:12. > :22:15.
:22:15. > :22:20.Colin Powell was attacked for supporting Barack Obama. Someone
:22:20. > :22:23.within the Bush administration said it was because he was black.
:22:23. > :22:28.choosing to answer in the way you did, you have piled on the
:22:28. > :22:35.criticism of the Republicans. I wanted to reflect on how America
:22:35. > :22:40.can find leaders, both Republican and Democrat, who can overcome the
:22:40. > :22:44.increasing polarisation of American politics. How and when is it going
:22:44. > :22:52.to happen? Five if the President is re-elected he will go a long way to
:22:52. > :22:57.doing that in the next four years. I think Hillary Clinton will run in
:22:57. > :23:01.2016 and I think she will be elected. If we have a long period
:23:01. > :23:08.of leadership like that, we will have some progress. There is a
:23:08. > :23:14.natural fear in this country, you see it in Europe, as America heads
:23:14. > :23:18.towards becoming a majority non- white nation, which we will be in
:23:18. > :23:24.2050, a lot of people are frightened by that. They say things
:23:24. > :23:30.like, give me back my country. I think it needs real leadership that
:23:30. > :23:36.is responsible over a period of 10- 15 years that is going to move the
:23:36. > :23:42.country on. One thing in defence of my country, this country had the
:23:42. > :23:47.original sin of racism, had slavery, fought a civil war in which 600,000
:23:47. > :23:52.people died and ended slavery. Segregation, we fought that in the
:23:52. > :23:57.50s and 60s. We are not there yet but we have made progress and we
:23:57. > :24:01.have elected an African American President of the United States.