From Staff Reports

Fox News contributor Michael Barone said the field is open for candidates in the 2008 president election and, for the conservatives to win, they need to seize the moment and dominate in framing the issues, during an address last Thursday in Asheville.

Barone, who also is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, a political scientist and an author, addressed “Open Field Politics 2008” in the banquet hall at Haywood Park Hotel, located downtown.

Almost 100 people attended the Headliner Luncheon sponsored by the John Locke Foundation and WWNC-AM (570) news-talk radio station in Asheville.

Barone spoke for 45 minutes, fielded questions from the audience for about 15 minutes and stayed later to sign copies of his latest book, “Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers.” (A story on the question-and-answer session appears on Page 7.)

During his collegiate days, he was editor of the Harvard Crimson student newspaper and, later, the Yale Law Review. He earned a law degree at Yale. He is a native of suburban Detroit, Mich.

Barone was introduced by master of ceremonies and JLF official Chad Adams, who termed the foundation “the largest independent think-tank in North Carolina.”

The JLF, a free-market think tank launched in North Carolina in 1990, advocates lowering taxes, decreasing spending on social support programs and encouraging free markets.

It is named after the philosopher John Locke, who was a primary contributor to what is now termed classical liberalism.

Barone began his address by thanking the JLF and WWNC radio station for their co-sponsorship, the latter of “which, I gather, stands for Wacky Western North Carolina.” The crowd laughed heartily at his quip.

He then said he was taking a poll and asked the mostly conservative audience members to raise their hands to indicate their television network news sources.

Predictably, no hands were raised when he called out, successively, MSNC and CNN.

However, when he referred to Fox News Channel, nearly all hands darted into the air, prompting Barone to declare, “Ah, for once, the fair and balanced news channel!”

After praising British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) for his contributions to freedom, he said “the 1680s were a time of political change ... and we’re in a time of political change” today.

For the first time, there is a woman and a black who are both serious presidential contenders, Barone said. “The parties are trying to redefine themselves.”

Polarization of politics today.... He said the Democratic presidential candidates all are positioning themselves to the left of Bill Clinton, whom he termed the only successful Democrat to win the top post in the last 25 years.

Both Clinton and President Bush were born in the same year, Barone noted.

“How many people here can’t stand to see Bill Clinton on TV?” he asked. Many hands shot up. “If you went on the hippie side of downtown, it’d be the same answer” if the residents were asked about Bush.

Barone said the period of 1996-2004 could be characterized as “trench warfare politics,” featuring much polarization.

He added that the period of 1980-95 could be characterized as “open field politics,” meaning “it’s going to be a tough year for the overdog.

“We have the potential for that to happen in 2008,” Baroke said.

He said Clinton leads the pack of Democratic contenders, followed by Barack Obama, 24 percent; and John Edwards, 12 percent. “It looks like Hillary Clinton has an excellent chance to win the Democratic nomination.
“If Obama runs well against Clinton in Iowa, the race could open up with Clinton and Obama.”

In contrast, he said “even if Edwards does well in Iowa, he’ll fade in New Hampshire,” based of that state’s historical dislike of Southern candidates.

As for the Republicans, Barone again held an impromptu poll, with Rudolph Giuliani, the front-runner, getting one-fourth to one-third of the votes; followed by Mike Huckabee with about one-fourth of the hands raised, Mitt Romney with about six votes and Fred Thompson, with about three votes. John McCain got no votes.
“The conventional wisdom of Giuliani is that he has no chance because of his relatively liberal position on cultural issues.”

However, Barone said, “I take a different view” about Giuliani. “We always ask how someone would do in a crisis — we know about that with Rudy. He also has an outstanding record in New York.”

When Fox News, in a poll, asked which candidate would do a better job of protecting the United States, Barone said Giuliani received 50 percent support, while Hillary Clinton got 36 percent.

Still, to date in the presidential election, “I think I have to concede that advantage goes to the Democrats. I don’t think George Bush’s approval ratings, which are at a record low, will rise appreciably in his final days.”
In 2008, “the perceptions are the Democrats will hold a majority in Congress ... I think what we’ve seen is the world in which Democrats won is changing and I don’t think they’ve changed.

“With Democrats leading Congress, we still haven’t left Iraq. We’ve got three leading Democratic contenders declining” to state a specific short-term withdrawal date, Barone said.

“The surge strategy is beginning to work,” he noted. “If Iraq is seen as a stalemate or withdrawal, most people would vote for withdrawal. But if it’s success versus withdrawal, I think they’d vote for success.”

He asked, “How many of you remember the ‘70s?”

Most hands were raised in the generally older crowd.

At that point, Barone contended, “the median-age voter in 2008 doesn’t remember the 1970s.” Born in 1963, the median voter got his driver’s license in 1979.

Thus, these voters do not remember stagflation, Keynsian economics and gas lines, he noted.

In essence, “2008 is a battle of ideas, a battle of who will frame the issues ... He who frames the issues tends to decide the election.”

He then noted that the Bush tax cuts will expire in 2010 and the estate tax will return in 2011.

When Barone asked how many of those in audience have been watching the polls in Great Britain, a dozen or so hands were raised.

To that end, he said Gordon Brown of the Labor Party became prime minister recently, succeeding Tony Blair. Brown was so popular, the word was out that he would call for an election so that he could get a five-year term, Barone said.

However, the Conservative Party cut out the inheritance tax and surged from behind to lead the Labor Party by 5 percent in the polls. “That’s substantial,” Baroke said. In the aftermath, Brown decided not to call for an election.

“That tells me the Republican Party could do the same with the same issue ... Basically, if we have a Democratic president and Congress, the taxes for everyone will go up — that’s a given.”

He said another issue “might be” immigration for which “the Democrats might get in trouble by using the same approach as George Bush.” Barone said a better approach on immigration is to withhold legislation for a guest worker program until there is enforcement of policies at the border.

Again, he reiterated, immigration” has not proved to be a winning issue for Republicans in 2006.”

However, Barone cautioned that “people don’t like the idea of ‘I don’t like that kind of people,’ but they do like ‘we should be enforcing current (immigration) law.”

He reiterated several times in his speech that “you can’t count on the mainstream media”  for truthful reporting on political issues.

As for taking positions on the economy, Barone said it comes down to partisan preference.

The median-age voter has lived most of his/her adult life with steady growth and low inflation, so “I don’t think the economy is a winning issue” for Republicans, Baroke said.

On the issue of national defense, he said, “Again, the world doesn’t stand still.” Neither, he added, do the polls or the results remain static.

“Today, we don’t know what will happen in the world in the next 13 months.”

However, “to listen to the Democrats, if we get Bush back to Crawford (Texas) and leave Iraq, everything will be fine and the world will love us.”

To the contrary, the GOP needs to frame the party’s position in the election as: “We’re protecting the nation from people would harm us.”

Alas, “the mainstream media is not going to make the nation a key issue. They’d say we get what we deserve.

“This year, in what I think is a period of open-field politics ... I think the side we believe in could suffer a very damaging defeat ... We also could have a victory in 2008.”

“There’s an open field for these new voters and it’s up to you — and these (GOP) candidates — to try to influence them at this time.”