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Bumiller, Carney, Martin: Discussion about the role of gender in this presidential campaign. (3:08)
 

Full interview. (22:25)
 

Tavis: Last Friday night in Denver, we explored the role of race in this year's presidential contest. Tonight here in St. Paul, we wanted to focus on gender and how the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate has shaken up this race.

I'm pleased to be joined by a terrific panel. Elisabeth Bumiller covers politics for "The New York Times" and is the author of a recent best-seller about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Michel Martin, the host, of course, of "Tell Me More" heard on NPR, National Public Radio, and, lest I be accused of being sexist, Jay Carney (laughter), Washington bureau chief for "Time" magazine. Glad to have you all on the program.

Michel Martin: Great to be here.

Jay Carney: Thank you.

Tavis: Let me start with the obvious. We'll start with you, Michel. How big an issue is gender going to be in this campaign?

Martin: I think it's gonna be a big issue in part because nobody knows what to do with it. I mean, nobody knows what to do with it. The same push-back you saw on Obama, which is, you know, people saying, "Well, he wouldn't be at this point if he weren't African American" and you have a reaction to that. There are people saying, "Well, she wouldn't be on the ticket if she weren't a woman." There's a push-back.

But remember, this is an eight-week campaign, so everything kind of gets magnified in this kind of pressure cooker because nobody wants to miss something in the eight weeks. So I think it's because we're so uncomfortable with these issues.

Tavis: Elisabeth, how big a risk, how big a roll of the dice, was this for John McCain?

Elisabeth Bumiller: I think it was a very big risk. It depends on who you talk to. Obviously, this is the choice that made the base very, very happy. The social conservatives have embraced Sarah Palin like I've never seen before. But other moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats, Independents, you hear a very different thing from them about her experience.

You also hear from women. We've been hearing from women who say, "Well, I'm not gonna vote for her just because she's a woman. What? Do you think I'm an idiot? You know, what about her ability to step into the role of Commander in Chief?"

Tavis: Can Obama-Biden - their surrogates, for that matter - raise the issue of her lack of experience without being called sexist? I'm trying to figure out where the line is of critiquing her, going at her, without being labeled sexist.

Martin: No, they can't. They can't raise it without being called sexist, but they have to because it's still relevant. I mean, you saw that when Rudy Giuliani spoke earlier in the evening before Sarah Palin, you know, he criticized people for raising the question of whether she had the time to fulfill the role properly because of the number of children she has.

So, of course, the people are gonna be called sexist. You already see the McCain campaign running against the media and trying to sort of push them back on some of these questions. The questions are out there.

Tavis: So, Jay, how do Obama and Biden effectively run against this woman in this space, as Michel says, we have never occupied before?

Carney: Well, two things. First, I think it's quite rich to hear the Republicans play the kind of victim identity politics game that they accused Democrats of playing for so long. It's like, you know, any criticism of Sarah Palin is really sexism even if it's just about her record and her resume. However, as I think we've just discussed, it's a very dicey proposition for the Democrats.

I think what the Obama-Biden ticket hopes will happen is what normally happens in these cycles, which is after the conventions, the vice presidential picks kind of recede into the background because it seems, coming out of her performance in St. Paul, that Palin is a pretty inspiring figure not just for evangelicals, but potentially to other voters in the country and they'd rather have the race be about Obama versus McCain because they can tie the past around McCain much more effectively than Biden versus Palin or Obama versus Palin.

Tavis: I've been waiting to see who gets at her first, NPR, "Time" magazine, "New York Times."

Bumiller: We don't think it'll be any of us.

Carney: I don't think we're top of the list, yeah (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) It won't be me.

Carney: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh.

Tavis: But it raises a good question, though, Elisabeth, I think, which is how long she can go without subjecting herself to media scrutiny, number one. The second part of that question is because she came out so hard and, to Jay's point, because the party now is running against the liberal media bias, when she gets there, she's gonna have to come with it, yes?

Bumiller: Right. I mean, it's a good question. I think a week or two and before she has to sit down, as Jay just said, this is an eight-week campaign. You know, she doesn't have much time to get prepared for "Meet The Press," but it's gonna have to happen. She can't just continue talking to "People" magazine. It's not just us. I think it's the American voters. You know, running against the press, it doesn't usually work, but I think it's worked for them in the short term.

Tavis: It works at their base, doesn't it?

Martin: It does work, it does work. I mean, look at Hillary Clinton who was complaining about sexist treatment by the media. She didn't start complaining sexist treatment by the media until she started losing.

Bumiller: Well, it does work?

Martin: Well, it works with some people. It worked to the degree that her supporters were still carrying that water up through the first two days of the convention. So it works to the degree which gets your strongest supporters fired up. I mean, they had a problem with their base. The Republican base was not loving him, so now they are loving that ticket. So at the very least, you get those people out. This is a ground war, so it's very important.

Tavis: Which raises for me, Jay, the question that we've been talking about here all week which is whether or not they can - the McCain-Palin ticket - assume that, just because she is a woman, they're gonna pick up a significant number of those disaffected Clinton supporters.

Carney: I don't think they're gonna get disaffected Clinton supporters. Clinton supporters are Democrats. They're pro choice. I mean, the women especially are not going to, as Elisabeth was saying, they're not blindly going to vote. The Hillary Clinton Democratic women are not gonna blindly vote for a very socially conservative, very fiscally conservative candidate for vice president of the Republican Party just because she's a woman. I just don't think that's gonna happen.

But she will appeal because of her authenticity, her stage presence, all the things that she brought to St. Paul, I think potentially to rural and ex-urban, lower middle class voters, the kind of voters that Hillary was picking up not because she was a woman, but because they suffered from economic anxiety, but they weren't ready to vote for Obama either because he's African American or because he seemed too not like them, too urban, too -

Martin: - see, the war is white independent women. That, to me, it's white independent women. Let's say you're a moderate, you're a Catholic woman, right? And you're pro life, but you were gonna vote for Hillary because you thought, "You know what? She stands up for people like me, she gets my life, she understands where I'm coming from, she knows what I need." And then along comes a Sarah Palin and you think, "You know what? She's more my speed anyway."

You don't need to move large numbers of people. This is a very close race. Let's say 18,000 votes in Ohio moved the last election. If there's 18,000 votes one way or the other, John Kerry would be president now. Maybe that's who you're going for.

Bumiller: I was going to say, you know, Geraldine Ferraro when she ran with Walter Mondale, that was a generation ago. It was 24 years ago, but she did not bring women to the Democratic ticket. The polls showed. I remember reading a very interesting story after that race - it was in "The New York Times - and seeing women quoted as saying, "You know, she seemed so ordinary to me. I couldn't imagine her as vice president."

Again, that was 24 years ago. That's, you know, a lifetime ago, but you're beginning to hear this from women in this cycle which is "How is she…" But these are women who are talking and saying, "How can she handle this with all these children?"

What I also find interesting is that the conservative women now have suddenly decided that it's okay to have five children and be Vice president. That's a new one for them. In the old days, you had to stay home. They were very critical of women who went to the offices and didn't stay home with their children.

Martin: But isn't politics all about trying to have it every way, every which way?

Carney: It's about winning, isn't it?

Bumiller: Yeah, right.

Tavis: I guess the question for me is it really sexist to ask that question? I mean, I know the sexism thing's gonna come up a thousand times between now and November. Is it sexist to ask whether or not, as part of your preparedness, as part of the capacity to be Vice president, you can do that with a number of factors, five kids, one with Downs Syndrome being a part of it? Is that sexist even to ask that question? Because that's what Giuliani said.

Martin: I don't think the issue is sexism. I think the issue is hypocrisy.

Tavis: Okay.

Martin: And the issue is we need to know what Sarah Palin believes. Who is she? What is your world view? There are folks who believe, there are some people who believe that women should be subservient to men. It's the theological perspective. It's their world view and they believe it firmly. There are women who told me to my face that that's one reason they couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because they don't believe a woman should be Commander in Chief.

We need to know what does Sarah Palin believe and is she walking the walk in consonant with those beliefs? That's why we need to know. Yes, it is sexist to say just on the base of the number of kids you have. John McCain has seven children and I've not heard one person ask him if he has time to be president. So that on it's face, yes.

Tavis: Let me shift gears here slightly. I think there's something here I don't know, but I'm looking for you guys to educate me on this. What does it mean, Jay, that, to Elisabeth's point, the Republican Party almost a quarter century after the Democrats, finally get around to putting a woman on the ticket?

It's a simple question, but is there something deeper there? What does it say about where the party is, how they're trying to reshape themselves, the challenges they have? Does it say something deeper that they now, 25 years after the Democrats, finally get around to putting a woman on the ticket?

Carney: Well, two things. I think that one of the reasons why we haven't seen a woman on the ticket of either party in the past 25 years is because the Mondale-Ferraro ticket did so poorly in 1984. That's one of the reasons. There are a lot of factors.

I think that certainly political scientists could have sat around back in 1984 and 1985 and said, "Boy, it's more likely in the end that the Republican Party can produce a woman on the top of the ticket or the second place as a running mate than the Democratic Party." You know, sort of like Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain.

Tavis: They would have said that why, though? I don't mean to cut you off.

Carney: Well, because for people to accept, the ones who were resistant to the idea of a woman as Commander in Chief, they're more likely to accept it if it's from the tough party, the one that's tough on crime, tough on national defense. You know, Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, sort of whatever the American version of that is. In some ways, that's what Sarah Palin is presenting herself as. You know, she's one tough conservative Republican and maybe that will sell.

Now the other side of this is the world's changed a lot. It's 2008 and, while the Republican Party hasn't at all become more progressive in most areas, it is, I think, more open. You see in its representation in Congress, its representation in the State Houses, more open to electing women than it was certainly 25 years ago.

Martin: But I think the key factor here is that women have had a hard time cracking executive level leadership. I mean, part of the reason Geraldine Ferraro had trouble is that she was a woman of Congress. How many people go straight from the Congress, from the House -

Tavis: - Condi, the Secretary of State, though.

Martin: That's true, but I'm just saying it's executive level leadership that tends to be the springboard to the White House. Governors tend to do better than members of Congress and that's part of the issue here. In fact, that's one of the talking points you've been hearing all week. I know you've been hearing it. "She has more executive experience than anybody on the Democratic ticket" and more than John McCain, for that matter.

Tavis: That's a good point, Michel. Is that line going to work, Elisabeth? Put another way, is that dog gonna hunt, that argument?

Bumiller: That she has more executive experience?

Tavis: Yes. They're gonna obviously ride that for a while.

Bumiller: You know, she's got twenty months of executive experience in a state the size of a medium-sized city and she was mayor of a city of seven thousand. I'm not sure it's gonna work. I mean, it's a very thin resume. There's no way around it. They are making this argument 24 hours a day now nonstop. You know, based on the comments you're hearing from people out in the country, they've got a very, very tough sell with that, you know.

I also want to say something about her as the attack dog, that traditional role of the vice presidential nominee. That is a really difficult line to walk for a woman. You can say this is a sexist comment, but a woman in television knows that it's really hard for a woman to do a really aggressive interview on television. You just can't do it the way a man can do it. You know, let us see how this goes with her in this role. Now she's very good at it because she deploys humor, but let's see.

Martin: I have to disagree with you. I think that Joe Biden has the tougher task here. I think that a lot of men, no matter the age, have a very hard time debating women. I think we've seen it time and time. We've seen Rick Lazio with Hillary Clinton. We saw it with, you know, Clayton Williams with Ann Richards.

I think you've seen it - Joe Biden did not cover himself with glory when he chaired the Judiciary Committee and handled the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings because I think he was kind of flummoxed by all the sort of subtext. I mean, obviously, there was the issue of sex and pornography and stuff involved, which is not the case. He did not cover himself with glory. I think a lot of men are thrown off their game by women in that debate and she is going to be the underdog because she's less well-known.

Look in the debates where Barack Obama made an offhand comment about Hillary Clinton. He said, "Oh, you're likable enough." You know, I think people my age, we were like, "Oh, whatever." But for a lot of older women, it was like, "You're being mean" and he had to apologize for that.

Tavis: I just want you to explain whether or not she really is the underdog after her performance here this week.

Carney: Well, it scrambles the game a little bit.

Tavis: She cannot be the underdog and attack dog.

Carney: I think what Elisabeth was saying -

Bumiller: - well, I was talking about daily attacks on Barack Obama. I wasn't talking about the debate. I was talking about everyday getting up and doing what she did at the convention. You know, those really kind of tough mocking speeches. Again, it was a huge hit here and the humor was - anyway, Jay, go on.

Carney: Well, I think it will be hard for - Elisabeth's right that it's tough to be the attack dog fulltime and then maybe harder for a woman in some ways, but I do not envy Joe Biden. I think that is a difficult task and I think they'll probably advise him to just stick to the issues, display the breadth of his experience and don't get dragged into a critique of Sarah Palin.

Tavis: But he is strident. That's his style.

Carney: Well, and he's also not exactly famous for sticking to a script (laughter).

Martin: But Democrats are gonna want him to stand up for the things that they believe in. I mean, I don't know about you, but my Blackberry was going crazy during her speech with people who were upset about sort of the sarcasm. I mean, I think she stayed on the correct side of me. I mean, I was at the 1992 convention where Pat Buchanan was on the ticket and you know what? Mean. That was mean. This wasn't mean. This was tough.

Tavis: I thought, watching the speech, that there might be the case made that, never mind the fact that the number two is the attack dog position, I thought the debate might have raged about whether or not she went too far and that's what you're speaking to now about your Blackberry, 'cause I got some of that, that she went just a little too far.

Martin: But you're hearing that from Democrats. I mean, you're hearing that from Democrats, you're hearing that from Obama supporters who are offended and who don't believe - who are sort of culturally offended at the way that Republicans attack the kinds of experiences and life story that someone like him represents.

I mean, attacking community organizers. I mean, if you are a person who thinks that's valuable and important service, then you're gonna be offended. If you're a person who dismisses that as kind of like, you know, something you do for fun before you go off and work on Wall Street, then you're not offended.

Tavis: Here's a silly question I think we're gonna hear a bunch of times between now and November which is whether or not these two things, gender and race, cancelled each other out in this race or whether or not we really are gonna determine whether or not one has a greater impact on peoples' votes than the other does.

Carney: I think, because there's an imbalance sometimes where they appear on their ticket, they don't cancel each other out. I think there is still, you know, this untested arena that we're facing with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket and what percentage of the population out there is gonna be reluctant to vote for the first African American president.

I think it's historic and it's important and significant to have Sarah Palin on the ticket, but in the end, voters tend to vote for the top of the ticket. I mean, look what happened. George H.W. Bush in 1998 had picked Dan Quayle. You know, by every measure, a disastrous pick in terms of how it played in those months after he did it and won walking away against Michael Dukakis.

Martin: I just think there are so many variables, it's hard to pick out where race and gender fits into this. I mean, if Colin Powell had chosen to run for president, I think it's very likely that he could have been our first African American president because he was the most popular political figure in the country at one point and he was a conservative in the level -

Bumiller: - different level of experience, yeah.

Martin: You're talking about a man who's very young running against a man who's very old. You're talking about a vice presidential candidate who's very young running against a guy who's been in Washington a long time. There are so many things up in the air here that I just think how do you pick out race and gender as the variables that are most significant?

Tavis: Is the best argument for Obama and Biden to run against her the lack of experience argument? Is that the best way to run against her?

Bumiller: Absolutely, absolutely. But then, of course, they're gonna have it thrown back at them. What they're doing now so far is issues. The Democrats now, the Obama campaign, is sending out lots of things, you know, the flip-flop on the bridge to nowhere in Alaska, her positions on abortion. You know, she's opposed to abortion including cases of rape or incest. They're doing it that way. I don't know what else they have up their sleeve, but that seems to be the safe approach right now.

Martin: How do you fight the culture war with the hockey mom? I mean, if this is a culture war about who best represents America, I mean, it's ugly, it bounces back all over the place. It's one of those genies you let out of the bottle and you can't put it back in.

Carney: I think they explore her record and let people know that she doesn't have a halo and then they go right back to, "Do you want four more years of George W. Bush and that's what John McCain's gonna give you?", and they don't talk about Sarah Palin.

Martin: And I think there too is also gonna be an extremist. I mean, they're gonna say that John McCain is a centrist who's worked across bipartisan lines. My guess is that they'll say that actually Sarah Palin, for all her maverick reputation, is in fact an extremist who, you know, really doesn't represent the core values of the American people and doesn't really represent John McCain.

Tavis: I don't know if the three of you read this the same way I read it, but the story of her forthcoming grandchild by her 17-year-old daughter who's apparently gonna marry the baby's father. That story seemed to die as the day - it's died from the time we heard about it until now.

There were some who predicted to me that that story would have legs for quite some time. I think Obama took the air out of that balloon when he said it's off-limits. But your read on the swiftness with which that story just kind of started to trail off.

Carney: It died because of what Senator Obama said and it died because it should have died. But what is really infuriating as a member of the sort of mainstream media is the way that the Republicans and the McCain campaign have basically said that we in the media and even the Democrats attacked Bristol Palin and it's simply not true.

There was a blog report out there that people looked into, but nobody in the mainstream media published it or broadcasted it or would have touched it had it not been for the decision by the campaign to release their statement. They release a statement, it's news. You know, they're using it effectively in their war against the media, but it's insipidly inaccurate.

Martin: It's Crisis Communications 101. Get it out, get it early, get it off the table. But I don't think it has gone away. It hasn't gone away on the blogs. Are you kidding? I'm telling you, my Blackberry's been burning up with people who just say, "A, if this were an African American, if this were Barack and Michelle Obama's daughter, do you think that the right wing talk radio host would say this is a fit role model for the country?"

The conservative punditocracy went crazy over Jamie Lynn Spears and the Hollywood secular liberal elite. You know, it hasn't gone away as far as people are concerned. You know what I mean? As far as regular folks are concerned.

Bumiller: No. You know, I'm debating now whether or not - I said earlier a couple of days that I thought that Sarah Palin would fade off into the sunset, you know, after a week or two and have the role of the vice presidential nominee and go to small markets in small states. I don't think that's gonna be the case.

I think that, because of this, she's gonna be a big tabloid story and she will be a big television story for the rest of the campaign. I think this story is not gonna go away. But I agree with Jay because I heard Mike Huckabee on your show recently saying that we had been attacking Bristol and I said to him recently, "All we did was report the statement. How were we to -

Carney: - yeah. It should be called what it is, which is a lie.

Bumiller: Yeah.

Tavis: For each of you, what's your sense of what this condensed now eight-week schedule, given these issues of race and gender and the fact that we've never seen anything like this, what does this condensed now, sixty-day, eight-week campaign mean for us, the American public?

Carney: Well, it's kind of after all these months and we've gone on and on and on, now you suddenly feel as the polls come out after the shakeout after the Republican convention, we could very much be in a dead heat and starting fresh. It'll feel like almost an election in Great Britain. You know, sort of the eight-week sprint to the finish.

Given the nature of the media in this cycle and the bombardment of information the voters are gonna be faced with and that we're gonna have to sift through in our efforts to explain it, you know, it's gonna be a campaign like none we've ever seen.

Tavis: Michel?

Martin: I agree. It's very different. It's the playoffs, you know. Everything starts new, you know. You got to wash the jersey and go on back out.

Tavis: Before I get to you, Elisabeth, how ugly, how nasty, how racist, how sexist, how divisive do you think this campaign's gonna get in eight weeks, or am I totally off-base here?

Martin: There are two campaigns and they've been going on all along. There's the above-ground campaign and there's the below-ground campaign. I had a guest of a delegate tell me to my face that Barack Obama is a Muslim, he's an extremist, he's lying about his religion and that he's a dangerous man and the country's gonna go to hell if he's elected president. This is a serious person who was a delegate four years ago. Her husband's a delegate now.

I had a man who's a Christian conservative tell me outside that he's not even gonna vote now, he's so disappointed that, if Sarah Palin can't run a moral household, then she's not fit to be Vice president. But those aren't people who get in campaign commercials. There's the campaign up here and then there's a campaign on the blogs and, you know, below the surface. That one's already ugly.

Tavis: Elizabeth, the last word from you?

Bumiller: Hold on to your hats for this campaign. That's what I would say (laughter). She's changed the narrative. What we're all gonna be looking for is any more revelations that come out about her. There are, obviously, teams up in Alaska because she's such an unknown.

Tavis: Yeah. It's gonna be fascinating to watch, as has been these last two weeks covering these conventions. I know we're all ready to go home now. Let's just say amen and go home after two weeks. Elisabeth, thank you for being here. Michel, thank you, and, Jay, it's always good to see you.

Bumiller: Thank you.