NewsHour Analysts Weigh in on Election Night

JIM LEHRER:

And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks– syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Let's just start right there, Mark. Do you think… what do you think the possibilities are of a Bush-Edwards administration?

MARK SHIELDS:

Probably slightly stronger than that of a Cheney-Kerry administration. But I don't think it's going to happen tonight. But, I mean, it's a risk with the Electoral College, it really is.

JIM LEHRER:

One of the reasons we wanted to explain that tonight is that based on what happened four years ago, you never know. The Electoral College came out of nowhere and nobody knew and this and that.

MARK SHIELDS:

It's a good point, Jim. To show you the commitment the Americans have to it, we have not recommended either Iraq or Afghanistan or any other democracy I know that would encourage or Japan to adopt the Electoral College system. So maybe… we said "well, they did it but maybe we shouldn't export it."

JIM LEHRER:

How do you read, David, the big turnout so far? Looks like it's going to be huge. We don't have a final figure, obviously. Much what does it mean to you?

DAVID BROOKS:

Well, conventional wisdom is that it's good for Kerry. Who am I to disagree with that? It gets young people, college educated people, or college students out to the polls, probably. Maybe people earning under $15,000; I've been on several college campuses over the past several weeks and there's the thing going on there.

There's a lot of people wants to get involved, wanting to vote. I think it signifies what's happened to this campaign. This campaign feels different than the others because of the intense activism, because of the Internet. You have people checking online every few seconds to see if the polls have been updated, going to blogs they agree with or disagree.

You have massive amounts of money to get people to turn out the vote, massive degrees of donations and activism. So the campaign is much more all around us, especially you're in a swing state. And I think that's contributed to this tremendous upsurge of interest and support and turnout.

JIM LEHRER:

Generally speaking, Mark, you think this intensity, this increase intensity in this election has been a good thing or bad thing?

MARK SHIELDS:

I think it's good, Jim. It's good up until the polls close tonight. Tomorrow morning the country will wake up and feel that they're living in a different America from the America they went to bed with. Maybe 100 percent will.

This is an election… Peter Hart and Bill McInturf, the pollsters for the "Wall Street Journal"/NBC News asked a wonderful question in his last survey. They said irrespective of who wins – I'm paraphrase — on next Tuesday, America has a chance of having a good president.

Do you agree with that statement disagree, strongly agree, strongly disagree. Five times as many people strongly disagree that statement as agree with it. I mean, that's quite unlike…

JIM LEHRER:

What does that mean?

MARK SHIELDS:

What it means is that people are convinced…

JIM LEHRER:

The other guy is….

MARK SHIELDS:

The other guy is really a bad guy. And this is really a problem. It's not going to go away when the polls close or the balloons and bunting comes down tonight.

Regardless of how gracious the winner is, how supportive the loser is. I mean, it's just… it's there and those divisions are deep and they're bitter. And they're real in this country.

JIM LEHRER:

Do you read it that way?

DAVID BROOKS:

Yeah, I guess I do. I think the reasons we're polarized are deep and structural, some are paradoxical. The more educated an electorate is, the more polarized it is. Highly educated voters tend to be less flexible and people are segmented by geography, media viewing habits.

So there are deep structural reasons. We are a polarized country and I think we'll remain that way. Nonetheless, I think a lot of people will say… there will be a mood shift. A lot of people are exhausted with the atmosphere that we've seen for the past year. There will be a hunger to move into some new atmosphere.

The effect of the concession speech, assuming it's gracious and the victory speech assuming it's an outreach speech will be significant. I think people… you know, you go to the polls like I did today people are in a good mood.

They love voting, they love what we've got here, they love the ritual of it and I think right after that they want to have some hope whoever wins, whether their guy loses. We aren't going to enter nirvana, but I think this moment it's an important psychological moment for the country and it will feel a little better.

MARK SHIELDS:

Let me play not total Cassandra to David's Pollyanna but I do think irrespective of where you stand on this race ideologically in this country, you really hope as an American whoever wins gets a majority of the vote.

We haven't had a majority winner someone with 50 percent plus really since 1988 when the first election of George Bush. And it gave the opposition to Bill Clinton an out. He isn't my president because he never was legitimate.

JIM LEHRER:

Never had a majority.

MARK SHIELDS:

And I think that's awfully important. I think move… I mean, if for example John Kerry is elected. You know, I think it's very important that he reach out to Republicans and, you know, do things like re-importation of drugs from Canada.

JIM LEHRER:

Is he likely to do that? Is he likely to reach out?

MARK SHIELDS:

I think he understands. I think he understands. And to go through this election, if he does win, just how divided the country is. And that, you know, in all likelihood there's going to be at least one of the two Houses that will be Republican, maybe both, and if he's going to get anything done he's got a window of six months from January to June and if he does the 9/11 Commission and maybe does some things like… probably the highway bill.

But there are things that have strong Republican support which for reasons that… in this administration and this Congress its relationship, weren't done.

JIM LEHRER:

David, same question for President Bush. If President Bush is reelected the he likely to reach out or say "hey they're with me and I will continue on course?"

DAVID BROOKS:

I don't know about President Bush personally but I've had conversations with senior administration officials who are thinking "if we win, what do we do to break the atmosphere?"

JIM LEHRER:

They're concerned about it?

DAVID BROOKS:

They're saying "what can we do?" Maybe tax reform, a bipartisan commission. Maybe we can appoint people here and there. They're looking around because they know they have the same problem.

It's a closely divided House and Senate and it's just become hard to get anything done, whatever you believe in. So both parties have the best intentions, now, to switch over to the Cassandra side, there's just deep institutional things going on in Washington. There's activists group, there are members of Congress who are on one side or the other.

There are strong pressures towards this polarization. It's not a freak that we're like this. There are strong pressure which is everybody in their best… the angel on the right side of their shoulder wants to get out of but the devil is over there, too.

JIM LEHRER:

Look at the campaign just the campaign, a presidential campaign, lasted for a year now and it's now over, whatever… not exactly a year but roughly a year. Did it… was it a good campaign? Did it reflect the real differences in the country or did it create the differences?

MARK SHIELDS:

No, no. It was a good campaign in several respects. I mean, that was lot more substantive than most campaigns are.

JIM LEHRER:

In what way?

MARK SHIELDS:

There were real differences spelled out between these men, whether it's America's role in the world, the war in Iraq, what the national security of this country… what price we've paid for it and what won't, what the federal role should be and items like health care and… I mean, big questions. I mean, as I said, this wasn't about drunk driving or did you inhale?

But I think probably the substance, Jim, if we look back on it, was in 270 minutes. Those are the three debates. I mean, there was an awful lot of the campaign… I'm more critical of the president's campaign than David is, but, you know, an awful lot of energy and effort was spent on the president's campaign's part in disqualifying John Kerry – I mean, the whole flip-flop thing which basically ended after the first debate.

JIM LEHRER:

What do you think about the campaign?

DAVID BROOKS:

I thought it was a great campaign. I thought it was an excellent campaign. There was not an issue that was not laid out. If you wanted to know the answer… they didn't always throw it at you about Iran and North Korea but all you have to do was look on the Web page, it was there.

The debates were great. There was a tendency to disport the opponent but I don't think it was particularly dirty. If there's one flaw in the campaign, we're still not very good at talking about character.

What sort of character does a president need to have? How do we measure these guys? How do we have a vocabulary to talk about what these two individuals have? We're still not that great at it. But when it comes to the issues, substantive differences, I thought it was much more serious and substantive than most recent campaigns.

JIM LEHRER:

We'll continue this conversation later this evening. Thank you both.