n >> this week on "q&a," dan balz, of "the washington post" answers questions from university students. >> dan balz, what is the difference today with reporting for newspapers? >> brian, i think the biggest part is i do not think of it as us be a newspaper people anymore. the world has changed so dramatically that we are posted online, in print. we are doing so many things, and

we are doing it around the clock. i have to remind myself that is not really the case. that is only one of the ways that we are disseminating the information. it is a much more fast-paced world. there is sometimes less time for reporting, and events are moving faster. >> how would you compare the information we have today? >> i think we know as much as we ever did. there is important information to know and what is trivial information, what might be fun to know, and one of the things i worry about, in the way that we move so rapidly today, here is is kind of hard to separate the wheat from the chaff sometimes, and we can get fixated, particularly people within the political community grew obsess

on a lot of this hour by hour, -- who obsess on a lot of this hour by hour, the important things. >> move ahead, and you are the moderator of the debates. what needs to be asked and answered? in order for the voters to have the best information going into the election? >> i think for both of these candidates, one of the things that needs to be answered in a more concrete way and in a more systematic way is what would they actually do if they were president. we are spending a lot of time at this point re-litigating the past. the president is litigating the bush years, suggesting that mitt romney would take us back to those years, and mitt romney is litigating the record of the president, but what i think most people want to know is why has

this recession dragged on as long as it has? definitely, we are out of it, but this is very difficult. we still have unemployment above 8%. we should not think that since it has come down some that we are at a good point. the economy is very fragile. the percentage of people who have been unemployed for more than six months is in the neighborhood of 40%, 42%, and those are astonishing numbers. when you think about what the candidates are talking about, either the president or governor romney has laid out a plan that says i have a path forward. here are the steps we are going to take, and here are the likely results. >> what are some of these specific questions you would ask the >> well, i think i would ask president obama, one of the major crises that he had to deal with was the foreclosure crisis.

there are the various things that be administration has tried that has not worked, and what would you do, what do you have left kind of in your tool kit to kind of deal with that, and i think one of the realities of this period is that there are so many people who are under water in their homes that is, or whose homes have simply lost a considerable amount of value, but they are frozen, frozen economically, and why, given the significance of that problem, be administration has not been able to do more. that is one thing i would ask. for governor romney, i would ask why he believes that the kinds of significant tax cuts that he is proposing, a, would definitely stimulate the economy. the bush tax cuts that were passed in the beginning did not lead to an eight-year period of dramatically robust growth.

there was some growth in that period, but it was not as it was an all-out success, so i would try to pin him down on that. and second, the question of whether the economic policy, why they would create continuing problems? >> in the room here, we have 18 students from purdue university. you graduated from another small school not too far away, the university of illinois. did you have any idea where you would end up for example, 1978 until now, "the washington post," a al covering all of these campaigns? >> i have to say that i would have put too. a at -- i joined the student

newspaper, the daily ilini. i did an internship in washington for the congressman who represented my district, anderson, who later ran for president as an independent in 1980, and the confluence working out here in washington, it puts me out here in journalism and in the federal government being in the nation's capital. at that point, i know i really wanted to come back here as a journalist. i did not know in what capacity. i thought about working for it to "the chicago tribune" bureau here, where a big bureau, and i was happy enough to get a job in "national journal" in 1972 and

so was able to get here relatively quickly, and then i was here for five years, and then i was lucky enough, frankly, to get a job at "the washington post," and i sort of pinch myself ever since. >> which candidate do you remember the most? not that you particularly liked or did not like but which were the most interesting? >> i think bill clinton was the most nural and gifted candidate that i watched in the time i have been covering politics. ronald reagan was a significant figure. i had very little contact with ronald reagan. i interviewed him in 1976 for a project i was doing unrelated to "national journal." i was in texas during his first term, and i was national editor at "the post" in his second term. i did not have a lot of contact with him on the campaign.

i did a lot of work with mondale. but the clinton campaign, and bill clinton as a candidate, it was a whale of a story politically, given all of the ups and downs that he went through, and to be able to see the ability of somebody who is under fire, which all candidates are at one time or another, his determination to kind of push through that, and also, i thought what he did in kinds -- rematching -- trying to rethink what the democratic party needed to do to bring middle-class voters back to their side, i thought that was intellectually and very interesting experience, but, brian, every campaign is a fascinating campaign. i mean, they are unpredictable. the country it is always in a different place both politically and economically as we go through these campaigns.

the human side of these campaigns is fascinating, and one you get to know the politics of different states and the politicians from different states, so as you are following the circus of the presidential campaign, you are in a sense of getting a graduate seminar every four years in terms of where the country is. >> how many people have made up their minds, a percentage? >> probably 85% to 90% at this point. we are a very polarized country, as we have been for some time, as lots of people know. i do not think there has been anything in this campaign cycle that shows that is beginning to change. if anything, it is very much so. we are in the middle of the recall battle in wisconsin where

governor scott walker is facing a recall on june 5. everybody i have talked to about that race, it does not matter what side they are on, but everybody i have talked to it says this is the most polarized state in the country, and i think there was a recent poll that came out that indicated in wisconsin on that race, there are probably less than 5% undecided at this point. these are remarkable numbers if you think about it. in a sense, people's self identification is either republican or democrat. it has locked them into a voting pattern. we had not seen until we got into this period itself. i do not think there is a lot of mines that are going to be changed over the next five or six months. >> i want to get our students involved, and robb has agreed to be the first to ask a question. >> thank you. my name is -- i just graduated

from purdue with a history and science degree. my question is how does the fact checking change your job as a journalist covering politics? >> well, those enterprises i think have had a huge effect on the way campaigns are operating now. and they are enormously valuable for readers. they do what in a sense we are supposed to be doing in the routine course of business, but as i was saying in the beginning, things move so quickly, and you have to post something. you are on the campaign trail, and if you are one of the people assigned to governor romney or the president or any of the candidates in the primary, if something happens, essentially, you are expected to post it very quickly. there is very little time for a reporter who is out on a bus or driving in a car in the middle of iowa to be able to do all of

the background research that you would do if you were writing a newspaper story about it. fact checkers have the ability and the brain power frankly and the knowledge to be able to go back and begin to unravel some of these things. the arguments that are made by campaigns these days are often over the top. all campaigns do it, stretch the truth. it is important to have a worker is an regular accounting of the -- to have a ridiculous and regular -- rigorous and regular accounting of that. in the 12th paragraph, and if people read only 10, they are not going to get to it, because we know people's attention spans are pretty sure. is it is on the web, they make click to the first page, but they may not click to the second page. to have a fact check in the printed version makes a huge difference. >> and natalee johnson is a

freshman. >> hello, my name is natalee johnson, and i will be going into my second year as a mechanical engineer. i understand that you were the co-author of two different books, so i was wondering if co offering altered your writing style in any way. -- if co-authoring did anything to alter your writing style in any way. >> at the university of maryland. one of the challenges, there are great things to say about collaborating with someone else. both of my partnerships were terrific. i could not have asked for better collaborators and co- authors.

the challenge is to make a book with one voice. frankly, it does not alter the writing style of either author, but the process is u trade back and forth chapters. somebody always takes the lead on a particular chapter, but that chapter then goes to the other co-author, and they do some re-riding, and they do some tweaking, and they do some structuring, and they do some smoothing, and out of that, the two voices blended into one. i mean, you would not have a good book if it was obvious to wrote which chapters, and in both cases, i think most people have not been able to figure out which ones he wrote or which ones i wrote to. collaborating is great. i am now working on a book by myself on this campaign, and i wake up in the morning and i think, boy, it would be nice to have a collaborator to work

through this particular issue or problem. >> lisa. >> hello. i am lisa, and i am in political science. going through that, how do you approach book interviews differently? >> well, they are different. i think of the book interviews as gathering history. i think of interview when i am working for the news side as gathering at temporary information. now, there is a fine line between that. but generally, in dealing with something that happened six months or eight months or four months ago, and it is really to get people to put me back in the middle of that from their vantage point and to tell the story as they felt it and lived it in those white hot moments of any campaign, the turning points of a campaign. when you are reporting for "the post," what you are looking for is where is something going

today or tomorrow or the next couple of weeks? you are always trying to push forward as best as you can, and you are trying to dig out things that have not been revealed. that is the essence that we do day-by-day. we are trying to break news and find things out that campaigns do not necessarily want to come out, so there is a kind of distinct difference in that. >> i am ashley, a senior in communications, psychology, and my question is, i was wondering how growing up in a relatively small midwestern town has shaped the way that you cover and interview politics. >> that is a wonderful question. i do not know if i can answer that directly other than to say we are all products of growing up place and years and the people around us, and

midwesterners, like yourselves, it tended to be pretty nice people, and i think when you grow up in a smaller community, where i grew up it was 25,000 to 22,000 people, not big, but it was well enough away from chicago that we were not big city. and i think there comes from that a curiosity about the world. what is the rest of the world like? you understand what are the values of the place you are in. i think carrying those with me through the rest of my career has been valuable because one of the things you try to do as a political reporter is to understand why voters are doing what they do, what voters are thinking about, and the degree to which you have contact through your own life with different kinds of people is

important, but, as i say, the other aspect of that is when you are in a place, you are wondering what is life like on the east coast or the west coast, and i think it feeds a curiosity to know more about other places as well as where you grew up. >> paul? >> my name is paul. i am a senior in intellection -- in electrical engineering. i want to know about the mitt romney campaign relative to the strategy in this one compared to the one he did last time. >> there are a lot of differences. the biggest difference starts with the fact that he began this campaign essentially as the front runner for the nomination. he began the 2008 campaign as essentially a little-known governor from massachusetts running against some people who were, in essence, a national celebrities, john mccain, who had run into thousands and rose

as a significant figure nationally, and rudy giuliani, who was the mayor of new york at the time of the attacks of september 11 and therefore had a national profile. as a result, the strategy adopted in that campaign was quite different than this one. he had a need early on in that campaign to make a mark, to try to convince people, voters, donors, people to pay attention to politics that he could play in the same league as john mccain and rudy giuliani, so he did some early fund-raising to create a splash. he did early advertising to drive his numbers up in iowa. he competed hard in the iowa straw poll, and he won in that as a way to put himself on the map. in the end, he got the nomination. he started this campaign and said, in essence, "we are not going to do it that way."

he did not put in personal money the way they did the first time. they ran a leaner operation than they did four years ago. if you went to the headquarters compared to four years ago, it was night and day. it was a much smaller, tighter operation. they started more slowly. they paid less attention to other candidates and kind of decided they would run the race that they wanted to run regardless of who ends up as our final competitor, we will be in pretty good shape, so there were a lot of significant differences between the two campaigns. >> hi, and a senior in civil engineering. how does this change your line of work in terms of getting the information? >> significantly, and i think that the change between 2008 and 2012 has been one of the most dramatic that we have seen.

the internet has obviously over a number of cycles had a pretty significant impact, but i think that social networking has been one of the most significant changes. twitter in particular is now a primary new source for anybody who covers politics and anybody who pays attention to politics. twitter did not exist four years ago for all practical purposes. facebook is important. the obama campaign in 2008 essentially created their own version of facebook with the help of some of the original facebook people. but now, it is the way campaigns think about doing organizing, creating community, creating networks so that those two facts alone have significantly altered the way we approach what we are doing. a real-time example would be when the candidates are having a debate. there used to be a spin room.

there still is a spin room, where at the end of the debate, gamblers come in to say who did best. it is mostly useless, but anyway, it is still done. in this campaign, because of twitter, campaigns could see instantly as people watching the debate, whether reporters or ordinary folks would be tweeting. they would be creating in a sense the conventional wisdom of what was happening in that debate. by the time the debate was over, the spin room was irrelevant, because people had already kind of come to conclusions as to what were the highlights of the debate. two had made a mistake or who had not, what mistakes were made, and so forth. that is happening in real time. the campaign's monitored that very closely to come to the conclusion of we have got a

problem on our hands or we have had a really good night, or we are somewhere in between. it is much different. as i said, it is so much more real time than it used to be. >> hello, my name is -- i will be going in as a senior in electrical engineering, and i am from india. the primary was the first process to be impacted by the citizens united decision and the super pac's, and the republican settling on a candidate, and there is a lot of debate on that. do you think there will be effort, is there a consensus that the unlimited money is not a good thing, and will there be any effort to curtail it? >> i think if you ask the average person what do you think about the role of money in campaigns, most of them would answer there is too much of it.

they would say that unlimited money is not a healthy thing for the political system, and yet, there is no groundswell at this point to change that. as a voting issue, money in campaigns rarely rises to the level of the economy, health care, education, any number of issues. the role of money in this campaign has been significant and different as we have seen, as you say in your question. the existence of the super pac's made it possible for newt gingrich and rick santorum to stay in the campaign than they otherwise would have, so it drag out, in a sense, the nomination battle. on the other hand, it also made it possible for governor romney to put down the attacks or the rise of newt gingrich and later rick santorum. his super pac was instrumental

in crushing the gingrich hopes in iowa, and when santorum rose up as a formidable opponent, it helped to take him back down. they are not the only elements that in the end brought the nomination to mitt romney, but there is no question that they had a significant effect on the long getting the process and changing it. i mean, when you have one family, one man and his wife and others, given as much money as they did to the newt gingrich super pac, it changes the nature of the game, and the other element of this is there is essentially no separation, and people now take for granted that there is no separation. definitely, the mitt romney campaign cannot coordinate with the super pac that is hoarding on his behalf, and yet of the people running it our previous

mitt romney people. the president's campaign now is helping to raise money for priorities usa, which is the super pac with the president's election campaign. so the closeness of this is obviously the distortion and the process with the amount of money, but the other element is, a lot of the super pac have to reveal who the donors are, and then there are others who are doing issues, and they do not have to reveal that. i have felt over the years there is almost no money you can take money out of politics. regardless of the structure that is set up, smart lawyers find their way to get money into the campaign in significant amounts. so it may be that until there is a radical transformation, that

is a given. if that is the case, then i think a very strong case can and should be made for as much transparency as possible. we are in an era where transparency is very easy to do. it can be almost instantaneous. i think if that were the case, there would at least be some greater check on it, and the public could at least say, ok, we know where that money is coming from. now, we cannot. we can and suspicions, but we do not know who it is coming from and the amounts, and i think that is having a distorting effect on politics and also on people's perceptions on whether this is an open process or not. >> genotropin >> hello, i am jennifer, a senior studying political science. what is the biggest consideration? >> yes, unless something else eclipses' it, and i do not mean that facetiously. if we had been sitting here four years ago, we would not have

said the collapse of the economy will totally change the last six weeks or eight weeks of the fall campaign. it is always possible that an outside event can transform things, and given the nature of where we are internationally, you could foresee something like that potentially happening. having said that, i think it is likely, very likely, that the economy will continue to be the biggest issue. whenever you talk to people about what is on their minds or what they are worried about, it is some aspect of the economy and this economic insecurity that so many people feel. some people are feeling a little better than they did a few months ago or a year ago, but they are not feeling truly comfortable, and one of our most recent polls, a significant percentage said they did not think we are truly out of the recession, so when you have that as the overriding area of the country, there is no doubt that the economic issues will

dominate. >> nick? >> sorry. nick. i will be a senior next year in political science. my question is mainly about the whole political primary process and how mitt romney had to appeal much more conservative in order to win those crucial votes and overall the nomination. we talked about even though this is polarized, a lot of people of made up their minds, but there is still left little left that mitt romney can win in certain swing states to win the overall election, so where does he go to move that back towards the middle? >> well, i think for the most part, he is going to try to not focus on some of the issues that he ended up focusing on in the primaries. immigration, for example. i think he moved himself much further to the right that he probably should have. i think the problem that he has potentially got with latino voters is significant and could be decisive in some of those

rocky mountain states, in particular, that will be in place, colorado, new mexico, and the obama campaign says that they are going to try to put arizona in play. we're going to see if they will be able to do that. but nonetheless, i think that the gap that governor romney is facing among latino voters is in part a function of what happened during the primaries. you know, his pivot at this point from the primaries to the general election has basically been to try to get back to where he wanted to be when he started the campaign. if you go back to the announcement speech she made in new hampshire last june, that was an economic focus, and it was focused on president obama. that is where they have always wanted to run the campaign, and when you talk to the ronny folks, they will say, "we have sought to be consistent in the message, and we have a message that we started out with that

works in the general election," and i think as you see them making this move over the last few weeks, as he has begun to do, from fighting the primaries to fighting the general election, that is where he is trying to be, and i think the feeling is even with the latino voters, economic issues can overcome some of the problems just because of the stances on immigration, that with women, where there is a significant gender gap that exists and he is on the downside of that coming economic issues, particularly with suburban women can help to overcome that. we will see if that is the case, but that is clearly where he wants to go. there is no question that for all voters, the matter how we slice and dice them, they do have a residence, and if he can do that, they may be successful. the obama campaign, as we have

seen this week, may do everything they can. farther to the right that he wants to be. and also as having a philosophy of economics that is geared towards helping the wealthy at the expense of or as opposed to the middle class, so that is the battle that we began to see unfold, and we will see that more and more as the campaign goes on. >> alley? >> i just graduate with a degree in communication. i am curious that you tailor your style for a book as opposed to your reporting audience, and how do you maintain what we as an audience might miss when it comes to your personal experience? >> in during the last book on the campaign and the scrapbook i am working on about this campaign, i think of this as

trying to write a narrative about the campaign. when i am covering day today, i am taking a moment in the campaign and trying to analyze it. where are we at this moment and why? what has happened today and why? what is behind the latest attack or the latest mistake? where are we in terms of the electoral map? so it is an effort to as best as i can step back half a step and try to make sense. when you are doing the book, you have the great luxury in a sense of on packing everything and putting it back together and trying to get people to understand it. when your in the moment, there are certain things that you do not know, and when you are able to go back to talk to people

about what was really going on in that moment, you sometimes come away with a better understanding. obviously learned things about specific tensions or debates within campaigns. you see things in a different way. and i think when you are trying to write for a book audience, what you're trying to do is say here is the story in fall. we have told it to you minute by minute, tweaked by tweet, newspaper story by a newspaper story, but now, you can read it all, and to some extent, we are putting aside some things that may have seemed important at the moment. i may have written three stories about it, but in the long run, it did not prove to be significant. we do not have to worry about those things. here are the things that matter. >> mike, a senior majoring in political science. my question, when covering and elections and diligently, how difficult is it to maintain

being partial and not being caught up in one campaign or another could >> well, it is not as difficult as you might think. when i learned in journalism when i was your age, i have a lot of good mentors, and this was an era in which the idea of being a reporter was to be as objective as you can be. now, we all know that everybody has biases and prejudices and world views depending on how you were raised and where you were raised and where you went to school, who your friends were, and what your parents and political views were, but there is the idea that i am going to try to as best as i can give people ask: understanding of what is happening in this campaign. it is not that difficult to put

your biases to aside, and i think a lot of good reporters do not have that much ideologies. there was a colleague of mine that covered the white house many years ago who passed away much too young. one of the best reporters ever, and somebody said of her, her only ideology was the ideology that she hated and competence in government, said she covered the white house in a way where if there was incompetence, she would pull it out and bring it to the fore. peter, a democratic pollster, and there is a republican pollster who does the nbc/wall street poll, he said something to me when i first started out doing political reporting that i always remembered, and i think it is particularly apt today in

a period where everyone is trying to be a handicapper. handicapping is a great sport, and we all have fun with it. he said the job of a political reporter is not to be a handicap. your job is not to sit there and predict to is going to win the senate race and who is going to win the house race or who is going to win the presidency in which canada and the presidency is going to win ohio and which is going to win michigan and which one is going to win nevada. he said what you should be thinking about always is when people are watching on election night or wake up the next morning and see in the paper or on television, so and so is declared the victor in this presidential campaign, that your reporting will have helped them understand why that happened, not that you predicted why it happened but that they will have an understanding of the forces at work, that were driving the

election. they will have an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates that made it possible for them to either win or lose, and i always thought that was really sound advice, because when you look at the presidential campaign, you look at it on a number of different levels. one is the daily back and forth, the combat that goes back and forth in the campaigns, to put a message out, to knock a performance of to the side or to knock them off their game. the external events that suddenly throw a campaign into turmoil and disarray. all of those contributed to impressions of the character of these candidates, and on a whole other level, the country is always moving. this is not a static country. demographics have an impact on where we are going. the economy has an impact on what people think about. that is another element of the

campaign that has a huge element to help the campaign is going to turn out. you watch different states change over time. you watch a state, as new jersey was, from a real swing state to a state that is predominantly democratic. solly democratic in president's selections. how did that happen? what were the reasons for that to happen? what were the reasons to turn a state like that? why did california go from a state that often voted republican in a campaign to one that has consistently voted democratic? those are out there, and one of the things you are trying to do is understand those, so it is all of those things. when you approach campaign reporting mike back, and i think you are not thinking about your own particular ideology. so you stand back and try to do it that way. we are in an era where that kind of reporting is less prized than

it was when i first started out, and in some ways, people are critical of it. all people covering campaigns should put all of their biases out on the table and talk about it. i disagree with that. i think there is a role for different types of reporting. that is grounded in a particular viewpoint, particular viewpoints, but also i think there are still a lot of people in this country is simply want us to tell them the way it is unfolding and let them come to their own conclusions. >> hi, my name is kile walker, and i am a senior in political science. my question, in the past, americans got their news from the print media, the 7:00 news, or the radio if they were on their way to work. how deep in the evolution of journalism and twitter will

change the way journalists like yourself and your colleagues have with reporting election issues in a meaningful way? >> i mean, if resurveyed this room, i am sure that half of the room would say they get their political news from john stuart, and those who do not would say most of it they get on their phone, that they look at their front. that is the way of the world, and we are all adapting to that. i know at "the post," so much of the energy and thinking and creativity is aimed at how do we make sure we are delivering information the way people want it, and so in a sense, the delivery changes. the news cycle is different.

we went from, when i started out, afternoon newspapers had the predominance side of journalism. they were dying out because people were working at different hours, and the morning newspaper was coming to the fore, but also, television was becoming dominant. we are now back in a sense in which the morning, by the time something lands on your doorstep, if you subscribe to print a copy of the newspaper, by the time in lands on your doorstep, much of the news in that newspaper you already know, and you have probably already checked your telephone or your blackberry or your email that morning, so if something is breaking, you are 24 hours or 12 hours ahead of the print edition, and yet there is still material in the print edition

that you did not know, that we can delivered to you, whether it is smart analysis, a deeper piece that was not based on that, but in terms of the flow of information, it is instantaneous, and that is why we do so much more. we do news alerts in ways we never used to think about, not because everything that we alert is earth shattering news but because people want to know about it, and people want to know quickly about it. i think that just changes. consumers change, and we have to change with them. how that affects the way political campaigns are run, smarter people than i are going to have to figure that out. all i know is we are adapting as quickly as we can to the new world, and all news organizations are. >> scott? >> oh, my name is scott oliver, and i will be a senior studying

communication. in 2008, they were able to captivate the younger audience, and now they will be at the voter age. how will mitt romney identify with them and capturing the votes could >> well, i do not know that he will be able to do it very easily. younger voters, people who voted for the first time in 2008, were captivated by president obama. i would say they are not as captivated today as they were 3.5 years into the presidency. it takes a toll on everybody, and it has clearly taken a toll on this president in the terms of the way people perceive them, but in terms of where he stands on issues, a lot of younger people identify more closely with that than with governor romney. the younger generation is pushing its way through the electorate in a very significant way. we are adding lots of people to

the voting rolls who are young for the first time, and we will continue to do that election my erection. the younger generation is a much more divorce generation that has grown up in a world that is far different than i grew up in or brian screw up and, or for that matter than barack obama grew up in. and different experiences. i think that the hope in the romney campaign is that there will simply be overall less enthusiasm among voters and therefore they will not turn out in as big of numbers. i do think there is a belief that they can significantly change the margin between the president and governor romney but if your of them turned out, the composition of the electorate will be more favorable to governor romney than it was before. >> my name is paul, and i am a

senior in nuclear engineering from texas. there has been a lot of talk in this election as usual, about the swing states, but if you had , whaty devil's advocate would be your estimate to flip a state? >> well, flipping states is all that mitt romney has to do. the president does not need the flip states. if the president were to flip a state, they would say in chicago that arizona would be their first target because arizona, john mccain was the candidate four years ago, the senator from arizona. they did not put a lot of effort in that. there latino population is growing, so they think at some point, that state comes into play for democrats. it may not be this time, and they will of is the spend some money probing that. we will see. for governor romney, there is a

slew of states. there is a nice, shorthand version of what mitt romney has to do. it is called the three-to-one plan for winning. a at they will go back. the obama team thinks they can still hold this. they won by a slim margin. i think virginia will be the big battleground right through the end of the election. since 1964 until 2000, it is a true swing state. beyond that, mitt romney has to look at the states that have

often been the key states in winning elections a at -- elections. ohio can be tough. there is the white working class. that is not a constituency that he has done well with in the past. that will be competitive. florida, he did well there in 2008, but we will see if that is as easy this time. i think that will be a tough state foreign. but then, yes got to win it somewhere else, whether it is iowa -- the mitt romney campaign says they will try to put michigan in play. in the last five elections, michigan has voted democratic. the mitt romney campaign things because he was born and raised their they have an opportunity to put that stay in play. i think a lot of critical analysts are quite skeptical about whether they would be able

to do it, but as of the the obama campaign, the mitt romney campaign will begin to probe and see what they can do. >> oh, my name is -- i am a psychology major, a senior from nigeria. my question has to do with the vice presidential candidate for mitt romney. do you think after the fiasco with sarah palin in 2008, he will have to take special care? >> yes, absolutely. i think that the experience that john mccain went through with sarah palin has made it much more difficult and, really, frankly, highly unlikely that governor romney will sit there and the last couple of weeks before making a decision and say we really have to roll the dice, let's stick somebody who is not on anyone's radar and elevate them to vice-presidential candidate. i also do not think that is in the dna of mitt romney.

there was a wonderful moments in the mccain campaign. sarah palin is on her way up to meet him at his home in sedona, ariz., for the interview, and he is on the home -- telephone with the person to handle the vetting process, and it they had just completed the vetting of sarah palin, and it was done quietly and rather hurriedly, and many people and not particularly thoroughly, and the last thing john mccain said is, "give me your bottom line," and he said, "john, high-risk, high reward, " and he is a gambler. mitt romney is not a gambler.

they are not going to have a governing choice. someone will be interesting -- seen in this way if mitt romney were to win. a at a ascot there is the difference between the two nominees -- and there is the difference between the 2 billion nominees. >> i am a nuclear engineer from austin, texas. with the health care, hal in has affected -- how it has affected things. >> i am sorry >> health care. other important topics. educational reforms and things like that? >> sometime this summer, we're going to have health care coming back when the supreme court

hands down its decision on the obama health-care law. health care was a significant factor in shaping public attitudes about president obama. it was a combination of the stimulus package but also the health-care plan that helps to read polarize this very rapidly health care is an important issue to people, so it is a bread and butter issue, but it is also a political issue.

this is reshaping the way the political debate carries out. by the time we get to september/october, i do not know how many swing voters will be front and center or whether it will be some other aspect of the economy. it is a big issue. >> i want to ask her to explain this. >> it is a very diverse group from perdue university in that we have liberal arts and a communication history, political science. we have psychology as well. we also have a group of engineers. this is the second year of this class.

the feeling is it will help to round out the education at purdue provides these young people. we also have an international contingent. five of our students are not u.s.-born. they are foreign students, from el salvador, nigeria, china, and i missed one. which one is it? jordon. thank you. so the experience that they have been having has been in many ways what i call washington from the outside in. for many of them, a first look at the capitol. we have had meetings on capitol hill, the state department. we had lunch yesterday with the new york times. and the question we have been asking office is formulas for success.

you have come to the town, of is the competitive on a number of levels, and you have been doing a job of reporting in a political town. you have had monumental success with the newspaper. what would you advise the students who are coming to washington? >> hold that thought. i want everyone to know that she is a former washington poster, a clinton speech writer, and the ambassador to belize. go ahead. >> speaking of success stories, the ambassador. i guess the advice i would give people, and i am not one that is very good at giving advice, but we all have talents that we were given, and we all have doors

that were opened, and we all have people who were mentors or guides or people who gave you a push along the way, and i look back at a succession of people, starting in freeport, the university of illinois, some professors you were just fabulous, some who were practicing journalists, some who were not but who were enormously helpful. people that i met in washington, when i first arrived, people i worked with at the post, beginning and in some ways ending with david, who was 4 years the political reporter in this town who defined what political reporting is and always should be and he was the most generous colleague that any of us ever knew.

this is saying how they should do it, giving you the space to do what you were trying to do and gentle encouragement along the way. i had a sense of what i wanted to do. i knew fairly early on that i wanted to try to get to washington as a reporter, and i was, again, lucky enough to be able to do that. every door opens other doors. every door that is close to moves you in a direction where another door is opened. after graduate school, i was that "the philadelphia enquirer ," in 1972, and i lasted their only a few weeks, and it was not

a particular unhappy experience. i say with understatement that they were not enamored with me. it was a difficult summer because it was clear to me that this was just not a good fit. it was not because, i did not think it was because they were measuring it up, but we had a different world view. luckily enough, "national journal" came along and had an opening in washington, and i leapt at the chance to do it. everyone has moments of success and moments of either set back or worry and stress. have confidence in yourself. if you do not have confidence in yourself, others will not, and believe in yourself. have a sense of what you want to do. also, the other thing i have

always said, find something that you really like to do. it sounds obvious, and it is obvious, but if you like what you do it is a lot easier to give up every morning and go do it, and those are the things to think about. one of the reasons i have always liked this more is that you're constantly forced to learn things. you are always out learning. the education of any journalist should never stop. it keeps on, from the time you leave school and take your first job to the time you quit working. so all of that is kind of the way that we approach things. i feel i have been lucky. i ended up as a reporter. i ended up as a reporter.