Byron York, White House correspondent for National Review, recently addressed a John Locke Foundation Headliner luncheon in Raleigh. He also discussed the 2008 presidential campaign with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Go to http://www.carolinajournal.com/cjradio/ to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Kokai: First, should we be surprised that this presidential race is so hot in early 2007?
York: Well, you know, I’m a little surprised. I mean, it was funny – the candidates who wanted to wait for a decent interval actually waited until after the November 2006 elections. I mean, if it weren’t for that, this might have been going last year. I mean, part of it is that George W. Bush is clearly a lame duck, and he’s not going to run again, so it’s wide open on both sides. And the other part of it is, I think, we’re just in an increasingly fast cycle in which television, the Internet, all of these things have come together to intensify people’s interest in politics. And the other thing is there’s a lot going on. There’s a war going on, there are a lot of questions to be talked about, we have a new Democratic majority in Congress, and so it’s a very political time.
Kokai: Well, the topic is the presidential contenders and their prospects, so let’s go ahead and start with the Republicans. What I seem to be hearing and reading is the big three, and then some others, with Newt as a wild card. What can you tell us?
York: The big three and the wild card, that’s exactly right. Well, if you look at the polls right now, Rudy Giuliani is pulling ahead, and I have to say he’s having one of the biggest and longest and best “up” cycles that I’ve ever seen. I mean, he’s getting a lot of good coverage, and he’s not getting much bad coverage. People are focusing on his very impressive record; I mean, he has a really, really impressive record as mayor of New York prior to September 11, in dealing with welfare, crime, and budget. So he has a very good platform on which to run, but he also, you know, he has troubles. He has a tumultuous personal life, he has all sorts of businesses that we don’t know anything about, and as far as the Republican electorate in the primaries is concerned, of course he has his position on social issues. He’s pro-choice. He’s not pro-gay marriage, but he’s sort of pro-civil unions. He’s been in favor of gun control. So, you know, at some point he’s going to come down. It just has to happen. So Giuliani is doing, you know, extremely well.
The next is John McCain, who’s having kind of a long “down” cycle. I mean, he has not been the old McCain lately, it seems. He’s been sliding in the polls. He’s looked tired a few times. People worry about his age, and he would be 72 on Inauguration Day in 2009, which is two years older than Ronald Reagan was when he took office. He’s trying to get his mojo back. He’s going on the campaign trail more. He announced his candidacy on David Letterman, and frankly I didn’t really get that one, but he did, and so, you know, I think McCain – just like Giuliani is due for a “down” cycle, I think McCain is due for an “up” cycle.
And then the other one is Mitt Romney, who’s really far behind the other two. It’s not as if it’s a big three. It’s kind of like a big two and another guy way back. And he’s been having a “down” cycle as well, and his problem is that his past is catching up with him. You know, he ran for the Senate in 1994 in Massachusetts, and for governor, successfully, of Massachusetts in 2002, as a strong pro-choice candidate, and he went out of his way to stress his pro-choice credentials. And as he explains it, he did not really change to a strong pro-life position until November 2004. That’s very recent. I mean, it’s just really recent, and for the portion of the primary electorate for whom abortion is a big deal, perhaps even a threshold issue, there are serious questions now about Romney.
And then, as you suggest, the wild card is Newt Gingrich, who is polling much better than Romney right now, and not that far behind McCain. And the interesting thing about Newt is that he electrifies conservative audiences. We had a meeting called “The Conservative Summit” in Washington a few weeks ago, sponsored by National Review. Jeb Bush came there, gave a good speech – good reception. People like Jeb Bush, but a lot of the Republican electorate is saying, “No more Bushes. I’m never going to vote for another Bush, and I mean it.” Okay, good speech. Mike Huckabee was there, workmanlike speech, good reception. Mitt Romney was there. He disappointed a lot of people, did not give a very good speech. Newt Gingrich was there and blew them away. I mean, the crowd absolutely loved him. He is going to be a factor in this race, no matter what he does. Staffers from two competing campaigns told me, “Look, if he enters the race, he will dominate the debates,” because he’s very, very good. Now, they don’t believe he can win, because he is in a situation kind of like Hillary Rodham Clinton: half the people who know about him like him, and half the people don’t like him. So, you know, he’s got baggage galore from the 1990s, but he is definitely going to shake up the race, if he chooses to.
Kokai: Okay, let’s flip to the other side of the ledger, then. For the Democrats, you hear Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the third name that I usually hear is our own North Carolina former Senator John Edwards.
York: Well, Mrs. Clinton is still ahead in the polls. She has all the strengths that we know about, which is she has a lot of money, and she has the former president strongly on her side. But I think what we’ve seen lately, in this whole thing with David Geffen, the Hollywood mogul who criticized her, is that Obama has really gotten under her skin, and she is reverting to this kind of 1992 Clinton behavior. I guess the quickest way to summarize it is this: if somebody criticizes you, you knock them flat. And I’m not sure that’s going to work with Obama. It has made Mrs. Clinton seem a little reactive and a little scared and a little overly aggressive. So, you know, I think right now she is having a bit of a “down” cycle, because when David Geffen came out and talked, he was only saying the things that Democrats are saying privately among themselves about Sen. Clinton. So, you know, I think she’s in for a bit of a “down” cycle.
Obama — his entire campaign has been an “up” cycle. He has had extraordinarily good press. His approval rating is huge. The number of people who say they don’t have an opinion of him has gone down a lot. It was 33 percent in December, and now it’s 16 percent, so people feel like they’re getting to know him a little bit. So he’s very, very strong. And when he will have a “down” cycle, I don’t know.
And then the last one is John Edwards, who is trailing the other two but has worked very hard in Iowa, where he might do well, worked very hard in Nevada, where he might do well, popular with the service employees’ unions out there, and he might do well in South Carolina, which he won in 2004. The thing about Edwards is I believe he is a candidate who is addicted to promising radical change. You know, the whole “Two Americas” thing, and now he’s big on the war and wanting to get out of the war immediately. It’s kind of a weird campaign when a candidate is going around saying, “I made a mistake! I made a mistake! I made a mistake!”—which is what he’s doing at every opportunity.
Kokai: “But vote for me!”
York: “But vote for me!” I think voters really don’t want radical change, and I think there’s a lot of research that shows they really don’t want radical change at any given moment, so I think Edwards’ appeal will ultimately fail. The interesting thing about all these candidates is they’ve all got a problem. I mean, McCain has his baggage, and Romney has his flip-flops, and Gingrich has his baggage, and Giuliani has his social positions, and Hillary has just being Hillary, and Obama has inexperience. They’ve all got problems, but somebody’s going to win, and my guess is, on the Democratic side, it will not be John Edwards.
Kokai: For the political junkies in the audience who like to follow this, what should we be watching in the next few weeks and months?
York: I think you should watch how Hillary Clinton handles Obama. She’s got to find a better way to handle him, and I think you need to watch that. And then the next thing is to watch for scrutiny of Rudolph Giuliani. When does that start, and how intense is that, and especially how does he react to it? Does he react in a thin-skinned, angry way, or does he take it in stride, like a candidate who really is ready for the first tier of the presidential race?