Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America (52 page)

If he was short of money, why not dip into his personal fortune to provide the campaign with funds until the convention, something he had done in 2008 to the tune of nearly $45 million? He and his advisers talked about this a number of times, he said, but always believed he would be pounded by the media and the Obama campaign. “Look, if I put $25,000 in, the Democrats would say Romney’s trying to buy the election,” he said. “It would connect with their narrative that I was out of touch, that I was this wealthy guy, different than anyone else, [that] I was in the 1 percent. And so we were very concerned about doing something that would create that narrative.” Eventually he personally guaranteed the $20 million loan that provided the campaign fresh funding in August. In any case, Romney said he did not see the summer as decisive, just part of the ebbs and flows of every campaign. “There are so many things you could point to as being decisive. For instance, I had a lousy September; I had a great October.”

•   •   •

His great October began in Denver, and, not surprisingly, he remembered the first debate as the high point of the year. “People would get a chance to see that I was not the person that President Obama had been portraying me as being, and the things he was saying about me and my positions were wrong. I mean, his ads were not accurate. His ads were just pillorying me, saying things
that were simply not true, and so I recognized this as a chance for people to see who I really am, and understand what I really believe.” When I said he seemed to reappear in that debate as “moderate Mitt,” he offered this interpretation of what happened. “People saw the entire me as opposed to an eight-second clip of me. . . . The clips are just a little piece, and I don’t want to say distorting, but they’re not the full picture. And if people watched me on the campaign trail and heard my stump speech, what I said in my stump speech was the same thing I said in that debate. I’m the same guy. But in the debate, they saw the whole thing.”

He believed the debates produced a fundamental change in his relationship with the party’s rank and file. “What had begun as people watching me with an interested eye had become instead more of a movement with energy and passion,” he said. “The rallies we’d had with larger and larger numbers and people not just agreeing with me on issues, but passionate about the election and about our campaign—that was something that had become palpable. We had a rally in New Hampshire [the night before the election]. I mean, this was not just, ‘Hey, we’re happy with our nominee.’ These were people saying, ‘We love this. This is great.’” As a result he woke up on election day thinking he would win. “I can’t say 90 percent confident or something like that, but I felt we were going to win. . . . The campaign had changed from being clinical to being emotional. And that was very promising.”

His last hours on the trail, especially the arrival at the Pittsburgh airport on the afternoon of the election, where he was greeted by a spontaneous crowd of supporters, gave him added confidence. “We were looking at our own poll numbers, and there were two things that we believed,” he said. “We believe that some of the polls that showed me not winning were just simply wrong, because they showed there was going to be more turnout from African American voters, for instance, than had existed in 2008. We said no way, absolutely no way. That can’t be, because this was the first time an African American president had run. Two thousand eight—that had to be the high point. . . . We saw independent voters in Ohio breaking for me by double digits. And as a number said, you can’t lose Ohio if you win independent voters. You’re winning Republicans solidly, you’re winning independents, and enthusiasm is overwhelmingly on your side. . . . So those things said, okay, we have a real good chance of winning. Nothing’s certain. Don’t measure the drapes. But I had written an acceptance speech and spent some time on the acceptance speech. I had not written a concession speech.” Once he landed back in Boston, a different reality set in. “I called Matt [Rhoades] and Rich Beeson, and we all got on the phone together and talked about what we were seeing. . . . We’re seeing much more turnout from groups that we thought would not be voting in as large
numbers. The enthusiasm gap is not playing out in who’s voting as we might have expected. And it’s going to be a lot closer. . . . This is not the picture we had expected.”

I asked Romney whether he saw the defeat as a loss for the Republican Party or a loss for Mitt Romney. “I don’t think I’m qualified to make that assessment,” he said. “I think political scientists will draw those conclusions. I’m sure there are lessons for the Republican Party or for any future nominee in my loss. But I mean, I take responsibility for my own loss. I don’t look to the party as being responsible. Clearly some things that happened in the Republican Party were not helpful to my campaign.” But did he think the party was on the wrong side of history, fighting demographic trends or trying to push against changing opinion on some of the social issues that would make it more difficult to win the White House in the future? “Well, I feel very deeply that our principles are the right principles for the country and the right principles for the people of America,” he said. But he noted again that the party had not effectively appealed to the Hispanic community.

I asked also about the comments attributed to him on election night, that he was now deeply worried for the country. “I’m fearful that unless we change course, if we keep borrowing a trillion dollars a year, this is—we’re walking along a precipice. I can’t tell you we’ll fall over it. Maybe we just walk along it for a year and the private sector will be able to pick up the gap and things will work out. That’s possible. But as a guy who’s occasionally walked the mountains, I don’t like to walk along the precipice. I like to walk back from the precipice.” Had the election resolved any of the big choices that he and the president had said the campaign was about? He paused. “There’s so many ways of defining what was concluded,” he said. “I think a lot of voters voted on things other than the biggest issues. I don’t think that if you were to go out and say, ‘Look, we’re going to have a vote in this country. Do you think we should continue to spend a trillion dollars more than we take in and pass those burdens on to the next generation?’ I think my position would win handily. And I think that was one of the measures that was in this election. But I think other issues diverted from that fundamental issue. I believe the American people would line up with the Republican Party on the major issues of the day. But I think oftentimes the opposition running a very effective campaign is able to confuse some of those issues and take us away from that very fundamental issue, which is, do you want to continue to spend and borrow more than we can afford?”

•   •   •

When Romney had mentioned his “lousy September,” it was an evident reference to what may have been the low point of his campaign: the infamous 47 percent video. He was in California and said at first he couldn’t get a look at
the actual video. His advisers were pushing him to respond as quickly as he could. “As I understood it, and as they described it to me, not having heard it, it was saying, look, the Democrats have 47 percent, we’ve got 45 percent, my job is to get the people in the middle, and I’ve got to get the people in the middle,” he said. “And I thought, well, that’s a reasonable thing. . . . It’s not a topic I talk about in public, but there’s nothing wrong with it. They’ve got a bloc of voters, we’ve got a bloc of voters, I’ve got to get the ones in the middle. And I thought that that would be how it would be perceived—as a candidate talking about the process of focusing on the people in the middle who can either vote Republican or Democrat. As it turned out, down the road, it became perceived as being something very different.”

You mean that you were insensitive to a whole group of people? I asked. “Right,” he responded. “And I think the president said he’s writing off 47 percent of Americans and so forth. And that wasn’t at all what was intended. That wasn’t what was meant by it. That is the way it was perceived.” I interjected by saying, “But when you said there are 47 percent who won’t take personal responsibility—” Before I finished, he jumped in. “Actually I didn’t say that. That’s the perception. I actually, thinking you might raise that, looked up the quote. Let me get it.” With that he got out of the chair and went over to the kitchen counter where his iPad was charging. “That’s how it began to be perceived, and so I had to ultimately respond to the perception, because perception is reality.”

He sat back down and began to look for the quotation, speaking to himself as he scrolled. “There it is, c’mon Notes, there it is, 47 quote—it’s this.” He began to read the long quotation, offering commentary as he read. At one point he focused on the question posed at the Florida fund-raiser. “Audience member: ‘For the last three years, all of us have been told this: Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. How are you going to do it in two months before the elections to convince everyone you’ve got to take care of yourself?’ And I’m saying that isn’t my job. In two months, my job is to get the people in the middle. But this was perceived as, oh, he’s saying 47 percent of the people he doesn’t care about or he’s insensitive to or they don’t care—they don’t take responsibility for their life. No, no. I’m saying 47 percent of the people don’t pay taxes and therefore they don’t warm to our tax message. But the people who are voting for the president, my job isn’t to try and get them. My job is to get the people in the middle. And I go on and say that. Take a look. Look at the full quote. But I realized, look, perception is reality. The perception is I’m saying I don’t care about 47 percent of the people or something of that nature, and that’s simply wrong.”

I asked whether he thought that video helped to crystallize another issue
he faced: Was it possible for someone with his biography and background and wealth to win the election at a time when there were widespread feelings that struggling families were being left behind while the rich were doing just fine? “Well, clearly that was a very damaging quote and hurt my campaign effort,” he said. “I came back in October. I led in a number of polls. I think I could have won the presidency. We came remarkably close. Would I like to have been closer? Absolutely. But the number of votes that could have swung to our side could have made a difference. You have to congratulate the president on a very good turnout effort. We were not competitive on our turnout effort with his. So could I have won? Absolutely. And did I recognize that coming as a person who has a great deal of wealth that in that environment that would be an obstacle? Yeah, I recognized that. But I thought I could get over it.”

Epilogue

Into the Future

C
ampaign 2012 settled little. Billions were spent to produce a status quo outcome in the balance of power in Washington. Obama remained in the White House; Democrats held the Senate; Republicans maintained control of the House. The divisions that had gripped the country through Obama’s first term appeared as deeply entrenched after the election as before. Dysfunctional government seemed to be a permanent part of the political landscape, as the weeks immediately after the election demonstrated anew, when Obama clashed with congressional Republicans over the so-called fiscal cliff—expiring Bush-era tax cuts coinciding with a deadline to begin implementing automatic across-the-board spending cuts. The resolution of that round of budget negotiations produced another unsatisfactory outcome, with Obama winning his fight to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans and another kick-the-can-down-the-road decision on spending that ensured more fights in the future. Obama was in a more favorable position politically, having won reelection after a campaign in which the choices were unmistakably drawn and facing an opposition held in low regard by the public. But he faced the same intractable opposition from the Republicans, who pointed out that they too had been put back in power in the House. Whether he would use his power differently in a second term and whether he would be more successful remained open questions.

The election changed few minds. If it was status quo in terms of the balance of power, it was also status quo in the philosophical gulf that separated the two parties over issues of economic policy, the federal budget, and the size and scope of government.
America was still divided
—culturally, ideologically, and racially, as Alan Abramowitz pointed out in his post-election analysis—and that condition was reflected both in the election returns and the way the two parties approached the country’s problems. Ideologically red and blue America were no closer to resolving their differences. On the continuum from conservative to liberal, the gap was as wide as ever.
Conservatives dominated the Republican
Party—three-quarters of Republicans identified themselves as conservatives, according to a post-election study cited by William Galston of the Brookings Institution. Meanwhile, liberals now constituted the biggest bloc—though only a plurality—in the Democratic Party, the first time that was the case in decades. Political scientists who charted the ideology of House members had noted earlier that the prospects for cross-party coalition building were greatly diminished. The most conservative Democrats were generally more liberal than the most liberal of Republicans. It was no wonder that every budget fight seemed to be a repeat of the previous one.

Culturally, the divisions were almost as significant, although rapidly changing attitudes on gay and lesbian issues, particularly same-sex marriages, had shifted the political balance in the direction of the Democrats. That marked a sea change from only a few decades earlier, when the sixties counterculture, antiwar protests, and battles over busing and affirmative action split the old Democratic coalition, gave rise to the Reagan Democrats, and helped accelerate the conservative ascendance that dominated the political life of the country into the first decade of the twenty-first century. Republicans began to talk openly about the need to adapt to the country’s shifting cultural attitudes, though they risked rupturing their conservative coalition by doing so. Many conservatives still believed their party should continue to be a movement of restoration, as
National Journal
’s Ronald Brownstein put it, with the goal of preserving and protecting traditional values.

The changing country and the evident racial divisions within the electorate put the Republicans most at risk. The Grand Old Party remains the party of white voters at a time when the face of America continues to change rapidly. Democrats have tapped into this new America, which in a matter of decades will no longer be a majority-white nation. Republicans awoke to this demographic deficit after the election as if it had caught them unawares. In fact it has been a persistent and visible problem for years, which, with some notable exceptions, has been either ignored by the party or dealt with in such superficial and ineffective ways that it has done them no lasting good. Nothing threatens the party’s future hopes more than the party’s shortfall among minority voters, and no amount of public relations alone can solve this problem for the Republicans.

Republicans faced a robust internal debate about their future as they looked toward the next presidential election. Political parties are organic, not static, and election losses act as catalysts for change. For that reason, no one could predict the future with any certainty. But the burdens on Republicans to adapt to the new order pressed hard on party leaders in the wake of Obama’s victory. Democrats, meanwhile, were mindful that the coalition Barack Obama
assembled for two elections may be uniquely his and not wholly transferrable to future presidential aspirants, particularly his support among minority voters.

•   •   •

Was Campaign 2012 a look into the future of politics? It was the first presidential race to be waged under new rules for outside political committees, the result of the Supreme Court’s decision in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,
which gave rise to super PACs and to even more shadowy committees that did not report the names of their contributors. Their influence was either enormous or insignificant. Romney’s advisers maintained that the nomination battle could have ended much earlier had super PACs not helped prop up rivals who otherwise were woefully short on money. But in the general election, pinning down exactly what difference all the outside spending made is far more difficult. Yet they are part of the new world. Obama’s decision after the election to reconstitute his campaign’s grassroots organization as a committee able to take unlimited contributions was another decisive step in institutionalizing the financing of politics through big and sometimes disguised money,
*
with all the corrosive effects that such practices can have on public confidence.

The campaign was significant in one other area involving money. It brought the final steps in the decade-long shredding of the public finance system for presidential campaigns that had been established after Watergate. That system was based on an explicit bargain: The federal government would help to underwrite the cost of campaigns in exchange for candidates’ agreeing to limits on spending. It lasted a quarter century and then collapsed in the last three presidential cycles. George W. Bush started by opting out of public financing during the 2000 nomination battle. In 2004, John F. Kerry and Howard Dean followed suit. Then in 2008, Obama decided to forgo public financing for the general election, choosing political advantage over principle. In 2012, Romney adopted the same approach, giving rise to a $2 billion campaign by the major-party candidates. All future candidates—and the country—will live with the consequences.

Presidential debates played a bigger role in 2012 than ever before. They were reality TV for political junkies. Debates certainly affected the course of the Republican nomination battle—Newt Gingrich would not have risen from the dead without them—and they shaped the media’s narrative of the race, if not the actual state of the race, during the last month of the general election. Cable networks hyped their debates during the Republican primaries as if they were confrontations between gladiators, complete with video introductions that
included plenty of battlefield metaphors. The Denver debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney may have been the single most interesting ninety minutes of the campaign. But how much do debating skills tell us about what it takes to be president? And what is the cost in other opportunities lost—more time spent in conversation with voters or in offering fresh ideas—of all the time spent on them?

New technologies and social media blossomed even more fully into a central feature of politics in 2012, and one can only imagine how coming iterations of technology will affect future campaigns. Internet fund-raising began to take root in 2004. The 2008 campaign was the first in which Facebook and YouTube played a big role. The 2012 election was the first in the age of Twitter, which became the virtual town square for the political community, a transmission belt of news, gossip, opinion, and distortion. This new medium showed its power throughout the year, but especially during the debates. Twitter became the new wire service ticker, the medium that first alerted the world to breaking news. But it also created endless sideshows and diversions and in so doing enlarged the gulf between political insiders and the public at large.

The preponderance and influence of polls increased dramatically in Campaign 2012, and so did controversy about them. There were more polls and more bad polls, and often there was little effort to distinguish between the two. Consumers of polls brought their own political biases to their judgments of which polls to trust. That was particularly the case among conservatives, who discounted any poll that suggested there could be a significant difference in the number of Democrats and Republicans who would turn out on election day. It turned out they were incorrect about who would vote. The emergence of poll analysts marked another change. Two weeks after the election, Richard Thaler, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago, wrote a
New York Times
piece titled “Applause for the Numbers Machine,” in which he praised the work of statistical analysts like Nate Silver and other poll analysts working in universities who not only evaluated state and national polls but also set the probabilities for who would win. “They are like the meteorologists who forecast hurricanes,” Thaler wrote. For many Obama supporters, Silver’s probability charts showing Obama the likely winner were a lifeline during the final weeks of the campaign as the Republicans talked up Romney’s chances of winning. More significant may have been what the Obama team did with its heavy investment in data collection and analytics. What they did will become a standard that alters the way future campaigns do business.

The candidates and their allies aired more television commercials than ever before, and focused them on a smaller number of states and a smaller
percentage of the population than ever. “Never before will so much money be spent by so many to persuade so few,” Peter Hart had said as the general election began. He was so right. The percentage of truly undecided voters shrank to single digits, as low as anyone could remember, with weeks still left in the campaign. Political strategists have long talked about reaching the persuadable voters as their top priority, and still do. But mobilizing the base has become even more important in an age of polarization, and the techniques used to motivate left and right are not ones designed ultimately to bring the country or the parties together once the election is over. Slash-and-burn attacks and the demonization of the opposition have made it all the more difficult to overcome genuine philosophical differences. But there is nothing on the horizon to suggest that any of this will change quickly. All of this may explain why Campaign 2012 did so little to actually improve the prospects for good governance.

The one area in which there was little noticeable competition or innovation was in the battle for ideas. Neither candidate fully rose to the moment. Each pursued a strategy designed for one thing: winning. The president was reluctant to offer a clear outline of a second term, either with fresh economic policies to stimulate faster growth or a blueprint to deal with the deficit and entitlements. The challenger offered Republican orthodoxy at a time when its salience and effectiveness were in question. Both operated within comfortable boundaries at a time of intractable problems.

•   •   •

Inauguration day is often a time of renewal and national unity. That was hardly the case when President Obama was sworn in 2013. Too much had happened during his first term—too many battles and too much strife. Then too were the events between election day and inauguration day that colored the ceremonies—the horrific shooting in December at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that left twenty children and six adults dead, and the maddeningly inconclusive fiscal cliff negotiations. The pomp and pageantry of inauguration day marked only a temporary cessation of the political strife that had gripped and at times paralyzed the federal government throughout Obama’s presidency.

Obama’s second inaugural address was far different from the one he delivered four years earlier, when the country was in the depths of an economic crisis and he still talked of fulfilling the post-partisan promise of his first campaign. Scarred by the battles of his first term but newly resolved after winning reelection, the president put forth a message that was not so much one of “Let us reason together” as it was of “Follow me.” He offered to work with those willing to work with him, but he rebuked the hard-liners in the Republican Party. He said, “We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute
spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.” He said there should be no trade-off between providing assistance to the oldest generation and making investments in the youngest—although of course there was—and he threw back in the faces of the Republicans words they had used during the campaign. Safety net programs or entitlements like Medicare, he said, “do not make us a nation of takers.” Most arresting was his call for full equality for gays and lesbians. This was a topic never before mentioned during an inaugural address, and the president linked that cause to the earlier struggles for civil rights and women’s rights that helped define the American story—from “Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall,” as he put it. Obama’s speech and the attendant ceremonies seemed designed to highlight the emerging America that was at the heart of his winning coalition. The scene at the Capitol was notable for its multicultural cast of performers, a celebration of this new America. When the ceremony ended and Obama was entering the Capitol, he turned and stopped for a long, slow look at the panoramic scene spread out before him on the National Mall. “I want to take a look, one more time,” he said. “I’m not going to see this again.”