Speaker 1: From Kurt Coe media. What are you gonna do about.
Speaker 2: Welcome to politics. Meet me in the middle. I'm Jane
Speaker 2: Albrecht filling in for our regular host Bill Kurtis. If
Speaker 2: the presidential campaigns have your head spinning or even worse
Speaker 2: ready to tear your hair out or if you're worried
Speaker 2: about what all this is going to lead to on
Speaker 2: election night then you've tuned into the right podcast. Today
Speaker 2: we're lucky to have with us an award winning journalist
Speaker 2: and veteran of eleven presidential campaigns.
Speaker 3: He will help us make sense of it all. We'll
Speaker 3: be talking about the dance between the presidency and the
Speaker 3: media how media coverage of presidential campaigns has changed over
Speaker 3: the years and how ratings pressures on our news outlets
Speaker 3: affects what news we get and how that news gets
Speaker 3: presented to us. We'll also talk about what you can
Speaker 3: expect on election night.
Speaker 2: So let's get started. First our co-host. Pulitzer Prize winning
Speaker 2: historian best selling author Broadway lecturer and one man encyclopedia
Speaker 2: on the history of American politics professor Ed Larson. Nice
Speaker 2: to see you Ed. Thanks Jane. And now for our
Speaker 2: special guest Walter Shapiro. Walters a fellow at the Brennan
Speaker 2: Center for Justice at New York University and a celebrated journalist.
Speaker 3: He's written for Roll Call The Guardian Washington Post Time
Speaker 3: Magazine Newsweek and USA Today. He also lectures in political
Speaker 3: science at Yale University. He is covering this presidential campaign
Speaker 3: for The New Republic. Early in his career Walter ran
Speaker 3: for Congress and later was the speechwriter for Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 3: One of the more fun things about Walter is that
Speaker 3: he performed standup comedy for many years.
Speaker 2: In 1998 the Times of London described him as one
Speaker 2: of Manhattan's leading political centrists. Welcome Walter. It's our honor
Speaker 2: and pleasure to have you with us today.
Speaker 4: Oh this could be fun. Walter you've written about our
Speaker 4: television press that it likes conflict and drama. They do
Speaker 4: so because conflict and drama gets ratings. I actually get
Speaker 4: a chuckle when I see promos for the presidential debates.
Speaker 4: They flash its candidate's face on the screen as if
Speaker 4: it were a heavyweight boxing match.
Speaker 5: Though I would love to watch Trump come in for
Speaker 5: a in.
Speaker 4: Yes that would be fun yes. So how has the
Speaker 4: evolution of the media from the first presidential debate between
Speaker 4: Kennedy and Nixon to the advent of social media changed
Speaker 4: presidential campaigns and how the media covers those campaigns.
Speaker 6: Well I mean the thing that stays in my mind
Speaker 6: is that the first presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon
Speaker 6: in 1960 took place in the studios of the Chicago
Speaker 6: TV station WPP. There was no studio audience. There was
Speaker 6: no wild applause. It was just two candidates moderators questioners
Speaker 6: from the media and two lecterns and the overproduced sets
Speaker 6: that we got particularly during the primary debates are just
Speaker 6: a comic expansion of what used to be but much
Speaker 6: more importantly the whole thing is everything is a profit center.
Speaker 6: Once the media discovered politics shelves there's a reason why
Speaker 6: the publications called Politico rather than the podiatrist. I believe
Speaker 6: CNN claimed they had to make this public this is
Speaker 6: part of the sale of Time Warner media that they
Speaker 6: made an additional 1 billion dollars in unanticipated profits during 2016.
Speaker 6: Les Moonves now the different president of the company that
Speaker 6: oversees CBS said in February 2016 they say Donald Trump
Speaker 6: isn't good for America but he has been great for CBS.
Speaker 6: So I say bring it on Donald.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Ed as a historian how do you see presidential
Speaker 4: campaigns have changed since 1960.
Speaker 7: I think social media has changed presidential campaigns before in
Speaker 7: the 1960s. We had just three broadcast networks and that
Speaker 7: candidate had to go through that media. Now you have
Speaker 7: that rather than news sources like CBS or Mutual Broadcasting
Speaker 7: who tried to get as broad an audience as possible.
Speaker 7: Now you have things like MSNBC and Fox that can
Speaker 7: narrowcast to a narrow audience and therefore feed a particular viewpoint.
Speaker 7: Plus with social media you can have sub communities and
Speaker 7: with that group they can foment and foster and develop
Speaker 7: their various viewpoints and that's not really a comment to
Speaker 7: right or left. So I think the social media on
Speaker 7: top of the cable news networks and the various different
Speaker 7: new sources of information has.
Speaker 5: From a media point changed American politics since 1960 what
Speaker 5: Ed said got me thinking about something I teach a
Speaker 5: course at Yale on presidential politics the news media and
Speaker 5: we always start the course with making of the President
Speaker 5: 1960 that even 60 years later is still probably the
Speaker 5: most influential book on political campaigns ever written for the
Speaker 5: first time Theodore White revealed the machinations that got Kennedy
Speaker 5: the nomination and as a result it really changed the
Speaker 5: dominant medium of 1960 which was in TV. It was
Speaker 5: still print and for the most part it was journalism
Speaker 5: as stenography. And what happened between 1960 and the boys
Speaker 5: on the bus of 1972 and the new journalism and
Speaker 5: the breakdown of traditional journalistic mores in the 60s and
Speaker 5: 70s is we got interpretive print journalism very similar to
Speaker 5: what we have today. By the mid 70s.
Speaker 4: You know Walter has the press really come to grips
Speaker 4: particularly our television press come to grips with the role
Speaker 4: they played in the making of this president to a
Speaker 4: large extent TV now has an excuse all presidents dominate
Speaker 4: TV coverage.
Speaker 5: It was true of Ronald Reagan. It was true of
Speaker 5: Bill Clinton. It was true of Barack Obama. So when
Speaker 5: you have both the spectacle of Donald Trump combined with
Speaker 5: the reality that he's an incumbent president it is really
Speaker 5: hard for television and the media in general clean up
Speaker 5: their act. So the fact is that we are living
Speaker 5: in a dominated by Donald Trump is less a function
Speaker 5: of TV the way it was in 2016 and more
Speaker 5: the cult of the imperial presidency that has grown up
Speaker 5: since Kennedy.
Speaker 4: Isn't there an inherent conflict between ratings pressures on our
Speaker 4: news which means giving the public what they want and
Speaker 4: true journalism which requires solid reporting of the facts.
Speaker 5: Aren't they sort of at odds with each other part
Speaker 5: of it is that we have metrics that we never
Speaker 5: had before when I was a columnist for USA Today
Speaker 5: and then America's largest paper from 1995 to 2004. I
Speaker 5: assume that every person who read the paper all two
Speaker 5: or three million copies read my column eagerly. The only
Speaker 5: way USA Today could measure this at that time was
Speaker 5: to do focus groups in shopping malls and show people
Speaker 5: parts of the papers and say Do you remember reading that.
Speaker 5: But right now in a web world Oh my God
Speaker 5: the readership of your piece has dropped significantly in the
Speaker 5: last nine minutes. Let's put something else up on the
Speaker 5: home page. Let's flog something else. If not only television
Speaker 5: everybody knows exactly what the metrics are. In many newsrooms
Speaker 5: they are actually showing these pressures cannot be ignored. Maybe
Speaker 5: they explain why the news coverage in the New York
Speaker 5: Times that probably gone to the left. It is certainly
Speaker 5: more sensitive to Black Lives Matter and other issues than
Speaker 5: one would have imagined five years ago. And in the
Speaker 5: same way The Wall Street Journal is much more clipped
Speaker 5: about politics even though the news coverage of the journal
Speaker 5: is still old fashioned follow the rules. News coverage.
Speaker 4: Do you have any thoughts about this age we're in
Speaker 4: and have there been other ages where the news has
Speaker 4: been as unreliable as it can be today from various
Speaker 4: outlets where there's no fact checking and things like that.
Speaker 8: I certainly think this would be true in the early
Speaker 8: ages of the Republic at the rise of the partisan newspapers.
Speaker 8: You had a collection of highly partisan self-funded newspapers and
Speaker 8: basically every Middlesex village in town in by then 15
Speaker 8: states and they presented the news in a totally partisan fashion.
Speaker 8: They recreated the facts. I think that continued through the
Speaker 8: rise of the world of Hearst and Pulitzer it at
Speaker 8: sort of though disappeared with the Second World War more
Speaker 8: than anything and you had an era of seemingly even
Speaker 8: handed news.
Speaker 4: Why do you think there's so much hostility towards the
Speaker 4: press and distrust of the press in general even before Trump.
Speaker 9: There has been a war by the Republican right on
Speaker 9: the press for the last 15 years. Yeah it has
Speaker 9: been a hallmark of the 21st century. Rather than Trump
Speaker 9: only phenomena even though it has been exaggerated that's part
Speaker 9: of it. Part of it is we didn't used to
Speaker 9: have a liberal TV network and an ultra conservative TV network.
Speaker 9: We didn't have bright bars. We didn't have the Huffington
Speaker 9: Post 20 years ago that to a large extent there
Speaker 9: has been a outgrowth of partisan media.
Speaker 4: Is there any hope and I addressed this both Ed
Speaker 4: and Walter for our news media in the current climate
Speaker 4: to come back to where people have solid sources of
Speaker 4: reliable information.
Speaker 8: I don't see the route out because I believe that
Speaker 8: there are fundamental market forces and fundamental American forces and
Speaker 8: fundamental bits of psychology that has driven us to where
Speaker 8: we are. And I don't necessarily see them coming back
Speaker 8: together because there will be that same commercial interest that
Speaker 8: same drive after the election no matter who wins during
Speaker 8: this period.
Speaker 5: The New York Times has significantly gained circulation. The Washington
Speaker 5: Post has significantly gained circulation. There is a large audience
Speaker 5: for newspapers and mostly through their Web sites. In addition
Speaker 5: although it's not nearly as sexy as what happened on
Speaker 5: Hannity last night or what Rachel Maddow said at 9:00 p.m.
Speaker 5: Eastern there are about 25 million Americans who tune in
Speaker 5: every night to watch the old fashion evening newscasts on
Speaker 5: the three legacy broadcast networks at six thirty. We don't
Speaker 5: focus enough on the appetite in this country for serious
Speaker 5: journalism because it's not as beguiling leading new and alarming
Speaker 5: as the fake news hyper partisan discussion that we have
Speaker 5: constantly on. Oh my God Fox News has MSNBC gone
Speaker 5: too far to the left.
Speaker 10: All of those questions let's hold that thought. We're going
Speaker 10: to take a quick break.
Speaker 11: Coming up after the break depending right now on what
Speaker 11: polls you look at. There have never been fewer undecided
Speaker 11: voters since we started polling in the 1970s wearing an
Speaker 11: era of intense partisanship which means people are much less
Speaker 11: likely to turn on a debate and say you know
Speaker 11: I never thought of that before.
Speaker 12: On medicine we're still practicing. Join Dr. Stephen pare back
Speaker 12: and Bill Kurtis for real conversations. But the medical professionals
Speaker 12: who have their finger on the pulse of health care
Speaker 12: in the modern world. Available on all your favorite podcasting
Speaker 12: platforms produced by critical media.
Speaker 2: So what's he gonna do about it.
Speaker 3: We're back with Walter Shapiro. And at last.
Speaker 4: Walter we talked earlier about the Nixon and Kennedy debates
Speaker 4: and we're going to be facing several debates in this
Speaker 4: coming election. It was said that the Nixon Kennedy debate
Speaker 4: was really dispositive in terms of who won that election.
Speaker 4: To think that the debates coming up between Biden and
Speaker 4: Trump will determine the outcome of this election.
Speaker 5: No. Let me explain why. In 1960 going back to
Speaker 5: some of the things Ed said about the fact that
Speaker 5: we were much less partisan country and political parties were
Speaker 5: made up of big coalitions that there were many more
Speaker 5: undecided voters. There were many more voters who did not
Speaker 5: know based on just party I.D. who they would vote for.
Speaker 5: We had just come out of two Eisenhower landslides in
Speaker 5: a row following 20 years of Democratic control of the
Speaker 5: White House. So to a large extent it was a
Speaker 5: volatile electorate with many swing voters depending right now on
Speaker 5: what polls you look at. There have never been fewer
Speaker 5: undecided voters since we started polling in the 1970s that
Speaker 5: depending on your poll you're talking three to five percent
Speaker 5: undecided even before Trump in 2012. When Obama and Mitt
Speaker 5: Romney was breathtakingly stable. So to a large extent we're
Speaker 5: in an era of intense partisanship which means people are
Speaker 5: much less likely to end on a debate and say
Speaker 5: you know I never thought of that before. I know
Speaker 5: that Donald Trump has a lot to say for himself.
Speaker 5: I think the odds are high that nothing before the
Speaker 5: debates have moved the polls significantly since March not the
Speaker 5: epidemic not black lives matter not the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Speaker 5: So the safe guess is that nothing as you move
Speaker 5: very much progressed in the debates despite the fact that
Speaker 5: the impulse of all press is to merely say ah
Speaker 5: ha that's a game changing moment.
Speaker 4: Walter two national polls really mean anything our president gets
Speaker 4: elected by electors and how electors are picked are determined
Speaker 4: not only state by state but often precinct by precinct.
Speaker 4: So one thing that drives me crazy is in August
Speaker 4: they promote all these national polls to try to keep
Speaker 4: the contest going.
Speaker 5: It is cheaper to do one national poll than to
Speaker 5: do a separate poll for Pennsylvania. A separate poll for Wisconsin.
Speaker 5: A separate poll for Michigan. The sampling is roughly the
Speaker 5: same whether you're talking about a universe of 10 million
Speaker 5: voters or University of 130 million voters where national polls
Speaker 5: are really overhyped is during the presidential primaries because not
Speaker 5: only do individual states vote in the primaries but individual
Speaker 5: states vote in sequence at least in the fall election.
Speaker 5: All the votes are geared towards one election not 50
Speaker 5: separate primary elections.
Speaker 4: With respect to covert How has the pandemic combined with
Speaker 4: the current news affected coverage of the campaigns.
Speaker 9: First of all the pandemic has been one of the
Speaker 9: few good sides other than the growth of home banking
Speaker 9: has been that this is a wonderful boost for pollsters
Speaker 9: because suddenly people are at home they're bored and they're
Speaker 9: actually answering the telephone. But polling questions are by nature
Speaker 9: a little rough a little a blunderbuss lie can you
Speaker 9: keep people on the phone long enough. They often posed
Speaker 9: choices on issues that don't fit the way somebody actually thinks.
Speaker 9: So I really love having free form conversations with voters
Speaker 9: in swing states say in a diner outside of Columbus Ohio.
Speaker 9: The point is that that is not possible during a
Speaker 9: pandemic because no one wants a stranger plopping down next
Speaker 9: to them while they're eating dinner in a diner. I
Speaker 9: don't want to spend time indoors.
Speaker 5: We don't know what effect the absence of campaigning has
Speaker 5: really had on the election because the major effect of
Speaker 5: a campaign appearance is for both the Challenger and the
Speaker 5: incumbent president to dominate local media. But again we don't
Speaker 5: have a good hand on what the absence of campaigning
Speaker 5: has really done to this election.
Speaker 4: What do you think the impact of the pandemic will
Speaker 4: be on Americans view of governance. I know Ed you're
Speaker 4: a historian not a not a futurist but there's been
Speaker 4: a lot of talk about this pandemic changing people's views
Speaker 4: of government and the role of government. Do you see
Speaker 4: it staying the same or changing.
Speaker 7: I see it driving people apart even more because I
Speaker 7: just like Walter I talk with different people and they
Speaker 7: each have their own narrative. There are people who believe
Speaker 7: that this shows that the federal government is corrupt that
Speaker 7: the only functional government is at the county level. I
Speaker 7: hear that from many people the CDC can't be trusted
Speaker 7: none of them can be trusted and therefore weakening their
Speaker 7: faith in government where another group takes the opposite you
Speaker 7: point and say that no no. We needed government we
Speaker 7: need government to step in. And so you're going to
Speaker 7: see that narrative driven by their own separate media and
Speaker 7: they'll have their own narratives driving them to different ways.
Speaker 7: And because of the so-called failed response in America it
Speaker 7: will even feed the two narratives even more.
Speaker 4: Walter until the pandemic you were on the road a lot.
Speaker 4: What's your stance.
Speaker 13: What's my sense is that I think if Biden is
Speaker 13: elected and certainly looks that way the biggest challenge he
Speaker 13: will face is creating faith in government to handle the
Speaker 13: pandemic competently and how he would handle the rollout for
Speaker 13: the vaccine which I hope is coming in early next
Speaker 13: year and how we would handle safety precautions and how
Speaker 13: we would handle massively expanding testing is really probably the
Speaker 13: biggest challenge of the Biden presidency. And if he's successful
Speaker 13: with it I think we would take a totally different
Speaker 13: view of government. If he is unsuccessful with it then
Speaker 13: I think we are on a downward slide of this trust.
Speaker 4: What do you think we should expect on election night
Speaker 4: November 3rd.
Speaker 14: Everywhere you turn there's somebody else with another dystopian scenario
Speaker 14: of what could happen on election night. Trump will declare
Speaker 14: victory when the absentees are counted there'll be a blue
Speaker 14: shift and that this will be seen as a corrupt
Speaker 14: way of changing the election outcomes.
Speaker 13: But all of this assumes the TV networks will call
Speaker 13: states based on incomplete returns on election night. I think
Speaker 13: that is very unlikely. Even Fox News has really prided
Speaker 13: itself on a totally professional decision desk. I think the
Speaker 13: difference from a normal election night is that instead of
Speaker 13: a massive number of red and blue states we're going
Speaker 13: to have a number of key states that are white
Speaker 13: for undecided. I'm really hoping that the networks will be
Speaker 13: very precise in saying we only have 56 percent of
Speaker 13: the vote in Ohio. We only have 48 percent of
Speaker 13: the vote in Pennsylvania rather than doing the deceptive ninety
Speaker 13: nine percent of precincts reporting. Because what that implies is
Speaker 13: that these are ninety nine percent of the votes. When
Speaker 13: really it's ninety nine percent of the day of reports
Speaker 13: from the precincts but the much more important thing is
Speaker 13: while it is looking like the count may be slow
Speaker 13: in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin there are states to start counting
Speaker 13: absentee ballots well in advance of Election Day. Florida for
Speaker 13: all the controversy of 2000 and the hanging chads is
Speaker 13: a fast counting state. You just happen to be evenly
Speaker 13: divided in 2000. Arizona is another fast counting state. North
Speaker 13: Carolina is a third fast counting state. And the point
Speaker 13: is that we show that Biden has on election night
Speaker 13: that Biden has won Florida whereas one North Carolina and
Speaker 13: Arizona and lost Florida it is almost impossible for Donald
Speaker 13: Trump to cobble together enough states to win.
Speaker 15: We may not have the 270 and the ball coming
Speaker 15: down on election night but we will have a very
Speaker 15: clear idea of who's ahead at any comments on that
Speaker 15: I just add that I hope Walter's right.
Speaker 7: I'm not as optimistic because I think that regardless of
Speaker 7: what the media does the president may call it for himself.
Speaker 7: And there are states states like Arizona and Florida and
Speaker 7: even in a way Wisconsin and North Carolina where the
Speaker 7: legislature is firmly in control of the Republican Party a
Speaker 7: party that might be responsive to Trump's claims. Now I
Speaker 7: don't know that's true. Again I've often said I'm not
Speaker 7: a prophet.
Speaker 14: I'm a historian and I will be ready to analyze
Speaker 14: it after the fact to some extent Ed you were
Speaker 14: referring in part to a Atlantic Monthly article by Barton
Speaker 14: Gellman that talked about legislators setting their own set of
Speaker 14: electors to Washington. But what gets complicated here is even
Speaker 14: if all Republicans who will go along in these states
Speaker 14: which I'm still somewhat dubious about there are Democratic governors
Speaker 14: in Pennsylvania Wisconsin and Michigan and North Carolina in Arizona
Speaker 14: there is a Democratic secretary of state.
Speaker 13: These possibilities are far from unequivocal. And I think to
Speaker 13: some extent we have gotten ourselves into so caught up
Speaker 13: in two new dystopian Trump induced fears that we are
Speaker 13: beginning to confuse what could in theory happen with what
Speaker 13: will happen. And while these are not impossible scenarios are
Speaker 13: low probability scenarios.
Speaker 4: But each one of them is treated as likely the
Speaker 4: last question is not so much on our topic but
Speaker 4: I know we're running out of time Walter. You were
Speaker 4: a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter. How many speech writers were
Speaker 4: there and how did that process go.
Speaker 14: It was impressive group. Chris Matthews was there. Jim Fallows
Speaker 14: was there recruits Berg of the New Yorker was there
Speaker 14: I was there. I was very much a junior speechwriter
Speaker 14: my friend Jonathan Alter has a biography of Jimmy Carter
Speaker 14: coming out of rush hour now. And I've reviewed it.
Speaker 14: Oddly enough the opening anecdote in the book is about
Speaker 14: Jimmy Carter giving a speech in June 1979 unveiling the
Speaker 14: first White House solar panels. And it happens to be
Speaker 14: in my speech and admittedly in that speech Jimmy Carter
Speaker 14: said there William Henry Harrison who governed for one month
Speaker 14: in 1841 was the president who brought all elected president
Speaker 14: to the White House because obviously he was the grandson
Speaker 14: Benjamin Harrison but all the way through. I wrote William
Speaker 14: Henry Harrison and it survived five different levels of vetting
Speaker 14: and Jimmy Carter repeated it. And it wasn't until the
Speaker 14: New York Times the next day pointed out that William
Speaker 14: Henry Harrison had died about three years before Thomas Edison
Speaker 14: inventor of the electric light bulb was born. And it
Speaker 14: is telling that I never heard a peep.
Speaker 3: Walter Shapiro Ed Larson thank you Walter. How can our
Speaker 3: viewers find you online and on social media. Let us
Speaker 3: merely recommend.
Speaker 14: At Mr. Walter Shapiro Twitter is the best way.
Speaker 16: But there is also archives of my work. If you've
Speaker 16: been just a Google Walter Shapiro New Republic. Walter Shapiro
Speaker 16: roll call. And Walter Shapiro burning center you will each
Speaker 16: come to a perfect insomnia might collect this wonderful.
Speaker 2: I'd also like to thank our producers Mike Thomas and A.J.
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