E-mail a friendSusan Page
airdate November 5, 2007
Veteran political journalist Susan Page is USA Today's Washington bureau chief. She also guest-hosts NPR's The Diane Rehm Show. Page has covered six presidential elections and four White House administrations and won national awards for her reporting. A native of Wichita, KS, she was a Pulitzer Fellow at Columbia University, where she earned her masters degree. She previously covered the White House and national politics for Newsday and is past president of the White House Correspondents' Association.
Susan Page
Tavis: Susan Page serves as Washington bureau chief for "USA Today" and is a past president of the White House Correspondence Association. Her front page "USA Today" story late last week on next year's presidential election was titled "A Year Before Voting, A Nation of Discontent." She joins us tonight from Washington. Susan, nice to have you back on the program.
Susan Page: Tavis, it's great to be with you.
Tavis: With all due respect to the fine work that you and your colleagues did at "USA Today," can we take anything seriously, including what the candidates say, one year away from the election?
Page: It's one year away, which sounds like a long time, but the fact is we're only about eight weeks away from the January - from the Iowa caucuses in January, the New Hampshire primary a week later. We are very close to choosing our next president, choosing the nominees that will be up on the ballot a year from now, and so yeah, I think we should take it all pretty seriously.
Tavis: Any evidence that suggests that the American people are starting to hone in on the election, on what the candidates are saying?
Page: People say that they're paying pretty good attention, pretty close attention to the selection, and that they think the election matters a lot. I think that often happens when people aren't happy with the direction of the country, and that's particularly true, of course, when you go to these states that are going to have early contests, like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina and Florida, that's where people are paying particularly close attention and where they're seeing a lot of these candidates.
Tavis: Beyond the fact that people are unhappy, discontent, and therefore tuning in, beyond that, what reasons have you discovered why, at the moment, they're paying attention?
Page: I think they're paying attention because they're concerned about what's going to happen in Iraq, what's going to happen with the war there. They're concerned about healthcare - 47 million Americans lack health insurance; that's a big issue. And I think there's just general feeling that maybe things have gotten off on the wrong track, unhappy with the government. President Bush's approval ratings are very low; so are the approval ratings for the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Tavis: What do you make of that?
Page: I think people just generally feel like somehow, things have gone wrong and they want to put things right. We've seen this twice before in the last generation; we saw it in 1980 when President Reagan was elected, we saw it in 1992 when President Clinton was first elected. This is a change election. It's an election where I think we're likely to see a change in control at the White House, and we might even see a third party candidate, because when people feel like both parties are failing and sometimes, that's when they start to entertain somebody like Ross Perot or John Anderson as a prospect.
Tavis: Tell me more about why they think the parties are failing them as opposed to an individual or individuals?
Page: Well, they look at President Bush, and I'll tell you, we have a poll in tomorrow's paper in which 50 percent of Americans say they strongly disapprove of the job President Bush is doing. That's an all-time record. President Nixon held the record, this unwelcome record, right before he was impeached in 1974. Forty-eight percent of Americans strongly disapproved of him.
President Bush has now beaten that at 50 percent. That's a really high level of unhappiness with what's going on with the president. And then when you go to the Congress, three out of four Americans say the Congress isn't achieving very much. The Democrats took over in last year's election, a lot of expectation they'd be able to do something about health care, turn around the war.
They failed to do that, and that accounts for discontent about Democrats, I think.
Tavis: When the president is the commander-in-chief and we saw that he beat back the Democrats in what he wanted in Iraq with regard to funding, pull-out, surge - he's the commander-in-chief, and he calls the shots to a large degree. On the SCHIP program, the Democrats tried twice now to send the president a bill they want him to sign to give health insurance to the kids in America.
Do the American people make a distinction, even though Democrats control Congress, that if the president vetoes something or if he's the commander-in-chief - I'm just trying to figure out find out why they're slapping the Democrats upside the head.
Page: Well, Democrats fare better than Republicans. The Democratic Party has higher approval ratings and favorable ratings than the Republicans do. But it's undeniable that Democrats now control the House and Senate. Why were they able to take over the House and Senate in 2006? It's because of unhappiness about some of the various things you were mentioning, like healthcare for kids and what's happening in Iraq.
So I think a lot of people thought hey, they're in charge now, they should be able to more effectively counter what President Bush is trying to do. We know that's really hard, especially in the Senate. The Senate filibuster, notorious for blocking action. The Democratic majority in the House is pretty narrow, so there are some reasons why Democrats haven't been able to do as much as they'd wished.
But still, I think a lot of Americans look at that and say, “I expected more.”
Tavis: I wonder whether or not you are of the mind, as I am, sometimes, when I see these polls, Susan, that because it is the politically correct thing to say that - or politically incorrect, depending on one's point of view, that Congress stinks, whether Democrats are running it or Republicans are running it. We'll leave Mr. Bush out of this for the moment, but I wonder how much, again, stock we put in polls? I'd be surprised if I ever saw a poll now, 50 years ago, 50 years from now, where the American people said, “We love what Congress is doing.”
Page: (Laughs) Well, that's true. As you say, it's easy to find fault with what the government is doing. But it's also true that we are at very high levels of unhappiness with how things are going, and there are times when Americans feel that things are going pretty well. Often, we're over 50 percent Americans saying things are going in the right direction. So it's unusual for us to have quite as much level of cynicism and discontent as we see right now.
Tavis: So in this poll, the thing I took away from it that got my attention, Susan, is that nobody who you polled anywhere in America believes - Republican, Democrat, Black, White, liberal, conservative - nobody believes that the next president - Rudy, Hillary, Barack, Edwards, Romney, anybody - nobody believes that the next president can get us out of Iraq any time soon without major complications. What does that mean, and what do you take from that?
Page: We interviewed dozens of Americans at four different locations across the country about this, and the people who want us to get out want us to get out, but they're not sure how fast we can do it. They worry about leaving chaos behind. And the people who want to stay are not actually that optimistic that we can win in Iraq, whatever a win would mean at this point.
So we found lots of distress about the war. The levels of opposition to the war in Iraq are now as high as they ever were toward the war in Vietnam. Although the climate's a little different; we don't have the same kind of campus protest we had during the Vietnam War, but six out of 10 Americans say it was a mistake to go on. Only 16 percent of Americans - that's not very many - say things are getting better for the United States in Iraq.
That's pretty much President Bush and his immediate family, when you're down to 16 percent.
Tavis: So if I'm a Democrat - Hillary, Edwards, Barack - running for the White House; if I'm a Republican - Huckabee or Romney or Rudy or McCain - maybe just take it one at a time. If I'm a Democrat, what do I take from what this "USA Today" poll said last week that might be instructive and informative for my campaign?
Page: Well, I think criticizing President Bush is a safe course to take if you're a Democrat. Calling for change, saying how you'll do things differently, and maybe outlining specifically how you'd address an issue like Iraq where people are so cynical about the prospects for effective action. I think those would all be good things for Democratic presidential contenders to do.
Tavis: And if I'm a Republican, what do I take from this poll?
Page: Well, I think you would not want to mention George Bush's name if you're a Republican, and they really aren't. When you hear the Republican candidates talk, they talk about Ronald Reagan as their model. You hear very little mention of President Bush. And I think if you look ahead to next year's ads, TV ads, you're going to see President Bush in the Democratic ads, not in the Republican ones.
Tavis: And yet, Susan, ideologically, while they're not mentioning his name, many of them are siding with him on many of these policy issues. Many of them support him and his position on the war, in terms of the surge. Every one of the frontrunners said they would have vetoed the SCHIP program themselves. So they're not mentioning his name, but they're supporting him, or they're certainly in lock-step with him on many of these issues that are being discussed at the moment. What do you make of that?
Page: Tavis, I think that's exactly right. And even on an issue like Iran, prospectively, what you would do about Iran, they're at least as muscular as President Bush is in talking about action in Iran. Well, I think they're trying to appeal to the Republican base. Republicans are still more or less saying they approve of the job President Bush is doing.
So if you're running in a Republican primary, you probably don't want to venture too far astray from President Bush, but it could create some big problems for Republicans when they get in the general election, where they're trying to appeal to independent voters who at this moment are just about as unhappy as Democrats are.
Tavis: So Susan, I'll close now going back to the beginning. Of all the persons running, Republican, Democrat, the accepted wisdom in Washington is that this is the Democrats' to lose. Now, you and I have been around long enough to know they are capable of doing just that. Even though it is theirs to lose, your thoughts?
Page: Yes, absolutely. The landscape is tilted in the Democrats' direction. It's quite uphill for the Republicans, but Hillary Clinton has some specific problems, high negatives, a lot of people say they wouldn't vote for her. When we do head-to-heads, we find about an even race between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. But the fact is the table is set for a Democratic victory.
Tavis: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for "USA Today." A wonderful poll, an instructive, informative poll in last week's "USA Today." Susan, nice to have you here, we'll do it again soon.
Page: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Take care.
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