(upbeat music) (graphic pops) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall, 2025 political year is getting underway.

A lot gonna be happening in D.C.

It's already started there, a lot will be going on in Columbus.

Joining us is Dr. David Jackson from the Bowling Green State University, Department of Political Science.

2025, a new year, we're talking about politics.

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the fact that just a very short time ago, a very distinguished political science professor at the university passed away, unfortunately, Mark Simone.

So talk a little about him.

He's been on the show to talk about international politics, but talk about what that means and what his impact was on the university and his expertise in international politics.

- So, yeah, at the end of the last semester, unexpectedly, Dr. Simone, the chair of the Department of Political Science and a well-regarded scholar of international relations passed away.

He was particularly known for the study of peace and conflict and mitigation strategies for global conflict in particular.

Perhaps more importantly, he was known as somebody who was always interested in sharing the insights of scholarship with the general public.

So that's why he would appear on the show and would appear on other forms of media to apply his expertise.

He was an activist in terms of applying his expertise, and probably, most importantly, he was an awesome, well-regarded teacher who changed the lives of lots of students for the better.

And was a very excellent colleague who led the development of our department from basically a ruined situation up to a thriving, well-regarded department, not just on campus, but really nationwide.

So it's a real loss for us.

- [Steve] I know that, yeah, when he appeared on the show, the most recent one was, of course, when the conflict began in Ukraine again, and he brought, yeah, great insight and a lot of depth and a lot of background and history to that whole situation and discussing the various ways that that might be settled or might not be settled.

So, yeah, he'll definitely be missed.

Also too, we want to mention too, of course, obviously, a president passed away even more recently than that, Jimmy Carter, who had a four-year run, a one-term president, almost was considered maybe a better post-president than a current president.

But history will write that about too.

So Jimmy Carter came into the country at a very volatile time in US politics.

So speak to that a little bit as well.

- Yeah, Carter, of course, having served as governor of Georgia was not a particularly well-known figure at all nationwide when he chose to run for the presidency in the first presidential election post-Watergate, post the resignation of Richard Nixon and the pardoning of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford.

And there's stories about how when Jimmy Carter started running for president, he would give somebody on a line at a factory a leaflet and say, "I'm Jimmy Carter and I'm running for president."

They would respond, "Of what?"

Because he started- - [Steve] Because that's how low his profile was.

- [David] From a very not particularly well-known place.

I also read that if people dropped the literature when the person walked away, they'd quietly pick it back up and use it for the- - [Steve] The next person.

- [David] Because they didn't have a heck of a lot of resources to start.

So he came in at a time when the country was seeking an outsider from Washington, D.C., was seeking somebody who was perceived of as having character and a conscience and a commitment to principles beyond the simple grasping of power and application of power.

A lot of those principles then probably didn't help him when he was president, having been an outsider, not having great relations with his own party, even necessarily in Congress.

That's of course why Walter Mondale was brought in to be the vice president, was somebody who had experience in the legislature.

So, generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that, circumstances overwhelmed the Carter administration in terms of inflation and interest rates and the hostage situation.

There were significant achievements in the administration.

Obviously, the Camp David Peace Accords are something that is certainly focused on.

And that being said, of course, he is particularly well-known for his post-presidency in terms of his activism and life there, so.

- Well, I thought it was interesting because you were watching the, of course, the state funeral, and I believe it was his son or a grandson that got up and said it was interesting that Jimmy Carter and his spouse, Rosalynn, had spent four years in the governor's office in Georgia, four years in Washington D.C. when he was president, but the rest of the time lived their lives in Plains, Georgia the other 96 years.

So I thought it was kind of an interesting thing that that's how defined he was, four years as governor, four years as president.

The rest of time he was a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia.

Almost like a throwback story to the 19th century kind of president versus a 20th century president.

- [David] Yeah, and then I've read as well that he put the peanut farm in a trust when he was president to avoid conflicts of interest, which presents certainly a charming difference.

- [Steve] A contrast.

- [David] To the way politics is happening currently.

- [Steve] Yeah, well, and and you mentioned too, that he came in when the country wanted someone who wasn't a Washington insider and took an approach somewhat differently than the most recent outsider who has become president now twice has taken, although the addition of the governor of Indiana to President Trump's first term as vice president was an effort to reach out to the establishment a little bit as an outsider, but the contrast between the two approaches is pretty dramatic between a Trump first-year term and a Jimmy Carter first-year term.

- Yeah, and it's one of those things we think about with regard to presidential elections.

Like, what determines presidential elections, and campaigns are obviously important or billions of dollars wouldn't be spent on campaigns.

But the same is true of advertising, right.

People say, "Advertising works," but it's not entirely clear at all times how much of advertising actually works.

So you spend a lot more money on it not being sure what's working.

And so in terms of presidential elections, sometimes in the distance of history, you can look at them and say, "Well, the circumstances around the election and the people involved in the election are seeming to be very outcome determinative."

So if you look at the 2024 US presidential election and you look at what was going on globally, incumbents were losing, left, right, and center all across the democratic countries.

And so Kamala Harris was an incumbent president, not president, vice president.

- [Steve] Vice president.

- [David] But part of the incumbent administration.

And, therefore that created headwinds.

In the case of Jimmy Carter, you were coming out of one of the most, perceived of as, corrupt presidencies in history in terms the Watergate investigation, the hearings, the tapes, the erasing of the tapes.

- [Steve] Yeah, the Enemies List.

- [David] The Enemies List, the dirty tricks.

- [Steve] You could go on and on, yeah.

- [David] And the resignation.

And so, sometimes it is the right candidate for the time.

Now the problem of course is that doesn't always lead to a successful administration in terms of if the characteristics of the candidate who's victorious match what the people are looking for in the election.

Once the election is over, people then say, "Well, we want you to run the country perfectly effectively as well.

We want microscopic unemployment, we want microscopic inflation, and we want gas prices to be extremely low."

And so it's one of those cases where elections and governing can be disconnected.

- [Steve] Yeah, well, we'll come back because we're at the end of the segment here.

It's interesting that you mentioned the fact that, because we look at this last election, as you said, millions, billions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars spent.

And the question would be, and obviously assessments underway, we come back that, did that really change many voters' minds over the course of that campaign?

Back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University.

Previous segment, you mentioned the fact that a lot of money was spent for the 2024 presidential election and the fact that whether or not that determined the election or just events around that and no amount of money would've swayed voters one way or the other.

And I guess that's a big question.

I mean, the research is probably being done right now to say all of that money spent to try and change someone's perception of this candidate didn't move anybody.

Should it have been spent some other way to change the impression of the other candidate in voters' minds?

- Yeah, I mean, when there's a loss in a presidential election, the party that loses spends a lot of time thinking about what happened, what went wrong.

And sometimes it can be really a lot of sort of outside-the-box thinking, sort of tear-it-all-down kind of thinking.

You have a former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan writing an op-ed saying the Democrats have lost their way in terms of working class voters.

And he even suggested that they should move the Democratic National Committee headquarters from Washington D.C. to Youngstown, Ohio so they can get back in connection- - [Steve] In touch with.

- [David] With working class voters.

Is that gonna happen?

Of course not.

But after the election, when a defeat happens, you've gotta figure out why the defeat happened and sometimes even call it an autopsy and try to figure out what to do differently the next time.

On the other hand, you've got people saying, "Let's not overstate and overreact how bad things were," because really Harris lost by 260-some-thousand votes in three states, that those three states flipping that number of votes would've changed the outcome of the election.

Because you can't forget that the United States doesn't elect the president directly.

we have the Electoral College.

And we actually came relatively close then in this sense to having if Harris flips those quarter of a million votes, but only those votes, she could have won the presidency but lost the popular vote.

- [Steve] The popular vote.

- [David] Which may have created some incentive and momentum on the Republican Party side to get rid of the Electoral College.

- Yeah, which we go back and forth, there's always that discussion.

And we think back too, and you mentioned Jimmy Carter because there was a confluence of events that took place there.

Gas prices, there was the Arab oil embargo that took place back then.

Gas prices went up.

There was the hostage situation in Iran.

A lot of things that no amount of advertising or marketing would've probably changed people's minds about those events.

And it was attached to him, just as you were talking about Kamala Harris, that she was the face of the four years of Joe Biden being president.

So no amount of how much money had to be spent to change the fact to the things that people saw negative in, in Joe Biden, who still to this day, even as he is leaving the presidency, has a disapproval rating higher than his approval rating.

- Yeah, and there's a couple different things that you can look at.

So I happen to be looking at the 1976 Electoral College map, and I know it's 50 years ago, but in human time, that's a relatively short amount of time.

And you've got the South going Democratic, you've got California going Republican, you've got Michigan going Republican, Ohio going Democratic.

The map changes.

So one of the things that people need to look at is that states realign, states' populations change, states' demographics change, and now California being considered a red state seems absurd, but, over the course of time, a realignment can happen.

And it can be driven in part by issues as well.

So in going to your question about the 2024 election and what happened, I mean, one of the lessons seems to be that inflation is more important than employment numbers to the public, because unemployment, last report came out last week, the economy added quarter of a million jobs and unemployment dropped to 4.1%.

So Biden ends his term, as far as we're aware that I've seen in the data anyway, as the only president in history to have a net gain of jobs every single month of his administration.

But his vice president couldn't get a second term for that because, coming out of COVID, the inflation ate into people's purchasing power.

That's very similar to what was happening in the 1970s with gas, oil prices driving inflation and other things.

At the same time as that, you also had high interest rates, which eventually killed that.

- [Steve] Was just gonna say that.

High interest rates, which we had again starting to happen in the last four years.

- [David] But again, the numbers now compared to what they were in the '70s are strikingly different.

It's just that over the course of 40 years, people have become accustomed to inflation being low.

And unemployment also being relatively low and interest rates being decades worth of low.

And so when inflation hit the percentages that it hit, which were nothing like the percentages in the '70s, it's still seemed incredibly dramatic.

- [Steve] Was a shock to the system.

- [David] So in the Democracy and Public Policy Research Network at BGSU did two surveys during the 2024 election of Ohio voters, a state that wasn't particularly competitive but is nonetheless telling.

And in terms of, we asked them, "What's the number one issue facing the country?"

And it was inflation and the economy overall.

Those are the ones that attracted the biggest numbers.

And we can talk a little bit then about in the future term of what's going on legislatively in Ohio, in Ohio politics, because those are the issues that matter to people.

Abortion mattered to people as well, but not at the same rate as the economy.

Democracy mattered, but not as the same rate as the economy.

Once you look at the economic issues, those are the issues that people care about.

And assuming they continue to care about those issues, that's how they're going to judge the incoming Trump administration and the incoming General Assembly in Columbus.

- Yeah, yeah, now you mentioned something interesting too, the fact that, of course, abortion still a very hot topic around the country.

The fact that Ohio had sort of settled that issue.

Has there been any look into did that maybe, that that wasn't as much an issue in Ohio because, well, we've settled that a year ago.

It's done: It wasn't part of the mix in Ohio politics the years the way it would've been had it not have been taken care of a year ago, theoretically, although there's still rumblings that it isn't totally settled yet.

When we come back, I think it's interesting too, you talk about the fact that states change over time and we've had that discussion about Ohio versus Michigan and that sort of thing too.

So that's an area to look at too.

And then yeah, what should happen or what should Democrats look at?

Because obviously there's a governor's race coming up in 2020... next year which require or requires somebody to replace Mike DeWine.

Is there a candidate on the Democratic side that has a chance of breaking Ohio's red state, statewide office situation?

So things to talk about, as you said, about locally, locally and in the state that that will affect not only Ohio, but what Ohio looks like across the political spectrum nationally as well.

Back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

We're talking the beginning of the 2025 political year, both nationally and at the state level.

One of the things that's happening at the state obviously is we have a new US senator elected, we also now have a vacancy in his position because he's moved on to become vice president.

The candidates, the mix of people that are, A, in line to possibly be the appointee, because Governor DeWine is taking a long time to do this in some people's minds, because as we sat here today, which is three days before this is gonna air, he still hasn't made that appointment.

And obviously, the Congress is going to start sitting down to do business.

So at some point he's gotta do that.

What's the take on some of the people, because you've heard the Lieutenant Governor's name come up, Jon Husted; Dave Yost, the Attorney General; Frank LaRose, the Secretary of State; almost anybody who's one of statewide-offs in Ohio seems to be a potential candidate.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who was a presidential candidate on the Republican side for a while.

What does that say about the Republican Party?

A wealth of talent to fill that position?

Or just the fact that they've held these state offices for so long, those are the names that we know.

- [David] Well, and due to term limits, they're all gonna be looking for work.

- [Steve] Looking for new jobs.

- [David] Come 2026.

So, I mean, you've got that situation where you're gonna have these open statewide races in 2026, which is of course the best opportunity for the opposition party to actually pull off a victory is when the seat is open.

So through term limits, we're gonna have some open races.

And of course, the question is, who will be appointed to that position?

But then in the Senate race, in the Senate then in 2026, there has to be an election again for that.

So it's gonna be a crazy 2026 in Ohio.

So even though the fact is that we're not a particularly competitive state in presidential elections when Donald Trump is on the ballot.

And I would argue that we don't know yet how Republican the state of Ohio is without Donald on the ballot.

- Steve] Without Donald Trump.

- [David] Until we see Donald Trump not being on the ballot.

Now we saw what happened with elections in between, and Tim Ryan made it close, but didn't win, but it was a hell of a lot closer in that election.

And it was a heck of a lot closer in Sherrod Brown's election than the presidential elections were in Ohio.

- [Steve] So there's still a thought that, yeah, depending on what the names are, that without Donald Trump, does that change the mathematics a little bit?

- [David] And so even though we're not particularly competitive in presidential elections, I think there will be a lot of money put into Ohio in terms of that Senate race because of the fact that the Senate is so closely divided and that midterm elections are usually beneficial for the party that lost the presidential election.

- [Steve] That's out of power, right.

- [David] And so, even though, like I say, we're not perceived of as competitive at the presidential level, we had the most expensive Senate race in the country in 2024.

And Sherrod Brown came within- - [Steve] He outperformed the presidential, presidential, yeah - [David] Dramatically.

Between him and Representative Marcy Kaptur, those were probably, I heard somebody say that in terms of Sherrod Brown's electoral performance, it was probably his best electoral performance ever up against the headwinds that he was up against, despite the fact that he didn't win the election.

And of course the point of an election is to win the election, but given what he was operating against, to make it as close as he did.

That also tells us something about the condition of the Democratic Party in Ohio, because people are saying, "Oh, Sherrod Brown needs to run for that Senate seat because they can't think of somebody else to run for it.

- [Steve] There is nobody else.

- [David] Now, we've seen Dr. Amy Acton talking about running or I think is running for governor, - [Steve] For governor.

Right.

- [David] And that could be interesting, but given where a lot of people stand on the conspiracy theories related to COVID, there's gonna be some significant opposition.

- [Steve] To that.

Yeah.

Just because, well, it's interesting.

- [David] Not necessarily the Democratic side, but in terms of the statewide election, yeah.

- [Steve] Because if you think back, and I guess if you can visualize, when Ohio began to deal with COVID, the governor and, and Dr. Acton, that was getting part as, I mean, positive reviews and Ohio was doing it, and everybody, on board, on board.

At that point in time, she was seen as somebody who was very much had this under control or was doing the right things, everything was moving in the right directions, implementing the right policies, that sort of thing.

For the most part.

There were people, obviously, who didn't like the governor's tack on that, but now, as you just said, that might be baggage now, even though Ohio responded, and it seemed at the time, in that moment, people were okay with what was going on.

Now looking back, they might not be as okay with her running something like that, yeah.

- Yeah, Governor DeWine's transparency and those press conferences early on burnished his reputation as a moderate person aimed at good governance and trying to get things done, which probably helped him more on the moderate side and among Democrats over time.

- [Steve] Than it did with his own party, a lot of them.

- Than had helped him with his own party.

And so, as his career comes to a close, he has one more big decision to make.

And then that's kind of it for his time in public service.

And, it's an interesting way to be ending it because he is not ending it in any way in a shameful or embarrassing way, but in a career that spanned as many years as his has, he's ending it as a member of a very, very different political party than when he started.

- [Steve] Than he started, yeah.

And of course, I know initially there was a thought, the question came up, can the governor appoint himself to that open Senate seat?

And he immediately said, "I'm not interested."

But it would've been an interesting thing to see happen if it was possible.

And we talked about this on the Democratic side too that the pool of candidates is somewhat limited, because as you'd mentioned in earlier programs, when you don't have a lot of people in positions of power, you don't have a bench to look at when these kind of opportunities come along.

And that's why you're looking at Sherrod Brown's name coming up so much because he's the one person who has won statewide election of Ohio on the Democratic side.

There aren't that many people who can say that in the last 10, well, 10 years at least.

- Well, how many more years do you think LeBron James has in the NBA perhaps?

- [Steve] Well, he says another eight or nine.

He says he is gonna play till he is 48.

So he's got seven or eight yet.

- [David] Well, we'll see about that.

- [Steve] Well, as they always say, Father Time remains undefeated.

So we'll seem but then again.

- [David] Perhaps he could return to Ohio and self-fund an election for statewide office.

- [Steve] Yeah, there's there's a breaking story.

We just started a new, yeah.

That would be interesting.

Yeah.

- [David] Well, I mean this is the era of politics that we're in.

We have a president who came to the presidency via celebrity status without stopping off as, and I use the word advisedly, an apprenticeship, if you will, in the house or in the Senate or as a governor.

Went straight from celebrity to the presidency.

So in a party that used to vigorously oppose the idea of celebrity involvement in politics, telling athletes to shut up and dribble, telling singers to shut up and sing and stay out of politics.

- [Steve] And actors to act and be quiet, yeah, yeah.

- So now that we can look more seriously at the pool of potential celebrity candidates for office and not say this is absurd.

I mean, there are surveys who will add names like, would you consider voting for Dwayne the Rock Johnson for president?

Or, and 10 years ago people would've said that's absurd to ask that question.

I don't think they consider it absurd anymore.

- Yeah, and we've got just a minute or so.

I mean, as we've said multiple times, I can remember going back when we were talking in 2015 when Donald Trump came down the stairs at Trump Towers, that the rules, there are no rules anymore.

The conventional rules don't apply, except possibly, as you said, when it comes to economics.

They're the rules still can override.

I mean, if Donald Trump has a horrible year of economic in 2025, my guess is it won't matter how good he is as a celebrity, his disapproval rating will go up.

So that's the one thing that seems to level that playing field a little bit.

- Yeah, it's impossible to tell why he brings up things like Greenland in Canada and Panama.

And it's not important to actually know what's going on in his head to know what the effect of those things.

Because the effect of those things is to distract people from what we also have happening which is Vice President-elect JD Vance saying, "Well, we're gonna try to bring peace to Ukraine.

We're gonna try to stabilize prices."

That tempering of expectations from Trump's promise to end the war in Ukraine in the first 24 hours and to actually bring prices down, not just stabilize prices, but bring them down.

That tempering of those expectations gets less media attention than than the more.

- [Steve] Yeah, we're gonna take the Panama Canal back.

And so it's almost a little magic act of like, "I'm distracting you over here."

Meanwhile this stuff is still going on in a different way.

Well, we're gonna have to leave it there, and obviously we're gonna get back together in just a few more weeks with some of our other colleagues as well to see where we stand 30 days after this discussion.

So thank you very much for doing this.

You can check us out at wbgu.org and you can watch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck up.

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