i do believe that the west for all of its historical shosh comings because they have to be admitted. for all of the shortcomings, the west still today represents the most acceptable and workable universally workable political culture. >> in 1981, the united states was the only global super power. how to restore the status in the world from former national

security adviser is zbigniew brzezinski. also this weekend on book tv, did fdr use a cover for a better branch? that is saturday at 11:00 p.m. sunday night at 10:00, the new privacy is the right privacy. book tv every weekend on c-span 2. the nation's mayors met in washington d.c. topics were the up coming elections. they heard from anita dunn and the campaign advisor steven schmidt. we pick up with comments from los angeles mayor antonio villaraigosa. this is about an hour. [ applause ]

>> thank you for that beautiful tribute to pat murphy. this morning i wanted us to have a thoughtful discussion about the presidential and congressional elections. i think our collective concern is the silence that's deafening about the state of america's cities. it's interesting. every year when we present the metro economy's report, it seems members of congress are living on some other planet. they don't realize that 90% of the gdp is generated in our cities, that 85% of the jobs that are created this year will be created in our cities. as some of you have heard, if we just talked about ten cities,

the ten top cities in america, we're talking about an economy the size of france. i'm sorry. we're talking about an economy that would be the third largest economy in the world. it would be a $5 trillion economy, double the size of france. if you talked about just the three largest metropolitan areas, you're talking about an economy the size of france. you'd never know that talking to the congress. so getting the candidates to focus on domestic and metro priorities is important. getting them to think about and talk about and most importantly do something about infrastructure investment, the ongoing housing crisis, job creation, these are the issues that we're here on. so yesterday we had an opportunity to meet with

president obama at the white house to discuss some of these priorities. we invited the major republican candidates to be with us. of course, they're a little busy on the campaign trail. i think they're in south carolina, as a matter of fact. so to help us understand where this election is going, we've invited some of the nation's top political experts to frame the current debate. i'm very pleased that today we have with us steve schmidt who was senior campaign strategist and adviser to the presidential campaign of john mccain in 2008, a friend of mine and someone who has also advised my very close friend, a governor i worked with, governor schwarzenegger. i'm also extremely pleased that we have with us anita dunn who served as senior communications

strategist for president obama in both the campaign and the white house. and we're most fortunate to have as our moderator today mike allen, the chief white house correspondent for politico. mike came to politico from "time" magazine where he was their white house correspondent. prior to that he spent six years at "the washington post" where he covered president bush's first term and capitol hill campaign finance, the bush, gore and bradley campaigns of 2000. when it comes to u.s. politics, these people have been in the thick of things for a long time, and they've got the scars to prove it. as national political media experts, i know they'll lead us in a very meaningful discussion. mike, it's yours. >> mr. mayor, mr. president, thank you very much for having us. i really appreciate it. thank you very much for the honor of talking to you.

we're going to plunge right in to a great conversation. it's a great honor to talk to all of you. i've enjoyed visiting with some of you. here in washington we can talk all we want. you and your colleagues have to actually do it. i'm looking forward to connecting with you. the last time i saw the mayor he was in spandex. you'll be happy to know it was not on "meet the press." we were both in aspen, and we were doing a hike with lance armstrong. they had sort of a bunny slope hike where i dropped off. you went all the way to the peak, right? did you get to ride a gondola back? >> no. i crawled back. i crawled back. >> very exciting time to be in washington. we're going to start with a little breaking news. most of you have probably seen on your device just in the last few minutes, texas governor rick perry has said he's going to pull out of the presidential race today and he's going to

endorse newt gingrich. we're going to plunge right into that. anita dunn, there's a debate at 8:00 tonight, as the mayor would say, 5:00 realtime tonight on cnn. we're now down to four, right? how does rick perry's sudden exit affect the chess board going to saturday's south carolina primary? >> i tend to leave the prognosticating about republican primaries to the people who know that party which would be steve. but i will say, just think about tonight's debate for a second. a two-hour debate. when it was scheduled, you had six or seven candidates. now you have four candidates and an interesting dynamic in that santorum and gingrich are fighting with each other to be the romney alternative, and yet they both also have to take

romney on directly. romney coming off what is arguably his weakest debate performance of the entire election cycle and he has become a very, very good debater. i think much better than he was in 2008. then you have ron paul who charts his own course at all of these debates. >> that was nice. >> but speaks -- frankly, tends to do well in these debates in terms of his supporters because he's very clear. he's very straightforward and he doesn't sound like a typical politician. i actually want to kick this to steve to get his analysis. >> i think for much of the year this has become the greatest reality show on television. and if you look at the cast of characters that have run for president, some of them have fallen away. it's been a really interesting process -- it's been a really interesting process to watch. i think you have a number of

balls in the air right now. it may well be the case by the end of the day that we find out that rick santorum, in fact, won the iowa caucuses. at either rate, who the winner know. but if the news cycle today becomes that rick santorum pulled ahead, i think that's a further loss of momentum and altitude for mitt romney who i think is having one of the toughest weeks he's had over the course of the primary election with the tax story which i think was not handled particularly well by governor romney and by gingrich resurgence. he was down, on his back, he appears to be up. there's going to be a very controversial interview that takes place with a gingrich ex-wife this evening on abc. and who knows -- who knows what's going to come out of that.

but i think we're going to see the realization of hell hath no furry like a woman scorned. so it will be an interesting dynamic. it will be an interesting dynamic over the next 24 hours. i do think that if you look ahead and if you look at conventional wisdom, conventional wisdom is that mitt romney will be the republican nominee for president. i think that anyone you talk to in the political or journalistic community in washington who has been around campaigns believes that. i believe that, whether anita will say it or not and may not be able to, i think the white house is preparing to run against mitt romney. i think that newt gingrich is utterly i'm plausible as a potentially victorious candidate in a general election sense. he's been incredibly erratic over the course of the campaign. one moment he's not going to attack his opponent. the next moment they're liars

and a looters. one moment he's the conservative nndidate in the next his rhetoric is identical to people who could be carrying signs in the occupy wall street movement. it will be interesting to see what the outcome of south carolina is because ron paul will stay in this race until the last primary is over. i think he'll pull somewhere between 18% to 25% of the vote. >> wait, steve. that means june, right? >> all the way through. because he's not running for president. he's running to advance an idea and to change the trajectory and the discussion of american politics, really to mainstream the issues that he cares about. in fact, he's doing an effective i think he's initiated what's going to become a big debate, for example, on national security issues in the republican party. saturday will be an interesting race in south carolina i think if mitt romney wins in

south carolina, the nomination fight will be effectively over. >> wait. how much does he have to win by? >> i just think he has to win. i think expectations were so loh carolina going in that it was never a must-win state. it's always been the determinative state in republican primary politics back to 1980. but if he wins i think the race will begin to shut down. race or gingrich gets out of the race or not, i suspect they won't, but he'll be well on his way to be the nominee. if he's not i think he's still likely to be the nominee, but florida is going to be a painful week and then you'll have this long break before the super tuesday states and everyone will stay in the race. >> anita dunn, in addition to being a managing partner of skd nickerbocker is an adviser to president obama. steve schmidt says we're looking

at an obama-romney race. how does that look to you? >> i think the president's campaign has always anticipated a tough race and a close race regardless of who the republican nominee was. in reality, most of the republican candidates who are running have ended up taking relatively similar positions on almost all of the major issues, whether they are social issues. issues, shall we say, later in their careers than others. but they've all kind of ended up at the same place, whether they're social or fiscal issues, issues around federal spending or issues around tax. they've all fundamentally aligned pretty much with republican congress. we've always anticipated from an issue point of view we'd be running against a nominee who is going to be carrying the banner, like it or not, of the very unpopular policies that this republican congress has seen fit to try to adopt over the last 15

months. as much as they would like to try to escape that, they will have that. in terms of moving forward, i think that one of the things that i have found interesting is that in 2008 our prolonged primary process actually ended up, i think, making president obama, then candidate obama a much stronger candidate. i think the fight against now secretary clinton, against a really top candidate ended up making him a much better candidate than he would have been if the process had been wrapped up early. i've watched the republican process. i this process has made whoever the eventual nominee is a stronger candidate. i think the kinds of attacks you're seeing right now are ones that frankly we would have anticipated as general election attacks. whether there are questions about what kind of value you bring to the economy if you are primarily concerned, if you've spent your entire life at an

investment firm or whether there are questions around tax equity and whether or not, you know, investment income should be taxed the same way that people who work hard for a living and punch that clock should be taxed. and i think this is not a primary process that's been helpful to the event nominee. from the president's point of view, he always knew he would have to defend his record and also put out a vision of where this country can go moving forward. i think that process is beginning. i think what you've seen since august is a president who is very clearly stating not just the differences in policy, but also a very different kind of vision of what america can be. >> steve, anita is pointing out that during the primary process governor romney has been pulled to the right on a number of issues, banged up on a few issues. when you look at primaries, is it a case of twas ever thus?

or would this make it harder for mitt romney to go against president obama? >> i agree with anita that there is a difference between the '08 democratic party primary process and the republican process in 2012. it was basically this, that both barack obama -- senator obama and senator clinton were both prepared and qualified to be president of the united states, and whomever was going to be the winner of that contest, there was no question that they were fit from a character perspective, from an intellectual perspective to take the oath of office. and that's not the case with all of the republican candidates, though it is the case with governor romney. so i think that when you are running against people in a primary process who are not plausible commander in chiefs, it becomes a diminishing experience as opposed to an elevating experience over the course of the debate.

i just think that that's a big piece. i'd also say much of the focus has been on the -- has been on the republican primary contest. the big political story i think over the last six months since the low point is, though it is glacial, though it is slow, you have seen a steady improvement of the president's approval numbers from a very, very dangerous place in the context of trying to get re-elected to a place where there is a vulnerability still, but where those numbers are improving into the range where, for example, we were in the 2004 bush campaign. the other thing, when you talk about the context of a close election, i think it's important to bear in mind that in 2008, which was the worst republican environment that a republican candidate has ever had a run-in and a race where we were

outspent by $250 million, the president got 53% of the vote and john mccain, in the aftermath of a global economic collapse got 47% of the vote. and i think that all of these messages that you hear, when you hear the republican message, 47% of the american population responds to it. when you hear the president's message, 47% of the population responds to it. there's about 6% of the population that is going to decide the outcome of the election, and it will be interesting to see how that group evolves over the course of the next year. >> the reality is that we've had extraordinarily close elections. even as steve points out, 2008 was not by any means a landslide, although people remember it that way. it was actually a very close election. >> president obama got 52.9%, right? >> yeah. but 2004, 1996 when bill clinton didn't get 50% of the vote. people don't remember that.

but he didn't get 50% of the vote. got 49.9 i think, but didn't even get 50% of the vote. this is a very closely divided nation and continues to be and has been for several elections now. you're going to see a very close election unless by some extraordinary set of circumstances that i personally can't imagine, the republican party nominates somebody who is deemed unelectable by the electorate. >> steve schmidt is vice chairman of public affairs of edelman which is a firm in addition to being global is also independent. steve, you pointed out there's been a glacial but unmistakable increase in the president's approval ratings, something else that matches that description is the economy. the economy is unquestionably getting slightly better. as you all know better than anyone, it's tough to feel. the statistics are pointing that way.

does that remove a lot of the argument for mitt romney? >> when we sit up here and we talk about what's going to happen in elections, we often talk about them through the prism of events that have already occurred. and i think this election is fundamentally going to be shaped by events that have yet to occur. so, for example, the euro crisis will have a dramatic impact on whatever natient recovery the american economy is under way. there's also the question of how the american people feel, and if you look at the nbc/"wall street journal" poll, you have 74% of the people think that the country is on the wrong track, and it's the 93rd consecutive month where people think that the country is on the wrong track. >> that's a lot of bush months included in that. >> absolutely. edelman does a global survey

every year. it's the largest of its kind in the world called the trust barometer. 30,000 people surveyed in 30 countries all around the world. the trend is a total collapse of trust in government, not just in the united states, and i don't mean this as a partisan statement because it's not. when i say collapse and trust of government, it applies to both parties. but you see that occurring globally. so unemployment will remain high. people are pessimistic. people don't trust the government. people think the country is heading in the wrong direction, and i think the fundamental challenge for the president in that environment and all presidents who are incumbents have about a 66% chance just on the odds of getting re-elected, his challenge is to communicate that tomorrow is going to be better than today. i think his re-election is difficult absent the ability to communicate that because i think that that's what the american

people are fundamentally looking for. who is going to make this better, because the one thing in a closely divided nation where republicans and democrats don't agree on a lot is that everybody agrees, you know, universally in the country that it's not going in the right direction and these are bad times. i think when you look at the instability in the congressional elections, we're in a cycle that, if there is a 20-seat switch which is entirely possible in the house, it would be the first time since the '48, '50, '52, 1954 cycle where you had switches that big. i think that's all being fueled and all this instability in american politics is being fueled by that very high wrong track number and that deep sense of pessimism in the country. i think that will frame the election. >> anita dunn, steve schmidt talks about the president's communications challenges.

among the many hats you've won in washington is white house communications director. president obama is one of the greatest political communicators in our lifetime, maybe the best since ronald reagan. why does he have that challenge? why has he lost that connection with the american people? >> i think it's always a challenge when you're in the white house to keep that connection with the american people because you have so many hurdles. both steve and i have been on that side of the wall. as people in government yourself, you know the best laid plans can be waylaid pretty easily by events outside your control. having said that, i think what you've seen as steve suggests is not only the improvement, the beginning of the improvement of the economy in a way that people actually see and feel, but you've also seen the president since august going out and communicating very directly with the american people about what his priorities are, where he wants to take this country, where we've been, but more

importantly, where we're going and how we have to get there and how he will lead us there. the contrast in message since august between the president and between the republican candidates has been striking because the republican candidates as a group tend to have an extraordinarily pessimistic message that has to do with going back, it has to do with getting rid of this, getting rid of that. it's not at all forward looking in terms of where we go and how we get there. it is is a lot of going back to this, getting rid of this, getting rid of that kind of thing. whereas the president has begun to lay out a very, very tangible set of values and visions for the american people in terms of a middle class that works, in terms of an economy where hard work is rewarded, where people take responsibility, where businesses and individuals are

held accountable. fundamental values that made this country great to begin with. i think that is going to be a real contrast. next week he delivers the state of the union. the state of the union for any president is always the best opportunity to lay out what that vision will be for the year. i think that as you progress, as challengers, the republicans have to make the case against the president and make the case why they are the best to replace them. but one of the great challenges they have is actually getting to an optimistic message given that their base is such an angry base and really -- and appears to respond best to the candidates who delivered the most red meat at any given time in terms of contrast with the president. that's a huge challenge. one of the great things that obama had in 2008 was the ability to criticize the status quo while still maintaining the optimistic message. i don't think any of the republican candidates have shown they can strike that balance yet. >> in just a few minutes, i'm going to bring you into the conversation. we're going to have some

microphones for you. get your questions ready. but first, steve schmidt made a very fascinating point, that the edelman trust barometer where they do global opinion sampling found a collapse in support for government. this isn't just a u.s. issue, and it's not a partisan issue. both president obama, president bush seem uniquely equipped to work across the aisles. steve schmidt, why is washington frozen? and what would change that, what will change that? >> i think it's frozen fundamentally because of a continuing cycle of political violence where the intentions of the other political party in the country are constantly called in to question. >> you're one of the chief callers. >> when i ran -- when i was in the business of running

campaigns, i've done my fair share of it. >> as a candidate -- >> ronald reagan talked about the fact that in this country we don't have political enemies, we have political opponents. if you look back at a generation of americans, maybe it was because they fought in a real war together against a real existential threat. men like ronald reagan and tip o'neill while fierce opponents could never look at each other as enemy. if you talk to people who have been in washington for a long time, the social mixing that used to occur between the wives of democrat and republican members of congress or increasingly as we have more women members of the house and senate, the husbands, it just doesn't exist anymore. there's very little contact. there's very little mingling, and everybody is geared up to

provide content for the cable news entertainment industrial complex which does not reward the reasonable person who goes out and says this is a solution to the problem. not to drone on, mike, but there was a fascinating charlie rose special where he had the mayors. i think mayor villaraigosa was on it, with the ten biggest mayors in the country. there were republicans on it. there were democrats on it. it was a discussion based in pragmatism and reality with people who actually have to make decisions and run stuff. i remember watching it and i found it so fundamentally detached, right, from what goes on in washington. it's an unhealthy process and system. >> when i worked at the dscc, the democratic senate campaign committee. as i was listening to mayor riley, we tried to recruit him to run for the senate. he always wisely refused to even

have that conversation. we used to say when we were trying to recruit mayors and governors, we would say don't let them talk to former mayors who are governors who actually got to the senate because they're all miserable. don't let them do that. steve is absolutely right. governors and mayors who are accountable for results, who actually have to do things have a very, very different outlook on politics than what happens here in washington where fundamentally, if an issue is debated and argued about and then nothing happens on it, people move on. it's like, okay, well, that's not a problem any longer because we're not talking about it any longer. you know you can't do that in the city. if you've got a problem, you've got to do something about it. it's one of the reasons why going to steve's trust barometer. ou