Three political journalists met in a panel discussion Saturday to discuss the causes and effects of last week's historic midterm elections, in which the president's party broke a long-standing trend by gaining seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate during the administration's first midterm elections.
Participating in Saturday's discussion, held in the Sanford Institute for Public Policy, were national political correspondent for CNN Aaron Brown, national political correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times Ronald Brownstein and national political editor for The Wall Street Journal John Harwood.
Although the three panelists differed slightly in their predictions for future election trends, all agreed that Nov. 5 was not an indication of an ideological shift for the nation as a whole.
Brown attributed Democrats' poor showing to an inability to frame a campaign for a post-Sept. 11 nation captivated by the Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks and the prospect of military action in Iraq. The anxiety associated with these concerns explained why factors such as a faltering economy did not work against the Republicans, he said.
"It's not that people don't care about the economy. People do. Or that people don't care about prescription drugs. People do," Brown said. "But in virtually every close race, what people did was say, 'What does the commander in chief need?'"
Harwood was slightly less willing to discount the importance of the economy in last week's elections. Rather than completely ignoring the issue, he said, voters considered the economy and weighed it against the many other issues in which the president's party is currently involved. In the end, however, the issue took a back seat to more pressing concerns.
"Voters didn't feel badly enough about the economy to punish [President George W.] Bush's party," he said. "The security situation felt more frightful than what they were feeling economically."
Brown added that the sniper attacks captivated the nation's attention, creating an incredibly distracted audience for an already hazy Democratic campaign. The Republicans did not encounter the same problem, he said, because there is guaranteed coverage whenever the president goes on the road, which is precisely what Bush did right up until the elections.
Like Brown and Harwood, Brownstein attributed Republicans' success to factors unrelated to an ideological shift toward the right. For instance, the depth of Bush popularity and the intensity of his supporters drew more Republicans to the polls than in recent years, he said.
"Where George Bush is strong, he is very strong," he said. "What he showed was that he could translate that approval into bodies getting off the couch, turning off the TV and walking into the polling place."
The panelists agreed that the midterm elections do not guarantee a second term for Bush.
"It's like eating Chinese food," Brown said. "It's not satisfying for very long."
The audience responded to many of Saturday's comments with laughter as the panelists conducted a relatively informal discussion. Sophomore Philip Kurian said he was glad he made it out to Sanford on a Saturday afternoon. "It was really interesting to get the perspective of a journalist who is out there every day, and of academics who were clearly very knowledgeable about the subject," he said.
Senior Chris Chandler also said he enjoyed the event-the annual John Fisher Zeidman Memorial Colloquium on Communications-but wished the panelists had elaborated on the consequences of last week's elections. "I really got a feel for why the country voted how it did, but I was really interested in getting more [analysis] about what impact it will all have on the future," he said.
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