Official White House photo by Pete Souza via Flickr

Just about a month from now, Election Day will have come and gone. Americans, who appear not to have much taste for either major presidential nominee, will have made their choice.

But truth to tell, any politician who is being honest will admit that they are never more beloved than the day before they decide to run for office.

Once a candidate, they can no longer claim outsider status, and he or she begins to look more ambitious than chaste. Hillary Clinton was a popular secretary of state, but now she is just Hillary Clinton.

There’s something about actually wanting a thing that makes voters think less of you.

The converse, of course, is also true. Once they have actually left office, we seem to grow fonder of our ex-presidents — and they of each other. That’s why so many sighed in approval at Michelle Obama’s public display of affection with George W. Bush at last month’s dedication of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

Now, little more than four months before he leaves office, President Obama has begun to get a taste of this phenomenon.

Official White House photo by Pete Souza via Flickr

A CNN/ORC poll this week pegged his approval rating at 55 percent, a second-term high, and an 11-point leap from this time last year. That’s about the time the 2016 campaign story was about to steal the march from the West Wing.

Surprisingly, according to Gallup, the president’s greatest gains have come among conservative Democrats, who conventional wisdom would have you believe we’re headed for “Trumpland.”

President Obama is doing better than George W. Bush did at this point in his second term and is on par with Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton’s approval rating, at 58 percent, was stronger, and that was in the face of scandal and impeachment. Clinton left office with one of the highest approval ratings in history.

Lame duck presidents handle this spotlight shift in different ways. Some keep a low profile so as not to influence the race for their successor. In the case of President Obama, the goal seems to be to use the cover of a presidential campaign to rack up a few wins.

So this week, we saw the U.S. celebrate the sealing of a 73-nation climate accord designed to reduce carbon emissions and boost solar energy.

“Today, the world meets the moment,” the president said in a Rose Garden statement, calling it a “turning point for the planet.”

The president, too, meets the moment in his final months as commander-in-chief as he prepares to relinquish the most influential platform he will have.

The post Gwen’s Take: The end is in sight appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Gwen Ifill moderates the 2008 vice-presidential debate with Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. Photo by Don Emmert/Getty Images

This column is not what you think it is going to be. Because I have moderated two general election debates — in 2004 and 2008 — I know better than to carp from the sidelines. I am confident in my accomplishment of having had Queen Latifah portray me on Saturday Night Live both years.

Safe to say, that record is safe.

READ MORE: Gwen’s Take: The high dive

But that hasn’t stopped the requests that have poured in every day for a month, as news outlets from around the world have asked my opinion on debate moderation.

I’ve saved my answers for you, dear Takers:

BE A JOURNALIST

This will not be a problem for the five smart people the Commission on Presidential Debates has selected as moderators this year (with no small blessing from the candidates.)

Moderating a debate means spending more time with briefing books than with your children. It means writing, and rewriting, and rephrasing. It means finding a way to be alert enough to notice when your question goes unanswered and nimble enough to decide what you will do about that on the spot.

For me, in 2004, it meant stepping out of the way when neither debating candidate — John Edwards nor Dick Cheney — had a clue what to say when I asked them what they would do about the rise in HIV infection among black women in the U.S.

Essentially, Cheney replied: “That’s interesting” and no more. Edwards launched into a rehearsed speech about AIDS in Africa. Except I had not asked about AIDS in Africa.

My response? To move on and allow voters to decide if the candidates’ ignorance on the issue mattered to them. Chasing candidates around the table for answers they did not have seemed a waste of precious time.

For years, people who watched that debate wrote me, emailed me and stopped me in public to thank me for that question. Mission accomplished.

ALWAYS HAVE A FOLLOW UP

So much of the pre-debate debate has centered on whether the moderator should bird dog the candidate when they skirt the question, or to be honest, when they skirt the truth.

RELATED: Watch and interact with every presidential debate since 1960

That’s the wrong debate. What every moderator wants to be able to do is pull a “Tim Russert.” The late Meet the Press moderator earned his reputation for being a tough interlocutor, because he studied. He anticipated the rote, scripted answer to come, and always had a “so how do you pay for that?” follow-up in his hip pocket.

You can’t always use it in a debate with rigid rules and timing, but it is the moderator’s responsibility to anticipate the questions well enough to add clarity if needed.

HOMEWORK GOES BOTH WAYS

It goes without saying that gaming the moderators is part of the deal. Have you ever seen a basketball game where the players protest what they consider a bad call by jawboning the ref? How often have you seen that change the referee’s decision?

It works that way in presidential debates too. Candidates research the moderators’ work extensively. In 2008, they questioned me over a book I hadn’t even finished writing. They raise questions about the party affiliations of the questioners. They try to put the imprint of bias on the forehead of anyone on the other side of the podium.

And guess what? That’s OK. But one thing voters should never lose sight of is this: the answers matter more than the questions. You’re voting for president, not moderator. If someone is complaining about the question or the questioner rather than providing an answer, they’re usually trying to change the subject.

IGNORE THE ARMCHAIR EXPERTS

A word for the moderators: Everybody thinks they can do your job. Interest groups insist you ask their question. (In 2004, one group pasted my face on a billboard, to implore me to talk about education.) Other journalists will hector you about the “only right way” to do the job.

Ignore them. Most of them (and in fact, only one of this year’s moderators — the great Martha Raddatz) have never done this particular thing before. Primary debates don’t count. One-on-one interviews with candidates don’t count. Backstage chit-chat doesn’t count.

You have to work on your questions, keep track of the time each candidate gets and whose turn it is for a follow-up. Oh, and you have to listen to the answers. Upwards of 60 million people will be watching — probably a whole lot more this year.

Suffice to say this is as tough a job as I have ever had, and I wish only the best for the moderators who will take the stage. If they are like I was, they long ago stopped reading social media or opening their mail.

But for viewers settling in with their pre-debate popcorn and wine, my only advice is watch carefully and give those hardworking moderators a break.

The post Gwen’s Take: How to moderate a debate appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Malaysian diver Pandelela Rinong Pamg at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Photo by Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images

For me, watching the summer Olympics should have been a respite from covering politics. But every time one of those amazing, tightly muscled divers stepped confidently to the edge of a high board, I held my breath.

As they sprang into the air – sometimes backward – and spiraled into the pool, I couldn’t help but think of the presidential campaign we are witnessing.

For Hillary Clinton, who is trying to make history by becoming the nation’s first woman president, nailing the high dive requires accomplishing it with considerable baggage – her legacy, her husband’s legacy and a raft of hardened public opinion.

Donald Trump’s high dive was illustrated best this week when he hijacked the campaign narrative with a surprise trip to Mexico, an apparently conciliatory joint appearance with President Enrique Pena Nieto, and a fiery hardline immigration speech only hours later.

By the next morning, he was telling Laura Ingraham, a popular conservative radio host, that he will soften his hard line – later on.

For diving enthusiasts, the high wire difficulty of pulling all of this off is apparent.

For Clinton, every time she talks about transparency, simple Google searches take us back to Whitewater and cattle future investments. When she touts her record at the State Department, the FBI’s harsh scolding about her handling of her emails springs back to life. And any mention of her husband’s post-presidential life summons debate about her ties — good and bad — to the Clinton Foundation.

Trump’s high dives seem to repeat themselves in real time every day. Is he a CEO or a politician? Is he a negotiator or a tough talker? Is he speaking to voters or about them?

Then there are the low dives. There is not a lot of risk in going before the American Legion to declare that you love the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, as Trump did. And it’s easy to stick the landing when you declare the “need to unify our country and go forward into the future with confidence and optimism,” as Clinton did before the same audience.

But it is the high dives that capture our attention and dominate the never-ending news cycle.

It’s Labor Day, the traditional beginning of the final drive toward Election Day. And if you doubt that there will be many high dives to come, consider this finding from the latest USA Today/Suffolk University national poll: Clinton leads in the horse race, but 80 percent of Trump’s supporters and 62 percent of Clinton’s also say if the other candidate were to win in November, they would feel “scared.”

Kind of like when you are hanging by your toes at the end of the high diving board.

The post Gwen’s Take: The high dive appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

June 1, 2016; President Barack Obama holds a town hall discussion with the residents of Elkhart, Indiana, hosted by PBS NewsHour co-anchor Gwen Ifill at The Lerner Theatre, in Elkhart, Indiana.(Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

One afternoon this month, I was standing on a stage with President Obama in Elkhart, Indiana, where we had just completed an hour-long conversation about politics, the economy and why a community that benefited from Obama-era policies still reliably votes Republican.

At the end of the PBS NewsHour taping, which featured questions from an invited crowd of local residents, I signed off. The credits rolled.

Then, as the president began to work the crowd, Doug Rhude, a local gun shop owner, rose to his feet and stayed there until he snagged Mr. Obama’s attention. Fortunately, the cameras were still rolling, and I rushed over with the microphone to where Rhude stood in the crowd.

Speaking politely, but with force, he said:

Doug Rhude, a gun shop owner from Elkhart, Indiana. Photo by PBS NewsHour

“Knowing that we apply common sense to other issues in our society, specifically like holding irresponsible people accountable for their actions when they drink and drive and kill somebody, and we do that without restricting control of cars and cells phones to the rest of us, the good guys, why then do you and Hillary want to control and restrict and limit gun manufacturers, gun owners and responsible use of guns and ammunition to the rest of us, the good guys, instead of holding the bad guys accountable for their actions?”

The president listened with his arms folded.

What followed has since garnered more than 42 million views on NewsHour’s Facebook page. A post featuring the clip reached nearly 80 million people.

When he replied, Mr. Obama was just as polite and just as forceful.

“First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true,” he replied, growing more animated as he spoke.

“And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it,” he continued. “I’m about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I have been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country.”

You can see his entire exchange here.

The president’s retort was revealing for a number of reasons. By noting that he is about to leave office, he said out loud what his actions have signaled for months. To his mind, it is time to throw caution to the wind in order to protect his legacy.

It was also instructive because, in retrospect, the president previewed this week’s post-Orlando debate by inviting listeners into one of the White House’s most secret spaces.

“I just came from a meeting today in the Situation Room, in which I’ve got people who we know have been on ISIL websites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens,” he said, his voice rising. “And we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.”

It was a remarkable exchange precisely because we never get to see anything like this. We have grown used to watching adults fight on television, but not to watching the president of the United States go toe-to-toe, face-to-face, with someone he disagrees with but who deserves to be heard.

Whether you support gun rights or gun control, there was something in this conversation for you. More than a half million Facebook users posted the video to their timelines.

In the wake of Orlando, the president’s words also took on new poignancy. Could the shooter have been stopped? Is there such a thing as common ground when it comes to access to guns?

In an era when opposing forces more often retreat to their corners and hurl insults at each other, this was different. Minds may not have been changed, but two citizens who disagreed were forced to listen to one another.

It is an approach we could use more of, especially in times of grief, confusion and political distress.

All hail public broadcasting.

The post Gwen’s Take: The gun debate, face to face appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Law professor Anita Hill takes the oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 12, 1991. Photo by Jennifer Law/AFP/Getty Images

I got the chance to get a sneak peek at HBO’s upcoming docudrama on the 1991 Hill-Thomas hearings, when college professor Anita Hill nearly derailed George H.W. Bush’s nomination of federal appeals court Judge Clarence Thomas to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

I betray no confidentiality and provide no spoiler as I write about this now. Although the film “Confirmation,” starring Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas, does not premiere until April 16, we all know how it ends.

Thomas has now served nearly a quarter-century on the nation’s highest court, while Hill has retreated to academia and a career as an advocate for women’s rights.

But at the time that she challenged Thomas’ nomination on grounds that he had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, no one had ever seen anything like it before.

The Democratically-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a floor vote on Thomas’ confirmation — after it had already approved him on a party line vote — to hold additional hearings that dragged into the wee hours of the night.

Newscasters warned viewers to keep their children away from the coverage — which included references to genitalia and pornography — and the rest of us watched it unfold slack-jawed.

Add to that the spectacle of watching a black woman challenge a black man in front of a panel comprised entirely of middle-aged to elderly white men (chaired by now-Vice President Joe Biden), and we were all glued to our television sets.

The HBO retelling is faithful to this history. And watching it decades later, and in the midst of a crazed presidential campaign, it still overwhelms.

It is mind-boggling to imagine the Hill-Thomas showdown played out in the Twitter era. Would it have ended differently?

Justice Thomas does not do much talking to the press, but I had the chance to ask Hill that question, as she made herself available to talk about the HBO film.

“It would be quite different today,” she told me on the NewsHour. “But I think that the issues are such that it wouldn’t go away.”

“Quite different” is certainly an understatement. At a time when a debate about the correct way to eat pizza or use a New York City subway MetroCard can consume an entire news cycle, just imagine what the Hill-Thomas hearings would do to us.

But for an entire generation of people under the age of perhaps 30 who did not witness them first-hand, it’s worth watching even a fictionalized version of the story to be reminded of what we can be.

The post Gwen’s Take: Shocker then, shocker now appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Jansen Tropf wears an American flag at a campaign rally for Donald Trump in Salt Lake City. Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Allow me to date myself and admit that I have covered campaigns when it mattered what candidates said.

It mattered whether their statements stood up to even passing scrutiny. It mattered whether they were polite to one another — or, at least, were perceived so. Remember the hit candidate Barack Obama took for remarking that Hillary Clinton was “likable enough”?

It mattered if the candidate changed his or her mind, or admitted he or she was wrong about something. And it mattered if someone who wanted to be president refused to rule out nuking Europe.

I speak, of course, of this topsy-turvy campaign year. And although Donald Trump is guilty of all the things I’ve cited — including name-calling, spit-balling foreign policy, and appearing to make it up as he goes along on a hot-button issue like abortion — my question is not about him.

Trump is doing what he thinks works, and by and large, the polls back him up. For some reason, most of his gyrations have not disqualified him as they would another candidate.

In the old days (the old days being four years ago), Mitt Romney was set upon for being too rich, too elite, and too fond of sports like dressage. His remark about giving up on the “47 percent” sealed his fate mostly because the storyline had become set in stone.

Trump mused aloud about preferring limousines to motorcycles while in Wisconsin, the home of Harley-Davidson.

Let’s go back a little further, to the wilds of 2004, when John Kerry was brought down by the same charges of inconsistency and elitism. A photo of him windsurfing turned into one of the most dangerous images of the campaign, after it was manipulated to show him flipping this way and that over his positions on the Iraq war, education and Medicare.

The tagline was brutal: “John Kerry: Whichever Way the Wind Blows.” Now, the accusation of flip-flopping seems such a quaint notion.

By now, all the examples seem prehistoric.

Set aside the Trump abortion comments this week. (In case your cable was cut off, he said women should be punished if they violated nonexistent laws banning abortion. He later recanted.)

Set aside the spectacle of a gold-plated candidate’s appeal to working-class voters. And ignore the contradiction of a television star who amplified his fame by firing people, yet, in real life, adamantly refused to fire a top aide charged with assaulting a reporter.

What I find more interesting is how rapidly we have come to accept the head-snapping nature of this campaign. Is it because this is what revolution looks like?

The post Gwen’s Take: Maybe the revolution is here appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

The story of infamous political rivals Aaron Burr, played by Leslie Odom Jr., and Alexander Hamilton, played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is one of Broadway’s hottest tickets. Then as now, running for president can be deadly serious. Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage

As any of my somewhat exasperated friends, family and co-workers can tell you, I have developed an obsession this election season with the music from the monster Broadway hit “Hamilton.”

I was one of the fortunate people who got to see the play last year, and I was blown away. More recently, I have been listening to the soundtrack — backwards, forwards and on shuffle.

It should come as no surprise that a political junkie like me should connect so strongly with a play that is about war, politics and ambition. Every time I listen to the score, I hear something different.

Even in 1776, politics was not beanbag. It’s not a spoiler to remind you that the story of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr resulted in the most famous duel in American history — and took Hamilton’s life in 1804.

Then as now, running for president — they both aspired to it; neither achieved it — can be deadly serious.

Illustration of the Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton duel from the book “Our greater country,” published in 1901.

And yet, this election year has boggled the mind in many ways, confounding pollsters, pundits and politicians alike. The business of prediction-making has all but withered on the vine. (As one Hamilton lyric goes: “The World Turned Upside Down.”)

In its place, however, we have seen a sharp spike in intolerance and plain old meanness that almost makes me long for the cruel efficiency and tradition of guns drawn at dawn.

Candidates and their partisans have taken to attacking each other’s spouses. They use Twitter as a sharpened blade to trash each other from a distance. No wonder newsrooms are trying to figure out how to keep their reporters safe when they venture out to cover campaign rallies.

Donald Trump, by apparent design, is the catalyst for much of this. Ben Carson, who also ran for the Republican presidential nomination before dropping out and endorsing Trump, acknowledged as much on the weekday chat show “The View.”

Pressed about his endorsement, he acknowledged that he does not condone everything Trump has to say, but it works.

“When you’re very nice, you’re very respectful, you talk about the real issues, and not get into all these issues, where does it get you?” he said to host Whoopi Goldberg. “It gets you where it got me. Nowhere, OK?”

But it is far too easy to pin blame rather than examine our culture of meanness.

Certainly the news media shoulders its share of the blame. The excellent Washington Post correspondent Juliet Eilperin chronicles how our jobs as journalists have changed in this Nieman Reports article.

“Though the volume of coverage has grown significantly, no small portion of it has been either hastily assembled, trivial, or, like so much coverage of previous campaigns, focused exclusively on the horse race,” she writes. “The nanosecond news cycle incentivizes reporters to publish as soon as possible and often to elevate snark over substance. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric guarantees traffic, so his statements garner more attention than crucial policy issues.”

It’s a hamster wheel.

I asked my Twitter followers about this, and their responses — dozens of them — were revealing. Some, of course, responded with even more snark. That’s the way of Twitter.

But most of the responses were thoughtful.

Carl Quintanilla, the CNBC news anchor, sent this:

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

And here are a few others:

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

This one, from Atlantic columnist Ron Fournier, made me smile:

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

Call me the last living optimist. I think most people strive for kindness, even though we sometimes fall short. That means that old devil on our shoulder sometimes wins the day. (Who hasn’t laughed at a mean joke?)

But it feels like we have crossed into the dangerous territory of late, and the distance from disagreement to violence and blame has been short-circuited.

I am clearly not the only one struggling with this, and it is a bipartisan concern. Both President Obama and House Speaker Paul Ryan have shared their concerns from the campaign sidelines.

Perhaps that concern will win the day, and our children — who in the words of another famous musical “have to be carefully taught” — will not take the wrong lessons from what we are showing them.

The post How mean can we get? appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

But it occurs to me there are things I would like to see happen in 2016 — promises I’d like to see more of us strive to keep as this already topsy-turvy election year speeds toward action at the ballot box.

Feel free to add your own thoughts. I can’t be the only one thinking along these lines.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz speaks to supporters in Storm Lake, Iowa, Wednesday. Photo by Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters

For the candidates:

1. Listen more. I recognize that it often serves competitors best to talk past each other — especially when you are trying to claim the fleeting attentions of voters on a debate stage or on social media. But think how much more clarity we could get if the people who wanted to be president clearly explained why he or she is the better choice.
2. Speak for yourself. Surrogates are all well and good, and often very handy to have when you can’t be in more than one place at a time. But they are not the people we are voting for. If Donald Trump has proved anything, it is that there is nothing more powerful than a candidate’s voice.
3. Lean away from fear. There is plenty to be scared about in the world without stirring the pot. Terrorists on the loose. Plots afoot. Fecklessness in Washington. Americans are already nervous. If the only way to get elected is by making an uncertain situation worse, perhaps it is time to rethink. Whatever happened to that shining city on the hill?

Latino leaders and immigration reform supporters gathered at the University of Colorado to launch a 12-month voter registration campaign in October. Photo by Evan Semon/Reuters

For voters:

1. Vote. Sure, you can whine and complain. Free speech is not limited to optimistic speech. But when it comes right down to it, you have a say. That’s more than a lot of people in this world can claim.
2. Practice accountability. You may have plenty of excuses for skipping the gym, but there is no excuse for not being aware of what is going on around you. As someone who asks questions for a living, there are few things that annoy me more than people who won’t ask for themselves. Social media is a great help, but so is something as simple as turning on your television or powering up your laptop to watch a smart news show. (You know which ones.)
3. Cut the mockery. This one is tough in a year when so many candidates provide easy targets, and Saturday Night Live has returned to its perch as the master of political parody. It’s OK to laugh. I laugh at something every day. But remember, it’s not a simple thing to run for president. If you’re willing to put yourself out there, someone should be willing to take you seriously.

It may already be too late to stick to these resolutions. But if you fall off the hammock, climb back in, and try your hand at optimism. Believe me; it will make 2016 better for all of us.

Check out what’s in store for Congress in 2016, and read Washington Week’s cheat sheet of big stories to expect in 2016. Share your own predictions of what the big stories will be in the year ahead.

The post Gwen’s Take: Resolving to rescue 2016 appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laugh together before the start of the first official Democratic candidates debate of the 2016 presidential campaign in Las Vegas, Nevada October 13, 2015. Photo by REUTERS/Mike Blake

I see you out there. You are the Bernie Sanders supporters up in arms that your guy is getting big union endorsements and attracting huge crowds, yet losing the headline wars to Hillary Clinton — or worse — Donald Trump.

You are the Martin O’Malley supporters unhappy that Democrat debates scheduled on weekends are way less “buzzy” than the GOP ones and therefore deprive your guy of a big platform.

And you are the vast majority of the 14 Republican presidential candidates raging against the dying light — infuriated you cannot break through, or, in some cases, even make it onto the main stage to snag some of the 18 million eyeballs who watched the last GOP faceoff.

I have one piece of holiday advice to offer. Everybody calm down.

I have. Every time I get caught up in the latest polling, I click on the Washington Post Twitter feed @PastFrontrunner, which reminds me to keep things in perspective.

It tells me that at this time in 2003, Howard Dean was leading the Democratic field by 15 points, a lead he kept for 46 more days. In 2007 at the same time, Hillary Clinton was ahead by even more — nearly 18 points — and held the lead for nearly another two months. (Rudy Giuliani topped the Republican field.)

Four years later, it was Newt Gingrich who held the early lead. Need I say that none of these people snagged their party nomination, let alone the presidency?

But this year, you say, is so different. Donald Trump has changed all the rules and made fools of anyone who dared predict where the race would stand today. This is true.

But here is another reason to keep your powder dry. As eminent Iowa pollster J. Ann Seltzer reminds us, first-in-the-nation voters like to take their time before deciding.

Seltzer’s last Iowa poll was the one that had Ted Cruz vaulting ahead of Trump in the Hawkeye State. But as she told Judy Woodruff last month: “People are often asking me, ‘Are these numbers going to hold through caucus night?’ And I always reply, ‘I hope not, and it’s hard to imagine they would.'”

]

Or as Republican analyst Kristin Soltis Anderson said in a National Review post, there is a difference between whether polls are predictive versus when they are valid. “The ground is always shifting beneath us,” she writes. “Of course a poll today isn’t ‘predictive’ of what will happen a month and a half from now.”

Using this distinction, it is possible to grasp why Mike Huckabee and Howard Dean seemed like good bets at the time. The numbers were valid; they just weren’t predictive.

These calming voices provide a reason to climb down from that political precipice so many partisans seem to be on. Take a break. Spend the holidays with family. Leave the poll-reading to the experts.

And I’ll see you again in January.

The post I have one piece of holiday advice. Everybody calm down appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, here with a look-alike supporter at a South Carolina rally, has supplied newsrooms with a surplus of headlines this election season. Photo by Randall Hill/Reuters

By nature, I am someone who hews to the middle. I need to hear all sides of a story. I pride myself on considering that someone else may have a better point.

Unless I am engaged in a tough round of dominoes or Scrabble, I think of myself as unreasonably reasonable.

But these times do not lend themselves to that kind of thinking.

At a time when covering a presidential campaign means sorting through your definitions of dishonesty, bigotry and intolerance, being reasonable seems to be a dodge.

WATCH: Are politics of fear driving anti-Muslim sentiment?

I don’t know of a newsroom where this has not become a prime topic of discussion recently. It peaked this week after Donald Trump once again displayed his gift for grabbing headlines by declaring that Muslims be banned from entering the United States.

At BuzzFeed, the editor has given his writers express permission to call the Republican frontrunner a “mendacious racist.” At my old NBC stomping grounds, the eminently reasonable (that word again) Tom Brokaw flat out called the Trump proposal “dangerous” and warned against the consequences of “paranoia overriding reason.”

Here’s the problem. Trump has done this again and again during this campaign — insulting women, black protesters, Mexicans, other candidates and anyone who dares disagree with him. Something this week, however, flipped the switch.

We discussed this dilemma at length in our NewsHour planning meeting this week. Do we talk about the headline? Or do we shed light on what’s behind the headline? We opted for the latter.

But I am still bothered. Do we give a platform to offensive statements simply because they are uttered by a leading actor on the political stage? Do we wait (hope) for other politicians to take up the cudgel?

Do we ignore what the applause for these statements tells us about their broad appeal?

It’s a tough choice. Hyperbole is not easily dealt with. Usually it collapses under its own weight.

But what if it doesn’t? This election year, polluted by fear and terror, may provide new challenges for us all.

The post Gwen’s Take: The dangers of hyperbole appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

What questions should all presidential candidates know how to answer? Gwen Ifill weighs in. Photo by Reuters/Jim Young

There is nothing like a genuine crisis to put a political election in context.

I do not have the answers, but the shocking Paris attacks have certainly given voters a reasonable list of questions to ask the 17 presidential candidates still eligible to return to debate stages in December.

As you begin to focus on who deserves your vote, this provides as good a guide as any to decide where candidates stand, and if you agree with them.

Photo by Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters

Any candidate should have a cogent response to these 10 questions. And if they don’t, you are the only one who gets to decide if that matters.

1.What does “boots on the ground” mean to you?
2.How vulnerable are we, and what should we do about it?
3.How should we prioritize our resources? Please provide budget numbers.
4. Iran, Russia and Syria: Do they have a place at the table as we battle terrorism? If not, what do you propose instead?
5. Should religious tests be applied as a determinant of risk?
6. Is the United Nations useful or useless at a time like this?
7. How hard should our borders be? At what cost?
8. What constitutes effective vetting for people seeking to enter the U.S.?
9. Should the U.S. lead, collaborate or step away from conflicts rooted in the Middle East?
10. Should we close Guantanamo and fully exit Afghanistan and Iraq?

​These are the types of questions that seldom get answered absent a time of crisis. Ordinarily, candidates would much rather talk about the economy, middle class values and domestic concerns.

But this is no ordinary time. And 2016 will be no ordinary election. The lasting ripple effect from Paris will affect homeland security, but also will provide us an opportunity to see, clearly, what leadership really means.

The post Gwen’s Take: 10 questions every presidential candidate should know how to answer appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

“Parson Weems’ Fable,” by Grant Wood, 1939, from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art

I have never been accused of chopping down trees, but like many children, I was taught early on about the value of honesty through an oft-told story about our first president and a cherry tree.

“I cannot tell a lie,” the six-year-old George Washington is said to have told his father in confessing to damaging the tree with a hatchet. “I did cut it with my hatchet.”

It was a straightforward and useful story. It was also not true. It turns out it was invented by an early Washington biographer (not in the first, but the fifth edition of a book originally published in 1800). In 1836, the tale was transformed into a children’s story that has since endured.

Writing for George Washington’s Mount Vernon historical site — which debunked the cherry tree story — George Mason University history student Jay Richardson reasoned: “The longevity of the cherry tree myth says a lot about both American ideals and Washington’s legacy.”

I might add it says a lot about how eager Americans are to embrace the simplistic.

That tendency is unfortunately on display in our elections as well. Often we blame sound bite culture for it. Everything gets boiled down to mere seconds. There is often no time, or inclination, to follow up.

But what about when there is time? When candidates gather on stage for two hours at a clip and still tell cherry tree stories?

Donald Trump is, of course, famous for this. He declares he will mimic President Eisenhower’s deportation policy, while neglecting to mention that this involved stranding people in deserts and separating them from their families.

Ben Carson, in the same debate, said he does not mind being vetted — only being lied about. Just a few days before, he declared flatly that he was being vetted more severely than anyone ever had. One of his own spokesmen walked that back the next day.

In a bid to showcase her foreign policy chops, Carly Fiorina said she had met seriously with Vladimir Putin — not just in a television studio green room. Except it turns out that’s exactly where they met. (Trump, of course, said he and Putin were “stablemates” because they’d appeared on CBS News’ 60 Minutes at the same time. This is true, if sitting for separate interviews in different countries at different times defines quality time.)

Republicans are not the only ones guilty of cherry tree exaggeration. Hillary Clinton implicitly accused Bernie Sanders of sexism, because he’d criticized people who shout about gun control while doing nothing about it.

And Sanders bent himself into something of a pretzel saying one week that questioners should stop questioning Clinton’s emails, and then saying the next week these were perfectly legitimate avenues of inquiry.

And there are even more questions about Clinton — including her claim that she tried to join the Marines in 1975 but was rejected because she was too old.

Some of this is just cagey politics. There were plenty of other examples — from the minimum wage debate to the virtues of military intervention. The fact-checking site PolitiFact is chock full of examples.

This is good news. You don’t have to believe everything a politician tells you, even if you are so inclined. But it’s up to you to seek out the places that will steer you away from the cherry trees.

The post Gwen’s Take: Of truth, myth and cherry trees appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

What will resonate with voters next year? If the 2016 candidates are smart, they will spend ample time trying to figure this out. Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters

The 2012 election was supposed to be a test of a weakened president and his ambitious and unpopular health care plan. Challengers saw a chance to take down a Democratic incumbent after the excitement of his history-making election had faded. It didn’t work out that way.

The 2008 election was supposed to be a coronation for Hillary Clinton and a second chance for a war hero nominee. History, in the form of a genre-breaking black man with a savvy digital campaign, caught up with them both.

Stay with me here. The 2004 election elevated another war hero nominee — this one a Democrat. But John Kerry walked right into a buzz saw of conservative discontent and liberal disinterest. The country was not willing to unseat a flagging incumbent who was also a wartime president.

In each and every case and in each and every election, we scrutinized the candidates to within an inch of their lives. We analyzed their personalities, their wardrobes, their leisure hobbies. We swapped stories about who we would rather have a beer with.

But, again and again, we all but forgot to look to the voters.

If we make that mistake again this cycle, it will be our own fault because we actually have something to work with this time.

Two research reports caught my eye this week that appeared to at least begin to explain the dyspeptic public mood this year.

Why, we have been asking ourselves as we eye the polls, is a bombastic New York businessman outpacing the field? How, we wonder, can a retired neurosurgeon suddenly force his way to the front of a crowded stage? What forces, we ask ourselves, have propelled a cranky 74-year-old self-described socialist senator from a tiny state, to fill overflow arenas with people looking for a Democratic alternative?

Part of the answer seems to lie with voters in a bad mood — many of them white, and many of them middle class.

In past elections, these were not considered niche voters. They were the prime targets for candidates who figured they were more likely to show up at the polls. Black, Hispanic and women voters were more likely to be wooed with narrow, targeted appeals — the Obama campaign becoming the obvious exception.

But this year, white, middle class voters — precisely the cohort drawn to the outsider element currently on view in the primaries — are increasingly disaffected.

One new study out this week showed, perplexingly, that life expectancy for middle class whites appears to be shrinking; just as other groups appear to be likely to live longer.

What is driving this? Increased rates of alcoholism and drug abuse and suicide drove death rates up. And what is driving that? “Despair,” Princeton economist Anne Case, one of the report’s co-authors, told my colleague Judy Woodruff.

Economic distress was also driving factor, spurred by the nation’s slow and stuttering recovery from a painful recession that seemed to punish the working class the longest.

A second report, which was first published in the journal “Research on Social Work Practice” in 2012, was enlightening in a different way. “Moderately educated whites” — which is to say, those without a post-secondary degree — are becoming less religious. The report, improbably titled “No Money, No Honey, No Church,” discovered that this religious disconnect is creating a new subset of marginalized, less socialized Americans. This disengagement — which extends to marriage rates — can and does extend to politics and to politicians.

Taken together, it all begins to explain the appeal of outsiders who promise to toss the scoundrels out. It also provides a ripe proving ground for candidates who have never done this before, as well as a political conundrum for those who have conventionally used elected office as the stepping stone to the White House.

What will these voters hear? What will resonate? Is it enough to promise hope and change? Is derision enough?

This will be the test in coming months, as candidates try to come up with a new solution to a daunting problem: how to win votes from people who can’t stand the sight of you.

The post The politics of resentment: winning 2016 appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

When a child with a little red wagon reminds us that bad news can take us to something good. Photo by Flickr user Teri Lynne Underwood

I am in the bad news business. Seldom do I get to report on puppies, rainbows or the sounds of children giggling. Well, never.

If there is anything good to be said about my particular line of work, it’s that we get to tell people the news they need to hear, and to put it in context.

To get to that — for one hour every night on the PBS NewsHour, and for an additional half-hour every Friday night on Washington Week, we have to slog through a lot of tough stuff.

We talk to the incarcerated, the drug addicted, the politicians and the policy makers, plus we sit through hours of speeches and committee hearings.

We do this so you don’t have to.

And, occasionally, we glean from you that it’s appreciated. NewsHour executive producer Sara Just received a note this week from viewer Robbie Schaefer, a guitarist, blogger and founder of OneVoice, a program that brings children together through music. We wrote about his program in 2013.

It’s worth it to reprint some of this latest blog here:

Last night my wife and I watched the PBS NewsHour as we do most evenings around 6pm. My youngest son was with us for dinner, so he was watching as well. There was a story about Syrian immigrants waiting and walking in the pouring rain in their struggle to cross Slovenia and Croatia on their way to hopeful asylum in Germany. There was a story about continuing violence between Palestinians and Israelis, including the brutal death of an Eritrean man who was an innocent asylum seeker. He had been mistaken for a terrorist, shot by an Israeli policeman and then kicked and beaten by the crowd while bleeding on the ground. Rage unhinged. Fear will lead us there every time. There was U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, like a decades old recording, calling for an end to the “senseless violence.”

It was enough to ruin your night.

Part of me wanted to turn it all off, make dinner, pet my dogs, watch playoff baseball. A bigger part of me couldn’t. This is the world we live in. All it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing. And yet, that familiar feeling of helplessness washed over me. I could see it on the faces of my wife and son as well. I got angry. Angry at the world for being this f***ed up. Angry at someone else’s reality intruding on my perfectly comfortable suburban evening. Angry at myself for being angry. And, in short order, anger slid into despair. What to do? Where to start? A facebook posting (or a blog) masquerading as activism is not enough. Not even close.

And that’s when there was a knock on the door.

We live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and this being dinnertime, knocks on the door are uncommon. Isn’t that one of the thin veils we invent to convince ourselves that there is order and civilization in our lives? We don’t interrupt people at dinnertime. Yeah, it’s polite, but it’s also a load of s**t. It turns out an interruption was precisely what was called for here. I opened the door, and there stood Emma, our neighbor’s 8-year-old daughter, with her red Flyer wagon waiting behind her on the sidewalk. There was something about that wagon. Still. Expectant. She explained that she was collecting supplies for people in South Carolina who had lost their homes and most of their belongings in the recent flooding.

Wow. I’d forgotten about that. It was, like, two weeks ago. How quickly I’d moved on from one instance of human suffering to the next.

Toothpaste, toilet paper, shampoo, paper towels. She was going to South Carolina with a group from her school to deliver these things in November. It would be her birthday while she was there, she explained, and she was sad that she wouldn’t be able to have a regular birthday party here at home, but at least two of her friends would be with her and maybe that would be alright.

Emma is the answer.

There’s more. You can read all his blog entries here.

Schaefer’s appeal is in the end a positive one. We need to know what’s happening in the world, but we cannot afford to shrug and walk away.

If we shrug, we don’t get to pick our leaders. If we walk away, we lose out on the interconnectedness that explains our world.

So I’m going to stick that one in my hatband, and set out to tell the stories that shed light and spur action. That way, the bad news can take us to something good.

The post Gwen’s Take: Turning bad into good appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Gwen hosted “America After Charleston,” a PBS special presentation taped before an audience on Sept. 19, 2015 at the Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

This has been a week for introspection. As the Papal whirlwind shut down the nation’s capital, Republicans and Democrats were forced to sit side by side and listen, for a change. Some wept. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Speaker and Mr. Vice President.) If the city wasn’t already quietened enough, many of its Jewish citizens turned to prayer and fasting in observance of Yom Kippur, while Muslims prepared to celebrate their Feast of the Sacrifice — or Eid al-Adha.

I, too, spent last weekend in church — at the Circular Congregation in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. That’s where PBS held a town hall meeting, “America After Charleston.”

We taped a similar special broadcast last year in St. Louis, Missouri, months after the uproar that consumed the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson in the wake of the police-involved shooting of Michael Brown.

The headlines have come and gone since then, as one upheaval after the other drew our attention to Cleveland (Tamir Rice), Baltimore (Eddie Gray), and Waller County, Texas (Sandra Bland). But Charleston was different. Absent in the aftermath of Emanuel A.M.E. Church slaughter was any debate over who was to blame. No one blamed the victims. The survivors of the assault — including their relatives — stood in mostly silent witness. This does not mean there was nothing to say. What I discovered in Charleston is that many residents believe there has been a tremendous amount left unsaid — about race, opportunity and even the future of their rapidly gentrifying community.

Four conversations stick out in my mind. Malcolm Graham, the brother of Cynthia Graham Hurd, who was slain that night, was blunt. “It was an attack on humanity; it was an attack on the Christian church,” he told me. “Now, we can’t say that we’re months away from it and that we forgive. I have a forgiving spirit. I do not forgive.” This emerged as a running theme. Many Charlestonians — including those who spoke at the accused shooter’s arraignment — publicly embraced the idea of forgiving. But others are not there yet.

Charleston residents, local leaders and Black Lives Matter activists gathered for the town hall last week.

Polly Sheppard, her friends lie dying around her, survived the shooting after the gunman told her he would let her live to tell the story of the massacre. Forgiveness for her is a “process” that is still underway. She alone called for gun control. And another black woman, whose name I did not get, was even more blunt. We were way too interested, she said, in erasing our past in order to race forward to a presumably less discomfiting future. “I have nothing but respect for the people who forgive,” she said. “But as a community, we’re not forgiving of racism, we’re not forgiving of the injustices that have been perpetrated against us.”

Then there was the man, his eyes shaded by baseball cap, who told me: “As a white man, my main purpose in life right now, is to get out of denial, to unlearn the racism I learned growing up here in the South.” Why? I asked. “Grief,” he replied.

These words — and those of many others — bounced around in my head this week as I listened to Pope Francis talk about reconciliation and forgiveness and delicate balances. In Washington, and in politics, it is increasingly rare to hear someone who agrees with one of the more trenchant passages in the pontiff’s address to Congress. “A good political leader,” he said, “always opts to initiate processes rather than possessing spaces.”

Or as the Reverend Norvel Goff, the presiding elder and interim pastor at Emanuel, said last Sunday: “Why let people take up space in your head, without paying rent?”

It seemed important that I conclude my weekend in Charleston with a visit to Emanuel. The African Methodist Church runs strong through my family. My father was its General Secretary when he died. My brother is a Presiding Elder now. I loved the embraces I received, the preaching and the music. The portion of Calhoun Street in Charleston in front of the historic building will shortly be renamed in honor of the church. But, as I glanced up into the balcony to see the armed off-duty police officer standing just to the left of the choir, I was reminded that the key word we should always keep in mind as we turn inward and search for meaning — political or religious — is one that recurred throughout the week — “process.”

The post Gwen’s Take: Processing appeared first on PBS NewsHour.