East Kerry (UK Parliament constituency)

Transcription

(APPLAUSE) Good morning, everybody. My name's Geoff Garrett. I'm the chief executive officer of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. And I think this is actually my last official act as head of the centre, because 30 September it is, and that's the last day in my job. I couldn't be more pleased than to be with you all this morning and to be with a live streaming audience on the 'Sydney Morning Herald's website to bring to you a fantastic session with three world-class journalists on what's going on in the United States at the moment when it comes to the election. So to my immediate left is my friend and colleague at the centre, Jim Fallows, who's also national correspondent with the 'Atlantic'. Anne Davies, who was in Washington for 2008 covering the election of Barack Obama for the 'Sydney Morning Herald' and the 'Age' is now a senior investigative editor at the paper. Nick Bryant from the BBC has covered Australia for the BBC, was also in the US for the turbulent end of the Clinton Administration, beginning of the Bush Administration. We have three people of three different nationalities, each of whom has enormous understanding of an insight into the US. So I don't want to talk very much this morning, but I do want to do two things. The first is to throw some rapid-fire questions at our panel to get some juicy material on the table and to hope that that juicy material will lead all of you to ask us even more provocative questions. I'm really looking forward to the session. Let's start. When I started thinking about this session a few weeks ago, I was wondering what the first question should be. But I think today, given everything that's gone on in the US in the past two or three weeks, the first question for our panel - rapid-fire, please, 30 seconds if you can do it - how can Barack Obama lose this election? (LAUGHTER) The answer would be "with difficulty". And it's important in American politics to stipulate always that anything could happen because surprises occur. I once worked for Jimmy Carter as a speechwriter on the 1976 campaign. We thought we were gonna win easily. We came within a hair of losing to Gerald Ford. Things could happen, but the reasons why it's gonna be hard - number one, in modern history, nobody as far behind as Romney has ever won. Number two, early voting, which is a new thing, locks in those results. Number three, Romney is just a terrible candidate - I think the worst we've seen in modern times. So the answer is "Barack Obama can only lose "if Mitt Romney isn't the candidate." A difficult counterfactual. Anne, have you got a stronger "How Barack Obama could lose?" I could imagine him losing if there was some disaster that he handled really, really badly. So it'd have to be like the hurricane down in New Orleans or something like that where he was really, really poor at managing it. OK, so the big example, the Jimmy Carter example - of course, you'd left, Jim, by then - was Iran, the Iran hostage crisis. So are you really saying that the only thing that's on the agenda at the moment that could blow up Barack Obama would be an explosion, an enormous explosion in the Middle East, maybe centred on Iran? I think so. I think early voting is going to help him an enormous amount. And, you know, even if we get a really bad unemployment figure, I don't think it would be enough to demonstrate a trend that's going the wrong direction for them. OK, so we'll talk about this week, which, I guess, is Romney's last-gasp week, in a second. Nick, what do you think? I'm reminded of what was said of Louisiana politics - you can survive anything apart from waking up with a dead woman or a live boy. And I think we're... (LAUGHTER) I think we're almost into that kind of territory now. (LAUGHTER) But a couple of things could happen. I mean, next week we've got the presidential debate. They'd be looking for a knock-down punch, although historically speaking, blood on the canvas is relatively rare in presidential elections... ..presidential debates. We can talk about that a little bit later. Unemployment figures will come out. They'd have to be really catastrophic, I think, if they were really gonna shift the dynamic of this debate. And when you hear somebody like Karl Rove, the senior Republican analyst, saying "We can win without Ohio. "There are 11 ways we can win without Ohio." Now, as you all know, every Republican presidential candidate, the only way to the White House is generally to win Ohio. It's a must-win state. It's a bit like the Liberals saying "We can win a federal election "without winning a single seat in NSW." Technically, it's possible, but it just isn't gonna happen. So when you hear a Republican like Karl Rove say something like that, you know that they're in really serious trouble. Geoff, one thing I do think that Mitt Romney might have on his side is journalistic boredom. Journalists get very bored about writing the same story every day, and they've had the same story, pretty much now, for the last month, and that's the 'Obama cruising to victory'. I think journalists will be looking for anything that they can glean from the debate or anything they can glean from the unemployment figures to try and write a comeback narrative. And I think that is one thing that might help him. Will it help him enough? I'm very reluctant to call an election this early, but it seems... OK, so the reason we're there, the reason we're in this place, is because Mitt Romney became Mr 47%. We believe that someone who was a member of the wait staff in a high-roller event where people were paying $50,000 a seat to listen to Mitt Romney used an iPhone to video Romney's speech in which Romney not only said 47% of the electorate was never gonna vote for him but they were indigent freeloaders on society who expected things like roofs over their head and health care. -JIM: And food. -Oh, and food too. That's right. -I forgot the third one. -(LAUGHTER) Now, Anne, this is a perfect confluence of modern American politics. After the campaign finance reform, you're only supposed to be able to give $2,300 as an individual to a presidential candidate. But these people were paying $50,000 a seat to listen to Mitt. And this would never have been an issue if it wasn't for the confluence of iPhones and YouTube. So, what does that tell you about contemporary politics in the US and maybe more broadly? Well, I think the first lesson is whatever you do, don't open your mouth unless you're happy to have it filmed. It's just absolutely the rule now. And it doesn't matter whether you're talking to just a small group of friends or not, it's probably going to get out. The other thing I think that's happening is that you're getting a world where people can choose what they want to watch. And so you can live in a world where you only get conservative commentators. You can live in a world where you only listen to liberal views. And I think that's adding to the polarisation so you're getting a very strange sort of coverage. So the problem... You're surely right about politicians have to be careful of every word that comes out of their mouth. But that leads to this robotic politician who... You know, the transformation of Julia Gillard from somebody who seemed to be quite good on her feet in Parliament to being a robot as Prime Minister... What do you think about this, Nick? Is this the death of politics, that politicians have to be so scripted, so driven by focus groups that they'll never say anything authentic? I think the worst gaffes, Geoff, are always the ones that reinforce the negatives about a candidate. And that was the problem with the 47% line. It reinforced this idea that Mitt Romney was this rich guy, out of touch with the election, the sort of guy that in a debate in the primaries will have a $10,000 bet with his rival. GEOFF: And he's got it in his pocket! "Yeah, here, I'll pull my 10,000..." The sort of guy that'll pay for a car lift, things like that. And that was part of the problem of the 47% thing. And the problem of any worse gaffe is one that does tend to reinforce what the voters negatively think about you. So I think that was... But I do think that Mitt Romney's problems began way before that. I think that was just a kind of reinforcing video rather than a transformative video in the sense that I think many people already had formed that view of Romney that he was that kind of guy, and this for them was kind of... GEOFF: The icing on the cake. Now, Jim, I know you want to say that Mitt Romney is the worst candidate for president in your living memory. So, who were the contenders and why? (LAUGHTER) The contenders... Let me say a word about the context of saying somebody's a bad candidate. 'Cause you're right, there are all sorts of fundamental pressures now that affect how anybody performs. You're on camera all the time. You have to be conscious of that. You're raising money all the time. You're recognised in these polarised environments. Any Republican candidate is straddling awkwardly a party moving right and having to go to the centre for the election. So it becomes a question of sort of basic... ..the political counterpart of basic athleticism, or sort of general IQ. For example, Bill Clinton is operating in this same environment, and he doesn't seem robotic. Barack Obama has his own, you know, sort of spontaneous way. So do a number of Republicans - Herman Cain... GEOFF: Until he umm'ed and ahh'ed... JIM: And Romney simply doesn't know how to do it. But when he's prepared in debates, he's actually pretty good. Anything that requires improvisation, he's bad. I think the people in modern history with similar sort of frayed or dulled nerves - John Kerry would be one of them, probably. Al Gore, his sequence of three debates showed not really having the right ear for things. We go back to Michael Dukakis, who actually was way ahead... GEOFF: So we've got three terrible Democratic candidates. But then we have Thomas Dewey. So Thomas Dewey, before any of our lifetimes, was assumed by everybody to beat Harry Truman in 1948, but he didn't. But it's very interesting that Jim's named three politicians from Massachusetts. (LAUGHTER) And this is not only geographically significant, it's politically significant. It's very hard for a northerner now to win presidential elections. Ever since the sort of Civil Rights era, there's a massive realignment of American politics. As you know, the American South used to be the solid Democratic South. Republicans just didn't do well there, obviously because they were the party of Abraham Lincoln. And the Civil Rights era shifted that. And 50 years ago, Mitt Romney would have been a pretty good Republican candidate, because he represented the Republican Party as it was then. And now, of course, he struggles massively, because he has no natural affinity for a party whose centre of political gravity has shifted to the South. And Democrats have the same problem, which explains why Dukakis struggled and why Kerry struggled. Barack Obama was only the first black president to win the presidency, he was the first northern Democrat to win the presidency since John F. Kennedy, for similar reasons - you need to be conservative now like Clinton, like Jimmy Carter, like LBJ, arguably like Al Gore. Some Democrats would still argue that he won the presidential election. It's very difficult for northerners now to win presidential elections and it explains part of Romney's problems. He tries so hard to be the candidate of the South and he sounds so phoney when he does so. And I agree pretty much. But remember that if, what, 60,000 votes in Ohio had gone the other way, John Kerry would have won. And Dukakis, maybe if he hadn't gotten in the tank, he would've won. So I agree with that fundamental... Let's talk constituencies, Anne, for a second. So we're dumping on Mitt Romney, but I think it's true that Romney is still the candidate of white America and certainly white male America. So the Democrats have, and Barack Obama has, ethnic minorities and women. What do you think about that kind of polarisation of contemporary politics? Is that understandable, natural? Is it a good thing? Would a better candidate be able to cross some of those divides? Ooh... And remember, there's the flip side - Barack Obama does terribly among white men unless they're highly educated. Yeah. You've gotta remember, the election does come down to a very few states with a small number of people. And it is those white males who seem to be the swinging voters that everyone's chasing. So that's what they're after. And so they're honing their messages to those people, I think. It happens in Australia too. I mean, they really get focused on very small groups of people in marginal seats and that's where they're putting all their efforts. So it's just modern politics. Maybe it's the way the society has aligned. I don't know. So I agree with much of that. What Nick was saying about the shift of the Republican strategy in the post-Nixon years, the white South used to be pure Democratic, now it's pure Republican. That worked for the Republicans great for a couple of decades. But now they are really worried because they're horribly weak among African Americans. The latest poll showed it was 95-0 for Obama versus Romney with 5 undecided among African Americans. Latinos, a huge spread, women, a very significant spread. So it's only older white males, especially in the South, a diminishing group. So they have really long-term demographic problems. So there's this other demographic change in the United States that when you're living in the US, and particularly in some states, you feel it viscerally, but maybe to Australians, it wouldn't be so apparent, which is that Latinos are now a larger minority group than African Americans. And the one that I think about there is the mountain west - you know, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona maybe - that I used to think of as the Ronald Reagan cowboy states. This was where Republicans couldn't lose. But now it's looking increasingly like it'll be hard for Republicans to win. Why? Because they've taken such a strident stand against undocumented migrants. So what do you think about that social cleavage, Nick? This is an opportunity for Republicans, because Latinos are socially conservative, at least. It's remarkable - when I was in Washington, Karl Rove was talking about a permanent Republican majority. He was talking about building a party that would... I mean, the Republican Party has done very well in presidential elections over the last, sort of, 30 years. And he was talking about a party that would win every single presidential election and they would also win majorities in the House and the Senate. They would have this kind of grip on Washington because they would have this permanent Republican majority. And what they haven't played very well is the demographic politics of America, as you say. I mean, they've alienated a huge swathe of the... The biggest voting bloc now, if we can talk in those old-fashioned terms, is this Latino bloc. And they're completely alienated with the hard line on immigration. The female vote - obviously they've alienated so many females with their very tough line on abortion and choice and things like that. They've played the demographic politics awfully. And actually, what the Democrats have done is played the politics pretty well. I mean, for a black man to win the state of Virginia is extraordinary. And that's what happened in 2008. And the Democrats have just been much better at appealing to kind of the core electorate that you need now to win elections. OK, but the amazing thing about this is this is not what the 2012 election was supposed to be about. The 2012 election, for every political science model that's ever been run, should have been a referendum on the performance of the US economy and in particular on the unemployment rate, and if Barack Obama is re-elected, he'll be the president re-elected with the highest unemployment rate in history. How did it go so wrong? JIM: Number one, life is unpredictable. The 2008 election was supposed to be about Iraq. That was how Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton. It ended up being about financial disaster in addition to Iraq. Second, the two contending narratives all the way along... GEOFF: But nothing in the real world has happened to derail the 'unemployment referendum election'. So can I say, the Republicans have been hoping all along it would be a 1980 referendum where people felt they weren't better off enough. Ronald Reagan famously asked, when challenging Jimmy Carter, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Enough people felt 'no', they were willing to take the leap with Reagan. Enough things are going better. The situation is bad, but the trends are positive, number one. And number two, led by Bill Clinton, the Democrats have with bit in teeth said, "Are you better off than you were four years ago? "You sure as hell are." And they have the stock market at half the current level, and just, you know, catastrophe every place. So they're saying, "Yes, we're worse off than we would like to be, "but we're a lot better off than at the end of the Bush Administration." GEOFF: Jim wears his Democratic heart on his sleeve. My American heart. That's true. Outside the country, you're an American, but inside the country, I think it's fair to say that you're a Democrat. Jim Fallows just said that there's an appeal to the Democrats that says, "Don't worry about the unemployment rate. "The stock market has recovered." I mean, this is a kind of bizarre politics. The first thing I said, you will note, was that all the trends were positive. The unemployment rate has been improving now for two years or so. Private hiring has been going up for two years. Obama never mentions the stock markets, but he knows that 401(k)s... But the scenes they show of four years ago right now were of meltdown everywhere that generally panicked people. Yeah, and it's true that we all remember that Barack Obama was elected not because of Iraq but because Lehman Brothers fell on September 15, when I think McCain was still ahead in the polls. So what do you think, Anne, about this? The sort of wizened view of this would be "It IS the economy, stupid," and the unemployment rate should be determinative. So has Obama done something brilliant with the statistics or have the Republicans just done so badly that that's not how the election is being framed? I think Obama did two things - first of all, he defined Romney as a 'vulture capitalist' really early on. This sort of phrase that makes him sound really evil, that he's out of touch. So that was a good start. The second thing I think they've done is that the Obama camp keep talking about the future and they're talking about green jobs in the car industry and a whole lot of areas. So they're holding out some vision of the future. With the unemployment line either flatlining or improving slightly, people can see that there's something in the future. Whereas I don't think Romney's been able to paint that other than this very simple trickle-down economics theory. Well, Nick, the Romney team, when they selected Paul Ryan to be the VP candidate, actually went on the front foot and they said, "Now is the time to gut the American welfare state," a kind of British austerity move in the UK. So was that a dumb idea by them? It's very hard, in the midst of a recession like this, for an American vice-presidential candidate or presidential candidate to say, "We're gonna gut the welfare state." I mean, that shifts the narrative as well. When we look back on this campaign, giving Ryan the vice-presidential nomination possibly was a mistake because it embroiled the Republicans in this debate about welfare when the debate should really be about jobs. I mean, I think there's a direct analogy you can draw with 2004, and in a way, Mitt Romney's been swiftboated. 2004, America was involved in two difficult wars, Afghanistan and Iraq. John Kerry was a guy who had a terrific war record, a hero in Vietnam. And, of course, the Republicans just took that away from him. They swiftboated him. That just wasn't available to him. Because they managed to redefine what that war record meant. And they've done the same with Mitt Romney. Obviously with the Bain, "I'm a turn-around guy." That really should have been one of his most resonant messages during this campaign. "I'm the guy that can really come in, as I did with Bain, "as I did at the Olympics, and turn this economy around." But again, as Anne says, they've allowed the Obama campaign to define them rather than define themselves. But it goes back to what Jim says. I mean, the guy's a very flawed candidate, and his inability to define himself has been this huge problem throughout. Who is Mitt Romney? I mean, we're four weeks away from the election - five weeks - and we still don't really know. The swiftboating comparison is one that I've made myself in print a couple of times, and I think there's a distinction we have to make. Swiftboating, for those of you who don't recall... John Kerry, I think foolishly, began his 2004 acceptance speech with a salute, saying "John Kerry, reporting for duty," which was seen as...going too far, or showboating. And there were so-called Swift Boaters for Truth who put out what was, I believe, objectively, a phoney narrative that John Kerry had not really been wounded or whatever. The attacks on Romney I think have had the same effect - they've had the swiftboating effect without being false. I don't know if there's any actual lies people have said about Romney. It's more that they're showing his record. For example, there's a video in the last couple of days circulating where he's making a promotional pitch for Bain Capital saying, "We find companies, we invest, "and then we harvest them after six to eight years in hope of a profit." It's sort of like 'Soylent Green' or something. Just had the wrong connotation, talking about harvesting. And, of course, the way you harvest, it's called 'stripping and flipping', isn't it? That's the way you harvest. So it certainly was a challenge. And of course, back in the Kerry case, one reason that swiftboating had the resonance was because there was also the camera footage of John Kerry after he came back from Vietnam speaking out against the war and clearly that would have mobilised the right. But this brings me to another, I think, extraordinary feature of this election, which is how irrelevant foreign policy is, particularly given how the world and how Australia thought about Barack Obama in 2008. Now, of course foreign policy is rarely a big story in American politics. But I think it is important to remember that... What have we got going on at the moment? No-one has a good word to say about Afghanistan. Syria is an unmitigated disaster, but no-one seems to be willing to do anything about Syria. Iran-Israel nuclear confrontation is, arguably, the biggest impending crisis in world politics. And the promise of the Arab Spring seems to have blown up with the assassination of an American ambassador. So I guess the question to all of you is... Whither foreign policy in this environment? But I think Obama can respond to everything you said with a simple bumper sticker. -"I got Osama"? -Obama got Osama, yep. And that's the reason why he's not so vulnerable on foreign policy. JIM: GM is alive and Osama's dead. My premise on this is number one, foreign policy matters in US elections only when there's some problem. Positive foreign policy, you just take for granted. Number two, the Republican team is historically inexperienced in foreign policy, so it's very hard for them to make the case. Number three, there's the Osama factor. Number four, most of the things Obama promised to do in foreign policy, mainly containing the exposure in both Iraq and Afghanistan, which is what most Americans wanted, he's basically been able to do. So I think the Libyan killing, that probably is the most problematic, 'cause there are contradictory stories now about what the US government knew... Again, I think the point to underline - maybe it's small-world politics, but maybe it's bigger - is that the consensus in the US on "Let's not intervene" is so profound at the moment. Maybe a pair-wise comparison would be... You were there, Nick, in 2003. If what was happening in Syria today had happened in 2003, I presume the Bush Administration would have... First of all, there would have been air strikes, there would have been no-fly zones, and maybe there would already be US troops on the ground. And it's just literally unthinkable today, isn't it? Yeah, it is. One of the things that Iraq and Afghanistan have done is prevented any future president doing an open-ended military engagement anywhere. And Syria's a result of that policy, and so too Libya. This idea that America now leads from behind - you know, encourages other people to do its fighting for it as it did in Libya. But, um... One of the interesting things about Romney is his failure to even engage on these issues. I mean, you talk about the difficulties in Afghanistan. America still has, despite the surge, which was the main policy contribution that Barack Obama made... Romney didn't even mention Afghanistan when he made his speech at the GOP convention. And there were various reasons for that, one of which was the turmoil within his campaign in the run-up to that, where the speech had various different authors whose drafts kept on being thrown out the window and then starting again. And because of that, they made these mistakes, and one of them was not even to mention Afghanistan. So, what do you think, Anne, about this, and what it means for the world, if this is now the iron-clad consensus in the US - "We'll look after our own tails first"? Yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens. I think one thing that could potentially change if Romney, hypothetically, was elected, is whether he changes his stance towards this region. I think Obama's been much more engaged towards the Pacific and China and Jim knows a lot more about this than me. I think that would be something that could affect all of us here. GEOFF: So let's go to that. We've gotta do it, because as Jim rightly reminded us, anything can happen. What difference would it make to the US, to the global economy, to the world of international affairs, if Mitt Romney becomes president next January? I would argue that probably, surprisingly... People who are actual Americans, like me, would feel more of a difference than anybody who's not an American because I think there wouldn't be that dramatic a difference in foreign policy. In this part of the world, Mitt Romney says he's going to declare China a cheater on day one. He's not gonna do that. Everybody knows he's not gonna do that. And one of the reasons, having nothing to do with Romney, is that for all the years since Richard Nixon, there's been essential consensus between Republican and Democratic presidents. When they're out of office, they campaign toughly that we're being too soft on China. When they're in office, they see the realities of the parameters. So I think it'd actually be very little different here. That's an interesting observation on foreign policy. But Nick, one thing that a fired-up Republican team led by a president might do is read their own rhetoric on the economy and take a massive... take stimulus out of the US economy in a massive way by holding the line on all the Bush tax cuts - the so-called 'fiscal cliff' - by saying that "We're not gonna do a deal on spending." You know, there are estimates that the non-happening of two deals, one on tax cuts and the other on spending cuts, is gonna take about 4% out of the US GDP overnight. If something like that happened... Isn't that the most cataclysmic thing we should all be worried about? Well, one of the things that happens generally after a presidential election is a very speedy retreat from all that kind of rhetoric that you hear in a campaign. Going back to foreign policy for a moment, and how radically that would shift - one remembers the main promise of Barack Obama previous to 2008, which was to close Guantanamo Bay. It's still open. But the Republican Senate wouldn't let him do it. They wouldn't let him relocate the prisoners. Sure, but he also realised the legal difficulties of transporting all those people to... ..and the intelligence consequences of holding open trials. So it wasn't simply a GOP block in the Senate that caused that. So I'm almost... You know, this idea that there's gonna be radical change overnight... But the radical change can happen before Mitt Romney is inaugurated. Because it would happen by non-action in the Congress in the so-called 'lame duck' session. So all the Republicans would have to do is decide that they don't want... They're not gonna be sullied by some ugly political compromise. You're laughing, Jim, at this. Yes, because I will confidently predict here that should Mitt Romney be elected, as none of us is predicting, but if he's going to... The Republican Party is not going to let him be the next Herbert Hoover. They will back away from this idea that budget deficit is the greatest evil of all time. That was very convenient as the Tea Party rallying cry in 2010. But Romney himself is running away from the Ryan budget and Ryan is his running-mate. So I think if he were winning, I don't think he would embrace it. OK, so we're supposed to have all these dangerous ideas here. And what we've got so far is "Don't worry, Barack Obama's gonna get re-elected. "Oh, and by the way, it wouldn't make any difference anyway." JIM: To you. To you. (LAUGHTER) So I guess the conceit of this session really was "Why are we all so fixated on this?" And I think this is an interesting question. You know, think about some other big elections that have happened in the world recently that are quite interesting. I mean, the election of Hollande in France changed the balance in Europe, probably flips the way the EU responds to the fallout from the Global Financial Crisis. The election of David Cameron, in essence repudiating a lot of Blairism, in the UK, was an extraordinary election. I was in Australia for both of those and no-one cared. Literally no-one cared. Whereas Australians seem to have this minute-by-minute fascination and understanding of the US. Why is that? To you two. Well, we've got a lot invested in bureaus over there. No, that's not really the reason. Um, I think it's partly Obama's personality, that we're all just fascinated by him. We love the idea that there's this larger than life character. There's been polls done in Australia that show that he'd get 70% of the vote in Australia. So, you know, we love him. And we want him to succeed. So I think that is why there's so much interest. So you just think it's Obama agony. It's not personality politics on steroids, it's not any of that stuff. What do you think, Nick? Oh, we love the show. It's the greatest democratic show on earth. And I speak as somebody who's covered an Indian election, which is fantastically brilliant and colourful - elephants, the whole shebang. (LAUGHTER) But, you know, I think if you add up all the other forces in the world, military-wise, you still don't get to America, do you? And I often think that with elections as well. If you add up all the elections in the world in terms of their entertainment value, you don't quite still get to the US presidential election. It's become this absurd elongated carnival now that obviously starts way back in 2011, at the beginning of it, and even before that. No, there is this fascination with it. I mean, there's a change of leadership in China happening this year, but do we care? I mean, we say we do, and there's a kind of wordy but dull element to the coverage, but of course, we're transfixed by what's happening in America because it's so colourful, because it's so bonkers, because these gaffes just continually entertain us. I mean, as it says - "just entertainment". It's a very entertaining process to watch. And, of course, that font of all wisdom on American politics, Jon Stewart, led 'The Daily Show's coverage of the Republican campaign with the subtitle 'The Road to Jeb Bush 2016'. Now, of course, what I think everybody is looking at is, you know, American politics is often like boxing. You know, what would we be up to if it's Clinton/Bush in 2016? This'd be like Ali/Frazier III or IV or something like that. So certainly there is this battle of the titans quality to all of this stuff. But I think it's an important debate. On the one hand we have "Boy, the US still really matters in the world, "so of course we care about American elections" versus "It's just so easy to consume and be involved in these elections "because of all the information and entertainment options we've got." What do you think, Jim, about this? I think it is generally entertaining. I speak as someone who went back to look at the tapes of ALL the Republican primary debates, which were just incredible. I mean, think again of Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. Rick Perry! "I'm gonna get rid of three...is it two..." "What are those agencies of government anyway?" Rick Perry would have been the nominee if there were only two or three debates. Because that's the only thing that derailed him. He'd have been a much stronger nominee than Romney. So it's entertaining, but while I'm saying that an Asia-Pacific policy wouldn't make a dramatic difference, inside the US, it would be really different if Romney wins because it's a time where the main problem in the United States is polarisation of all sorts. You know, economic polarisation is at a modern extreme, there's long-term stagnation, political differentiation. And I think the visions of life between today's Republican Party one of whose Senate candidates is talking about how after a 'legitimate rape', a woman cannot get pregnant because her machinery shuts down, and the Democratic Party, in ethnic terms and all the rest, it really is consequential inside. But do you think it would be important for those symbolic social issues or do you think there's a chance under Romney that the Republicans, quote unquote, would tackle the big structural imbalances in the US, most importantly, Medicare, which, in the US, is the healthcare system for the older population? They would certainly need to tackle them. 'Tackle', of course, is a polite word for 'privatise' at the moment. So one of the arguments that Paul Ryan made early in his time as vice-presidential nominee was that Barack Obama was betraying America's elderly because he was gonna cut 716 billion or whatever out of Medicare, not revealing that his plan does that too and refunds it as high-end tax rebates - you know, the people in the top 3% - whereas Obama was trying to shift it into some other coverage aspects. Whoever wins is going to have to deal with fiscal imbalances, 'cause they are too large. Whoever wins will appoint two or probably three Supreme Court justices, which also will have... In current politics, that has generations-long effect. OK, so mindful of my promise to you that we'd have at least 20 minutes of interaction with the audience, there are two microphones, one on either side of this hall at the front. I'm only going to ask one more question of the panel, so anyone who'd like to formulate a question and make your way to a mike, I'd encourage you to do so. Last question for you all. How high would the US unemployment rate have to be next Friday for Mitt Romney to be elected as president? JIM: 50. (LAUGHTER) OK. So that's a "It ain't gonna happen" from Jim Fallows. -(LAUGHTER) -Anne? I don't know, if it bounced back up around 9.5 - which is impossible as well... GEOFF: OK, 9.5. We're at 8.2. That's impossible. It could go up a couple of tenths of a percent. -Not enough. -Not enough. Nick? I'm with Jim - unemployment's not gonna help him at this stage, unless it's a massive, massive jump. GEOFF: OK, and that, surely, will be the epitaph of this election - that at the end of the day, it didn't matter that the US economy is still in a parlous state. JIM: When we say something could happen, it'd be like Obama's actual Kenyan father appearing and saying "Yes, he was born in Nairobi." Or something like that. I think it would require new information. GEOFF: Or, presumably, potentially - although we just don't know - an Israeli air strike in Iran or something like that. JIM: Short term, that'd probably help Obama. Probably help Obama, yes. OK, so first question over here to my right. The far right as I look at it but the far left as you all look at it. (LAUGHTER) WOMAN: Good morning. Thank you very much. My question is actually about the fascination with US politics from an Australian perspective. Is it more about the style of leadership that Obama represents? I think here in Australia, the politicians strive to be more like average Joe Blow. The vernacular they use, the language they use, they're meant to be like us, whereas Obama is very much... He's a figure to aspire to, he's a real leader. Is that something that captures our imagination, perhaps something that's missing in our own politicians? Of course, it wasn't there in George W. Bush, who was about as folksy as they get. What do you think? ANNE: Um, look, I think... Having listened to many, many Obama speeches when I was there, I came away thinking, "If a politician said this "over and over in Australia, "we would be going, 'No, that is absolute garbage.'" We expect our politicians to be a bit more down to earth and a bit more realistic, whereas in America, I think they're quite happy to have this sort of soaring rhetoric. And it's because they're not tuning in - a lot of people are not tuning in very regularly. And some people are just completely devoted to it. GEOFF: Certainly, some of my Republican friends say that. I was over and done with Obama rhetoric the 15th time I heard it. When it gets up to the 315th, it's a little tedious. What do you think, Nick? It's a little bit like comparing the film industry with Hollywood. You know, Hollywood is where the really big box office stars are. And occasionally Australia has a brilliant box office star, like a Cate Blanchett or something, but, you know, most of the box office stars are in the States. And that's partly why. To give you an indication, I heard a lovely story recently about Billy McMahon, the prime minister here, obviously, about 40 years ago. He was in New York. It was just before he was going to the White House where his wife wore that very revealing dress. And they had a stray Saturday night in New York, and somebody suggested they go and hear Eartha Kitt sing in cabaret. Anyway, someone suggested to Eartha Kitt, "The Australian Prime Minister's in the house. "You might want to go and serenade him midway through your set." She went up to Billy McMahon's table, she started singing to the man she thought was the Australian Prime Minister. It turned out it was his US security guard. (LAUGHTER) And I think speaks of the problem, in the kind of body language. Australian prime ministers tend to sort of deflate themselves whereas American politicians try everything they do. Well, of course, I don't know whether many people in the room are old enough to remember just how weird Billy McMahon looked... (LAUGHTER) ..and how easily caricatured he was by cartoonists. I remember that. So next question, over here, now on my far left. Good morning. I'm mindful that I'm talking to a panel of journalists. The point was made that Australians are so interested in the American spectacle. To what extent is that a failure of media to tell us why we should care about the Chinese elections or these other major elections? Are they getting caught up in the spectacle and the narrative? Why don't we care, I suppose? NICK: I think all of us would say "Guilty." Every single presidential cycle, we all sit there and we think "We're gonna cover this election differently. "We're gonna cover the issues, we're not gonna cover the gaffes. "We're not gonna be diverted by the silly stuff, "the kinda cosmetic stuff." But getting journalists to cover a campaign like that is a little bit like trying to persuade a child to eat greens. Um, it's very hard to do. And I think this campaign has actually been worse, partly because of the relentlessness of this 24/7 cycle, the absurdity of the sort of coverage now that you get on things like Twitter, which is not even "Who won the day?" It's "Who won the hour? Who won the minute? "Who won that exchange in the debate?" And I think it's crazy, and I think as journalists, we should accept some level of culpability and responsibility for this. You know, we always say we're gonna cover American campaigns slightly differently. And people like Jim do. I mean, if you read his piece in the 'Atlantic Monthly' this month, it's brilliant, and Jim's coverage is. And there are lots of journalists like Jim. But there is this sort of day-to-day obsession and it's this sort of sports contest. OK, Anne - were you sticking up your hand to go to Paris to cover the presidential election for Fairfax? No, but I would say we make a big effort to try and cover Chinese politics. We have an excellent correspondent, John Garnaut... GEOFF: Who breaks global news on China, I think it's fair to say. But you can't even find out what day it's on, let alone get in there with an iPhone or tweet out what's happening. You know, it's very difficult. One of the great things about the American system is it puts it all out there for everybody to see. But I can't remember - did the 'Herald' send a correspondent to London to cover the 2010 British elections? Oh, we had someone there, but we covered it... intermittently, I would say, yeah. So one brief word of explanation for why coverage of this election might be more shallow-seeming. The Republicans, for better or worse... They're not really presenting a case for what they're gonna do for the next four years. Their case is "The last four years haven't worked." So it's not sort of contending agendas for what we're gonna do in Afghanistan or... It's basically saying...trying to make it a referendum election. And to be fair, again - fair and balanced, to use that over-used and abused term - neither has Barack Obama. Right. He's saying, essentially, "Give me a chance to keep... "It'll be better if you stay this course." So both sides are essentially arguing whether the last four years have been a huge failure or not. And I think all of our news organisations do a lot of China coverage. 'Cause there's the fascination... There's no equivalent of the debates, but there is the Bo Xilai case. GEOFF: Which is extraordinary. Yes, next question? AMERICAN MAN: So everything you're talking about appears to apply mostly just to 10 states in the US. A dangerous idea might be for the people of the other 40 states... If you're a Green and you live in Texas, why would you vote for Obama? 'Cause he's not gonna win Texas. Vote for the Green candidate. If you're conservative and you don't like religion in the public place, and you live in California or in New York, why vote for Romney? You might as well vote for a Libertarian. And I love that about Australia. The Greens certainly get more from Julia than the Greens will ever get from Obama. OK, now we're talking political science. So it's electoral systems. If only the US either had proportional representation or direct election of the president, the world would be a much better place. Do you agree? My dangerous idea - the US constitution is really screwed up in 50 different ways. (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE) But also, it's impossible to change. So it's screwed up and impossible to change. And this is our challenge. One way to get around this current Electoral College nuttiness which makes Ohio matter more than any other place on earth is an initiative that a number of states have now passed, including California, that when enough states approve this to represent a majority of the Electoral College, they pledge to allot their electoral votes proportionately. GEOFF: So, how do you think about that one, Nick? NICK: I was gonna say exactly the same thing. If you want a dangerous idea, you really need to rethink the American constitution. Not only has it created this weird electoral system, it's created a system of government which now is in paralysis and almost a level of ungovernability in Washington. And that's a huge problem. And you should also rethink the nominating process. You know, the fact that it starts... If you were to invent a system that was less representative of America, you'd struggle to do it, quite frankly. You'd think, "Where's a really weird state "where ethanol subsidies is the biggest issue? "OK, let's go Ohio." "We're there already." "Let's think of somewhere which is 95% white." "Oh, New Hampshire. We do that already." "Let's go to South Carolina," which is the next primary, "a really conservative state." "Done it already." "Let's take New York out of the equation, really, and California." Two of the most populous states that don't really have any impact on presidential campaigns in the nominating process anymore. They did in 2008. "Let's do that." "Well, we've done it already." You know, the system is very, very flawed. And, you know, the Electoral College, we could go into the detail of that as well. You know, you've got a system, obviously as happened in 2000, where the candidate who wins the popular vote doesn't necessarily win the presidency. And that is something that, as Jim said, is not gonna change. But, of course, there is a flip side, Anne, which is that Bob Carr, that incredible student of American history, in his analysis of the 2010 election for the Labor Party, suggested that there were a lot of elements of American politics that we'd do well to emulate in Australia, and one of them is moving towards a primary system. Do you think he's right about that? NSW is experimenting with it now. It's quite a limited system. You can join the Labor Party and you can take part in these broader votes. I know that some of the people in the party are interested in having a system a bit like the British system where members can participate in choosing the prime minister. To me, it seems like a good idea for one reason, in that in America, everyone is a lot more engaged with... Well, there is a big class of activists who are engaged with the party. In Australia, I think the really sad thing is that political parties have shrunk and they're losing members because people feel like they can't be part of the preselection system, that it's done behind closed doors by the powerbrokers. GEOFF: I have to share with this group... I became an American citizen in 2008, so my first act as an American citizen was to vote in the primary. And I couldn't believe an American primary. The polling place is somebody's backyard. There are no official officials anywhere. And the person in front of me... This was California, so the ballot paper was... Not like that tall, that THICK. And somebody in front of me had made a mistake. And so the person who was scrutinising the election said, "Don't worry, I'll just snip the ballot box and I'll pull yours out." I mean, this is an extraordinary thing, the folksiness of this process. Do you think it's an endearing, charming thing, Jim? (LAUGHTER) I think we saw its excesses... That was what gave us Florida 2000, the accumulation of a thousand things like that. And I think the serious part of it right now is some of the voter suppression efforts that are under way in a lot of states which may have the countereffect of mobilising a lot of early vote turnout. But the American electoral system is really bad. And I think it's only that America has... It's one of many things that America has so far been rich enough and resilient enough to afford, which is this bad political system. And the question is whether that margin of being able to afford it diminishes. Next question, over on our left. Well, maybe we've covered all this, and perhaps you can ask the next question, because that was exactly my question. Every four years, the rest of the world is reminded of the inability of America to get past the Electoral College and we look at states wiping people off the electoral roll and so forth. There's no national electoral commission. There's no kind of rule of law about the elections. The elections are held on working days, where some people need to queue for hours when they're supposed to be working. There are so many things! And the rest of the world looks at the sort of leader of democracy, according to the rhetoric, and looks at how it actually happens on the ground and is completely amazed and shocked. OK, so let's focus this in two ways. Nick, you covered 2000, Gore/Bush. And this is a case where the Supreme Court literally decided the outcome of the election. Second case, 2011, Citizens United. The Supreme Court decided that yes, indeed, money is speech in the US. And as long as you're giving it to something called a Super PAC, it can be X million dollars, which kept Newt Gingrich in an election campaign for six months. What about those two big things? Well, I was live on air when the Supreme Court made its ruling in 2000 and had that awful moment where we were trying to decipher this ruling. It was written in legal gobbledegook. And, of course, afterwards, the Supreme Court justices who were in the majority said "This should not be a precedent, 'cause it's so poorly argued," paraphrasing them. I take it back to what you were saying. Further than that, though. I remember waking up the morning after the election. In fact, I didn't even go to bed that night. And I remember seeing a Florida polling station with yellow police tape outside of it. And it was like a crime scene. And that was probably as it should have been. And I remember Indian officials sort of saying, "Do you want us to send election observers over to America?" (LAUGHTER) There was this wonderful moment where the rest of the world was saying, "Hang on, you've been telling us how to do democracy for donkey's years. "We'll return the favour." What about Citizens United and 'money is speech' and "If you've got more, you've got more to say"? Yeah, I think this is probably the most dangerous part of the American system - that you can basically now donate via these Super PACs. It means you donate to this organisation, they don't have to declare who the donors are. Some people out themselves, and it's quite interesting why they say they're donating. For instance, there's been... And his name's escaped me. -JIM: Sheldon Adelson? -Yeah. GEOFF: AKA Mr Newt Gingrich. So the great big casino owner, under investigation by the Justice Department, and he told Mike Allen at Politico he's done it for 'self-defence' reasons - that's why he's donating first to Gingrich and now to Romney. So that's pretty alarming. And, you know, the same thing happens in Australia. We've now banned donations to developers in NSW, which hopefully will help a little bit. Maybe not. JIM: I think the US narrowly avoided a constitutional crisis about three months ago when John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, decided not to overrule the Obama healthcare law. Because if he had ruled to overturn it, I think there would have been a narrative among a lot of the American electorate saying "From Bush v Gore to Citizens United to this healthcare ruling, "you had essentially partisan control of the Supreme Court." Through most of American history, the Supreme Court has actually been an activist, partisan body, not a detached, judicial one. The more judicial, restrained one that we think of, say, in the desegregation rulings of the mid 20th century was the anomaly. I think Roberts was concerned enough about how the court... To protect the court, that he swung that way. Yeah, it was extraordinary. I remember that one. Everyone who's followed the Supreme Court knew it would be 5-4, but they had no idea that the Chief Justice would side with Barack Obama against the conservatives. Next question. AMERICAN MAN: Morning. I just came back yesterday from the US. The main argument I get from my Republican family is that Obama's a redistributionist, and that they still pay their fair amount of taxes. And that they feel it's very visceral, when he continues to say on the campaign trail that they're not giving their fair stake. And I wanted to know how in some sections that's playing out in the country, and other sections it's not, particularly in New York, I found it to be more playing out - that they feel insulted by Obama, that rhetoric. I think it's very... Again, you can only appreciate this if you are in the US and you are among Republicans, just how much they hate Obama. I mean, with a passion. But is it because of redistribution or is it other reasons? Well, Geoff, it's worth pointing out that Barack Obama's been a huge disappointment to many Democrats as well. And this really should have been the Republicans' year. They should have won this election, as we said earlier. But, Jim, why do the Republicans hate Obama? Is it because he's a redistributive guy? Is it because he's a black man? What's the big story? A combination of things. There are some people... Some of the animus against Obama is certainly racially motivated, people feeling this is just an improper person to be holding the office. Some of it... There is an interesting, and I think not really attractive in human terms, reaction by a lot of the Wall Street people, who are feeling... They're the worst. They did get bailed out, nobody got prosecuted, they're able to get all these profits. Somehow they still feel picked upon and not appreciated by Obama. You know, objectively, the level of taxation overall in the US is near a historic low. And the income rate progressivity is much, much lower than it was under Clinton, under Reagan. When I was a kid, John F. Kennedy, he lowered the maximum tax rate from 90% down to whatever it was - 70% or something. Now the maximum is... The effective maximum for rich people is 15%, the capital gains. And so there's lots of reasons for it, but also there's this sort of self-enclosed information sphere, just thinking that Obama really is a redistributionist and that... It is a narrative that people just feel beset by the government. How important do you think Fox News is in all of this, Anne? Well, I was going to say, I was talking to our correspondent, Nick O'Malley, and he was saying even inside the campaigns, they sort of have parallel universes. That they're watching their own media and it's reinforcing their view about how their campaign's going and also about the ills of each candidate. So I guess Fox News is really important in establishing that narrative that Obama is a big-government guy, a big taxer, and dangerous. But it's a huge problem for Republicans now. You need to win over Fox News. And there's a cost - there's a very big cost of winning over Fox News. And it's you lose CNN, you lose MSNBC, and the math of that adds up to losing an election, arguably. Next question. Maybe we've got time for two more if they're brief. Hi. We've talked about the South as being a Republican stronghold. But Bill Clinton actually managed to win a great swathe of Southern states in his two elections, I think including Georgia and Louisiana. So, what does it take for a Democrat to be able to win the Southern states? Well, of course, Bill Clinton won against - and I'm surprised he didn't come up - Bob Dole. By God, there was a weak presidential candidate. 1996. So Bill Clinton was number one, a very gifted politician, number two, he ran in two unusual circumstances - '92, it was against the first George Bush, who was a very impressive statesman but a bad politician, AND Ross Perot, who was in there, sort of splitting the vote. In '96, the Republicans, as they appear to be doing this time, are attacking a vulnerable president with not the best candidate. You know, Bob Dole was not the best candidate. But Clinton was Southern. He was able to apply Rhodes Scholar analysis with aw-shucks diction... (LAUGHTER) In his speech at the Democratic convention, he said, "How do people think that Obama is taking your money away? "I'm fixin' to tell ya." And he went on... And no-one could imagine Barack Obama confessing to the American public that he had a problem with his Big Mac addiction or whatever it was. Remember when Clinton was trying to jog to the McDonald's? JIM: So human in all ways, Bill Clinton. Just overflowing humanity. So I think he's an exceptional case. What will turn the South eventually, it'll be the Latino vote. And Texas will become an in-play state pretty soon. Next, and probably last, question. Just pushing the boundaries of dangerous ideas, and thinking about four years' time, which candidates from the Republican and Democrat side do you think will be the candidates put forward and be able to navigate the system? And a supplementary - what would be the key issue, the economy, or will we have moved on? Alright, four years from now. Is Bush III, IV, V versus Clinton whatever... Is that the best guess we've got today? On the Republican side, there is a struggle for the soul of the party. And again, the question presumes that Obama will be re-elected this year, as most of the speeches at the Republican convention assumed too. (LAUGHTER) 'Cause Chris Christie gave his keynote speech, "Stand with me and I'll stand with you. "And oh, yeah, vote for Romney." (LAUGHTER) GEOFF: Marco Rubio, "I've got the Republican story!" So I think if the Republicans lose, there will be this struggle for the narrative. Was it because they weren't conservative enough and they should have gone with a pure deal, with Ryan and Santorum, or because they need to swing back? So that, we don't know. It'll be those contests. GEOFF: What do you guys think? NICK: For the Dems, I think it may be Hillary Clinton, and for the Republicans, they need a Clinton. They need a Clinton-like Republican. GEOFF: You're not with my guy, Jeb Bush? Spanish-speaking Floridian who's intelligent? He's their best candidate except for that issue - his name. -GEOFF: Anne? -(LAUGHTER) Well, I thought Tim Pawlenty was quite impressive. He's Midwest state... Minnesota? I think he'll probably put his hand up. JIM: Have you heard him speak? GEOFF: I was gonna say, he's gonna Minnesotan you into submission. That's the way it's gonna go. And I don't know who it would be, but I could see the Democrats looking for a Latino candidate next time around. JIM: The Castro twins from Texas. Yep. Not Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles. Thank you all for joining us. Thanks, 'Sydney Morning Herald'. (APPLAUSE) Please thank Nick Bryant, Anne Davies, Jim Fallows. Thank you very much. (APPLAUSE)