November president ial election. This is an hour and half. One of the best things about sitting across from you is that, for all of us who have been part of the institutes staff, we are wondering what you been thinking, with this experience has been like for you over the last yearandahalf, two years. So tonight, we get to hear for the first time your reaction to the campaign. Thank you very much. I want to thank the in boyer for the support the university has given the institute politics, including making it possible for us to hire such Extraordinary People like Steve Edwards and been restored and all of the other people and ben reeseberg and all the other people. [applause] you have been wondering what i have been doing and i have been wondering what you have been doing. [laughter] those who were disappointed by this outcome, the democrats elated by this outcome given the conventional wisdom around this campaign, the president s Approval Ratings that were barely above 50 , often dipping below it, the unemployment around 8 , gdp growth stock of around 2 the conventional wisdom was that should that this president should not be reelected. As you take a look at what happened two weeks ago, how do you assess this . Let me just say first that i made a very good living and politics betting against conventional wisdom. It is a general principle of mine that the conventional wisdom is almost always wrong and it was wrong here. It was wrong here because what we often do in political circles and journalism is that we look at what happened in the last election or past elections and we think it is prescriptive for what it will happen for what will happen in the future. It is a much more dynamic process than that. The assumption was that no the prison had been reelected other than Franklin Roosevelt with such high employment. But no other president had the same issues going on as Franklin Roosevelt. Certainly several hundred focus groups the next time we meet, i will have the right number we spoke to thousands and thousands of people in a very intimate way. Invariably, people would say we are not happy where things are at. And we were talking with swing voters, people who could vote for us or against us, not all for us and all against us. Invariably, they would say that things are not the way we would like them, but they were sterile there were terrible when he got there and maybe we should demand and maybe we should give him a chance. I would tell you that the day after the catastrophic midterm election, the shellacking, as the president calls it, i said to them, you know, i really think that the seeds of the election were planted yesterday. The reason i felt that we was because the gravitational pull within the Republican Party, when the right became so strong in the midterm election, it was clear to me that any republican candidate would have to deal with those forces to become the nominee, would have to go through that and go through very heavy toll to become a nominee in a party that was where the gravitational pull was against Immigration Reform and very much against choice, was against gay marriage, was against a lot of things that were running against the demographic and social trends of the country, where the country was moving. And that proved out. Mitt romney made a series of bargains to become the nominee for the Republican Party in order to beat rick perry. He moved to the right of carry on immigration. He moved to the right of rick santorum. He took the Grover Norquist pledge. He did all the things that were required of a potential republican nominee. But in each of those steps, he made it harder for him to win a general election. And he brought to this some strengths. The other thing that will the president four years ago was that romney was the likely nominee because i believe in the theory of opposites. Whoever the incumbent is, people are looking for the brevity, not the replica. And romney would represent a stark difference from obama, a businessman, grounded, not a visionary, not an order for. So you thought he would be the nominee. You thought that through the whole entire primary process . I had a few moments of doubt, as i suspect he may have. But he got to those moments was to do what i said, to move to the right. With each step, i think he made himself more vulnerable. In the abstract, his profile as a businessman will stay positive, even until the final day. It was the concept of a businessman who knows how to create jobs and so on. That was their message and that was not a bad message. You also told mike allen of political that you did nothing to the Romney Campaign emphasized that. I dont think they flushed him out enough. You have to be fully dimensional. It is not like any other office. People have to know who you are. They have to feel comfortable with who you are. Whatever message you build, it has to be built around your biography and it has to be compelling. The Romney Campaign spent at least 90 of the money in the primary on negative ads and never spent time flushing it out, and developing a portrait of who romney was. After he won the rock after he won the nomination, we expected them to do that and create stronger sense among the American People as to who he was. They never did that. That left an opening. I want to talk more about the election campaign. Lets stick with the chronology. You talked about the mid a tarrative the mets narrative. I think it is important. The iop and my basic approach to politics is rooted in the belief that it is more than just a game of tactics, strategies and thrust. It means something. What is fundamental and what ultimately made the difference for us, aspects of why we won, was the fact that the president s fundamental message, which is one that he run it that he ran on in 2008, was that we need to not just rebuild our economy, but reclaim the secured the so Many Americans have lost. We needed to put people back to work, but people needed an economy that work. There was a fundamental compacted that we thought was the American Dream has been shredded. That was essential. It was clear that governor romney and the side had a much different view, which was more of a topdown kind of approach. If folks at the top did well, that their prosperity would lead to the prosperity of the country. We had a much different view. If the middleclass thrives, the country itself will thrive and be stronger. So there was something bigger its stake beyond all that. And i want to emphasize that. But getting back to your question, whether that message was resonant or not, it was part of what we needed to find out, we did spend a lot of time and effort on research, talking to voters, along an ethnographic study of thousands of voters, to really get a sense of what was going on in their lives, what was really important in them and so on. This fundamental concern about the economy and about their own economic prospects was central to those concerns. I learned that narrative was the one that played through big in this race. Getting back to my point of the primaries, at our country is becoming more diverse. Every election, that diversity is more prominent, in terms of the share of the electorate. Latino voters represented and africanamerican voters represented, and women voters would continue to vote in larger numbers than men and often in a different way. So we mapped out a plan and strategy to make the case strongly to those constituencies. While governor romney was separating himself in many ways from those constituencies, we were working hard to develop and furnished our support their, which was our support there, which was strong to start with. It was doing a lot of compilation of data about voters around the country, about tracking where our supporters had been in 2008, who may be more mobile and may not be living where they were before, and registration was a big part of it. And really identifying the vote that we needed to win and developing an ongoing conversation with these voters to we could mobilize them at the appropriate time. I heard it said that it included cross referencing, not only voting behavior, but social activities and the kinds of films like and all sorts of behavioral data that you were able to cross reference. So much happens online in the social media. Including, by the way so, yes, a lot of information accrues there, but that is how people share information. One of the main things that we learned was that people were much more apt to accept information from friends on facebook or elsewhere, twitter, than they were if we were simply to campaign or information that they saw on a broadcast. Really developing those social networks was essential to our strategy. I want to come back to the point made about tactics they not really as important as the bigger message. You know one of the criticisms leveled at the campaign was that it was to tactical, not visionary enough. What is your response to that, that this election was not about the big picture . I think it was about the big things. It was how we think about this economy. It was about tax cuts at the top were more valuable to growing the kind of country we need, the kind of economy that we need, investing in things like education and research and development, investing in clean energy and technology, investing in infrastructure and dealing with the deficits were more in a more balanced way. It was about what our obligations are to each other. It was about big things. Those are very, very big things. I will say that, for all of the critique about whether our campaign was about big things or not, the preoccupations of people who write about that and i used to do that for a living i dont try to separate myself many of them are my best friends there is an awful lot of horse race coverage of this president ial race. There is such a preoccupation with who will win and who will lose and so little real interest in what the implications are. We were talking about pulling. Public polling is so voluminous now. Any to kids with an abacus can do a poll of the Corner Grocery store and some National News are in position will cover it as if it is news. And maybe the billion tommy pulled him out today. The billy and tommy poll came out today. It can be done sound yet they produce results that were wholly different than what we knew to be the case. Yet it would drive coverage. The gallup poll was wildly deficient throughout this race. Just days before the election, they said we were seven points behind. What does that do to a campaign on either side in a race when you have that kind of cycle happening . We had a Wonderful Group and a great campaign. We had very solid data and we had all kinds of failsafe apparatuses to check our conclusions. And we were very comfortable with where we were in the race. The frustration was that our supporters would read this and it would spend especially in washington, the worlds Biggest Record chamber people would get nervous and worried. When those things happen, you find everyone very generous with their advice. [laughter] the frustration was less than we be worried about where we were but other peoples behavior and that it would create a disillusionment among supporters. So we spent a lot of the campaign fighting back against some of these polls. What was remarkable about this race, as looking of the data that we had, it was not how volatile it was, but how steady it was. From february through november, we were running in our own data generally a twopoint to 4point lead. We never fell behind. There was a time in september, after the conventions, we had a strong convention and they had not so strong convention, and came the famous 47 tape. We got a sixpoint or seven point battleground states lead. Some republican leaning voters moved away from romney. And then can the first debate, which we strategically planned a little suspense for. [laughter] there were a couple of signal points. That last one was a joke. [laughter] you have an answer the question millions of tons of how the president would respond in the second debate. Take me you have answered the question millions of times of how the president would respond in the second debate. Take me through it. What was going on behind the scenes . What was going on in your mind . T i was thinking cant someone else do this . I knew that it was not a good night for us. I did not feel that the president had substantively done as badly as some of our friends thought. Msnbc was relentless that night. There were a few others, supporters of ours in the media, and sullivan Andrew Sullivan was on suicide watch after the debate. [laughter] i did not think i did think that one of the reasons the president was a little off kilter was i really believe that the audacity of romneys debate wasing in that the so remarkable. But still had a lot to work with one or not to meet the media, but it was not something that i look forward to any more than i would a root canal. What was the Biggest Surprise . A glib answer would be how few surprises there were. That was partly because we had really prepared very well. We knew where the race was pierre you were confident throughout we knew where the race was. You were confident throughout . I really was confident because i felt that we have the best messenger and the best message. What were the moments when you soon to say, wait a second, this thing could turn on us if we are not careful . The closest is after that first debate. But i never really felt that it was a hit to the engine. I expected that what would happen is what did happen, that he would get back the republicans he had lost term in happened over the course of three or four days. The race leveled off and never really changed much. It widened out a little bit, but never really changed much. But in terms of surprises, i was surprised in little bit about some of the things the other side [indiscernible] i was surprised by the fact that pacs did not go on the air until may against us. Our greatest fear was that they would use their money to attack us in the first three months of the year when we really wanted to respond. We did not have the resources to do that. They gave us a pass for whatever reason. I dont know why that was. I was surprised that the Romney Campaign did not flush him out in a more substantial way when they had the opportunity to do that. I was surprised by his choice of a vicepresident ial candidate pierre why . Not a surprise candidate. Why . Not as surprised as john mccain paused. They played a very much to the base of the party and they needed to broaden out his appeal. There were always trying to grapple with the next challenge on the theory that a major step moving 1 foot in front of the other, just being on the ballot with barack obama because of all of the conventional wisdom you had cited earlier was enough. So the game was just to get to the next square. I think they had concerns about their convention, which was a very conservative group, representing many different candidates. They never fully embraced romney. I felt that the ryan choice was in part an effort to make sure that that yvette went well. T went well. Even t it played in closer to the House Republicans who congress was pulling 9 , 10 . Every poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 . So to pick someone who he identified as the intellectual leader of the Republican Party was clearly a very significant leader of that caucus and was surprising to me. Brian was so identified with the presentation ryan was so identified with the privatization and a voucher for medicare idea, instead of talking about the economy, which is where they wanted it to play out, we had a lengthy debate about the economy, about medicare. I cannot think that was to their benefit. Our numbers among Senior Citizens were probably higher than we anticipated. You are noted for the axelrod never as smarte as you think you are. Youre never as smart as when you win and youre never as dumb as when you lose. We talked about some of the shortcomings of the Romney Campaign. What did they do as a whole what did the Romney Campaign as a whole do well . I think it is important for us to carry through on the commitments of the campaign. You cannot treat a campaign as a one off and pursue a different agenda and i dont think the president will. We have lots of real challenges that we need to meet. But there is the uber challenge, this challenge of how we build the economy in the 21st century. That offers the greatest opportunity for the greatest number of people. That will require a sustained, longterm commitment to some of the things i mentioned earlier, to education, research, innovation, technology, clean energy, a 21st century infrastructure. Health care reforms, to see Health Care Reform through, to see modern oversight of the financial system. There are so many things that we have to follow through on here in order to move the ball down the field on that larger question. In terms of what the Republican Party did right, they raised money well. Seriously, they did that very well. Whenever expected romney to be able to raise the resources we never expected romney to be able to raise the resources that he did. We made a decision that we would spend we would overspend from the standpoint of budgeting in the months from may to august on the theory that Television Television advertising is impact will in a president ial race in proportion to the attention people are paying. So by september and october, people are disregarding ads and are just watching coverage and debates. It is very hard to point i cannot think of a president ial race that was one on the basis of the Television Ad that ran after labor day. They back loaded. We followed it. I think that was a smart plan on our part. But they had a heck of a lot of money. It was a source of some concern. To pick up on that last statement, in chronology, what about 88 all in the summer. The lot of ink has been spilled on key supporters of president who saw a campaign that was as focused as any, a message that they would say not be effectively able to communicate a message or effe