analyst. followed by the perdition house of common debate on uk action in syria. then, u.s. representatives speak with reporters on the situation in syria. >> this week on "q & a" editor and publisher and national journal columnist, charlie cook, talks about his job as a political reporter and -- eporter, and how he became interested in politics. >> when did charlie cook become charlie wook cook? >> i started getting interested

in politics in high school. i got kind of bit by the bug. in rked my first campaign 1972. that's when i first started getting bit from the bug i didn't come from a terribly political family or anything like that. >> do you know who captain shreeve was? >> he was a river boat captain, and he broke a logjam on the red river. that's my high school. >> in louisiana? 4 bl are are are -- >> in shreveport, louisiana. > the captain shreve gators. >> is it louisiana or louisiana? >> it depends on what part of the state, kind of like missouri or "missoura."

i say louisiana. everybody thinks their state is a little different from the others, but louisiana really is different. and politics is part of the kl tour. less so now, but we've just always had such colorful characters, that it was, you there was college football, high school football, and louisiana politics. so it is easy to get bit by that bug in louisiana, or probably easier than in a lot of other states. >> who is the first politician ou ever met? >> i think i actually shook hands with spiro agnew in high school once. but the first politician i knew was bennett johnson. i worked on the senate race. he had just come off the governor's race and was running for the u.s. senate. i started working on his

campaign. he actually was the first one. although there was a director of public safety that went to jail. he was in my father's sunday school class. i guess he would be the first. >> did that have an impact on you that he went to jail? >> oh, no, it was many, many, many years later. i used to come from sunday school, my father's class, and hey had doughnuts. "no good, charlie." >> the reason i asked about politicians, i have a letter written back in 2006. i want to read that and then ask you again, when did charlie cook become charlie cook? "the greeks had oro and delphi. washington has charlie cook. please tell us how many seats we will pick up?"

when did you become known that, well, if charlie says it, it is ok. >> i started my newsletter in 1984. i had a half dozen jobs out of college. i had no idea where i was going with it. but when i looked back, every single job was good preparation for, you know, doing what i'm doing now, as editor of the newsletter. it is almost as if it were very carefully planned. >> tell us what those jobs were. >> well, while i was in college, the first paid job i ever had in elevator as as an operate nor in the u.s. senate, the second semester of my freshman year in college, which is basically giving tourists, you know, where they are asking for directions and stuff. then two years as an intern in senator johnson's office, and

then i interned for a year at the snorl campaign committee. then when i got out of college, i went to work there for a couple years. then it was sort of a presidential campaign, a house ace, a polling firm. i worked for business political action committee downtown sort of watching races. back to the hill with the senate democratic policy committee. but by that time i found myself voting for republicans almost half the time. i wasn't becoming a republican, i was becoming a swing voter. i liked politics, and i thought i was pretty good at it, but i didn't feel comfortable working for either side anymore. i started thinking, well, how can i make a living doing this? there were several political newsletters out there, and they were all pretty good, but i had an idea of a different niche. so i took my $6,000 out of the fund, and my father co-signed a loan. so with $16,000, i started a

business. we were living pretty much off my wife's salary, and lucy was a real trooper. bhu in those early -- but in those early, early days -- and cnn was sort of in its infancy at that point. my good friend and competitor, roffenberg would say the same thing. taking young guys, giving exposure and experience on tv. huge, huge, huge boosts for my areer. >> we have some footage of you. >> what you see in north carolina and virginia, there are two republican parties. there is the traditional, sort of main street, business-orpted, some democrats would say country club, but that's really not fair. there is that group of republicans. then you have a second group of

reynolds that are really former democrats that are more conservative than the other republicans go. that is sort of the wing in north carolina and there is a similar wing in virginia. simes i think that the far right actually look upon more moderate prince worse than they look upon democrats. so it is a real mess. >> what turned this sutch upside down back then? >> actually, i was listening to that, and that's a fight that we have going on today, between the old republican establishment and hen we called them jesse helms conservatives, and now you could say tea party or whatever. it was interesting watching that and thinking, wow, maybe other than 100 pounds and different glasses, not much has changed since that clip. >> what did you decide with that 16,000 dollars you were going to do, and when did you determine

you had something unique? >> well, my job was to write memos about races. analyze what's going on, what are the key dynamics, who is going to win. i basically decided to come up with the equivalent of a memo. then i got a list of all the top lop lobbyists and political action committees in washington and started mailing it out to them for free for a couple issues. and then sent them a solicitation. nd, you know, it started gradually -- when i say "gradually," i mean, six or seven years. 1992 or 1993 is when it started turning the corner. >> what were you selling the cook original book for? >> originally it was 100 and then 195, and then we were at 2.95 for almost 20 years, and we finally raised it to $3.50

almost a year ago. >> what does someone get for $3.50? >> in the old days it was stapled in the upper left-hand corner. i guess the original issues were probably 20 pages long, printed. eventually we got to a point where some went over 200 pages. and the problem with analysis ratings of all house races, each of the senate races, and write-ups on every competitive house race and senate race, but got over a couple hundred pages at one point. which, at the time it was researched, republican, edited, printed, delivers -- delivered, was starting to get obsolete. so when the internet came along, originally i kind of wished it would go away, i didn't like it. but eventually i think we switched in -- i think in 2008

we switched to all online. so we have all of our ratings. we have all my columns columns, and you know, a decent amount of stuff. and that's what most people are interested in, to be honest. behind the pay wall is the narrative and analysis of individual races. that's pretty much -- lobbyists, political junkies, managers, that sort of thing. probably have to really get into the weeds, though, to get into that. >> if someone was going to start one of these today, and i know there are a lot of other ones around, what did you learn about what you had to do in order to make a difference in the analysis? con convenience the players, the campaign committees on both sides, that i was going to play it straight. i remember the national director

of the national sentorle -- snorl committee, the executive director was a fellow by the name of mitch daniels. he had been lugar's chief of staff. i made an appointment. i went over to see him. i said, you know, if this is just some kind of a democratic tip sheet, it's not going to stay in business very long. if you give me a chance, i'm going to show you that i play it straight. he instructed the staff to be cooperative. as long as he's playing it straight objectively, be cooperative. and i did the same thing with the campaign director at the nrcc, republican congressional committee, and early on some of the bigger problems i had was democrats thinking i was bending over backwards and being tilted against them. but early on it was sort of demonstrating that even though i had had a partisan past, we were

going to play it absolutely objectively. i know if i go for a couple years and one side is really happy with me -- what you want is sort of for each side to be mildly annoyed but not absolutely going crazy. and if you are walking that line, you know you are sort of roughly in the right place. >> i know you had a lot of successes, but for talking purposes, what's the biggest mistake you ever made. >> oh, lord. how about the most recent one. i thought up until about the first week of december of 2007 guy would oung obama give hillary clinton a real race

for the nomination but there was no way he was going to win it. and starting sort of december -- a couple weeks before the iowa caucus, i started thinking -- seeing it and saying, wow, this -- what hillary clinton needs to happen isn't happening. and sort of over that iowa caucus over the next couple weeks, i made a real sort of transition in thinking. but i remember being on a phone call with somebody and said, you know what? i now think there's a decent chance she's not going to be the nominee. i was verbalizing something that i hadn't really thought of. so that was sort of the big recent thing. oh, rush holt who recently lost a democratic primary for the u.s. senate in new jersey and is a house member. left only two physicists in the house. every time i see him, he says,

you missed my race. you said i was going to lose. you know, there are all kinds of little ones like that. i'm sure if i thought about it, i would come up with some others. >> what are the milestones in the last 30 years when things shifted. for instance, when did you start working for a television network? >> actually, the first network, stu and i did c-span for the 1986 election night and did some consulting for cbs for the next come and did cnn. we were on "inside politics." judy woodruff's show. rothberg and i were -- rothenberg and i were on several times. "meet the press" i think i have done seven or eight or 10 times. that was terrific. and right after tim died or a couple months after, they did a "meet the press" from iowa and

brokaw was moderating it. that was sort of, kind of, bitter sweet. it was fascinating to do it with tom brokaw but to do it for the first time without tim was kind of weird. but in my business, doing "meet credentialed d of one. stu and i did "this week." if i were to look back and say other thing i am most proud of, to me, what i can bring to the table is after having watched this a long time, i think i'm ok at picking trends real early. sensing we could start over the summer just this gut feeling that something weird was going on. democrats had had a majority in the house for 40 years.

there was a growing sense -- all the way up to election day it was never clear whether republicans would hit the 40 seats they needed to get a majority, but the odds were getting higher, a little higher, a little higher, and then lo and behold, they picked up seats. we picked that up earlier, i think, than just about anybody else. in 2010 when it looked like democrats were going to lose it there, six and 10, so spotting patterns early. that i at's something really like doing. >> what do you think of mark lebowitz' book "this town" that's been on the best seller's weeks now.couple

y haven't had a clans to read that yet. . wish you hadn't asked that > and he says he's become a -- >> i think washington is a rribly insular, incestuous self-absorbed place. absolutely true. things in a couple the bangkok that were true.

memorial service for tim russert. i almost stopped going to correspondence dinners. i think there were a lot of things he was absolutely right on. but having said that, it was pretty much snark from beginning to the end. i think some places maybe in were true. ste. memorial service for tim russert. i almost stopped going to correspondence dinners. i think there were a lot of things he was absolutely right on. there were individual things i thought were ok, but i didn't enjoy it. i think fundamentally he was right. >> do you think if people read it they are getting a pretty ood picture what goes on here? >> i would hope that anybody that reads it, it's not the only hing they are going to read. >> i don't know if there is anything in the book that isn't true, but something can be true but not the whole truth.

he barbecued some people, and some people deserved it, but it was sort of trying to make everybody look bad. and i think some of these people are very well intentioned hard working people and didn't necessarily deserve this. >> here you are at the omni in atlanta in a 1988 democratic convention talking to a bunch of close-up kids, and you predicted a few things. let's see how you did. >> the question is, i think for any group you used to say that a catholic could never be elected president. we used to say a divorced candidate could never -- so each of these barriers, they fall one by one in their own little sequence. i think that probably we will see a woman president first of the next groups. but i think we will see a black or hispanic president within the next 20 years. part of the problem is you have to think of it like a pipeline where, you know, how many women

have started the process of school board, state legislature, worked their way up to congress to all the way up to the place where you pick your running mates, which is generally speaking, the united states senate, its governor, occasionly the house of representatives. >> 25025 years ago you picked a woman to be president -- >> before an african-american. yep. [laughter] >> what changed that allowed this to happen. i don't mean "allowed" but after all these years of only having a hite male? >> i think watching that race between hillary clinton and barack obama, obama had just won the iowa caucus. i flew home, and all her kids were home from school.

people were bar acknowledging me with questions about barack obama. i thauth thought that's great. i don't care who they are interested in, but i'm glad they are interested in politics. i asked my daughter the next day. does it matter to you that we've never had a woman president? we've never even had a woman nominee. clearly it meant nothing to her. that's when it dawned on me that there is nothing my daughter ever wanted to do that she couldn't do because she was a woman and that she did not consider herself to be part of a discriminated class. and the fact that we'd never had a woman president or nominee, it seemed almost coincidental to her. but electing the first african-american, that was change. that was really something.

and when i realized that, that nominating a woman wasn't enough change for where the democratic and maybe the country was at that point, it was like, wow, this is something different from hat i thought. a larger thing is, i like to watch data, but anecdotal evidence sometimes helps you understand. >> how many kids do you have? >> three. rebecca is 27. she's a genetic counselor at the cleveland clinic. david is 24, he's a specialist in the u.s. army, 82nd air borne, and our youngest, jeffrey, is going into his second year at elon university. 20. >> and how long will you keep this going? how big is the staff? >> there are six of us. jennifer duffy, our senate editor has worked with me with

one brief interruption since 1988. david wasserman, our house editor has been with me for six or seven years now. recently amy walter came back. she's our national editor, and to us from abc news and the hotline. then we have two young people on board. lauren fulton runs the web site. ashton barry runs everything else. there is so much younger -- i turn 60 later this year. there is so much younger talent in the place that i can see this thing going on, you know, even after i start slowing down. i think i have to go full tilt through one more mings election, and then soort of, you know, kind of gradually downshift a little bit for a while longer. >> what has happened to your interest in politics since you started all this?

>> i still like politics a lot. but i have to tell you, by the time i get to december of an election year -- heck, by the time i get to december of an odd-numbered year, i'm kind of here. i have to go into a month or so where, you know, where i try not to think about it at all. but a lot of what is said about . shington, it is true -- my friend wrote kind of an indictment. they tend to blame republicans for a high percentage of the problems while i tend to think it was, you know, 50-50 more give or take of the problems that have happened over the last

30 years or so that have changed it from a washington that was -- that existed when i came in 1972 to where it is now. i can point fingers at both sides. >> we kind of get the blame. i do want to ask you, i don't care what the answer is, how much has television changed thing.

>> i remember arguing with c-span that it would ruin things and it would cause show boating. to a certain extent that has happened, but if i were to rank water all the things that have ,ade washington as bad as it is c-span would be number 288. there has been a little bit of showboating. but you trade off with the transparancy and the understanding of the process. i think clearly c-span is a winner. yeah, there has been some showboating, but there has also been a lot more understanding of how the place works. would people be as cynical about politics today if c-span never existed? yeah, i think so, actually. >> well, then, what's number one?

>> if i were to point to one single event when i was doing my newsletter, 1984, and there was a house race in your home state, mcclossski -- it was almost like florida presidential 232000. god only knows who really won that race. it went back and forth. the secretary of state said this and the local election board said this and this and this. what they should have done is what they actually did in a new hampshire senate race earlier, saying, the heck with it, we're going to re-run the race. but they didn't do that. tip o'neil was the speaker of the house then. under the constitution the house is the final judge of its members, and finally the house said, to heck with it, we're

seating our guy. at that point republicans were in the minority for 30 years. they were pretty docile. they were sort of living off the crumbs that the democratic majority threw them. what sort of reseating frank mc klofsky, it so enraged house republicans, and even 134 some of the most mild mannered most moderate members -- nancy johnson from connecticut, for example, one of the more liberal republicans in the house, was incensed and started supporting newt gingrich and his rise to sort of take over the republican apparatus. and bob michael who had been leader for a good while and was sort of a get along, go along kind of guy. to me indiana 8 started the revolution in the house. the take-over of newt, going after jim wright. if you are going to say when did

the spiral in the house start, where i would put the general siss is indiana 8. then things became so partisan and bitter between the two sides, with plenty of blame on both sides, you started seeing a bunch of house members coming over to the senate. it was almost like a con tafment tageon coming over from one body into another body. it took a long time before the bitterness that was in the house senate. r to the now it is in the senate. now the rules in the senate are such that it is a much bigger problem in the senate than in the house where fundamentally it is just majority rules. >> when i came to down there was only one woman in the senate, margaret chase. now there are 20? >> yes. >> how did that happen? >> i think it was inevitable. >> it never hatched in --

happened in our history, but now in the last 30 years. >> well, as soon as you started getting more women elected at lower levels and middle levels and getting to the point where they had a realistic chance and they had a chance to raise the money, to build up the awareness, to have the credentials that you need. it sort of all started gradually happening. the truth is, it's happening slower than it ought to. but, you know, i think it was inevitable that it was going to appen. and i would say one of the problems that republicans have is that -- i think emily's list on the democratic party has done an enormous amount to encourage and bring along and raise money for women on the democratic side to move 0 up. to the extent that there are analogous groups on the republican side, they are not

neaferly -- not nearly as big, effective, influential and have enough money. i think there are other reasons why there aren't as many republican members in congress as democrats, but i think that's also a problem. if republicans -- if i were a republican woman executive of some big company, i would want to create some entity for business republican women to help people like us, you know, move up over there. because i think it is something that would be very healthy for the republican party. both parties have issues and things that aren't particularly healthy. >> one of the things we've had come along in the last 35 years, we have had lots of interviews. here's jerry sibe interviewing you back in 2010,etting you to predict what's going to happen

to the g.o.p. >> i think it is more likely than not that the house is going to tip over and go republican. we are sort of seeing 35 to 45-seat gains for republicans. they need 39 seats. frankly, i think we are being very conservative with that. i think the odds of it being higher than that range a lot better than lower. in the senate, we now see the number of seats. there are enough seats for the republicans to pick up a majority in the senate. but they have a -- but they have to really run the table. i think they are going to end up coming up short. there are 18 democrat or republican seats that could change hands. republicans would have to win 16-18 to score a 10-seat net gain. >> you were careful, but the ouse didn't pick six, they picked up eight. and you predicted between six

and eight. where do you get your information? >> my staff is meeting with hundreds of keats each election cycle and spending -- hundreds of candidates each election cycle and spending hundreds of hours with thesm. then you come back and with the experience of having watched these elections before and notice patterns and similarities ith certain years. you know, tip o'neil is famous for the adage "all politics is local." but i remember, i wasn't working there anymore, my wife was, but being at the democratic sentorle

-- senatorial committee in 1980, and democrats lost what, 12 senate seats? and watching birch bye at 6:30, because in indiana the polls close first, and basically watching a senate seat tip over om -- every half-hour from 6:00 p.m. to midnight, when you see something like that, all politics is not local. to me it is like, all politics is local except when it's ton not -- except when it is not. there are these occasions when we have this wave elections where it is like an invisible hand pulling down the candidates from one side and putting them on for the other. >> what are wave elections in your mind? >> 79 hurt republicans a lot.

1980 was one. a little bitty one was 1982. president reagan's first bid term election. 990 was a big one, gingrich. then 2010, 2011. . at was weird in those you can -- people that probably shouldn't win do win. and people that probably should have lost, some of them win depending on which side they are on. it is where, you know, in the al big wave elections, you will have candidates that didn't et a dime from their party's national campaign committee win. their own side didn't even think they were going to win. that's what you have when you have these big, big tidal waves.

i think our country is voting more parliamentary than it used to. >> in the house, how many seats are absolute givens at this stage in the game? >> we only have 25 or 26 competitive races at this moment. but kind of broaden that out. i would say we have a very, very, very, very good idea who is going to win. 360, 370 out of 435. and a pretty good idea for 400 out of 435. >> i got on your web site and found that jose shirano -- in the last election barack obama got 95% of the vote and the other side got 3%. it is the biggest swing in the whole country. the republicans don't have anything like that. he's the bronx by the way. >> and i recall at one point jack fields had the most. >> texas. >> yeah.

i don't know who has that now. but the thing about it is, republican votes are more efficiently allocated than democrat votes. where democrats roll up the score -- and it doesn't matter if you are talking about the presidency, the house, or whatever did he -- they roll up the score -- well, let's take presidentially. california and new york. you don't get bonus electoral votes for winning big. you get these votes. texas is the only enormously populated state that republicans can count on, and it is sort of 2024, it isme 2020, not going to be a blue state, but it will be a purple swing state and that's going to change the college math. >> i got on your web site and i wrote down a couple races. these are all african-americans. their difference is enormous. barbara lee's district in

california. 88 for obama, 9 for romney. janis hawn 89 for obama, 13. fredericka wilson 88-12. charlie rang l 95-5. what do you think of the facts that these districts are so one-sided and how does that happen? >> well, there are several different reasons. some innocent and some not so innocent. on the innocent side is, some of it simply reflects population trends of who lives where, what kind of density, and what's adjacent to it. so you can go to places in new york city and los angeles, some of these places where you've got an enormous number of minority voters -- let's just say african-american voters in an area -- and it is enough for

several congressional districts. and it sort of is what it is. sure, you can probably design one to dilute it if you wanted to, but you would have to go out of your way to do it. so there's that. then on the other side, there s a transition if the, and i think it was the 1991 redistricting, where republicans became somewhat more enlightened about the minority districts. and they started realizing that the more very, very heavily african-american or hispanic districts there were, the wider, therefore more republican more conservative, all the other ones were. and there is a really horrible racist term called "bleaching." by creating a lot of heavily minority districts you are bleaching out the adjacent districts. so you start seeing lots of legislators and governors who had kind of -- some had not been

terribly happy with the idea of minority districts saying, hey, this is actually good for us. obviously the minority community wanted to maximize the number of minority members they could get elected. and the members -- everybody wants a safe seat. so it was sort of the con a fewnce -- confulence of things. texas, georgia you see republican legislators and governors doing everything they can to create, you know, as many minority districts as they can, and then in other cases, it is just a factor of who lives where. >> i don't have the full quote here. "few political analysts have a longer track record" and then later on it says "he's rarely had reason to be disappointed with their results." and that's a guy named nate silver. >> yeah. >> what do you think of nate

silver? he's just gone to espn. >> yes. >> is he in your business? >> no. i've only met him once. we were on a panel together years ago. he's a very, very bright guy. and he has a statistic cal tool kit that i could only dream about. think he's intellectually honest. i could probably guess where his politics are, but he's very rigorous in his analysis. so i think he's very good. what he does is kind of like -- let me use a "money ball" example. people ask me, was there a need r a charlie cook or a stu rothenberg to do races when we have a nate silver. and the analogy i draw is, there's not a team in major league baseball that does not employ more than one statistician.

that is incredibly important in any sport, and particularly baseball. at the same time there is not a single major league baseball team that's fired all their scouts. if people have watched the movie "money ball" or read the book -- >> about the oakland athletics? >> yes. where there is the old fashioned gut instinct, there is that, or what i would call the art, or there is the statistic side on the other side, what i would calm the science. and just as no baseball team has statisticallytely oriented, i think it is sort of marrying them together. one of the thing -- nate spends four or five minutes in a book where he spends a day following vid wasserman around and sat

anonymously through an interview with a house candidate. even a guy as numbers oriented as nate is appreciated that meeting with candidates and -- there's a real value in the qualitative information in addition to the quantitative information. >> we have a clip here. >> we're looking at a probable democratic net gain between zero and 10 seats in the house. there is a lot that is going to be turning over compared to the last non-wave year we had where we had 32 competitive races. this year we have between 50 and 55 races that are genuinely competitive. we have 62 house seats with no one on the ballot, which is a record. so there will be a lot of freshmen in the house, just not a whole lot of partisan change. >> now, that was 2012 in the house. how did they do? >> fabulously well.

i tell you, when amy told me she was going to the hotline to replace chuck todd as editor of "the hotline" i offered david wassermanned job before there were four people that knew there was an opening. had he been a student of larry sabateau's, and i saw that kid mack hought, holy relevant -- makarel, this kid is brilliant. >> amy is back with you. what's her job now? >> national editor. she's basically providing big picture content. kind of like what i do. all my columns on our web site -- it is delay of 96 hours, -- 36 hours, but they are on national journal first, but we wanted something frankly in a fresh different voice. >> for those who haven't

walters whoe is amy works with you. >> this is a great race. rogers has a great story. he comes across well on tv. also a great candidate. she's followed in debbie sabinaw's footsteps for years up the political ladder. ll the polls i watch show this race in a dead heat. > that's a very young amy in 2000. >> yes. amy is great. ed for glen t host ivel on "washington weekly." we're very excited to have her back. >> a little down on the first page, he says "the mid-term

elections are two weeks away. but the powerful cannot wait that long to learn of the outcome. and they call in cook who for a e of $5,000 to $0,000 -- $20,000 gives his audience an early return. that's in 2006. first, leading authorities, one of your bookers, has this video on their web site of you. >> a legacy. >> and this is where i kind of get fairly critical of the romney campaign, because i think they have made a major, major strategic decision. they sort of -- remember, romney kind of won the republican nomination very tactically. he basically raised more money than his opponents. he out-organized them, out maneuvered them, and let's face it, in some cases, we're talking migits.group of

i mean, this was not an impressive group of people. they came out with this over confidence. the thing about it is, they have never told his story. >> migits? >> well, there was a certain -- i how element to the think that's one of the reasons republican leaders now are not so public about having so many debates. >> i bet in 1984 you couldn't get $5,000 to $20 thousand to make shows speeches. >> sure. >> when did that start? >> in four or five years i got $5 huven hundred or maybe $1,000. as you get better known and more widely recognized. and to be honest, one of the biggest boosts for i'll say rothenberg and me was the ban on members. for congress

when congress banned honoraria it was a big boost for other people to go and speak to trade ocean or corporate offices or meetings or labor unions or other groups. >> people see you in public all the time, you are on this network a ton, you are on other networks, what would we see you doing when you are shoving that information into your brain? where are you? how long do you spend doing it? what is your best source of information? >> well, what i think people are looking for is someone to cut through the clutter and explain to them -- >> but what i mean by this question is, where do you do your work that we don't see? how long do you spend doing it? >> i spend a lot of time going hrough polling data. ou know, every time a woast -- "washington post/abc news poll"

comes out, i'm going through the cross-tabs. i'm looking for original data. i spend a lot of time talking to pollsters. tell me -- i don't need to run the numbers. but tell me what you are seeing. so i am trying to do that. >> well, you know, american people are often cynical about polls. >> they can be or not, but i think i am a pretty good reader of polls. > you did a whole column recently on gallup, and they had a bad year, and i think you were surprised that they were mea culpa? >> the thing that is instrumental in getting out of the weeds, the gallup voters were actually one point off. they developed a likely voter model based on seven or eight questions that historically had worked very well for predicting who was going to vote and this

time it just sort of didn't. at the same time there were a lot of very, very talented republican pollsters who have a history of being right a whole lot, and suddenly they were wrong. what we started seeing -- what i was doing during the three months leading up to the presidential race was e-mailing back and forth for some of the top republican and democratic pollsters from either side and saying, ok, what are you seeing at this date? this date? this date? and i started seeing this huge great difference between what democratic pole centers -- pollsters were seeing and republican pollsters. and i'm not talking about the cheerleaders that think everybody is going to win, i'm talking about the pretty cold-blooded people. republican pollsters looked back at the 2008 election and said,

this was the first african-american nominee for the presidency and it created turnout dynamics among african-americans, other minority voters, young people. it was a one-time event, and that 2012, the turn-out will be closer to "normal." and democratic pollsters were just as adamant, no, the country has changed and this is a new normal. so each one was sort of weighting their numbers and making certain assumptions as they were polling on what proportions of young people, african-americans, latinos, and this and that -- they were using different assumptions and coming up with wildly different numbers. but to me, i was watching this thing and seeing, you know, if you think what was the high water -- to me the mistake i was alluding to in that clip earlier

was that the romney campaign never defined them. they never told a story. to me, you do buy graphic cal testimonial ads to, a, build your candidate up, but also to provide a tephlon coating, to protect your candidate from the attacks that you know will come. the romney campaign, their feeling was any day or dollar they spent talking about anything other than obama and the economy was a wasted day. it was just going to be a referendum up or down on the economy and that romney had almost nothing to do with it, which i think was a horribly flawed view of the race. so the obama campaign took around $60 million that they had budgeted for tv and put it into june, july, and august into dvertising in eight states and they just beat romney's brains in with the bain capital ads,

beat him to death, so that romney's numbers were upside down by the end of the summer. but in those eight key states, it was horrific for romney. >> a good example of how television ads work. >> then you say, what was the best moment of the campaign for mit romney, that first debate, where he clearly beat the heck out of president obama. right after that debate romney was effectively ahead in one swing state, north carolina. basically even in florida and virginia and behind in every other swing state. the thing is, even on his best day, the electoral college vote was not even close. >> i cannot leave out jennifer duffy who at many times is another very important part of your six-person team. >> what's interesting about this cycle, we have two or three blue states, massachusetts,

connecticut that have fairly competitive senate races with more moderate republicans running. so the caller was actually asking, what was her incentive to vote, and i get this question a lot. and i say that voting assures your right to complain about who gets elected. if you don't vote, you don't let your voice be heard, then you really don't have much to complain about. >> what is her expertise? >> janet has been watching senate races since -- actually 1985 and 1986 she was the deputy director of the republican sefatorial committee. i found she was very good. very objective. probably more objective than she should have been in that job. when i had a chance to hire my first additional person, she was the first person i went to.

she has seen every senate race -- i mean, every state many, many, many times over. she just knows the rhythms, knows the players. >> does she go to states? >> we don't go to states. hat would take a horrific -- incredible budget. downstairs we were at johnny's half-shell talking b on background about their race. she has done this so many times. >> i want to show what you do when you don't quite want to say what you know. this is a short time ago in july of this year. >> sometimes they have gotten either conservative or foo liberal or too moderate and i'd logically out of sync with their state. sometimes they might have scandals or something like that. i can't really find any of those with mike enzie. it would be hundred charitable

to say that this is just about personal ambition. [laughter] and my mind is open to be persuaded that that's not the ase. >> all right. what are you talking about? >> well, we're talking about vice president cheney's daughter running against mike enzie in wyoming. you know, maybe it is having been in town for 41 years. i hate to kick people. and i really don't like to be unfair. you know, i don't want to cast doubts on people's motives. but sometimes, you know, you have to kind of work very hard not to do that.

because it sure looks like something. actually, talking about some of the fun things, it was 2006, and it looked like democrats were going to take back over the house. it was looking pretty bad for republicans. and vice president cheney's office called and wanted to know if rothenberg and i could have breakfast with him. so we went over to the vice president's residence and had breakfast with him. i had met him before. first of all, it was unbelievable how much he knew about -- he had been to so many of these districts over the years as one of the republican leaders in the house, this and that. basically he was sort of asking us how bad is this? nd we were saying, yep, it's pretty bad. but that's kind of fun when you get to do that or talked to the various caucusses on both sides and you get a glimpse on the

inside players. >> two quick questions. your wife's name? >> lucy. >> you met her where? >> i met her working at the democratic senatorial committee. >> if you told lucy you were going to go to new hampshire on vacation, what would her reaction be? >> she went. >> she did? >> oh, i thought you knew this. >> no. >> we went up in 1995, the family vacation. e went to new hampshire. e said -- why don't we go up to new england, we can drive up the coast of maine, and i said, yeah, then we can drive back down to new hampshire. so the cook family vacation, we ave also done iowa before. so our kids say they don't like actually knowthey

more than they think. >> what is your favorite aairport? >> my least favorite airport is atlanta. gosh, i don't know. >> you've been in all of them. >> oh, shoot, i don't know. >> of all the politicians you have seen in your lifetime, which one is the biggest -- i don't want to say in your favor, but had the biggest impact on you? >> well, i never personally met president reagan. but just bill clinton was a hell of a politician. just the skills. the raw skill that that guy had was pretty amazing. and i'm sure, had i had any personal experience with president reagan i would probably feel the very same way. but you know, when you see people that are single-a, double-a, triple-a ball players and then you see someone that is not only major league but hall of fame, whether you agree with them or not or whatever, you

just say "wow." >> charlie cook, we are over time. charlie cook, "cook political reports." >> thank you. >> thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captions performed by national captioning institute] >> on the next washington journal, jeremy mayer will discuss the war powers act.