Speeches & Texts
Outlook on the U.S. Presidential Elections
Berlin, September 13, 2012
Ambassador Philip D. Murphy
Thank you, my good friend Friedrich and to all my good friends in the audience. Let me just say up front how much your words mean personally to me. The show of solidarity, not just here, but over the last couple of days, from the Bundespräsident right on down to the man in the street around this country, the outpouring of solidarity, friendship, and support is overwhelming. Now you know it’s always there but it kind of ironic and tragic that it takes moments like this to see it in the stark relief we see this week. But it is there. Let there be no doubt about the commonality of values and the depth of the relationship and the friendship between our two countries. You see it in times like this and it is deeply appreciated, right up to and including the President of the United States. I may come back to this in the course of my remarks but I wanted to say this at the beginning. It means more than you know.
I am very happy to join you this evening to talk about the upcoming election for a number of reasons. Number one: I am a fan and a long supporter of the Atlantik Brücke. The work of this organization is just as important and just as valuable as when it was established 60 years ago. Second reason: Despite all the messiness of American election campaigns, I think it is an example of transparent democracy that I for one am extremely proud of. Political campaigns are history in the making. And thirdly: I am a political junkie. I love politics and I love talking politics. There’s a phrase in English for which I am not sure we will in fact be able to come up with a good German equivalent: a gym rat. A gym rat is an athlete, who after practice, stays behind and talks about the last game or the last season, or the moves made by another team. Well, you know I love soccer but I am a political gym rat. I love talking and re-hashing what’s gone on and what’s going on in politics. And so, let this political gym rate offer a few observations about the ongoing campaign and then I would be glad to take some questions.
First, this election will be a close, hardly fought campaign. It has been and it will continue to be. The polls tell that story. The Republicans and the Democrats are neck in neck and they have been for months.
Both parties experienced what we call a convention bounce. The Republican ticket got a modest bounce from the convention. The Democratic ticket received a slightly bigger one. There was some speculation about the potential effect on public opinion of the monthly jobs statistics that came out last Friday, a day after the Democratic convention ended. The numbers on jobs showed that steady progress had been made but they sure could have been a lot stronger. We have seen this movie before. For the last three years in a row, the year starts out strong in the first quarter and then it sort of goes sideways, typically for a number of reasons. I am often asked why we care so much about the Euro; well, the European economy and the Euro impact our real economy. It just goes to show you how closely tied we are. Now it seems that the monthly labor report did not dampen too much the overall positive impression of the Democratic Party convention but it’s hard to disassemble that.
But my advice to you on the opinion polls is this: forget the polls from last week and even this week. Start taking the numbers really seriously next week or even the week after. The race is still tight and the election could go either way. Do, however, look carefully at what’s happening in the battleground states – in Ohio, for example, a state that was hard hit by the financial crisis and has really bounced back. Its unemployment rate is lower than the national average.
Remember, in our system, you have got to win states. You have got to put a series of states together to get to the required number of electoral votes which is 270. But you have to win states. Al Gore had many more votes than George Bush but lost the election.
Speaking of which, look at Florida. According to poll results announced on Tuesday, Governor Romney leads among Florida's white voters, but that lead is erased by Florida's minorities: Obama leads by 16 points among Cubans, 36 points among non-Cuban Hispanics, and he leads by 67 points among African Americans. Now we know that the economy is the main issue in Campaign 2012, but changing American demographics will play an important role in this election – and elections to come.
One example: North Carolina, where Governor Romney On the whole, I believe that both parties left their respective conventions with the feeling that they had accomplished their main goals. That goes for the Republicans in Tampa and the Democrats in Charlotte.
The Republicans had to do some re-scheduling due to Hurricane Isaac – shrinking the four days that had originally been planned down to three. And they did a good job under the circumstances.
One of the challenges the Romney campaign faced was to offer a more personal view of their candidate. And in his acceptance speech, Governor Romney did just that – and he did it well, as did his wife Ann. For me, the highlight of the Republican convention was the speech by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice which was brilliant. She gave an excellent and for the most part nonpartisan overview of US foreign relations but she also gave an overview of America and what it it like to be an an American. We’ll go back in a few minutes to foreign policy but I thought she, as they say in baseball, hit the cover off the ball.
The Democratic Party had fewer distractions and skirmishes; which is to be expected with a campaign by an incumbent. It’s rare that that wouldn’t be the case. Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy would be an exception to that; Pat Buchanan and George H.W. Bush in 1988; but that’s rare. The Democrats also had to deal with the weather, and had to move the President’s acceptance speech from an outdoor football stadium inside. But the Democrats planned from the beginning for only a three day convention. As a result, the schedule was tighter and I would say that the flow was a little more lyrical. Each night was marked by a strong keynote speech and also strong lead-up introductory remarks. First Lady Michelle Obama, once more, showed an incredible presence.
There are a number of speeches that are part of the political annals of American election campaigns. In 1964, then actor Ronald Reagan gave the keynote address at the Republican convention in San Francisco. After years as a Democrat, Reagan had recently become a Republican. “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny,” that’s what Reagan said in a very well-received speech that launched his political career. Two years later, Reagan was elected governor of California. In 1980, he was elected president.
Among the most memorable keynote speeches was one by New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo at the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco. “We proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze if only to affirm the simple truth: Peace is better than war because life is better than death.” The speech instantly made Cuomo a national figure and for years Democrats urged him to run for president, an invitation he never accepted. His son is now the Governor of New York and is on the hot list of potential future Democratic candidates for President.
The keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston spoke of the hope he believed was needed to move America forward. “It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores … the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too.” At the time, not many people had heard of the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois named Barack Obama, but four years later his would be the name behind which the Democrats rallied at the national convention in Denver.
But a rising star is only as good as the convention speech he or she gives. And that speech is not always easy for a beginner. In 1988, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was tapped to give the nominating speech at the Democratic convention in Atlanta. The speech went on for so long that the audience cheered at the words “In conclusion.” He became famous overnight, but not in a good way. Four years later, however, Clinton was nominated by his party, won the presidential election and is now remembered, like Reagan, as one of the more effective presidential speechmakers of all time. And the speech that he gave last week in Charlotte proved that point. It will be added to the all star list of great political speeches.
And President Obama’s speech last week was also excellent. Some say it was not his best. True, perhaps. But hw sets the bar high. I continue to believe that his speech on race in America from March 2008 is a Top Ten all time speech. We all know his ability to reach audiences both on a personal and a policy level. High expectations are a double edged sword; and people expect a lot from this President.
Some say he has not come through on the message of hope and change that he communicated four years ago. Now obviously I am biased but I believe history will show that just how challenging the past decade has been. I say to young Germans all the time that I wouldn’t extrapolate a whole lot from this decade. Fifty or a hundred years from now, I think we’ll look back and conclude that this was a unique ten year period. Time will tell. 9/11; two of the longest and most expensive wars that our country has ever fought; the bursting of an enormous economic bubble, unlike any we have not seen since the 1930s; global economic challenges, which still go on. Each of these challenges in and of themselves has unique and serious consequences. It’s a tough time to govern. I think that incumbents in free, democratic societies have a very difficult job these days. Look around Europe and you see that as well.
In the United States, I believe it’s a combination of unrealistic expectations, the very challenging political rhetoric that we have in our country today, and an economic environment which feels constraining to all of us which feeds the myth that change has not occurred. But I believe the record of accomplishment of the Obama Administration is truly impressive, particularly in the context of the economic situation which he inherited when he assumed office. It was the most challenging that we have seen in our country – and in the world – since the 1930s. But look at the automobile industry. It was almost at the point of a complete meltdown when the President took office in January 2009. Look at financial market regulation which Germans kept asking me about when I first got here. They said that the US would never regulate its financial markets. Now companies say there is too much regulation. Look at long overdue health care reform, the progress that has been made on the long path toward a nuclear weapon free world, America’s renewed strategy of engagement with the world and with allies, notably among others with Germany. I could go on and on.
That is not to say that there are not real problems. The unemployment rate is too high. The August jobs report that I mentioned earlier points out some of the inherent problems. Too many homes are worth less than the debt incurred to buy them. These are the realities that American voters are rightfully concerned about. A lot of Americans are not happy about their situation in life, and who could blame them? But it took years and years to build the bubble I referred to earlier. We have to accept the fact that it will take time to get back to where we were.
I’m a bull, by the way. I think we are in for a very strong two or three years, regardless of who the President is. I think we are on the verge. Time will tell.
And so, American voters will be looking for real answers from the two major candidates. The economy is definitely the number one issue in the campaign. And there is no doubt that the prescriptions that Governor Romney and President Obama offer for America’s future are very different. This is not an election where you say, “Gosh, one guy is just a little bit different from the other.” It’s hard to believe this now but in the 2000 election, George Bush so effectively made the case for compassionate conservatism that many folks in the middle thought that Gore and Bush were in the same neighborhood. You wouldn’t think that now. But in 2000, there was a lot of talk about that. This year, you don’t hear that kind of talk. This year, American voters have a very real choice. That, too, is reflected in the tight polls. Within the political spectrum today, there is less room for a large undecided portion of the population.
For me, this is the difference. The Democrats are offering what I think of as a 100 percent middle class policy approach to the future. The theory is that if things go well for the middle class, things will go well for everybody, including the very wealthy.
The Republican approach is that the more government stays outs of the way of entrepreneurs, the more they will succeed; and when they do well, Americans will succeed with them. So, if we stay out of the way of the folks who build companies and create jobs, if we give them a fair to attractive tax regime, they’ll do well and we’ll all do well as a result.
There are a few other issues I would like to raise at least briefly raise before we turn to questions. By the way, I don’t want to go President Clinton’s route in 1988 and have you applauding each time I say, “and in conclusion.”
Let’s look briefly at some of the other topics on the political agenda.
I am asked often about the role that foreign policy will play this year –and obviously even more so during the last 24 hours. I believe that will be the case at the end of the day here. The truth is that in any election, domestic issues are almost always more important to American voters. Two exceptions were the presidential election in 2004 and the congressional election in 2002, the first elections after 9/11. There is no doubt, however, that given the very real tensions and challenges on the international scene and witness what is literally happening as we speak, at any time during the next two months, foreign policy issues could take the forefront. Let me also say that I don’t think that what happened this week doesn’t have a place in the political campaign. But these are the issues that a President has to deal with and so it is appropriate that one of the presidential debates will focus exclusively on international policy issues.
Other issues? This year, we have heard a lot of discussion about social issues and issues of particular concern to women voters. And I have to say that frankly I am surprised by that. If you had asked me a year ago to predict whether social issues would be on either the primary or general election season agenda, I would have said no. My guess is that these are not the kind of debates that the Romney camp will want to be engaging in and that they will try to maintain the focus on the economy.
Another big factor in the election is money. Money always plays an enormous role in American elections; and I, in fact, was the Finance Chair for the Democratic Party. In my opinion, it is too big a role, particularly after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case in January which essentially allows the possibility to raise unlimited parallel campaign funds.
And in conclusion (and I mean it), and in stark contrast to money, let’s talk about poetry.
One of my favorite quotations about the American political process stems from that same former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo. He said, not in the convention speech that I referred to earlier but later in the 1980s, “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” In my opinion, poetry and emotion are two of the essential ingredients in a political campaign. President Clinton’s speech last week was exceptional because he managed to cite an endless list of cold facts and hard statistics but he did so in a way that people understood. He touched people’s hearts and souls. Only Clinton could have done this, by the way. His speech was clocked in at 3,000 words, loaded in the teleprompter. He spoke over 5,000 words. New math.
In the same way, many people were attracted in an emotional and poetic way to Barack Obama. But like all figures in public office, he has had to accept that when in office, it is one step after another. Those, I believe, who are the most disappointed in President Obama (and I think there is an overblown sense that there is an enormous number of people who are disappointed) are perhaps the poets among us. They expected poetry not only in the campaign, but also in government.
Poetry is also the driving force behind what we call transformational politics. During the 2008 election campaign, then Senator Barack Obama often admiringly referred to Reagan's transformational presidency. Others speak about Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and President Obama's ambitious plans -- often described as the New New Deal -- that were made at the beginning of his administration. But that parallel, drawn by insiders as readily as by outsiders, misses one crucial historical difference. And this gets to the nub of some of our political debates these days. F.D.R. built new structures from scratch, while President Obama has been trying to overhaul a massive machine that has existed for decades. It is the difference, says Harvard professor, Dr, Theda Skocpol, between a start-up and turning around a big, troubled company; or, building a brand-new house and renovating an old one. ''We know from economic and technology history -- it is easier to fill a space for the first time,'' Dr. Skocpol says. When it comes to the campaign trail, the easiest platform is a start-up; everybody loves the shiny new toy. Next best is demolishing something that's old. That is in part of very, very effective appeal that Representative Ryan has added to the Romney ticket.
Which message will win on November 6? Who will be the next President of the United States? I don’t know the answer to that. Sometimes, I wish I could predict the future.
But I do know that all the rough-and-tumble of the election campaign, all the speechmaking, the political advertising, and also the razz-ma-tazz, the seemingly trivial events and issues that will occupy the candidates’ attention between now and Election Day – all these are a profound and fundamental part of who Americans are as a people.
We know very well that the world is watching. And this November, we will offer the world, as President Teddy Roosevelt once said, “a wonderful example of democratic government on a giant scale.”