E-mail a friendDavid Gergen
airdate February 6, 2008
David Gergen has taken his practical experience to academia, as professor of public service at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of its Center for Public Leadership. A former White House adviser, he's served four presidents—Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton—and was a campaign staffer for George H.W. Bush's '80 presidential campaign. Gergen is also editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report. The North Carolina native is a member of the D.C. bar and active on many nonprofit boards.
Former White House advisor discusses the female vote in the 2008 presidential election. (2:01)
David Gergen
Tavis: As we attempt to break down results of last night's Super Tuesday contest, I'm pleased to be joined by David Gergen. He's a professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He's also a former adviser to four U.S. presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. He joins us tonight from Cambridge. Mr. Gergen, as always, glad to have you on the program, sir.
David Gergen: Tavis, good to see you again.
Tavis: I saw you last night - I was sitting at NBC doing analysis last night and saw you at CNN doing analysis last night, and I don't know that either one of us today knows - (laughter).
Gergen: Knows what we're talking about or knows what happened?
Tavis: Yeah. Well, I would never insult you with the former but certainly the latter. Do you feel any better today about the accuracy of what we think we know?
Gergen: Well, I would not want to bet the farm on the precise numbers. The fact that NBC, CNN, and ABC all have different accounts on the delegates won yesterday on the Democratic side says there's still some confusion. Even now, we don't know, of course, which way New Mexico went. But what we do know is two fundamental things: that John McCain on the Republican side is closing in on the nomination.
Yes, there are two other candidates still in the race, but it's going to be very hard to stop him for the nomination. What he's having trouble with is getting Republicans to rally around him, especially conservatives, and that's going to raise a lot of questions about his candidacy in the fall.
On the Democratic side, this is anything but decided. We all thought this might be close; we had no idea it would be this close. The final tallies look like about 14 million votes cast in Democratic primaries across the country, and that Mrs. Clinton beat Barack Obama, with 14 million votes cast, by less than 50,000 votes. In other words, there was a less than 1 percent difference between them.
And on states, he actually won more states than she did. He won at least 13 of the 22 states, doing very well in the caucuses. And we also know that the delegate count is very close. And finally, we know this, Tavis; it's very, very important: the Clinton folks want to put a lot of emphasis on two states coming up, Ohio and Texas, on March 4th.
What they like to get people to focus on is the fact that there are six states that are going to express themselves between now and Texas and Ohio, and that Barack Obama has a very good chance in those six states. So he could have fresh momentum two weeks from now as we head towards Texas and Ohio.
Tavis: I noted, David Gergen, earlier last night and again looked at it today, that if you overlay the places where Hillary Clinton won with where John McCain won, what you see are big states for both, big delegate counts in those big states - that goes without saying - and that's a big deal if you're trying to become the nominee to win in November. That's what I saw. What do you make of that?
Gergen: Well you're absolutely right about that, and each of them won the two biggest prizes of the night: New York and California. And she deserves an enormous amount of credit and she got a big, big surprise in Massachusetts when she got a thumping victory in Massachusetts. Barack Obama surprised in Connecticut and he surprised in Missouri.
So there were surprises on both sides, but the difference between McCain and Hillary Clinton in terms of when you do the overlay is that for McCain those are mostly winner-take-all situations on some of that, and for her it's very, very proportional so that that's why he's building up a big delegate lead whereas she, coming out of California, even though she won these big states, by some counts, Barack Obama - NBC estimates that Barack Obama actually won more delegates nationwide yesterday than she did.
Tavis: And again, to your earlier point, you got 15 different networks, you got 15 different numbers, she's leading in the delegate count in some, he's leading in others. If you think we're confused, the campaigns must really be confused trying to figure out where they are, and it's obviously very, very important to them. Since you sit, of course, tonight in Massachusetts, in Cambridge, what do you make of this whole notion of endorsements?
The Kennedys - let me be frank about this - half of the Kennedy clan took a thumping yesterday because the other half endorsed Hillary. The children of Robert Kennedy have endorsed Mrs. Clinton. But I'm really starting to think, David, that these endorsements across the board don't really mean a whole lot.
Gergen: Well, they create a lot of froth and they can create a sense of momentum, and I do think that helped Barack Obama in the closing days. Out in California, she swept that because she did so well among voters who made up their minds two weeks, three weeks, four weeks ago, and indeed she wouldn't have had that big victory out there had it not been for a lot of those people voting before the tide turned.
And I think that tide turned out in California and he won the greater number of people who decided in the last three days, at least according to the exit poll. And I think that tide turned in part because Teddy Kennedy got involved and they created this sense of excitement, and the media gave him a lot of very positive publicity.
But here in Massachusetts, I think there are a lot of us that feel the untold story is that Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry and the governor, Duval Patrick, all endorsed Barack Obama, but the person who really delivered the votes for her was the Tom Menino, the mayor of Boston, who has been a long-time political leader, has an excellent organization to get out the vote, and really helped her a lot.
Tavis: What's your read on the woman vote? And I raise that again, back to your point about Barack. He brought out Caroline Kennedy, he brought out Oprah Winfrey. If ever there was anybody at the center of the zeitgeist, it's Ms. Winfrey. And yet Hillary held her own yesterday with women voters.
Gergen: Well, that's true. No endorsement is going to turn everybody, I don't care who it comes from. It's just never happened in American politics. He cut a little bit into the kind of lopsided majority she has had with women. But what is very striking to me, Tavis, is that how different the two parties look in terms of the voters who actually went to the polls.
On the Democratic side, in state after state, about 57, 58, 59, 60 percent of the people who voted were women, whereas on the Republican side, majorities in most states were men. So that there's been this big gender gap, and there's no question - I haven't gotten the numbers yet, but one of the things I want to do is I will bet you, if you look at the total vote that she got yesterday, the seven million people, I bet a huge majority of those seven million people were women, and a significant majority of them, or at least a significant proportion of them, were single women.
That has been her greatest single strength. We don't talk about it much, it doesn't get a lot of media play, but there are a whole lot of single women in this country, women with kids, raising kids, single moms, widows, and others - women who never married - who are very, very strongly in her camp, and they are powering her to victory.
You come to think about it, she was talking about this last night, Hillary Clinton was talking about her mother was born at a time when women couldn't vote. Women are now, I think, the driving force behind her candidacy and a very strong possibility she could be in the White House.
Tavis: You raised this issue earlier, David Gergen, and I want to let you unpack it right quick here - the issue of the media giving some rather favorable coverage to Mr. Obama over the last few weeks. Now as you well know, at any one particular point of a campaign, one candidate might get more favorable coverage. But over the last few weeks leading up to Super Tuesday, it's very clear to me at least that Mr. Obama received more of the favorable press.
I don't think anybody reasonably would disagree with that. And yet she was able to hold her own. What do you say about her, given her fighting back against the positive media coverage he was getting?
Gergen: Well, the positive media coverage, it competes with the fact there are a whole lot of Americans in this country, especially lower-income people, who look back upon the Bill Clinton years as good years for them in their lives. We'd had 30-plus years in this country where the upper half was moving up and the bottom half was stuck or moving down.
And it was only in the mid-nineties, under President Clinton, that you started to see people in the bottom half, especially the bottom quartile, whose lives really started to improve. And they are very grateful for that, and they remember it. And at a time when economic hard times are coming again, they're going to be loyal to that and she wins heavily among lower-income people.
As you go up the income scale, go up the education scale, that's when he starts winning. It's a very interesting flip. But this election has divided, on the Democratic side, very sharply on income lines, on generational lines, on gender, and on race, and I think the racial-ethnic part of it is the explosive part that could get quite ugly if we're not careful.
Tavis: I got about 20 seconds here. Tell me quickly, David Gergen, how you think that John McCain does in fact pull those conservatives into the fold with people like Hannity and Limbaugh still attacking the guy?
Gergen: Really carefully. (Laughter) He's got this big speech coming up Thursday to a conservative political action group in Washington. What he's got to do, Tavis, is he needs to consolidate and bring conservatives with him without pandering and without looking like he's selling his soul. Because if he does that, he's going to lose the middle.
That's the way he went down earlier. The first time he crashed was when he looked like he was just chasing after the Falwells of the world, and he cannot do that here and expect to win the general election. So he has to do it with great poise and he has to be authentic, he has to stay with who he is, and yet at the same time, look, here's where I stand with you.
And he's going to do it on taxes, he's going to do it on judges, but he does not want to, I think, essentially be seen as making himself hostage to conservatives. That will drive away the independents and independents are what will help him ultimately win if he's going to win, and he's got a real shot.
Tavis: We will see if he can make that happen. From the Kennedy School, the director of the Center for Public Leadership there, David Gergen, former adviser to four presidents, including Reagan and Clinton. David Gergen, always appreciate your insight, man.
Gergen: Tavis, it's always good to be with you, sir, thank you.
Tavis: Thank you, sir.
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