israel. speakers include national security advisor susan rice, house speaker john boehner, house majority leader elect ron dermer.hy, and you can watch that live at 2:30 p.m. eastern on c-span3. add makers, pollsters, and reporters discuss the political climate ahead of the midterm elections this fall in the implications for the 2016 election cycle. posted by politico, this is an hour and a half. >> good afternoon and thank you for coming. congratulations to steve and new, who have started a service from zero.

when we call people and say, since you are getting all of the, do you want to see governor's races or the senate races? are you getting too much? and they say, no, i want it all. good coverage. i really appreciated. welcome to all of you. we appreciate you being here. if you will send us a question i will get it here on my twitter machine and if it is a good what a treat we have with the people on this stage this morning. i went into jim's office, and i said i think we might have the best politico event ever because we have visual aids, and the people who created them. so some of the hottest commercials of this cycle so far we're going to see, and we're lucky enough to have on stage the people who made them. start with mark putnam who's worked on four presidential campaigns and right now has three of the hottest senate races, mark getting itch in --

bell itch in alaska -- begich in ag, mary landrieu and allison grimes. ashley o'connor, founding partner at burning glass consulting, congratulations. she just won the thad cochran primary. i'm here everyone in this room accurately predicted the outcome of that runoff. [laughter] and she now is doing his general, and she also is doing asa hutchinson, republican for governor in arkansas. arkansas, such a republican -- such a political hot spot right now. and todd harris who couldn't think of a name for his new firm, so he called it something else strategies. is there ever going to be another name, or is that it? >> no, that's it. [laughter] we had to pay five grand to buy somethingelse.com. [laughter] >> you're stuck with it. mark does mike owe and is five

for five -- marco rubio and is five for five in statewide republican primaries this year. first of all, ashley o'connor, while we were standing back there, you told us the best thing about the romney campaign. she worked at romney hq, what was the best thing about the romney campaign? >> the food. the north end of boston, we had a great location and, of course, our candidate, mitt romney. [laughter] >> so in just two seconds we're going to take a look at an ad called squeal. this is for jodi ernst, the republican senate candidate in iowa. todd harris, who wrote this ad, had the idea for it. it's called squeal, but what is it really called? [laughter] >> well, we call it squeal. most people outside the campaign will call it the castration ad. [laughter] >> so let's take a look. >> i'm joni ernst. i grew up castrating hogs on an iowa farm, so when i get to

washington, i'll know how to cut pork. >> mother, soldier, conservative. >> my parents taught us to live within our means. it's time to force washington to do the same. to cut wasteful spending, repeal obamacare and balance the budget. i'm joni ernst, and i approved this message because washington's full of big spenders. let's make 'em squeal. [laughter] >> todd, you wrote that, what was the germ of that idea? >> well, that's what came about, this was about a year ago i was in iowa meeting with joni and one other consultant, and we were actually working on a stump speech for her, and so i had said so tell me about how you grew up. and she said, well, it was, you know, it was very normal, you know? for in iowa, i grew upping food

and --canning food, walking beans finish i'm from california, have no idea what that means -- we'd feed the hogs, castrate the hogs, and she just kept going. wait, what? [laughter] she said, yeah, we'd castrate the hogs. and so i just made a little note of that, and then we came back to it, i think, probably the next day. and we came up with the line about cutting pork, but it was originally an idea to use a sort of a one-liner in a speech. we had a debate coming up, and so we thought, all right, let's use this in the debate and see, see if it works, and it did. and so i just filed it away until it was time to make some tv. >> okay. republican senate candidate, mark butt -- putnam, why is that

effective? >> because it captures the spirit, the personality of the candidate. and when you ask me what republican ads, you know, really stuck out to me, that was the ad that i mentioned to you because it, i think, first off, i think it's the reason why she's the nominee. i think that's such a memorable metaphor, such a -- she comes off really well in the ad, she's likable. >> there were a bunch of unknown candidates, right? how many? >> there were six candidates including -- >> so that's why this was -- >> including one is a self-funder, and that was not us. we had no money. >> and, ashley o'connor, what does the effectiveness of this ad tell us right now about what's moving political consumers or what's working this cycle? >> well, i think mark touched on a good point. i mean, you really have to capture something real. i think that there are so many political ads out there that voters can really sniff out if you're not being authentic. and be i think that's one of the

things that's incredibly important right now, is just good, old-fashioned authenticity. >> where ashley and i were -- actually, all three of us were joking before we came out here because we've all had climates who see a spot that we've made maybe for one client, so i've had other clients say, like, how come i don't have a spot like squeal with 600,000 views on youtube? [laughter] >> you should send a review and -- >> i said, fine. if you grew up castrating hogs and doesn't tell me, like -- [laughter] you know, then we'll make a spot like that. but the authenticity piece so critical, and i do think it comes through in that spot as real. >> all right. the second ad that we're going to look at is called father/son. this was a commercial for a democratic candidate for congress who lost his primary so is no longer in congress,

candidate carl shortino in massachusetts, he is -- go ahead. >> and he's proud of it. >> dad's in the tea party. >> damn right. [laughter] it was bad enough to take on the big banks and corporations in the legislature. >> they weren't paying their fair share in taxes. >> and he wrote the buffer zone law. >> to protect women entering abortion clinics from harassment. >> it's gone all the way to the supreme court. i was kind of proud of that. >> but here's the one that drives him crazy. >> he wants to go to congress and take on the nra and the tea party. >> and i want to take on the gun rights. equal pay for women and equal rights or, well, everybody. >> he's been like this for 35 years. >> that's why i approved this message. and i still love you, dad. >> me too, son. >> okay.

this candidate who's a gay man living with aids, the set-up was that he's coming out as a liberal democrat. todd harris, you saw this ad, and you sent an e-mail to the nrcc, and it said what? [laughter] >> when this spot came out, i e-mailed several people at the nrcc, and i said who -- does anyone know who the media consultant on this campaign is? and someone wrote back and said, yeah, it's mark putnam, and i wrote back, i said i hope i never go up against this guy. [laughter] i love that ad. >> so here you are a consultant -- [laughter] >> mark, this has raised a huge amount of money. tell us how it came about and the effect of it. >> what todd was saying about really getting to know your candidate. e spent time with carl, learned that his father was in the tea party, he was a dues-paying member wherever you pay due toss the tea party, and was something

that carl would occasionally talk about on the stump but not all that often. we in the campaign all just thought this was a great piece of his message, the idea -- and you missed the beginning of the ad, but he says i'll never forget that day when i had to tell my dad, and the father says, wait for this. that is their relationship. he's a massachusetts liberal. so message wise, you know, which is really the most important thing, you have to capture the candidate's personality, but it has to be driven by a strategy. and message wise we needed to prove that carl was the most progressive candidate in the race in a democratic primary in massachusetts. and so we did not shy away from massachusetts liberal. we just wanted to figure out a way i to really make that interesting to people and have them watch the ad. now, the challenge we faced was we had very, very little money. carl budget able to, you know -- wasn't able to reach his fundraising goals for a variety of reasons. there were a lot of other candidates in the race who had larger shares of the district, so i went into this thinking i was going to write --

>> by the way, the ed markey district. i should have said that. >> waited to make two ads originally for cable. but the idea came into my head of this conversation back and forth, i realized i couldn't do it justice in 30 seconds, so i made an executive decision we're going to do a 60-second ad and put all of our chips behind that ad. and we went on cable initially, very, very small buy. we got a lot of call on msnbc, and the money started coming in, a lot of money we should have already been raising, and we raised about $200,000 in a week, so -- >> i was struck, i remember the very first time i watched it and then just i watched it again yesterday, and i was struck again by the same thing that struck me the first time, they're both so likable in it. there is so much message in it, and at the very end it's clear that they love each other which, you know, so it takes all of

this, there's all the political messaging side, but it ends in a really heart warming way, and they pulled it off, you know? a lot of dads wouldn't, couldn't pull that off. >> ashley o'connor, these two ads address something that you told me is one of the biggest concerns of consultants right now, and that is the overcrowded airwaves. you have super pacs, ies, all advertising aggressively already. what do campaigns do about that? >> well, i think that these are two great examples. you know, creative is incredibly important. you need something that's going to cut through, and both of these examples are crowded primaries. and so you find something that really cuts through. i also think that there are a couple other strategies of using surrogates to cut through or testimonials. we've seen a lot of testimonials in advertising this cycle so far. >> what's a good example of an

effective surrogate ad cycle? >> well, the chamber did one down in mississippi using brett favre, and i think monica -- [inaudible] testimonial opened her campaign was fantastic. and i think that that's probably one of the biggest challenges right now, is cutting through crowded airwaves. >> how much of a difference did the brett favre make in the runoff for senator cochran? >> made a very big difference, yeah. >> is that why you won? >> i think we won because of his record. i mean, there was a lot of time pointing out just how conservative thad is as a senator. >> all right. mark putnam, you got an article in the "new york times." this is a very harsh article, it's what we call tough but fair. the headline was political adman finds the personal in democratic hopefuls. it talked about your effective use this cycle of real people. and unless i'm misreading it, the subtext is that you're a little bit turning on its head

the assumption of us and a lot of you and only negative ads work. candidates hate them, they talk them down, but in the end they work, you're doing something different. >> well, again, i think it gets back to capturing what's unique about your candidate. and with all the super pacs and the ie advertising out there, the airwaves are filled with plenty of negative information about your opponent. and that's not to say a candidate still doesn't have a responsibility at times to point out what they disagree with in their opponent's record, but we have this unique thing in the race which is we can capture our candidate and why there are positive reasons to to vote for them. and those ads actually in this flurry of negative advertising do stick out. so one of the campaigns that that article talked about was mark begich in alaska. he has a unique story to tell. starts with his father and his history and legacy of public service and also his own sort of doggedness at getting things done for alaska. those were stories that we could tell using senator begich and

having him really tell his own story. no ad maker behind the scenes making things up, it's really him. and those types of ads do stick out, you know? yes, the negative advertising and comparative advertising by other groups does have an influence on the race, you can't argue that it doesn't. but i think it elevates the importance of the positive advertising because that's really the only chance that voters get to hear from their incumbent or a challenger. >> mark putnam, one of the high wire acts you pulled off was president obama's election eve 30 be -- 30 minute commercial. seven networks, watched by 35 million people. and when i was reading this new york times article, as is often the case, the most interesting sentence is in the second to the last paragraph. i'm going to read it to you, and you're going to tell me what it means. it says democrats who have worked with him say he can be reluctant to give up on his concepts even if they don't test well. >> ad testing is not perfect.

[laughter] i mean, there have been examples where, you know, ads that, you know, do okay in testing end up catching fire. testing -- i respect testing. a lot of uses for it. but what people will tell you is that if i think i have a good idea, i'm going to push for it. in the end, it's always a team decision as to what a campaign's going to do or not do. ing with a consultant, you can't just rule the day. but i am dogged. if i have an idea i think will work, i'm going to give it a shot. >> so what's an example of something that tested wadly but worked well -- badly but worked well? >> there was some advertising a number of years back that we had done for john kerry in the presidential campaign. we worked on the dnc side of things, and there was some advertising that got a decent response, but then when we actually put it on the air, we saw numbers move. >> pull back the camera to talk about a concept or technique, is there something that you found

always works better on the air than in the lab? where your gut maybe is better than the data? >> that's the -- that's a good question. i think sometimes campaigns are a little bit reluctant to have their candidate talk straight to camera, you know in i actually think once you figure out -- i think the main thing is figuring out how a candidate is most successful to television. sometimes it's speaking to camera, sometimes it's narrating. there have been times when there are some concepts that candidates are a little bit -- a good example is governor richardson when he was running for president. there were a lot of people that questioned the series of ads where he was interviewing for the job for president. and they were funny, and he was self-depracating, and he lived at this unique intersection of really being greatly underestimated as a candidate, amazing resumé, and a great sense of humor. and so there were some in the

campaign that weren't so sure that he should be shown that way. but we put those ads on the air, and they tested okay. but we put them on the air, and in iowa and new hampshire we jumped up about 12, 14 points in two weeks' time. so we were on to something with that. now, in that race we had john edwards, hillary clinton, barack obama at the top, we had to break into the top three. history shows that was going to be very difficult to do. but we put him into the consideration set with a technique that people weren't 100% sure about in the campaign, but when we did it, it really worked. >> if i could just add to that, i know when we do ad testing, the stuff that always seems to underperform in the test is the softer stuff. it's some, maybe it's the candidate either straight to camera or interview style, and they're telling a compelling little story about growing up or their mom or their dad or whatever. and you show that in a focus

group, and the people say, well, where's the substance? i like to hear about policy. i always research everything, you know? and so then the whole group goes on this tangent about how, you know, there need -- there needs to be more facts and more meat in the spot because that's what focus groups do. but then you put the spot on television, you put it in the context of a crowded environment with a lot of clutter, and that's what cuts through. >> now, ashley, you were about to jump in. >> yeah, i would just say we had a similar experience in '04 with the wind surfing ad of john kerry. we caught some news tootage of he was -- footage of he was out wind surfing, and we set it to blue danube and through testing it was like, oh, yeah. it didn't poorly, but it didn't test off the charts. but i think it's that point that when you're in a crowded field, to put something up like that,

it really caught people's eye and, you know, they kind of got the message. >> that ad really was a game changer, and why was it so much more effective than you might have thought in the lab? than the data might have suggested? >> i think sometimes taking risks, to mark's point, you really have to trust your gut. and in focus be groups that people will be very critical of what they're watching -- >> so what was the reluctance about the wind surfing ad which can in retrospect seems like such a home run? >> no, i just think in focus groups you'd hear people sort of say, well, i don't know, i mean, it just didn't test off the charts. >> interesting. >> but it goes with the point of following your gut. we sort of thought this captures something here, and it's message driven which is, you know, the greatest point of all. >> ashley, something you did in '04 that got a lot of attention was the keynote video for the 2004 convention. it was called "the pitch." tell us why even networks picked up that up.

tell us why. >> "the pitch" was, it's the film that introduced the president in 2004 at the convention, and it was actually something that came together late in the game. we had put together a different convention film, and we thought, okay, that's great, you know? but what else? and we went, hmm. we sort of sat down and started thinking what can we really, what can we really tell about the president that people don't already know? and there's these amazing photographs from the white house, so we really just dove into that and took moments, you know? these sort of telling, pivotal points about his presidency and kind of what happened at 9/11 and interlacing real people through it. and i just think it was very, very personal and told, showed a side of the president that people had forgotten about. >> so my thanks to christine and the -- [inaudible] for making these clips possible. we have another set of clips that we're going to queue up

right now. ♪ >> we want to go in a different direction. we want to have an america that celebrates success, gets jobs for people who are hurting and that stops the war on coal now. >> it is a brand of coal, and that's who we need in washington, d.c.. >> mitch mcconnell does have the experience. >> senator mcconnell is our voice for coal. >> barack obama will be gone in three years, but coal will still be in the ground. we are going to have a future when we get past this administration. [applause] >> i'm mitch mcconnell, and i approved this message. >> and this is don disney from clover leaf, kentucky, and he has a question for senator mcconnell. >> senator, i'm a retired coal miner. i wanted to know how you could have voted to raise my head care costs $6,000 -- medicare costs $6,000. how are my wife and i supposed

to afford that? >> i don't think he's going to answer that. i approved this message because i work to strengthen medicare, not bankrupt seniors like don. >> mark putnam, i think that that ad was just called the question. i believe it's going to be one in a series. tell us, we'll give you the idea for what you're trying to do there. >> well, first off, she's celebrating regular kentucky people and giving them a voice and a platform that they would not ordinarily have. senator mcconnell is notorious for, first off, he's not campaigning much. it's hard to find him, hard to see him, hard to ask him a question, so this is giving regular people a chance to ask him a question. it is; obviously, delivering information that people need to know about his record, but without the usual harsh attack ad with the figger in somebody -- finger in somebody's face. ..

tell us about the fire truck that was behind us. us. >> we shot these in small towns in kentucky and we found that location. so it's really trying to capture a little piece of kentucky americana. >> pod here -- todd you told us that a piece of spending --

>> not that there was a spending ceiling but there was an effective ceiling. spending is going up year after year, but i do think that you reach a point of diminishing returns when you have outside groups after outside group throwing these pure post spots and it just means spots with a v.o. and editor uses the stock images. it is a stereotypical negative campaign ad. and i need these office in 2012 in the last two, three weeks we saw outside groups in the house and senate side from both parties literally just throwing money onto the airwaves with ads that if you had actually six months earlier kind of plot it

out the spot that we want to put, you know, a million dollars behind the last week of the race come of answer would be no. and if i do think that there is a limit to how effective the outside spending can be in the current context that it's in and one of the reasons mark alluded to before is the only people who control the candidates themselves is the campaign. we have the ability to take the candidate and put them to interview formats and put their kids in with their families and of this really matters in the statewide races. for congressional races if the bar to get to know actually who your member of congress is but people do want to have a sense

of who you are and most super packs have a hard time delivering that kind of information. >> we all have tivos or some version of them and try to speed through the best work. what are ad makers trying to do to counteract that? >> i think broadcast has always been the broadest reach in television and certainly they become more targeted at a more effective way to reach voters but it's interesting to watch the role of digital grow as well because we target both geographically and demographically through the advertising. and to me it is truly a combination of all and of course radio i think radio is also effective in different areas i think it is more about building an eco- chamber so that voters

can see you through to tv and cable if they are according through the commercials you know you are serving them through ads online and the radio and there is having that eco- chamber. >> now we are going to look at a final set of clips. >> i've seen a tv ad of a celebrity and it made my dad a little jealous. my dad gave me a good name. a lot of common sense. he said it don't spend what you don't have. stand on principle even if you have to stand alone if you have to eat you have to work. when you're done with politics give me a hand. i approved this message. >> are you a once a week christian? they say senator mark pryor is

saying he made a negative statement about his faith challenging him on that faith. i'm not ashamed to say that i believe in god and i believe in his word. the bible teaches us no one has all the answers, only god does. i'm mark pryor and i approved this message because this is who i am and what i believe. >> break this down and tell us what works and what doesn't work. what did you notice as you walked through the mechanics? >> i thought the father and son approach is an example of what works. you have seen a lot of ads over the years of the candidate and their parent and often times they are corny and forced into too much affection between the two and it doesn't feel real or there is tension between father and son. i did a series of ads with senator landrieu and her father and they are kind of riveting

each other. there is tension that is reflective of how a family really is. so i like that piece of it. the congressman comes off as likable site features him in a personality to get a sense of family and i think that works. i think the response from senator pryor's campaign is effective that when you don't want to go into is questioning somebody's faith. that is a third rail that can get you into a lot of trouble. that is something the campaign might regret. >> do you agree? >> it's probably accurate. >> we have a question on the flipsidflip side of what we havt been talking about that has ever been a political ad or is very well-known add not one of yours but one that is notorious in the profession that tested well but flopped?

like t -- [laughter] >> i'm not going to name any names but they put a bio spots featuring the candidate and the only thing on the air and the negatives went up. [laughter] did that candidate win or lose? >> the candidate won. they fire the media team. >> what other trend should people in the room we aware of either that you come up high in the air or that you picked up on? >> one of the things you and i talked about is reaching people in other ways than over the air tv.

>> while i think i touched on this earlier that seeing the political ads in every medium and how they are going to start to follow you around and that echo chamber in targeting so that they are constantly being exposed to the message so that is near the cycle. >> of ththe different platformsr meetings. >> you will have broadcast tv which is the most effective way to reach. and in cable if you can target a message with different voters and through online you have the banner and the targeting where they are now finding you and being delivered to you. i agree with all of that.

the digital side is in a lot of ways the wild west and its technology and the ability to target people in a lot of ways is outpacing the ability to measure it and so it seems like there's a new story about whether it is the thoughts that are jacking up the number of the views that the video has or that you are buying an online network and you think that you're going to be placed in a certain place and way and it turns out that what you bought was resold it to somebody else and by the time you get placed its not at all what you were getting and so you are making huge strides and the cycle was better than it was in

the last cycle but when we buy tv we have a really good sense of what it is that we are buying and how many people are seeing it. digital is still getting their. one sentence. you told me that another trend that you are seeing is earlier spending. you told me they come earlier and this is an important conce concept. the reason you are seeing more spending early on -- number one because there is so much spending now there's so much clutter being up earlier allows you to move numbers in a less competitive market so you can get lower rates, and the second is we are seeing this more and more, you know, there used to be a pretty even slope in terms of

your spending where you max out your television spending. but now the add event of the billions of dollars from those being spent by outside groups everyone has a pretty good sense of when the outside groups are going to be polling. they are going to be polling at the end of august and september. so it behooves you to be doing really, really well when those outside groups are taking the pole because that's when they will be deciding that they are going to invest in that race or not. and so, i know the campaigns that are kind of rolling the dice to get the numbers up ear early. >> last question. you are a marathoner. what is a running tape? >> i'm a swimmer. it's a long race usually and you

can't judge a race in any snapshot in time other than a horse race it really is a long campaign in the pot is right. you have to play an earlier game and still be there at the end. and every race is different. >> they want to thank you for being here and mark putnam, ashley and todd here us. my boss at politico and all of you for the interest in the campaign. thanks for a great conversation. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] thanks to mike allen and everyone for joining us. before we get started on stage, a quick reminder to everyone here. you can send questions at hash tag campaign pro. i have a great star-studded lineup of panelists here. we don't have visuals like you did the last one because they didn't make for good visuals. we mix the visuals and you will have to listen to us talk. i have two colleagues that are star reporters.

senior political reporters for politico. john is the founder and ceo of social sphere inc. at the harvard institute of politics and the doctor later he at the university of virginia center for politics and editor-in-chief of the crystal ball and also a columnist for politico magazine. it now befornow before we get sw many of you are addicted to politico? for how many of you is that your first read in the morning? the honest. and for how many is it your last read at night? and how many of you are politico readers? that's great. and you're happy with it? yes, no? good, good. well i can't tell you how to

respond and the interest at starting something from nothing to something that's really become a must read for a lo a lf people so thank you for your support. now, today's an important day for all of us here because today is the day of the release of the second politico poll that we did with john's firm and its gotten huge pickup around the country coming and we've been really excited about that. and i want to ask john to open up and ask first about how what's different about the pole and why we think or hope it stands out from others. >> thanks for having me. there are a couple of things that are different. i guess the first thing is it is a complete collaboration with frankly everyone on the panel between larry's coastal ball in terms of where the competitive districts and states are.

we also work very, very closely with your team to tell us what they are hearing on the trail but what makes i think it's most unique is most of the polls in the country do a fine job of measuring public opinion on what all of the adults think or likely voters in the midterm elections. four out of four are likely measured in one form or another. what this poll does is for three out of four people that are not going to participate in the competitive district or the house race while what we are doing is focusing on the people that are most likely to vote in the competitive districts only specially 25 to a third of all voters across the country their votes won't really matter in terms of shaping the short-term view in this country and that is what we are focused on. >> and we all sat down and did a

journalistic exercise where we said what could the headline possibilities before the pole even before we went into the field? can you talk about that process click the headline ended up being stay out of ukraine. we didn't really know that would be the headline. >> we didn't know we had a hunch when we started talking about doing the pole. it was clear that things were out of hand in iraq and syria. things were not as out of hand in ukraine as they are today but the trend lines were not great even a month ago and so it was clear that this was emerging as an area of vulnerability for the president and discomfort for the congressional democrats and within the republican party but we didn't really know what the voters thought about all of this. we knew that the president's approval rating on foreign policy was dropping but we didn't know what people would like to see him doing that he

wasn't already doing so we decided to go in and in addition to a couple of the questions we asked on the previous poll of the presidential approval and the horse race ballot with the congressional races and the president healthcare law we did this much more detail policy question about the foreign-policy and national security, so not just do you like what the president is doing generally speaking but should we be more involved in iraq and less involved as we are now and ask that any member of the sort of global hotspots some of which have gotten hotter since we went into the field. and i think that you might have guessed that the public is not overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the idea of the adventures at this point. i don't know that i would have guessed they were this enthusiastic about the engagement to the point that you have a big majority of republicans saying they support the plan to get everybody out of afghanistan across the age groups and geographically consistent saying what the rest of the world deal with its

problems. >> how might this be relative? the foreign-policy as we know doesn't always play. [laughter] who was it that said that? >> tip o'neill back in the day. it's an interesting tension in that we ask people how important is the foreign-policy or is it important in the terming the vote and you had nine of ten respondents say it was somewhat important or very important and many of those people are liars because they see that it's either somewhat or very important but then when you ask them what is the most important issue to you or what is the issue that comes to mind that is important to you and you can go down the list of jobs for economic growth, taxes, deficits from immigration before you get the foreign-policy described as the foreign policy is like 2%. if you add a foreign-policy

national security defense spending, terrorism, you get to 11%. so the gap between buying of ten people saying it is important and 11% of people saying that somewhere in that set of issues there is something that might be the top three or a come of it is a huge gap. so i think you looked a couple of states and congressional districts in particular where maybe the military bases or big populations. in mississippi last month and in the primarendedthe primary thera huge issue just within the republican party and as the democrats voted as well the state likes being conservative is a huge beneficiary of the federal defense contracts pending. so i think that you look to those places and then in addition to sort of moving individual votes you do look to these issues as setting up the larger atmosphere people feel like things are out of control.

>> speaking of the foreign-policy, there was interesting findings about her tenure at the state department. >> john's numbers brok broke usn a way that you don't see in the polling done so far. typically it's been an up or down for the tenure of state. this is an excellent good fair and poor category. so if you combine the two difference is that most people tend to come of the net for good was 43 i believe, 42, 43. and the net for fair or poor was 53. that was so that was a net majo. that is a big difference than host of the public polling that we have seen over the course of the last year and a half in the state department. and i think some of it is because it isn't being asked and up or down? the do you approve question tends to be easier and what category do you put it in and tell me if you disagree that

takes you to refine your view of little bits. so you can attribute it to a couple of things. number one, as alex has said that length and he is right the world is a very messy place at the moment and the trends have been heading that way the last several months but have a feeling of growing up in the last couple of weeks now hillary clinton has been -- i reject the fact she isn't separating herself on the economy but she certainly has on the foreign-policy. but i think what the numbers suggest is that isn't necessarily going to matter when things are very messy because she has been out there having to answer questions at having real-time about a foreign-policy issue that she is no longer involved in and having to defend for instance the recent that doesn't look so great right now in light of the current events. number two, the port number was the biggest one. for 32% and i think as much as there's been a discussion on

twitter and blogs today about whether we were emphasizing the negative too much i think when you have a single category that is that high there is a certain definition and it's hard to take it away. i also think as much as i do not think that benghazi will be the reason people do or do not vote for her there is a case to be made with a lot of people have heard about her has related to that. either poor or positive. her folks will argue very strongly that the negative isn't sticking that i think that the numbers do suggest there is at least some sense among the voters of something happening. >> you brought this story on the chapter in her book. how skillfully do you think they have handled were anticipated the attacks on her position? >> i think that's the benghazi issue and a lot of the

foreign-policy pieces for the most part were not handled thatt well both in the book it's been swamped by the discussion of her gaps in wealth, but her critics have actually not laid out a huge glove on the book itself. they would also argue because there isn't that much in the book but generally speaking, in terms of benghazi, she gives a pretty thorough telling that at least gives a roadmap for democrats that are hearing about this in the 2014 election. >> where is your crystal ball? >> i left it in charlottesville. >> can you still take a chance and help us without that? >> i can try. >> can you talk a little about your sense of foreign-policy and how that might be playing out in november? >> iab lead in analyzing both

presidential and midterm elections from 30,000 feet actually after last week i don't think that is a safe place to be. but essentially, the higher your url looking down on the landscape of the election, the more likely you are to detect a general movement in one direction or another. the most interesting thing that i saw the most revealing as usual is a generic ballot because i believed it was plus two republicans. it was plus seven, and i think that's about right and i think other surveys have been showing that, too. it's very important for the midterm congressional elections because it tells you basically where it is in mid-july so you have to be careful. but we take a couple observations that are important about the midterms and have

nothing to do with foreign-policy and surprisingly little to do with most domestic policies. this isn't where i thought it would be at this time last year or even for that matter january. i didn't think it would be anything like 2010 because they are already scooping up in the house. they lost a few of them in 2012 but it i isn't what i thought it was going to be. i thought since president obama was in the low 40s depending on the season and some other factors that this would be a predominantly maybe a very good republican year. >> i think it is mild. at least in mid-july. now it can be late. you can have them develop in late september and october sometimes they are developed in august in 2010.

we were the first to call the house or the republicans what we said by the white margin at least 40 seats in august because the generic ballot was moving so strongly in the republican direction. well, that is not happening. when you look at the house and the republicans will probably pick up a few seats i think it will be a wash plus two in the democratic direction of zero change and you will have some incumbents that will be the headline everybody says the western civilization collapsed into the fact of the vast majority of incumbents will be reelected. it is the senate that is revealing. and this is the best map for republicans since 1980. they should've run a big margin based on the conditions that ought to be present in the

six-year election. it isn't happening so far. it isn't happening. i can't see them gaining fewer than four. so that will be a mildly good year. i can see them getting five and i can see them getting six and if you stretch me i can see at seven but they will not run up the margin big enough to sustained 2016 if the turnout is as democratic as it has been in the last couple of elections. so that is my view from. it isn't as interesting. it's not nearly as interesting as 2006 and i'm sorry to say i know i said the wrong thing but that's my view of it. >> how is your view a little closer? >> the point that larry raises to sort of give you a back story on the poll, we got the numbers

back last week. we were a little concerned about the sample that we ended up getting because what you do is you and you know, select a set of voters randomly in the ballot in the states and see the response to the polls. and you can wait the population going into afterwards you're not literally going to tinker with while we would like to see more women in the sample even though they want more women so we are going to multiply it by nuts and bolts kind of stuff. ..

>> all the movement was within a margin of error, so we're not going to just junk this poll because it doesn't feel identical to the previous of poll. and the reason for that is really simple. in 2012 republicans got a lot of polls with, we saw over and over again these public polls showing more democrats participating than republicans and a lot of us in the -- than a lot of us in the media thought should be participating. and there was the whole unskewed phenomenon, right? if a poll came back showing more black people or more young people than felt right, the temptation was let's exclude this and go with what we think is going on. as it turns out, a lot more young people and african-americans participated than we thought we were going to participate. so sometimes when you end up with a different sample because the one you're expecting, that's

because it's a different electorate than the one you're expecting. so we don't just throw out a poll because there's been movement in the margin of error. you interpret in light of that, but basically, i think, with the question this poll raises and it's the one that larry is sort of sketching out is maybe this isn't going to be the kind of election where democrats just stay at home and republicans come out with overwhelming enthusiasm. maybe it's a little bit more of a 50/50 test of wills. and i agree with larry this is not shaping up to be a sort of epic midterm election the way we got in 2006, '8, '10, but i think what is interesting is what you see now race to race, we saw it in the mississippi primary last month, we see it in the georgia republican primary tonight, we've seen it in a couple of gubernatorial campaigns is that tactics wednesday up being worth a lot more. back to 2010, there were a number of campaigns we could

say, well, this democratic senate candidate really ran a much, much better campaign than the republican opponent, but they were never going to win this 2010. i think that's much less likely to happen this year across the board. >> john, could you tell us some takeaways from the poll for november? >> yeah. one thing i want to touch about, talking about republicans, one of the reasons we're all kind of agreeing, at this stage 7% of republicans think barack obama, you know, is doing a good job as president, but only 53% think republicans in congress are doing a good job, right? so unlike 2010 we see disapproval of republicans and democrats at a far greater extent than we saw in 2010. in fact, there was two times more disapproval both in our numbers when we look at, like, pew numbers kind of consistently, we see two times as much disapproval among democrats but three times among republicans. so just incredibly upset, volatile electorate, and we don't know who yet will, obviously, participate. we also see, again, in this all

should be taken through the lens of one out of four or one out of three voters in america. so it's not surprising that, you know, as an example secretary clinton will be viewed harsher through this lens than if we included california, massachusetts, etc. so i guess what i would say is that democrats need to begin to reconnect over the economy. this is something that's very, very clear kind of throughout the poll, and republicans have a hard time, you know, alex talked about republicans talk about foreign policy, but when you ask republicans what the policy should be specifically in russia and iraq and syria, they don't know. we have slightly more republicans thinking that we should be less involved in russia than more involved prior to last week. we see similar numbers for iraq as well as syria. so i guess the question, and it's still very volatile, rick. i do think foreign policy will play a more significant role than perhaps other people on the panel.

not necessarily because of the specific issue, but because of the overall context in terms of do voters share the overall world view in terms of should we be engaged or should we not be engaged? not necessarily the policy, but especially among young independents. >> maggie, can we talk a little bit about the intersection of 2016 and midterms? one of the, some of the results also showed, talked about the hierarchy of surrogates that candidates or people want out there. can you talk a little about that? >> sure. and i would like to, if i can also ask if, john, you would tell me whether you think i'm reading your numbers right. but president obama still remains the democrats' most potent surrogate which i did find striking given the fact that his approval numbers are not great, and there are people who would rather not campaign with him and begin this is a battleground poll. blibt and hillary clinton are the next -- bill clinton and hillary clinton are the next

two. there was a steep dropoff for joe biden. 52% of democrats wanted him to campaign for them, and then very interesting, elizabeth warren had a much lower number, 30s, right? >> and 22% of democrats -- [inaudible] >> that's right. and i was very struck by that. one in five democrats and 22% in the overall sample had never heard of warren. so name id is a big factor here, and she is relatively new politically even among democrats. among republicans it was still, you know, a former nominee, mitt romney was the most popular among republicans, next was, i believe, jeb bush and then rand paul. >> rand paul not far behind. >> rand paul not far behind was really striking to me given that he remains pretty much the most interesting person to watch on the republican side for 2016 right now in terms of the moves he is making. the other number that i was struck by, independents across the board said every single one of them would make them less

likely to vote for them than more likely which i took as a throw the bums out approach defite the fact the share of -- despite the fact of the share of independents available has dwindled. that was a number that jumped out at me. would you disagree? >> no, in fact, it speaks to the mood. fewer politicians in my face, the better right now. right? >> but if you have to have one, have rand paul, the clintons or obama. >> and who is the most active out there of the possible presidential candidates? >> not hillary clinton. the, among the possible presidentials it sort of depends. they all have different priorities in terms of where the intersection is. you had chris christie go to iowa last week to campaign for terry branstad which there's a gubernatorial race there. that is as much about the intersection between what chris christie needs in terms of a rehab and what terry branstad is trying to do in iowa with the republican party. you have had rand paul doing some midterm campaigning.

i think you're going to see marco rubio doing a lot more. i think you will see jeb bush do very little because i think that he would like to not start the clock on himself as much. on the democrats' side, warren -- as i suspect most of you have been reading -- has been very active. joe biden has been very active. martin o'malley has been very active. you know, where people go -- going to iowa is easy and going to new hampshire is easy, but it's sort of the more surgical targets that i find more worth watching. >> could you talk a little about as the foremost hillary clinton watcher on reporters, you were on her book tour, you've covered her for years, she's about to go on vacation for three weeks. are we going to hear from her at that point? are there planned -- >> one of the things, so one of the things that's been striking, there's a couple of things that she's -- she's been adding like crazy interviews which is not -- she has done this rollout sort of backwards in terms of the

book tour, i would argue, for how you would handle it in 2014. i forgot what year it was, it's not 2016 yet. she just did jon stewart last week, right? i could make an argument that you probably would have wanted to start with jon stewart. so they're adding these events because the book is not, you know, lighting on fire. it's selling fine, but it's not selling the way living history did, and that's not surprising given that it's about a very narrow context as opposed -- >> and why is that important? i mean, book sales are nice, but why -- >> her people have been very preoccupied with the book sale issue for much of the last six months heading into the writing of it and then the rollout of it. they were afraid that if it didn't sell, that it would be viewed as and certainly described as a reflection of her popularity. that isn't what it is, but that is what they're worried about. and there is, as it happens, a pretty big chasm between what her last memoir sold in its first month which was a million

copies and this one which has sold about 300,000 copies. so she has been adding these, she's got a facebook chat later, she's doing a twitter interview, she's been adding these events sort of on the fly. she is supposed to on saturday be the understudy for george w. bush at a paid speech for a financial conference, and then she goes on vacation for three weeks, and i don't think we'll be hearing that much from her. she has some paid speeches at the end of august. in kentucky one local official said that he expects her to be campaigning this fall for allison grimes. i don't think that's a surprise given their relationship with her father. but so far they have yet to announce exactly what her targets are going to be, and i think they're going to be more limited than sweeping. >> larry, can you tell us about some surprises, upsets that may be in the offing for the fall that may not be on our radar? >> oh, i think most of them are on our radar.

obviously, people are looking at iowa. we're getting ready to move that to toss-up. we were waiting for this partnership to begin. i think it's been obvious that it's become a toss-up. and colorado is close to a toss-up. i suppose that might be an upset. in some people's minds if it happens. you know, the key races in the senate have been well known for some time now. look, you never know when somebody's going to be indicted. you never know -- [laughter] when, you know, someone's tongue is disconnected from the brain and they say something incredibly stupid and it ends up throwing away a senate or a house seat. so, you know, those are probably the upsets we don't see coming because the event that will precipitate them hasn't happened yet. but, you know, again, we're focusing -- we've been focused for a long time on the maps. if there are so few competitive house races, it's pretty easy the gauge what's going to happen

in the house. you're not going to get the numbers exactly right, but who cares? you can run the majority of the house on three like the republicans did in 2001-2002. so it doesn't matter. governorships matter a lot, but you've got a ton of incumbents, i think 29, running out of the ones elected in 2010, and they have a natural edge in the vast majority of cases. corbett's an exception, couple of other exceptions. but, you know, the senate's really what we're -- where it matters, where an upset really matters. and, you know, it's obvious where both parties and the interest groups are going to pour their money, those southern states plus alaska. democrats are going to try kentucky and georgia. good luck, you know, with both of them because i think it'll be tough. in both cases. but they're going to try those two. other than that, there's really nothing the democrats can pick up. they'll be lucky to pick up one of those two. the republicans have all the

opportunities. we already know, really, which ones they are. so it's a question of where the electorate moves, you know? does that generic ballot number move up or down between now and the time that things start solidifying in september and october? >> speaking of money, alex, what's different this time with the midterms and the big donors? >> well, i think what's, what we're going to see change over just the next three and a half months is that the balance of spending in this campaign is going to start shifting away from the outside groups and towards the actual campaigns and candidates. the folks you heard from on the priest panel, you're going to -- previous panel, you're going to start seeing a lot more of their work and a lot less, or relatively speaking, less of the work of the very fine consultants not that far from here who are sort of cranking out these ads with unlimited money. a lot of people are talking about this news from cnn yesterday that sheldon edelson may spend tens of millions of

dollars. i think we always knew the money was going to be saturated. what matters most is how is it going to get spent, and if the difference was going to be unlimited, outside money, we always knew that money was going to be in play. you do have among incumbents in particular in the senate and incumbent republican governors just unbelievable hard dollar fundraising. so you have these senators. i remember, i'm old enough to remember when it was a big deal to raise a million and a half dollars in a quarter of two million or two and a half. this quarter you had people like mark udall and jeanne shaheen and allison grimes raising three, three and a half, four million dollars in a three month span. that's crazy. that's just a crazy apt of money. so you -- amount of money. so you do start to see more of that hand-to-hand combat between candidates mattering more than it did three months ogg, six months ago or a year ago.

what mitch mcconnell does today and what allison grimes does today matters more. it's part of why iowa is more of a toss-up race, that joni ernst has been very, very clever about how she's run her campaigns, and bruce braley's been a lot more passive, and colorado, at least from the people i talk to, is not probably in the same category because mark udall, the very well funded democratic incumbent, has just been murderously brutal on his challenger when it comes to these social issues that have been so devisive in colorado. and corey gardener who was correctly thought to be quite a strong republican recruit has taken time responding. >> thank you. maagty, i'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. you talked about how hillary clinton is doing all these events. how accessible is she to you, and how does that compare to the accessibility of another politician you cover a lot, that's chris christie? >> i mean, it's night and day. and for, to some extent for

specific reasons, and some of it's stylistic reasons. but what has been really striking about hillary clinton's book tour is she has not taken a single question -- that i know of at least from the events i've been to -- from reporters who were attending. which is not to say that her aides have been difficult and/or unkind which certainly has been the hallmark of other campaigns, both hers and other people's she is giving very controlled interviews, these are very controlled settings. there is very little that is sort of up in the air and unexpected about them. christie in iowa last week -- to be fair, it's not like he was holding a conference every day after bridge gait be, i mean, he -- bridgegate, i mean, he really shut down. he has started coming out of it more. but when you are traveling with him in another state, you can get right up close with him. you just can't have that with clinton, and i remain really amazed at the that that lance

traveling with her. it's not understandable, but it does not headache you feel -- >> like how many, like, can you give a sense of the scale? >> she was on stage at a gw event recently for a q&a with someone, and at the end she stayed and was shaking hands with the audience, and there were four what looked like service people or security people but standing next to her. it was -- on the one hand, it makes her look like an incumbent which she is often seen as running like, but on the other hand, it does not create the feeling of being able to reach out and connect. >> let me ask you all just a very few quick questions. john, let's talk about polling right now. we're overwhelmed by polls every day. some reliable, some not. all kinds of methodologies. how do you personally know who to trust? >> i think we're certainly in a transition. two or three things i look to. national polling, i look to see, obviously, are cell phones included? so cell phone versus land line

telephone is an important thing for me. also i also look at language. hispanics play an incredibly important role in our nation and about half of hispanic voters we talk to prefer to take their interview in spanish, so i look at bilingual polling as well. and like everybody else, i look at consistency over time as well. and why some of these barometers are of particular use if you don't have one poll you can count on. >> do you think the state of polling in america is getting better or worse? >> i think it's better than it was, but it's still in a transition. it obviously depends who you ask. i guess one note, on most of the national polling that i do and certainly the polling we do together is done via the internet, so actually dialing the clock back to the days of george gallup when we went from door to door. that's how we're actually selecting the samples based on not what kind of phone you have, but where you live. they can take the poll whenever they want.

they want to take it add midnight rather than during their time, that's the prerogative, and i think it's a more natural act. so is, but not everybody's able to do that yet. >> larry, i'm curious, how much do you personally get lobbied by candidates or or campaigns for saying why did you rate me this way? [laughter] >> that's why i have great people like kyle condit, tim robinson, they take all those calls. [laughter] i'm always out of town when they come in. >> what if it's a really big name? >> i'm still out of town. [laughter] especially when it's a big name. >> but they try. >> well, of course people complain and whine, and they should, you know? their livelihoods are on the line. i don't blame them for that one bit. i mean, you got lots of calls, right, in your other role prior to this, and i'm sure maggie and alex get lots of calls. the key is to ignore them. [laughter] you know, unless they have interesting information. and just let me add one thing on this polling. i am amazed that reporters still

write stories based on partisan polls produced by campaigns or parties. they are garbage. it's a joke. and why anybody pays attention to them, i don't know. they have ulterior motives. >> do you all agree with that? yeah, yeah. >> thank you. >> alec, i have a question for you that's a twitter question. what are the chances for romney to enter the 2016 race, and is santorum next in line given that the gop convention history? >> well, i'll take the second question first, and the answer is, no. [laughter] you know, i think you can say that i think just this notion that republicans always nominate the next guy in line like, yes, that's true technically, but it's really more complicated than that. if it's true that the runner-up always got the nomination, then in 2012 which would have been mike huckabee -- which he'll tell you himself if you ask --

his delegate count was higher than mitt romney's. i think santorum has a constituency. is he the default candidate? certainly not. the odds that romney runs, i was talking to a republican recently who said they were convinced romney was going to run because he kept saying he wouldn't in the 2012 campaign, and that persuaded him you can't trust a word the man says. [laughter] now that's not my personal view of 2016, but, look, i think this notion that if you go to a conference hosted by mitt romney and ask a bunch of people who are mitt romney's guests should he run for president and then they all say yes, that this is some kind of groundswell of support, the host, right? he's standing right there. of course you're going to express sort of interest in him as a candidate. the only scenario in which i can envision mitt romney running is like if every other mainstream candidate gets hit by a bus, right? and maybe not a bus, but it could happen that jeb doesn't run, scott walker loses

re-election, marco rubio, for whatever reason, decides his family is not, you know, ready for the campaign, and then -- and right, christie, you know, continues to face the u.s. attorney investigation and then next thing you know you're looking at a lineup of candidates that looks a lot like 2012 minus mitt romney, right? and then if there's just sort of like you know in cartoons where wile e. kite owety will -- coyote will run through a wall, there could be a mitt romney-shaped role where there's not mainstream, business business-oriented, inoffensive, conservative, you know, somewhat conservative man with terrific hair. [laughter] and then there's an opening, right? but the notion that, like, the wheels are moving or something like that just doesn't, doesn't scan -- i mean, correct me if i'm wrong, maggie, but that does not scan with what i'm hearing at all. >> no, no, no. i'd say everything you just said was absolutely on target. i mean, at a certain point be i think the moment you would start

to see some of this run, many it, run stuff -- mitt, run, stuff, there are some owners who don't attend those conferences, but for those who are like, well, i could back him, i think the minute you would start to see that come to a halt would be when romney openly says i'm really considering this. so i agree with everything alex says. >> because really, i'm sorry, which is -- [laughter] mitt romney has a lot going for him as like a human being, as like a government administrator. there are a lot of republicans, and it's easy to romanticize the 2012 election sort of in retrospect, right? but when you think back at what an amazing opportunity that was for the gop -- >> totally. >> right? and the fact that he didn't just lose, but actually lost by a pretty big margin in terms of modern history. only the second time in 25 years that any presidential candidate has won an electoral heart. you know, the argument for, like, strike up the band again and let's do this a third time starts to get pretty limited. >> right. and not just lost, to continue

on this theme, but not just lost with a huge opportunity, but a lot structurally had not changed within the party since 2012. if you look at that rnc autopsy or whatever growth opportunity report they put out afterwards six months or so, eight months after the election, very little of it has been addressed including their endorsement of immigration reform. so very hard for me to see where romney becomes the candidate of the future based on what we're looking at. that having been said, alex did say something i thought was very important, and i wonder ored about looking at your numbers, especially talking about the younger voters who now feel more warmly toward hillary clinton. there is a tendency when i talk to supporters for them to say, well, a lot of people have buyer's remorse about obama. okay, but that doesn't mean we're redoing the 2008 election. while i do think this is not 2008 again and i don't see a candidate who can do what obama did, i think that the idea that we are doing a reprisal is

really a mistake. and so for her supporters who think that, for the candidate's sake, one hopes that's not something her advisers actually think. >> larry, one final question for you that came in. do you anticipate, i mean, the primary season's almost over, but do you anticipate any more mississippis? tight challenges but also outside pending wise? >> oh, you know, i think -- i don't think lamar alexander's in trouble. pat roberts, i suppose there's a possibility there. if he had had one of the republican congressmen running against him, i think he would have lost renomination. milton wolfe is not the strongest candidate in the world , but you never know who's going to show up in a low-turnout summer primary. there'll probably be a couple more surprises. again, looking at the big picture which reinforces the idea that less is more in this particular midterm, we're well

below average in the number of incumbent primary defeats in both the senate and the house compared to the entire post-world war ii period. that doesn't suggest to me an election that redefines american politics. nothing, nothing close to it. that doesn't mean 2016 will be boring. there's almost no connection between a midterm and a presidential election even though we all strain to find, to find some connection there really isn't, you know? just give you an example. the e-mail that i got over and over again in different forms after 2010 was each my dog could beat president obama. well, we found out, didn't we? we found out how misleading a midterm election can be, and a lot of them are that way. >> final quick question for alec, just came back -- alex who just came back from california where he wrote a much-talked-about piece. it's time for some gen-xers,

right? tell us about the political dynamic there is. >> it's a state that is younger than the country as hold, it is twice as hispanic, three times as asian, half the population lives in the los angeles area, and the two senators, the governor are 70 years old and up and all from the bay area. they're all white, and if you look at lineup of statewide officials in california right now and then going back 20 years, overwhelmingly they have been from northern california. this is what you call, you know, it's what the folks out this at their fancy conferences call a moment prime for disruption, right? [laughter] this notion that you would have this state that is home to, you know, hollywood and silicon valley and sort of this, you know, allure of youth and innovation that they'd be represented entirely by this cast of characters literally from the '70s and '80s --

1970 and '80s in addition to being in their 70s and 80s, that just doesn't line up. you're going to start to see this change. jerry brown will probably win this election this year, you're going to have a democratic bum's rush into that job, and in 2016 the question is will barbara boxer run again. you could have two successive psychs where the state attorney general, they all suddenly have to decide after playing this waiting game for, like, ten-plus years they suddenly have to decide which of these available offices they're going to run for. and this is important because the next big democratic politician to get elected to a big, statewide job in california, you're looking at someone who will be ap immediate contender for the -- an immediate contender for the presidency. it's bizarre that it is by far the biggest state in the country. democrats get so much of their money from there.

finish the only person that the democrats in california have produced who would ever for 15 seconds considered a presidential candidate was gray davis. and that, folks, doesn't add up. [laughter] >> final concluding question for maggie. and this isn't your personal opinion, or but if you -- i'd like to get your take. if you polled the press corps covering the presidential campaign in 2016, who would they want the two nominees to be from a ourly, purely journalistic point of view just for the fun and the story? >> from the journalistic point of view or -- mac faction d. [inaudible conversations] >> i think for the fun point of view they would want an elizabeth warren versus a chris christie. >> no joe biden? >> sorry -- you know what? that's right. that would be a joe biden versus a chris christie and/or a ran paul, and probably the edge would go to rand because one of

the things that people who cover him in the senate will often say is that he is very, very, very undies palined in terms of, like, what he says walking around the halls. and so i don't mean that that's something -- you know, he often talks to reporters, and i think his aides would rather he momentum, and he becomes hard to control. so for reporters that kind of thing would be a lot of fun. >> how about for crystal ball analysts in terms of who you'd like to see. i think marco rubio would be interesting to understand where the future of the hispanic vote goes. so that would be of interest and a challenge for us. >> who i'd like? i don't pick candidates. that's up to the parties, so i'll work with whoever they pick. i'd prefer to think about the future of the country rather than the future of the two parties or what would make great journalism. god help us if that becomes the standard. >> larry's being modest, but in his heart of hearts, he would

love to be able to say he called the scott walker nomination. [laughter] >> so true. >> thank you. by the way, the '70s were a great decade. [laughter] i need to tell you that. >> thanks, everyone. thanks for a great panel. we covered the water front here. appreciate it. [applause] thanks. thanks for coming and for watching. [inaudible conversations] up, our interview with former under secretary of defense, michele flournoy. then, bbc parliament's westminster

review. senior adviser to president obama, dan pfeiffer discussing the crisis on the u.s. southern border, russia and the midterm elections. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," our guest is michele flournoy, the ceo for the center of a new american security and former undersecretary of defense for policy. she will discuss issues surrounding the defense department including the budget process, military readiness and lasting effects of sequestration. >> michele flournoy, the media has been reporting that this is one of the worst times since world war ii. to you a?