Redstate

By Ben Domenech Posted in Special Events — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Michael Barone, the greatest political observer of his generation, sat down with RS for an exclusive chat. And yes, we know that he's a Mentat. Read on, and learn a thing or two.

RS: There have been a lot of arguments this cycle, in Pennsylvania and Florida and elsewhere, about whether downticket races have a real effect on the Presidential election outcome. Do you feel that downticket races really translate to a different outcome in states for the President?

Barone: Oh yeah, absolutely - Harry Truman 1948 Illinois. They had Adlai Stevenson for Governor, and he beat a two term incumbent, Dwight Green, and Paul Douglas for Senator beat C. Wayland Brooks, who was elected in the 41-42 special election. It was important for those tickets, and Stevenson and Douglas won by something like 400,000, and Truman won Illinois by a very narrow margin, and in fact they were very lucky because they kept Henry Wallace off the ballot in Illinois, so they didn't have the leftwingers in Chicago voting for Wallace.

Now, those were more straight-ticket times than we've become accustomed to in recent years. But we're getting back to a more straight ticket form of voting in the last decade than we've seen since the early 1940s and 1950s. So that's an apt comparison, I think. Truman only got 303 electoral votes, and - How many congressional districts did Illinois have during the 1940 cycle? At least 25, 26 - so you take those votes away from Truman's total, and you're looking at 276.

RS: We've been wondering that, because conservatives have been told by the establishment that they couldn't go with Toomey and others, saying that the President needed a certain candidate - like Arlen Specter - to carry the state.

Barone: Specter, who just got endorsed by the AFL-CIO. Another triumph of cynicism in politics.

But at least not as bad as Congressman Lipinski, who you know is retiring, and the ward committeemen met to decide the nomination. The ward committeemen were Michael Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his father's the attorney general, and John Daley, the son of the late mayor and brother of the former mayor, and the other was Bill Lipinski himself, and they decided to nominate Lipinski's son, who's a political science professor in Knoxville Tennessee. So he's going to end up representing the south side of Chicago in Congress, and his father said, "Hey, you know, it was a totally open process. Anyone could've applied!"

RS: Is there any news in this convention?

Barone: Of course there's news. I was just talking to the Governor of Hawaii, and she thinks there's a chance that it'll go for Bush. So that's Linda Lingell, she's over by the Guam delegation. Madeline Bordallo won the delegate race in Guam, she's the one whose husband killed himself on primetime TV in Guam.

And then there's Rob Portman, who's speaking right now. He told me that he doesn't know what's in the President's Tax and Social Security Package, which is a little strange because he's on the Ways and Means Committee and is generally thought of as one of President Bush's confidants, and a mindreader of Bill Thomas.

But everything I've said is obvious.

RS: In 2008, do you think that there will be a real fracture in the party over who takes the leadership role and the nomination?

Barone: Well, I think it'll certainly be a spirited contest. My own gut judgment is that issues like pro-choice positions on abortion, which have functioned as disqualifiers since the 1980 cycle really will no longer be such. And I say that partly because of the persona of Rudy Giuliani. I was standing with the Texas delegation, and they loved every minute of him. The Oklahoma delegation just ate it up. And this is Oklahoma mind you. They are swallowing the New York style, because they've been through it all together, they've gone through an intimate experience with him.

For other candidates, Pataki, Romney, I don't know. For Owens, I don't know what the situation in his personal life is.

Romney's smart, he's an adult, he's eloquent. But I have the disadvantage of having known Mitt Romney in High School, and he was four years behind me. So I have a personal bias, and I always have a picture of a 14 year old twit. Of course, if anyone knew me at 14, they might have a similar impression, but I just can't get that out of my head.

RS: What about the voting issues of the changing electorate in 2008?

Barone: Well, I think that's an interesting issue. At this point, they definitely have more liberal views on issues like marriage than older voters. But the question becomes, as they get older, do those positions stay the same? Or do they change? And I think that I can find examples of both: of where voters have carried forward the same views as they get older, and others where they have changed those views. But I've been wrong on issues like that in the past, on issues like gay marriage and others. So we'll see.