4/4: Opening Day

Although there were two official games played in Japan last week, this week marks the day all die-hard baseball fans wait for during the long cold winter — Opening Day.

The opening day of the baseball season used to be celebrated in Cincinnati where the Reds were the oldest of the original professional baseball clubs.  In the nation’s capital the President of the United States would always throw out the first pitch.

But, did those two games played by the Mariners and A’s in Tokyo take a little away from this week.  Is Opening Day not quite so special anymore?

Some say yes.  Why?  Because, baseball is now a year-round sport for both participants and spectators.

For one thing, we now have the MLB Cable Channel 24/7.  Instead of having to watch basketball, hockey, golf, and those other secondary sports, those of us who are addicted to the national pastime have a fix.  Not only do we get to watch quite a few spring training games, we also get to watch one-hour television specials on each of the 30 professional clubs.  Add to that replays of classic games, televised baseball trivia games plus hours and hours of commentary and prognoses by a host of former players, general managers, and sports writers.  Does that make Opening Day and that first pitch just like any other day?  For those who say the answer is yes, I say get over it.  I love the MLB Channel.  The MLB Channel has filled a void from October to February for sure.  If nothing else, since my wife also loves baseball, the television gets a reprieve from HGTV.    But, the MLB Channel isn’t the only thing that has altered the importance of Opening Day.  Some say it’s Spring training.

There was a time when players gathered in Florida and later in Arizona to hone their skills and prepare for the upcoming season.  Many had spent the winter working their second jobs to support themselves and their families.  Others had put on a few pounds on the banquet circuit.  So by the second week in February, reporting to training camp not only served the purpose of getting back in shape and shedding some pounds, it also was a transitional time where you could still get in a round of golf or even bring your family to enjoy the sunshine and warmth.  It didn’t come with the grueling travel by train, bus, and later airplanes.  The 154 game (and later 162 game) schedule was still ahead.  So while there was the business of getting back in shape to be taken care of, there was still time to do this in an atmosphere of relaxation.  Fans also discovered it was a great time for them as well.  Not only was there the opportunity to watch some of their heroes, but they discovered players had time to mix and mingle.  For quite awhile spring training was one of the best kept secrets among die-hard fans.

That was then.  This is now.  It’s no longer a secret.  Spring training has morphed into big business.  Arizona and Florida have become travel hot spots in February and March for the die-hards with the time and resources to take off and see first-hand what the prospects of their teams hold for the upcoming season.  The once simple practice fields have been replaced by big moneymakers — small stadiums which can seat as many as 13,000.  The players are no longer as accessible.   The practice games are now televised multi-camera productions.  The irony is that the small number of fans who once befriended the players of another era might brag they knew the players better, but today’s fans know more ABOUT the players…all of them… including the young ones who will not make the roster but show promise for the future.  All because of television.  Three and one-half million fans attended springs training games last year.  Thousands more are now watching those games on television.

The naysayers may tell you that you’re not as hungry for it when you’re well fed.  But, it’s still baseball.  And there’s no such thing as bad baseball.

I still count the days from the last out of the World Series until the day pitchers and catchers are allowed to report.  And count me in when the wins and losses really matter.  I’ll be there with my hot dog and scorecard for that first pitch… and rejoice for another year of life, and another baseball season.

I’m excited the time has finally arrived.  It’s Opening Day.  Let’s play ball.

 

3/14: A Look Ahead to Opening Day

With Major League Baseball’s opening day less than a month away, the countdown to the regular season has begun.  What can baseball fans make of the change in the playoff system?  And, who has the best chances of winning this year?  Sports journalist and Marist Poll Contributor Len Berman offered his insight when he spoke with the Marist Poll’s John Sparks.

Listen to the interview or read the transcript below.

Part 1:

John Sparks
Len, what do you think about Major League Baseball expanding the playoffs for this season?

Len Berman
I think it’s a good move. I think adding a wild card and diminishing the chances for the wild card to advance, I think that’s all positive. I mean it’s going to create some more excitement down the stretch in September, keep some more teams alive, and those two one game play-ins should be very exciting, so I don’t really have a problem. I mean it makes it look more difficult for them to advance. It certainly puts a better premium on winning the division, something the Yankees didn’t really try to do a couple years ago despite what Joe Girardi claims, so I think generally it’s positive.

John Sparks
So then, it puts more value on getting hot at the end rather than persevering over the long haul?

Len Berman
Well, you know, I think that’s always the case in post season, and that’s always the case in playoffs no matter what the team. Look at football, too. I mean, look at what the Giants have done. No, I don’t think that’s a prob…  I mean, yeah, the hot team, my goodness, I mean the St. Louis Cardinals were certainly not picked by anybody last year and certainly didn’t have a wonderful regular season. They got hot at the end, and they carried it through and won the championship, so I don’t think this change in the playoff system alters that philosophy at all.

Part 2:

John Sparks
Let’s take a look at the upcoming season, what do you think about the Yankees for this year?

Len Berman
Well, they’re always a team to be reckoned with because of their resources. I mean, I think the team they put on the field is strong. Things can fall apart. They’ve never had that problem over the years, but, for example, they lost a good relief pitcher in Dave Robertson because he fell down some stairs. Now he might not be ready opening day. I mean, if that’s the beginning of a series of issues that even great teams can fall in the abyss.  But, with their resources, if something isn’t working, and they do have the injuries, they have the deep pockets to go out and buy replacements midseason, so you never count out the Yankees ever.

John Sparks
I’m curious, A-Rod bounces back this year and what about Derek Jeter at the tail end of the ride?

Len Berman
Well, those are issues. I mean, these guys are older. I mean Mariano Rivera. I mean, I have a feeling this is his last season. What if he doesn’t have it? Hey, there’s always question marks, which is great. I mean I think people are just penciling in the Yankees for one of those playoff spots. What if they don’t make it?  Look at how that opens things up for a lot of other teams. So, yeah, those are valid questions. A-Rod’s age, Jeter’s age, sure, that’s not a real young team. What you find with the teams like the Cardinals, a team that has some young players, all of sudden exceed expectations, and you hope that works out. You like to see that, so maybe there’s a team out there that no one’s considering.

Part 3:

John Sparks
Let’s go over to Queens and talk about the Mets, what do you see for the Mets this year?

Len Berman
Well, it’s just sad that their mantra is: We’re not as bad as people think we are. I mean, that’s a hell of a sales slogan.  They’ve got problems, and they’ve got financial problems. And until those financial problems get resolved, things are going to continue the way they are. Having said that, these are Major League players. I mean, Ike Davis is a Major League first baseman. David Wright’s a Major League third baseman.  You’ve got some players there. What’s to say that they aren’t this year’s St. Louis Cardinals? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.

Part 4:

John Sparks
Let’s go around the League and the divisions real quickly. I’m just wondering, American League West.  Will Pujols bring Los Angeles a division, and what about the Rangers and Yu Darvish?

Len Berman
Yeah, well I think those are both great questions and I think that’s — it used to be the American League East that was spocked[sic]. Then all of a sudden, you’ve got Texas, which has been in two straight WorldSeries, and they had heartbreaking loss in last year’s Fall Classic, and you’ve got the Angels with Pujols. You know, you always lean on the side of pitching, so maybe Texas by getting Darvish is the bigger get. Certainly possible.

John Sparks
Thinking about pitching, let’s move over to American League Central. Justin Verlander and the Tigers, can anybody beat them?

Len Berman
You know, they look awfully solid. They’re certainly the strong favorites going in, and they’ve certainly become a franchise with deep pockets there, so for anyone to pick against the Tigers, that would be a long shot.

John Sparks
Okay. We talked about the Yankees, but let’s talk about the American League East. Can Bobby Valentine bring the Red Sox back, and what about Tampa Bay or maybe even a long shot for Toronto?

Len Berman
Yeah, I mean I love the East. I’m a huge Bobby Valentine fan.  I wish all it took was a manager. I think he’s a great step in the right direction, and he’s going to shake up that clubhouse, and he’s certainly going to make all the games with the Yankees a lot more interesting. He’s just one of the great baseball characters. Do the Red Sox have enough? It doesn’t look like it. Tampa Bay is a solid club. I hope a Toronto or even a Baltimore come out of nowhere. I mean, it’ll be nice, but I think you’re looking at the traditional powers for another year.

Part 5:

John Sparks
Okay, National League East, Phillies again, they picked up Jonathan Pabelbon. Are they best team in baseball really?

Len Berman
Well, if they are, their fans are going to get a little upset that they don’t win it all. After being to the World Series a couple years, they haven’t for a couple years, so I think they’re a hell of a team so…  are they the best team in baseball? You could make a case, sure.

John Sparks
National League Central, St. Louis without Pujols.  What does that mean for the division?

Len Berman
You know what, I still like St. Louis. I really do. I mean I don’t know where the… Obviously Cincinnati, you always have to look out. Milwaukee, Ryan Braun’s going to have a chip on his shoulder, so that could be a fun — that could be a real fun division. Look for those three teams to mix it up. I don’t… Certainly when you lose Pujols’ bat, it’s going to affect you, but historically teams that have lost a major free agent, it’s for some reason the other players who’ve stepped up, so I’m not going to count them out just yet. But I don’t look for them to repeat, that’s for sure.

John Sparks
You mentioned Braun, what do you think about the steroid thing with him?  Did he or didn’t he?

Len Berman
Well, obviously it’s only he and his urine sample know for sure. I mean the odds are that it’s awfully far-fetched to think that a tester tampered with sample A and sample B, so… In 99.999% of the cases, if it’s in their system, it’s in their system. It’s not some kind of fluke. So, if you put a gun to my head, he dodged that bullet for sure.

John Sparks
Moving out West for the National League, the Giants are pretty tough, but what about Don Mattingly and the Dodgers?  What do you think is going to happen there?

Len Berman
I don’t know. I mean, I’d love to see — I hope that he doesn’t become a… They still have an ownership situation that’s up in the air. I hope he doesn’t become the odd man out because of that. I love… I’m a big personal fan of Don Mattingly. I don’t know if his team has enough, but the Giants still have some of that pitching. I always look at the pitching as being the strength.

John Sparks
Anything else as we look at the 2012 baseball season?

Len Berman
You know, I think the one story you didn’t bring up is the Miami Marlins. New Name, new stadium, they’ve spent a load, and you want to see if the fans come out. I mean, that’s been a market that still you don’t know about that. They’ve won two World Championships, yet that can’t draw fans. If they can’t do it with this new stadium and Ozzie Guillen and Jose Reyes and the rest of the people down there, then they never will. So I think that’s a big story that you got to a — that I think is going to be one of the big baseball stories of 2012, the Miami Marlins.

John Sparks
Appreciate your time, Len. What’s going on in your life these days?

Len Berman
Well, I’ve got a lot of different things going on. I’m still doing The Today Show once a month with Spanning the World. I’ve started this relationship with Channel 5 in New York where once a week I do my Top Five on Channel 5 which is a spinoff of my daily email which people get at thatssports.com, and I’m very excited about my newest book coming out in the fall for kids. It’s going to be Greatest Moments in Sports, Upsets and Underdogs, and it’s more than a sports book. It’s really going to be empowering for young people to see how anyone can succeed no matter where you come from or what your background is, you have a chance to become a champion, and I think it’s going to open a few eyes. As I very modestly say, “Every young people… Every young person needs to read that book.”

John Sparks
Well, I’m looking forward to reading it also. It’s always a pleasure, Len.

3/6: Taking the Pulse of the Economy

Is the U.S. economy really in a recovery?  What about gas prices, and what role could the economy play in this election year?  Associate Editor of Barron’s, Michael Santoli, spoke with The Marist Poll’s John Sparks about this and more.  Listen to the interview below.

Listen to Part 1 of the Interview:

John Sparks
Michael, some folks are saying our economy is in a recovery.  Are we indeed in a recovery?

Michael Santoli:
Yeah, I mean in most of the measurable ways, we certainly are in a recovery. I mean the basic way is to say that at the end of last year, the total size of the economy, the nominal gross domestic product was basically where it was at the peak in 2007. So in other words, all the economic activity that was lost during the financial crisis and the recession had been recovered in nominal dollar terms, and we’ve basically had positive economic growth statistically for a couple of years now and created close to four million jobs in the last two years. Now, the problem is the hole was so much deeper when this kind of unsatisfying recovery started because the recession was so bad that we haven’t recouped obviously all of the jobs that were lost. It really regained only less than half of the jobs lost. And, of course, the housing market, even though it might be showing a little bit of signs of life, is well, well, well below where it was then both in terms of activity and home prices. So, a lot of the things that people can kind of see and touch and feel don’t really appear as if this is a recovery. But, in the ways that an economist or a commentator would talk about it, yes, it’s a recovery. You’re kind of better off now than you were a couple years ago.

I also would finally point out that over the last 12 or so months, the monthly rate of employment growth is basically the same as it was at a similar point following the prior recessions in the early 2000’s and the early ’90’s in terms of the absolute number of jobs created per month. The problem, again, is that we had lost so many more in this recession that it just doesn’t seem like it’s quite enough. So, I don’t think the economic recovery is doing anything particularly unusual or perverse, it’s just that things had gotten so bad that what’s been achieved since then just based on what the business cycle can do has not really been evident to so many people.

Listen to Part 2:

John Sparks
One thing that is on my mind concerns oil, Iran, the Straits of Hormuz, rising gasoline prices.

Michael Santoli:
Well, it’s definitely one of the big swing factors from this point on that’s going to determine whether we can kind of maintain this momentum that the economy had coming into this year or not. That’s for sure.  So obviously the fact that gasoline prices are significantly higher now than they were one year ago is going to be a drag, and you see the retail sales numbers were not great this past month, so I do think it’s going to be a bit of a headwind. But, at these levels of both gasoline and crude oil prices, it’s not yet enough to really impede or derail what’s now a decent, if unsatisfying recovery, simply because we’ve been here before in terms of these prices. It doesn’t feel good, but we have. And, also the pace of increase in energy prices has not quite been as rapid as it was say in 2008 when we went from about $100 a barrel for crude oil to $150 in a very short period of time. So, we’re still kind of that in mode of: okay, fine, higher oil prices are more or less telling us that the global economy is demanding more energy and it’s growing to some degree, and then of course you have the Iran stuff that’s adding a premium on top of that. But to me, it’s mostly about the demand continues every single day to slightly outstrip supply, so the trend is higher. So, I do think there’s that risk that that’s the thing that potentially chokes off economic growth here, but we’re not yet at that level. We’re not yet at that real panic point to me when it happens. I would point out too that if you adjust for inflation, the price for a gallon of gasoline in this country throughout history has been between $2 and $4 a gallon, so clearly we’re on the upper end of that range, but we’re not in unchartered territory, and price per mile driven is actually down from significantly from the peak just because we’re a bit more efficient. We’re driving less these days.

Listen to Part 3:

John Sparks
You’re in an election year.  What can we expect between now and the November elections as far as our economy goes?

Michael Santoli
Well the economy came in — like I say, came into the year looking a good deal better than it did several months earlier just because you had the European crisis that was sort of a finger in the dike there, and the banking crisis didn’t really spill over just yet. And companies here are quite strong, and they’re actually spending a fair bit, and business investment has been pretty good. And the consumer, even though we’re nowhere near the heavy spending days of a few years ago or just speculating on homes and all that other stuff, it’s just in better condition. The cost for the average consumer to service his or her debt is down to levels that were common in the 1980’s. So, even though we have so much debt, people can kind of afford to spend because the cost of servicing that debt is relatively low. So, I do think between now and the election, we probably should have kind of persistent kind of slow growth in spurts and then pulling back to slower growth. So, to me, the trends look like they’re relatively positive going into the election, but I don’t know that it’s going to be so dramatic that it’s going to be quite obvious exactly how, say, the election goes simply because the economy’s gotten up a huge head of steam. I don’t really see that as being very likely. There’s still these constant threats that are out there that could really derail the growth story at any moment.

John Sparks
No president since the Second World War has ever been re-elected if the unemployment rate is higher than 7.2%. Now January, I think we were at 8.3.

Michael Santoli:
Yes.

John Sparks
Will Obama benefit… Will Obama benefit if the recovery goes at the pace it’s going right now?

Michael Santoli:
Wel,l first of all, it’s unlikely that, unless we really go off to the races, that the unemployment rate does go down below 7.2 in the next six or seven months. It could happen, but it’s unlikely. That being said, all those numbers are completely valid except that the sample size is so low. I mean there’s only been a couple of elections when you’ve had the unemployment rate above that level, and I would — I guess what I would say is it’s the trajectory of the unemployment rate that’s probably a little bit more important than the absolute number. So, at this point, the world knows those statistics, and yet the kind of polls and the betting, the political betting sites that you can find out there are still kind of giving a slight edge to Obama, mostly because the incumbent tends to have that advantage, like the home field advantage but… so at this point, I don’t think that the economy is going to be so great that it’s a no-brainer that there’s a second term, but I also don’t think we can cling too tightly to that rule of thumb on 7.2 or plus or minus just because there just haven’t been enough elections to — for me to really think that there’s a ton of statistical significance there.

Listen to Part 4:

John Sparks
Sure. Now the Dow was just below 8,000 when the president took office, lately it’s been vacillating around 13,000. What do you see for the Dow down the road for 2012?

Michael Santoli:
Well, I actually think it’s a similar story where we’ve come a long way. We definitely have kind of built in a lot of good news into stock prices at this point, but I think we’ll probably have a little bit of turbulence. If tradition holds, you have a little bit of turbulence and a little bit of kind of downward movement maybe into the summer, spring or summer. And then, most likely somewhere around the election, it tends to rebound, and I actually think that business conditions will probably support that. There is an upward bias at this point to the market just because a lot of folks have been kind of under invested in stocks. We… this bull market that’s been going on roughly since, by coincidence, roughly since Obama was in office (I say “by coincidence” because he had the good luck of coming in just after the stock market had been cut in half in a few years.) is — it basically has been tested a couple of times pretty well, so we’ve… It’s not been just sort of like kind of greedy straight up in the sky type of move, it’s been pretty difficult along the way to get from 8,000 to 13,000. But usually there’s a good harbinger that there’s actually underlying business strength that’s driving things, so I think there could be a little bit more upside. I don’t think it’s going to be like the ’90’s where we just kind of coin money just by putting a few bucks in the stock market, but I do think that we’ll probably have a little bit of indigestion period, maybe we back off a little bit in the next several months, and then maybe finish out the year pretty strong. In fact, the pattern historically is that if an incumbent, no matter who the incumbent is, is re-elected, the stock market does better than if the incumbent is voted out, which kind of makes sense because the pre-conditions for an incumbent being voted in again is obviously the world doesn’t look so terrible.

John Sparks
Consumer spending, what do you see the rest of this year?

Michael Santoli:
I think just slow and steady. I really don’t see it taking off. I mean it’ll kind of probably advance in line with job and income growth. There’s definitely been in addition to just obviously being the tremendous challenges of unemployment and great jobs not being abundant, you have a psychological change. I don’t think that people are very willing to take on a bunch of debt just to feed their consumption habits as they were several years ago, so I feel like we’ll kind of just trudge along and grow slowly on the consumer side, but definitely in a positive direction just because people can generally afford to do it in a sober way. And hopefully if job growth kind of continues the current trend, they’ll have the capacity to do that.

Listen to Part 5:

John Sparks
Do you see anything looming on the horizon that could derail this slow recovery that we seem to be in?

Michael Santoli:
Yeah, the one obvious…  Well, the couple of obvious things, and we already talked about the — an energy shock, which could certainly happen. I mean whether it’s because of hostilities breaking out somewhere, or just because we get this trading move in oil like we did in 2008, people just like pile into it and it creates a shock to the system. A couple of other things that really could go wrong is a major economic accident in China would be a big deal. I mean they’ve basically been kind of managing their economic growth pretty well with certain hiccups along the way, but there seems to be a bit of a real estate bubble there. If something really kind of goes off the rails in China, they’re such an important piece of incremental bit of global economic growth that that’s a problem. And then finally, Europe’s not a done deal. I mean even though we’ve kind of had these measures that have taken the risk of an absolute all out panic and crash off the table for the moment, there’s so many delicate negotiations and so many wild cards over there that it could kind of just feed into the banking system both here and over there very quickly, and I feel like people wouldn’t really wait around very long before getting worried and pulling in loans and tightening up credit and all that kind of stuff again. So, those are the major things that I think that are out there as the obvious risks.  Of course, you always have to acknowledge that sometimes it’s that thing that you don’t predict that’s out of the blue that really hits us.

 

2/23: The Latest on the GOP Race

Where does the race for the Republican nomination stand?  What are the chances of a brokered convention?  And, who has the best odds against President Barack Obama?   The Marist Poll’s John Sparks visits with Marist Poll Analyst and syndicated political columnist Carl Leubsdorf who writes a weekly column for The Dallas Morning News about  this and more.

Listen to the interview below.

Part 1:

John Sparks
Carl, where do you think things stand on a Republican nominee at this point?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I think the Republican race is much more uncertain than we thought it would be at this stage. The general assumption was that Mitt Romney was a reasonably strong frontrunner and would show that, but he’s proved to be a weaker front-runner than many people anticipated. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with his campaign, and his campaign is well run. He’s got lots of money. In fact, his money has saved him so far. He has two big problems.

One is that the dominant conservative wing of the party has never quite accepted him as one of theirs. Romney keeps insisting he’s a conservative, but the problem is that he wasn’t always a conservative. He was pretty moderate when he ran against Ted Kennedy for the Massachusetts’ Senate race in ’94. He was pro choice. He was in favor of doing positive things for the gay and lesbian community. He at one point was a registered independent. He voted for Democrat Paul Tsongas in the ’92 Democratic Presidential Primary and was critical of President Reagan. So, his conservatism is rather recent and to some critics in the party is something that he’s acquired for purposes of running for president.

His other problem is he’s just not an effective candidate. He has trouble when he gets off his script. He doesn’t mesh with real people too well, and he has a tendency to say some odd things.  He was last week, for example, in Michigan and talking about his affinity for Michigan, the state in which he grew upin.  He said he loved Michigan. He said he loved its trees. They’re the right height. Now, what in the devil does that mean? He talks not like a real person sometimes, so he’s had a lot of trouble there.

The real fight in the party has been: Who is the conservative opponent for Romney? That’s sort of been going on from the beginning and, as we know dating back to last summer, we’ve had a whole string of pretenders [sic], various Republican contenders — Michele Bachmann; Governor Perry of Texas, Herman Cain soar to the top of the Republican race then in December, Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House. About the only one who didn’t was Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania Senator and who was plotting along working in Iowa, visiting every country there. But in the end, the conservatives in Iowa sort of solidified around Santorum. On the night of the caucuses, it appeared he had lost narrowly there, but when they finally counted all the votes, he in fact beat Mitt Romney there. It’s been a peculiar race though. Then Mitt Romney won in New Hampshire where he has a summer home, and it’s adjacent to Massachusetts where he was a governor. He looked like he was on the right track, but then in South Carolina, a state that every Republican nominee has won since they started their primary in 1980, Newt Gingrich beat Romney rather decisively. The following week in Florida, Romney turned the tables on Gingrich. Meanwhile, Santorum was sort of finishing well back in the pack in some of those states. Well he was working in some of the caucus states rather than the primary states, which it’s a lot cheaper to run there, and they’re the kinds of situations dominated by the more conservative wing of the party. And on Tuesday two weeks ago, he scored three victories which have catapulted him into the lead in the national — in most national Republican polls. It was an odd set of races. One was Missouri, a non-binding primary where he won quite easily. The other were two caucus states which Romney had won four years ago, and that I think explains why these had such a big impact. One was Minnesota where Governor Romney had the support of the state’s former governor and one of its leading Republicans, Tim Pawlenty, and Santorum won there. And the other is Colorado, not considered as conservative a state, a state with quite a few Mormons in it as Romney is, and Santorum won that too. So, it really turned the race upside down.  It established Santorum as the main rival to Romney. And in Michigan, that is next week we have two primaries, in Michigan and in Arizona, and the major test is Michigan, the state in which Governor Romney grew up in and where his father was a popular Republican governor in the ’60s, and every poll so far shows, Santorum leading there.  So, if Santorum would actually beat Romney in Michigan that would really turn this race upside down. Romney could no longer be considered the front-runner, and it would really set Santorum with a real chance of becoming the nominee, but that hasn’t happened yet.

So, that’s a long version of where things stand.

Listen to Part 2:

John Sparks
If something like that does happen, looking down the road, where do you think the tides might turn for a candidate? In Texas, the primary has been delayed until probably late May. Could Texas be a decider?

Carl Leubsdorf
Texas, I mean… And actually, I think Santorum would probably like to have Texas sooner rather than later because there’s a new poll put out by the Texas Tribune and the University of Texas that shows Santorum with a rather substantial lead. Remember this: The Texas Republican Party is very conservative. In the primary for governor last year where Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison challenged Governor Perry, Hutchison got 30% of the vote, Perry got 50% of the vote, and a Tea Party candidate got 20% of the vote. That means that 70% of the votes cast were cast for very conservative candidates.  So, this is not a good — Texas is not a good state for Romney. He’s probably just as well for the primary has been delayed indefinitely.

What happens after next Tuesday, and I mentioned that Arizona is also voting next Tuesday, its rivals have pretty much conceded that to Governor Romney. So whatever happens, he’ll have a victory, but if he only wins Michigan – - wins Arizona and doesn’t win Michigan, it will be something of a hollow victory because the real fight is in Michigan.  The week after that we have so called “Super Tuesday” with a whole bunch of primaries. Some are in states like Massachusetts where Governor Romney almost certainly is going to be the winner, but in states like Tennessee and Oklahoma and Georgia, Newt Gingrich’s home state, so it’s going to be a very interesting day and not a great day probably for Romney. His next big stand would probably come on the 20th of March in Illinois, the kind of state that Romney as a more moderate Northern candidate ought to be — have a good chance in. But, as I say, if Romney loses in Michigan next week, all bets are off.

Listen to Part 3:

John Sparks
Carl, could it be that we could head into the National Convention and see a brokered convention if things keep flip-flopping?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well let me approach that in a couple of ways because every time we have one of these fights and it looks a little bit inconclusive, the first words that come out are “brokered convention.” First of all, it’s not clear who would broker a convention because the idea that candidates who have run for months and months and years in some cases would suddenly say, “Okay, we’re deadlocked, let’s like let a bunch of party leaders who’ve been on the sidelines decide it.” It ain’t[sic] going to happen that way.  That’s not how it works.  To have a brokered convention, you probably need three, at least three candidates with substantial number of delegates. Now the problem in the Republican Party now is that there are four candidates still staying in the race, and one of the issues will be whether in addition to Santorum and Romney, the other two candidates, Gingrich and Ron Paul, continue to acquire delegates. That’s not at all certain. Someone did a study, and they said that if Romney won the rest of the primaries with 49%, he wouldn’t win enough delegates to be nominated till June. If one of these candidates starts winning more decisively, they will not be getting 49% of the votes, they’ll be getting 59% and 69%, and they will be getting well over half of the delegates in most of these races. Gingrich, for example, has got to make a showing on Super Tuesday with races in Georgia and Tennessee. I haven’t seen any Georgia polls, but, in Tennessee, the last poll I saw had Santorum up by a pretty substantial margin. Gingrich’s only hope is that his principal financial supporter, Mr. Adelson out in Las Vegas, is planning to spend a lot of money in his behalf. That might help keep him in, but he is — he looks like the guy on the outside now as Santorum and Romney are fighting, and Ron Paul is sort of working along the fringes in smaller states. He will continue to get delegates, but it’s not clear how many delegates. So, that’s the first thing. There has to be three candidates getting delegates because otherwise the leading candidate, assuming there becomes a leading candidate, will begin to pile up delegates at a big pace.

If one of the candidates has a substantial lead, but it doesn’t quite get to the figure over 1,100 that they need to be nominated, the first thing that would probably happen is that that candidate would try to make an accommodation with one of the other candidates to get some of his delegates.  As I say, the idea that Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum and Ron Paul and maybe Newt Gingrich after running all year would suddenly step in the sidelines and let former Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi or Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana try to decide the nominee, it just doesn’t happen.

Now the other possibility is that another candidate comes into the race. There are a number of primaries where the deadlines have not yet been reached and where a candidate could come in. Now that’s very hard to do. There’ve been a number of examples. It’s very interesting. The pattern of this race is beginning to resemble two past races of recent years in which there was an insurgency against a rather weak establishment candidate. One was 1964 when Barry Goldwater was running against Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination. One was 1972 where George McGovern was challenging Senator Ed Muskie for the Democratic nomination on the Vietnam War issue. In both cases another candidate did come in. As Muskie began to collapse in ’72, the party leadership encouraged Hubert Humphrey, the former vice president, to get into the race, and he carried the race all the way to the convention but did not win. In 1964 when the Rockefeller candidacy faltered and it appeared that Goldwater was going to get nominated, a number of the party leaders got behind Governor Scranton of Pennsylvania and got him into the race in the last month, and that went nowhere. Goldwater had enough delegates and was nominated. So, you could get another candidate in. You could get party leaders to trying to do something, but there’s no guarantee that they would derail some arrangement among the top candidates. The danger here is that if the more ideological candidate gets nominated, and that would be Santorum in this case, the danger is that that candidate often has a more difficult time winning the general election. Goldwater carried six states against Lyndon Johnson, and McGovern carried one state in the District of Columbia against Richard Nixon. Now, this election won’t be that one-sided in any case. The Republicans will certainly win a certain number of states in the South and in the mountain area, and the Democrats will certainly will win a bunch of states in the Northeast, but what looks on paper to be a close race might not be so close if the Republicans nominate a candidate who drives away independent voters.

Listen to Part 4:

John Sparks
As Republicans continue to battle in public, isn’t the real winner sitting in the White House sitting on his $76 million in campaign funds waiting for the general election?

Carl Leubsdorf
Sure.  As I said, the battle — the real key to this election are the independents. The Democrats are 90% for Obama, and the Republicans are 90% for whichever one of these candidates gets nominated, but the different tallies show different numbers among the independents.  Most of the discussion of that until very recently had to do with Romney versus Gingrich and that Romney was a better candidate against the independents, for the independents, being more moderate than Gingrich. It’s more complicated with Santorum because on one hand, he seems to have definite appeal to blue collar voters, what we call the “Reagan Democrats,” the people who were union people and of ethnic origin who had been traditional Democrats but were fairly conservative on social issues and began to vote Republican often starting with President Reagan, but there’s another group of independents, and those are the suburban independents. I always like to call them the  “Clinton Republicans.” They probably voted for Reagan in the ’80s, but they then voted for Bill Clinton in the ’90s, and they voted for Al Gore, and they certainly voted for Obama, and they’re not as conservative on the social issues. And if the Republicans have a candidate who stresses social issues, like Santorum, he’s going to have a lot trouble with the suburban voters in major states.

The White House likes this. The White House has been planning all along for a race against Romney.  You know, Romney is still the more likely candidate, but he has shown his weakness steadily through this race, but they’re also beginning to consider what would happen if Santorum were the candidate. They haven’t done much about that yet. There’s a lot of material on Santorum, especially from his unsuccessful re-election race in Pennsylvania in 2006 against Bob Casey, a conservative Democrat. Lots of material from there that has not been used so far, which the Democrats have. So, a lot of that will depend on what happens here. The White House is quite happy for the Republicans to be fighting among themselves, using up their financial resources, and the fact that the campaign has taken on such a negative tone among these candidates, especially in the television commercials.  So, the White House is quite pleased through this. In the meantime, the economy has gotten somewhat better, and so, it looks like President Obama’s situation politically is somewhat better than it was last year. That doesn’t mean he’s yet a strong favorite to win, it still looks like a close race, but more and more people who follow this are thinking that Obama’s chances are beginning to edge above the 50% mark.

Listen to Part 5:

John Sparks
Interesting that you mention independents. Twenty years ago, Ross Perot launched his presidential bid as a third party candidate. Last week, Tom Friedman was talking about that and suggesting maybe the time was now ripe for an independent candidate, a third party candidate.  Any chance of something like that happening?

Carl Leubsdorf
There has been a group called “Americans Elect” that is talking about getting a ballot space in every state with the idea of having an Internet primary and putting a candidate on the ballot. The problem with this is they don’t at this point have a candidate, and most American third party movements have been driven not by parties but by candidates. For example, when Ross Perot decided to run for president 20 years ago, he created the mechanism to get on the ballot. It wasn’t like there was a party out there that nominated Ross Perot, and the same thing happened in 1968 when former Governor George Wallace of Alabama ran as an independent candidate for president. So this Americans Elect group so far does not have a candidate. I’ve noticed over the weekend there is one person who has emerged who might try to win that nomination. His name is David Walker. He’s not known at all. He’s a deficit hawk who was the comptroller general of the United States, which is a bookkeeping job pretty much in the government, and he’s been a big advocate of cutting the deficit and taking stern measures and not — to deal with the deficit issue.  So he might be a candidate for that, but I think it’s going to be very difficult for a third party candidate to be in this race.

John Sparks
Carl, in 1992 when Perot ran, the clear loser was an incumbent president, George H. W. Bush. If a third party candidate were to emerge, who would be most likely to be vulnerable?

Carl Leubsdorf
I think probably if someone ran on a deficit cutting ticket that it would probably hurt President Obama more than the Republican candidate. It’s interesting, Alan Lichtman, the Professor of history at American University who developed a system for judging president races, has what he calls “13 Keys to the Presidency.”  And if a certain number turn against the president, the incumbent president he’ll lose.  And he became very famous about 20 years ago because one he was one of the early people who fingered George H.W. Bush as a loser in 1992 as he turned out to be, and one of his keys is a third party candidacy, a third party candidacy in his system hurts the incumbent. Again, it really depends how many votes the… you could say that the Ralph Nader candidacy, which is, of course, Nader has run several times, in 2000 defeated Al Gore because Nader got enough votes in New Hampshire, presumably mostly from liberals, that it was more than the difference by which Gore lost the state to George W. Bush.  And without Nader in the race, Gore probably would’ve carried New Hampshire, and that would’ve been enough to win that very close election. So in that, he was running as the candidate of the incumbent party. So I think a centrist independent is bad for Obama. On the other hand, if say — and there’s no sign of this at point, suppose Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination, and a group of conservatives get together and say, “He’s too moderate for us, we want a conservative candidate,” and they run a conservative candidate as a third party candidate and get on ballot, that would obviously hurt the Republicans.

Listen to Part 6:

John Sparks
If you just have a Republican versus the President in November, who’s the best candidate?  Who prevails if it’s Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, or even Ron Paul? Who do you think has the best chance?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I think the assumption all along has been that Romney would have the best chance basically because he’s more moderate than the others.  He would have a better chance of getting independent votes, and most of the polling until now has shown that. Now interestingly, some of the more recent polling has shown Santorum’s chances are almost as good, and the places where Santorum would challenge Obama more may be somewhat different from the states where Romney would. Romney, a lot of people, more moderate voters, probably don’t believe Romney’s conversion to conservatism like the more conservative Republicans who don’t believe it either and might vote for him on that basis. Now he says he’ll have a very conservative presidency and has listed some of the positions he’ll take, and then that’s always a danger that the zeal of the newly converted is greater than that of the traditional holder of the views. George W. Bush ran as something of a moderate personality in 2000, but he said he would name Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and he named two very conservative Supreme Court justices. So, you got to be careful of what you wish for, it may not be what the candidate will advocate.

But at the moment, Romney looks stronger, but he’s got a lot of flaws as a candidate. For example, you would think that he would be able to take advantage of the bad economy in a place like Michigan, his home state because of him being a businessman, but he opposed the bailout of the auto companies which has been spectacularly successful and has saved General Motors and Chrysler, and he’s still arguing that it was a bad idea. That’s hurting him in Michigan. Heck, it’s hurting him against Santorum in the primary even though they both had the same position, partly because Romney was in favor of the bank bailout but against the auto bailout whereas Santorum was much more consistent. He was against both of them.  So, I still think Romney is (a) the more likely nominee and (b) the stronger general election candidate, but he’s been hurt a lot by the race so far.

John Sparks
Carl, it’s always a pleasure. I’ll be watching with interest, as I know you will, and look forward to visiting with you again real soon.

Carl Leubsdorf
Happy to do it, and it’s just been a fascinating race and much more than we could’ve bargained for.

12/9: A Look at the GOP Contest in Iowa and New Hampshire

With time counting down to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, are there more twists and turns ahead?

The Marist Poll’s John Sparks visits with Marist Poll Analyst and syndicated political columnist Carl Leubsdorf who writes a weekly column for The Dallas Morning News about the latest trends in the 2012 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

Listen to the interview below.

John Sparks
Carl, it’s less than a month until the Iowa caucuses, and according to the latest Marist Poll there have been some changes. But before we talk about those changes, I’ve got to ask you: Which is more important to a candidate, Iowa or New Hampshire?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, it depends which candidate, I think, because for certain of the candidates for the group of — that we call the conservatives in this race, they’re all conservative, but basically who have been jockeying all year for position, and I’m talking about Speaker Gingrich, Governor Perry, Representative Bachman, in particular Herman Cain because he’s not there anymore, and to a lesser degree Ron Paul, Iowa is more important because it’s going to establish the pecking order among those people. In effect, we’ve had sort of two primaries going on, the — on one side, the establishment side, we’ve had Romney and the two former governors, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, and on the other side, we’ve had the other candidates. So, among the other candidates, they’re jockeying for position, and Iowa is extremely important because of the nature of the electorate, quite conservative. It’s a caucus system which encourages activists, so… But for Governor Romney, while there’s some importance in Iowa, the key thing for him is to win New Hampshire and win it decisively so that the media does not write: Well he won, but he didn’t meet expectations because he needs to use New Hampshire where he has a summer home and where he spends a lot of time as a board to sort of propel himself into the primaries in South Carolina and Florida.

John Sparks
Well, let’s talk about Iowa first since it comes first. The caucuses are January 3^rd, and the latest Marist Poll has Newt Gingrich on top with 26%, followed by Mitt Romney at 18% and Ron Paul at 17%. Now Marist Poll Director Lee Miringoff says, “Hold on tight for further twists and turns.” Carl, do you think we could see more changes between now and January the 3rd?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, historically there have been a lot of changes in the last six weeks, and one thing I’ve been advising everyone that I’ve talked to and probably have discussed in these interviews previously, is that Iowa tends to firm up in the last month to six weeks. There are a lot of changes near the end, and the way it stands in August or in June probably isn’t going to be the way it’s going to end up, and that, in fact, has happened with the emergence of Speaker Gingrich as the leader there. It’s going to be interesting. I don’t know whether he can maintain it. It’s a shorter period he has to maintain it than some of the others who’ve come up. There’s the question: If he doesn’t maintain it, who would get his votes since just about everyone of his rivals among that group has been up there earlier.

Ron Paul is an interesting and sort of a separate phenomenon. He has a very fervent following, a lot of it young people. He’s got a solid vote, which is I would rate at 10-to-12%. But the latest poll is, not only the Marist Poll but the two others that were taken, show his numbers coming up in Iowa, so he’s clearly a contender for first place.

And the third player near the top of the poll, Governor Romney, has not spent that much time in Iowa. He spent a lot of time four years ago. He definitely has a following. We have to remember that while the Iowa Republican Party and likely caucus attendees are pretty conservative, maybe a quarter to a third of them are more moderate and more establishment, and Romney will do very well there whether he spends a lot of time in Iowa or not. I found interesting in these last polls, and we’ll find out later if it was meaningful, Romney’s numbers appear to have come down in Iowa for no particular reason, and this is the phenomenon we saw four years ago that the more he campaigned in a place, the less well he did, and people forget that at one point he was the leader in both Iowa and New Hampshire four years ago, and he ended up winning neither. So, whether we’re seeing that phenomenon in the fact that he’s dropped from the mid 20s into the upper teens (inaudible) polling caucuses is very difficult and finding likely attendees.

Listen to Part 1 of the Interview:

John Sparks
You know, Carl, second choices might tell us something because Herman Cain was still in the race when the Marist Poll was taken, and 28% of Cain’s supporters said that Gingrich was their second choice, followed by Paul and Romney with each 19%.

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I think the general assumption has been that Cain’s vote is… more of it will go to Gingrich than to anyone else. They’re both from Georgia. They both had some affinity on the issues. They’re quite…  There are a few suggestions that Cain will in fact endorse Gingrich fairly soon, so that’s not surprising. In a way, the thing that Romney most fears is the consolidation of the conservative vote behind one candidate early in the game. Romney was counting on the fact that the conservative vote would stay very divided, and, in fact, in a very divided conservative vote, Romney with say 25% might win the Iowa caucuses. But if the vote begins to consolidate in Iowa behind one person, then, at the moment that appears to be Gingrich, that’s a problem for a candidate like Romney who has shown great difficulty in getting above about a quarter of the vote everywhere except in New Hampshire.

John Sparks

The Marist Poll showed that among caucus goers who consider themselves Tea Party or conservative and Evangelical Christians, Gingrich gets 35% compared to only 11% for Romney.

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, that’s not Romney’s electorate, but the… I didn’t notice what percentage in your poll was people who consider themselves conservatives as opposed to moderate or however it’s described in the poll, and maybe it wasn’t asked. But I said, the assumption has been about two-thirds of the caucus electorate or maybe a little more would be Tea Party people, Right-To-Lifers, Christian conservatives, the various factions that make up the right side of the Republican Party, and that is not a group that where Romney is going to do very well.

Listen to Part 2:

John Sparks
You know, I think it’s always interesting, polling people and asking them why they vote like they do, and in Iowa, three in ten that are likely to be caucus goers tell us they want a candidate who is closest to them on issues – 29% say the candidate who shares their values is a key, and that’s flip-flopped a month ago. Any significance to this that now there’s…

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I think it seems to be fewer of them are saying that the first choice would be someone they think that can win, and actually we’ve seen in the some of the polls lately, more people think that Gingrich can win than think Romney can win. Romney has not… Romney has run this very buttoned up campaign where he tries to avoid the other candidates, where he behaves like the front-runner, where he straddles the issues and tries to say as little as possible, and when you combine that with his bland personality and the fact that he doesn’t have much of a persona, I think it’s hurt him, and I think it’s, you know, Gingrich has emerged as a more dynamic candidate, as a candidate who could get in Obama’s face. I mean, the thing that Republicans want most is to beat President Obama. They want a candidate who will stick it to him in the debates and who will be outspoken, and I think they see Romney is not able to do that. So, in the other candidates, and I say Gingrich is the favorite of the moment, they see ones who both agree with them and can be aggressive against Obama.

John Sparks
It’s interesting that you mention the general election. When Iowans turn to the general election, Obama ties Ron Paul, but he defeats Gingrich in Iowa 47% to 37% and he defeats Romney 46% to 39%.

Carl Leubsdorf
That’s interesting. That’s especially interesting because Iowans have been subjected to a steady barrage of anti-Obama rhetoric. The president’s been there a couple of times, but since there is no Democratic primary, most of the — most of what’s coming out in politics is Republicans, and most of what they’re doing is attacking Obama, and for Obama’s numbers to hold up that well is probably a good sign for him from the Fall that I think it’s the calculation of the Obama campaign at this point that in a relatively close election where they have a reasonable chance to win, Iowa would be one of those states that the president would be able to carry. It’s considered one of the states definitely in play. It was carried by, I guess, by Bush in ’04 and by Obama in ’08, but that is not a great sign for the Republicans, and there’s some sense, and there’s a new Pew Poll on this too, that what’s going on in the Republican Party has actually hurt the party somewhat. Whether that will have a long-term affect, we don’t know.

Listen to Part 3:

John Sparks
Carl, organization has always been an important factor in the campaign.  Is it still an important factor, especially in Iowa?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, it’s important in Iowa because in order to vote, you have to go to a caucus in your precinct, and there are 2,400 precincts in Iowa, and the weather in January when this takes place is often not very good, and traditionally, the way you won in Iowa is you set up a structure in every county, you said the 99 counties and then a lot of the towns, to get people out to the caucuses. I think that’s going to be less of a factor. If it is a big factor, Speaker Gingrich will be in big trouble because he doesn’t have much of an organization there. Ron Paul’s got a perfect organization out there supposedly, and Mitt Romney has one because he had one four years ago. But, this campaign has really been fought out in the televised debates. That’s what’s really driven the race and have gotten the most attention, and the flubs of the various candidates like Governor Perry’s problem, naming the third department he would get rid of or outside issues like the problem Mr. Cain had with various women have really driven the narrative of this campaign, and television advertising’s about to start really full scale in Iowa, but I don’t think that’s the major factor either. I would guess organization will be less important. But if we wake up on caucus morning and Newt Gingrich is in fourth place, then we’ll know organization was more important than we think it is, but I think it’s been reduced a lot.  Another factor on the organization side is there’s a difference between the Democratic caucuses and the Republican caucuses in Iowa.  In the Democratic caucuses, they have a system where if you get — if someone has less than 15%, their support doesn’t count. The caucuses are precinct caucuses. They elect delegates to the county conventions, which eventually this will get to a state convention. In the Democrats, they all line up for the different candidates in different corners of the room. Anyone who’s got under 15%, his candidate is out, and those people can go join one of the other groups, and you really need organization to do that. The Republicans have a straight vote. It’s like a straw poll. When they arrive at the caucus, they vote for one of the candidates, and that’s how the delegates are allocated to the county then. That’s much easier. It’s more like a regular election than a primary than like a caucus, and if they don’t want to stay for the discussion of the issues and all that, they can go back home as soon as they vote. The Democrats, you got to stay awhile. So, it’s another factor that reduces the importance of organization in this election.

Listen to Part 4:

John Sparks
Let’s go from Iowa to New Hampshire. The New Hampshire primary comes a week after the Iowa caucuses, and the latest Marist Poll shows that in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney is in the lead 39% to 23% over Gingrich, but that lead has been cut in half since last month’s Marist Poll in New Hampshire. Any significance there?

Carl Leubsdorf

Yeah, I think a couple of interesting things there. One, Romney has steadily been… I think most of the fact that it’s been cut in half is probably because Gingrich has gained and less that Romney has been consistently in most polls in the neighborhood of 40%. And the fact is, if he gets 40% in the primaries, he’s almost certainly going to win. One thing… the biggest caution on New Hampshire is that the day after the Iowa caucuses, all the numbers you’ve seen so far in New Hampshire will be worthless because the numbers will change according to what happens in Iowa. It happens every year, you see a real change, and the fact that the primaries are only — and the caucus in Iowa and the primary is in New Hampshire are only week apart means that there can be a big affect of what happens in Iowa. What that means is that the winner in Iowa will get a boost in New Hampshire. Now, if it’s Gingrich, and he’s already surpassed 20%, that could put him up near the 30% level. And, unless Romney comes out of Iowa with a feeling well he did okay considering he didn’t campaign much there, his numbers might come down a little bit. Now if Romney’s numbers come down a little bit, that votes probably not going to go to Gingrich, it’s probably going to go to Jon Huntsman who is the former Governor of Utah, has concentrated in New Hampshire, and although his record is equally as conservative as the other candidates, his more moderate manner and the fact that he’s not spent all of his time bashing President Obama gives him an appeal to the independents.  Remember in New Hampshire, independents can vote in the primary, and with no Democratic primary, we expect a lot of independents to vote there. Not all independents are moderate to liberal to be sure, but I think there are more of those than arch conservatives. So, what you’ll see in… Now if Romney comes in to say a strong second in Iowa, his numbers will hold up very well, but if comes in a weak third, he may suffer some erosion there, and certainly the winner in Iowa will get a bump up, so you’ll see a change there by the Thursday or Friday of that week, and it’ll determine whether anyone actually has a chance of beating Romney. The great fear I think from the Romney point of view is that he survives to win, but he wins so narrowly that it does not give him a boost for the later primaries. As I said before, New Hampshire is extremely important to Romney. He was governor of a neighboring state. He has a summer home there. He’s spent a lot of time there. He really needs to have a strong victory there, or he’s going to have real problems when the race moves south.

John Sparks
Interesting that you mention the independent voters in New Hampshire. Romney leads Gingrich by 12 points among Republicans in New Hampshire, but when it comes to independents, his lead opens up to 21 points over Gingrich.

Carl Leubsdorf
Well that’s exactly right because the two candidates who the independents are most likely to vote for or like more than will vote for are Romney, considered the moderate in this race. Remember, he’s taken all these conservative positions, but a lot of people don’t believe he really believes them, including a lot of conservatives, so he will get a lot of that independent vote, but if he falls or has seen trouble, it’ll go to Huntsman I think.

Listen to Part 5:

John Sparks
According to Marist, the New Hampshire voters are firmly committed to their candidate – 49% say they’re strongly committed while 31% report they’re somewhat committed, whatever that means, but that may tell us something…

Carl Leubsdorf
That’s more than in Iowa is and…  that’s more than in Iowa that it’s… they’re less committed, I think.

John Sparks
Correct, but I wondering if this might tell us something about what the general election might be like in New Hampshire. There’s something that’s interesting about New Hampshire.  Marist has President Obama losing to Romney in New Hampshire by only three points, 46/43, but they have the president defeating Ron Paul by only two points, and they have the president defeating Gingrich by ten points and yet…

Carl Leubsdorf
I think…

John Sparks
I was going to say – and yet a majority of New Hampshire voters, 52%, say they don’t approve of Obama’s performance.

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I think if you compare the two states, Obama has much less chance of carrying New Hampshire than Iowa, especially if his opponent is Romney who is — we said is well known there and has ties there. He is not popular in New Hampshire. All the polls have shown that consistently. He’ll have a difficult time carrying New Hampshire. I would bet if you could get an Obama person to say what was the map that they would have assuming that they barely got over the 270 mark needed for an electoral vote, what’s on that map? I would guess that Iowa would be on it and New Hampshire would not.

John Sparks
Probably so.

Carl Leubsdorf
One of the interesting things in New Hampshire that I should mention is the influence of the Union Leader newspaper. For years, the Union Leader, which is the only statewide paper in New Hampshire, has played an outsized role in New Hampshire Republican politics. It’s… the person that has supported hasn’t always won, but a recent study showed that, I think by Nate Silver of the New York Times, was that the endorsement of the Union Leader is definitely worth a number of points.  That candidates who were endorsed by the Union Leader gained strength afterwards. A couple weeks ago they endorsed Speaker Gingrich as their candidate. That’s undoubtedly one of the factors in his rise to 23% in the Marist Poll, and it will be a factor because when the Union Leader endorses someone, they don’t just write one editorial and then go back to their knitting.  There will be more front page editorials in the Union Leader, and not only will they spend some time supporting Gingrich, but they will be beating up on the candidates they don’t want, and number one on that list is Mitt Romney. So, that is going to part of the dynamic here. It will help whoever emerges from Iowa as the leader of that conservative group, and, at the moment, it looks like it will be Speaker Gingrich.

John Sparks
Carl, I’ve got to ask you with everything that’s going on in my business, people are not reading newspapers as much, so does the Union Leader still have the influence it once had?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, you know it’s interesting in New Hampshire.  It’s the closest thing to a statewide newspaper. Television, there’s only really one major television station in New Hampshire, WMUR in Manchester. Now, of course, they get news on cable, and they get a lot of Boston TV in New Hampshire, but New Hampshire outlets — New Hampshire has an interesting group of newspapers. I know a fair amount about it because my son, Ben, works for the Concord Monitor. There’s a string of local regional papers in New Hampshire, most of them dailies but some weeklies, and which have a fair amount of readership in their local area. The Union Leader has more influence. Manchester is the biggest city in New Hampshire. It has a bigger readership, and also what the Union Leader does gets trumpeted by TV. It’s always a big thing. What some of the smaller papers do doesn’t get as much as publicity.  So, I think it’s less than it once was, but all signs are it does have influence and especially on the Republican side.

John Sparks
Carl, it’s always interesting to talk presidential politics with you. We’re getting to that time when the rubber meets the road, and I look forward to visiting with you again real soon.

Listen to Part 6:

10/31: The Candidate’s Spouse on the Campaign Trail

Presidential candidates willingly step into the political spotlight, but their spouses are, sometimes, reluctant participants.  What is the role of a candidate’s spouse on the campaign trail?  Historically, how important have they been?  Veteran news correspondent Bonnie Angelo discusses this topic with the Marist Poll’s John Sparks.

Listen to Part 1 of the Interview:

John Sparks

Bonnie, we’re in the throes of a presidential election. We read and see a lot about the candidates, but do the candidates’ wives play any significant role in the campaign?

Bonnie Angelo

I would say that the candidates’ wives in this day and age play a very significant role.  A candidate’s wife can be a tremendous help, or she can be a disaster.  If she says the wrong thing at the right time, it can haunt her.  So, she’s playing a very important role because people expect a candidate’s wife, the person who wants to be First Lady, live in the White House, be a public figure around the world, she’s got to have something more than just average sorts background.  So, I think that the candidate’s wives are going to be examined more closely.  Each election, they’re going to be examined more closely than they were before.  They’ve got to be public figures, and they’ve got to understand it from the start.

John Sparks

Is it the press who is responsible for this attention on the wives?  I recall when Jackie Kennedy became the media darling, but she really did not like the campaign, did she?

Bonnie Angelo

Oh, Jackie hated it.  She hated the whole scene of politics.  She wanted the White House, and she did beautiful things with the White House, but she did not want to live up to the part where you have to shake a lot of hands, be in boring meetings, be on display whether you want to be or not.  She didn’t really like that; she wanted it on her own terms.  She pretty well managed that, too.

John Sparks

Well, that takes me to leaping to Hillary Clinton.  She actively campaigned for her husband Bill, and then of course, four years ago, she was a candidate.  Now, I think it’s fair to say that with the Clinton’s, either Hillary or Bill, that most folks are not on the fence.  They either really like them, or they don’t.  But I’m just curious, was Bill an asset or a liability in Hillary’s run against Obama four years ago?

Bonnie Angelo

I think he was an asset.  I think he took great pains not to overshadow her.  He did a lot of things on her behalf, speeches and that kind of thing, in a way that did not attract that much attention.  I believe that he was truly supportive, and I think that both of them thought how exciting it would have been for the each of them to have been President of the United States.  It would be historic, and they had a great sense of history.  So, I think that he kept his place very nicely, shall we say.

Listen to Part 2:

John Sparks

Sure.  Now, I recall back in 1998 when Hillary is campaigning for Bill on his first run.  She made a comment during the campaign that she would not be the kind of woman that would be at home baking cookies, and that prompted Family Circle magazine, they sponsored this cookie bakeoff between Hillary and Barbara Bush, and certainly got a lot of press, but did that have any impact on the election at all?

Bonnie Angelo

I don’t think it had any impact on the election.  I think the election was going to go the way it would, but it did not help because once she was doing was demeaning the role of the average American housewife, and I think that they could see that it was like they were being kind of scoffed at for baking cookies.  Now, she should have handled that smoother.  Would have done it had she stopped to think.  One of the problems for candidates, there’s no time to stop and think.  A question comes flying at you, and you answer it, and you think, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t said that,”  but she couldn’t take it back.  But, I don’t think that helped her at all.

John Sparks

You know in thinking about things that one might want to take back, in 2004, John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz, made a comment about Laura Bush.  She said that Laura had never really held a real job.  That hurt her I think, and then also the fact that Teresa Heinz had also been a Republican before she married John Kerry, but was she really a factor in the outcome of that election in 2004?

Bonnie Angelo

No, I think the handwriting was already on the wall on that.  I don’t think she helped, not at all.  Maybe, she cased some vote, but I don’t think the outcome would have been any different.  It was  not, shall we say she had not thought it through what she was saying, because you can’t insult somebody in a rather personal way, the way she seemed to insult Laura Bush. Not a wise thing to say, she never put her foot wrong again after that, but you have to be very, very, I should say, the candidate’s wife has got to be very, very careful where she makes — gives opinions.

John Sparks

In summing up, what would you say is the primary thing a candidate’s wife should remember about her role during a campaign?

Bonnie Angelo

I think she could remember that she is out there to help his cause, not in any way trying to overshadow him, and I think they don’t instinctively, but they must bear that in mind that to be very careful not to say anything, to be so well versed in the issues that she would not say anything that could be used against him, and to be supportive of him without being a doormat.

John Sparks

Bonnie, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you.  I appreciate your time this afternoon.

10/11: A Look at the Republican Contest for the Presidency

The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are just months away.  With so much attention given to these early contests, what are the implications for the current field of Republican candidates?  The Marist Poll’s John Sparks speaks about this issue, the contest on the national level, and President Barack Obama’s re-election strategy with Marist Poll Analyst and syndicated political columnist Carl Leubsdorf who writes a weekly column for The Dallas Morning News.

Listen to Part 1 of the Interview:

John Sparks
Carl, we’re three months away from the Iowa caucuses.  So, where we are today with a GOP candidate?

Carl Leubsdorf
Mitt Romney is, as he’s been for some time, the frontrunner, but he’s — in one sense he’s not a very strong fron-trunner.  If you look at the Republican polls, he’s polling between a quarter and a third of the Republican vote.  He hasn’t gone up much.  He hasn’t gone down much.  He’s sort of stable there. And if you look at the more conservative candidates, and I’ll include just about everyone else in the field except Ron Paul, who I think is a special case, they’re polling about 50% of the Republican vote, but the problem is, of course, that it’s all divided up.  And when Perry came into the race, it first was going to be Michele Bachmann, and she had that good debate performance in June and suddenly she started gaining, and then Perry came into the race and then everyone sort of — the conservatives sort of shifted over to him.  Now he’s had some problems and some bad debates. He’s clearly not fully ready for what’s come up.  He’s had the controversy over the racist word on that ranch his family leases in Texas, and he’s dropped, and Herman Cain has come up.  It’s like the vote is shifting from one of them to the other while Romney is over there on the other side.  So, eventually one of two things will happen. Either the conservative vote will consolidate behind someone, and Perry is still the best chance for that, or Romney might be able to win against the very divided field if they all sort of stay in and no one can get enough votes to beat him.  If in Iowa, if in the Iowa caucuses, the field is divided enough, it is not impossible that Mitt Romney could win the Iowa caucuses with a rather low percentage. That’s happened before that the winning candidate didn’t have that much support, and he’s already the favorite in New Hampshire. If he won in Iowa, he’d have a good chance of winning in New Hampshire, and history tells us that Iowa/New Hampshire double winners are almost always nominated.

John Sparks
This business of Rick Perry renting the ranch with a name that’s a racial epithet, is this going to be a fatal blow to his campaign do you think?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I don’t think it’s fatal in itself.  His… and I think his bigger problems are two other things.  One is that his position on immigration, which is a very volatile issue and where Republicans feel especially strongly against the flood of illegal immigrants who’ve come into this country, because of the fact that Texas passed a law granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens, and Perry has strongly supported it, that is a very unpopular position in the Republican Party. That was one of the big factors, I think, in his loss of support in the Florida Straw Poll, and the other is that he has not performed well in debates.  Again, it’s not all that surprising. He came into the race late. He’s not spent a lot of time dealing with some of these national and international issues, and it’s sort of the classic situation that the successful politician on the state level, be he a senator or a governor, doesn’t realize until he gets into it how difficult running for president is. Every issue that was visited before is going to be revisited, and he’s suddenly expected to be an expert on all sorts of subject that he never thought much about.

Listen to Part 2:

John Sparks
I want ask you about Herman Cain. I saw a poll today that has Romney and Cain tied on top. Do you think that we could really see a presidential election with two African Americans facing off?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I think we could see that some day, but I don’t think we can — likely to see it in 2012.  Herman Cain is basically the “none of the above candidate.”  I think that’s really for the conservatives.  Now he has a lot of appeal to the conservative portion of the Republican Party, the Tea Party crowd. He’s a terrific speaker. He’s very dynamic.  I remember, I have one of my sons, who does some work in politics, told me last summer, said, “The guy you really ought to watch out for is Herman Cain.” And, he does very well when he speaks before these conventions, but he’s really the “none of the above candidate.” I think no serious Republican politician or analyst expects him, in fact, to be nominated, but it’s a sign of Perry’s problems that his support suddenly shifted to Cain.

John Sparks
You and I spoke back in June about Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin. Do you believe any of these folks are still serious players?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, I think Ron Paul is a serious player to the extent that he’s always going to get his 10-to-12%. He has a very strong following.  It’s interesting, I wrote a column in the Dallas Morning News about the fact that the press doesn’t take Paul seriously, and they never pay any attention, and I discussed some things that he had said at a breakfast I was at with him for reporters, and he said, you know, that some of the economic stuff he talks about, he admits it’s a little arcane and that he hasn’t explained it very well.  Paul’s not going anywhere, but he’s also not going to be nominated.

Now as for the other ones, Sarah Palin, as far as we know, is not in the race and has no plans to enter, and that hasn’t changed any.  Of the others, I would guess that most of them have no real chance. I don’t think Michele Bachmann has a chance. I don’t think Newt Gingrich has a chance. The one in that group who might conceivably have a chance is Rick Santorum, and I say that only because he’s come across in the debates as a pretty intelligent guy.  He’s got strong views which fit with the Republican Party.  He knows what he’s talking about, and he doesn’t do some of these verbal shenanigans that Gingrich does denouncing the reporters, and he served two terms in the United States Senate, so he has a background of some experience. He doesn’t have much money and he’s just sort of hanging in there, but it’s conceivable that if the Perry candidacy would not get its moorings and would not recover that he’s the one in that group who just might have an outside chance to make a strong showing in Iowa and somehow get into this race.

The question in the end is: If Perry doesn’t recover to be a strong foe for Romney, can one of these other people do it?  And what happens to the many Republicans who are very cool to the Romney candidacy? Do they just accept it?  We’ve sort of run out of new candidates.

Listen to Part 3:

John Sparks
Yeah, but you know, Carl, if Mitt Romney is the fallback, is that really so bad for Republicans?

Carl Leubsdorf
As a neutral analyst, I think it’s probably pretty good for Republicans.  By all signs, he’s still the strongest general election candidate they have.  He consistently runs better against President Obama than the other candidates. He’s a much better candidate for the party in the North than I think Perry would be, who has — beyond all the issues we’ve talked about, has — there are some — he’s so culturally Texan and Southern that that might be a handicap and appealing to moderate independent voters in Northern states.  Romney, who is from Michigan and served in Massachusetts, would have some appeal there. Now he’s got some problems, most of which are getting very little attention now because of all the to-do about Christie and Herman Cain and Perry. For example, his position on immigration is more hard line than Perry’s, and that could be a problem with Hispanic voters who will be very crucial in states like Colorado and New Mexico and Nevada. He was strongly opposed to the administration’s bailout of the auto industry as he was to most of the administration’s economic policies. Well, the auto industry bailout of Chrysler and GM seems to have worked. It’s one of the success stories the administration has, and there are a lot of auto workers in Wisconsin and Ohio and in Michigan who are probably very happy about it and might not like a candidate who is against it, so there are some issues out there.

John Sparks
I saw a Rasmussen Report that said “A generic Republican wins over Obama 47 to 41 among likely voters.”  Do you think that any of these Republicans could defeat the President?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, we don’t know that now. If the President’s approval level is in the low 40s and if unemployment is 9% and if more than 70% of the country think that the country is going in the wrong direction, historically it says that it’s very hard for that president to get re-elected, and that would be a real problem.  However if things improve a little bit, it may really depend on which Republican runs against him. The one… the other warning signal for Obama in the current situation — current polls, is in that poll that you mentioned, Obama had 41%, but even in a number of polls that show him ahead in major states, he’s ahead like 45 to 43 or 46 to 44 or 44 to 41.  An incumbent who’s polling in the mid 40s historically is going to have a lot of problems in an election because that probably means that the — all the ones he doesn’t have are going probably going to be against him in the end.

John Sparks
Do you think the main issue, though, still is going to be the pocketbook and jobs?

Carl Leubsdorf

Sure, barring something happening.  I mean it’s always possible something would happen in the month before the election to take attention. Our attention spans seem to be very short on these things, and something becomes a big issue.  Remember when everyone said that the BP oil spill in the Gulf would be the defining issue for Obama, well, that didn’t last very long, and although the anti-terrorism policy has been very successful in this administration because of the ability to kill major Al-Qaeda leaders starting with Osama bin Laden and a whole bunch of others. That’s not getting very much attention these days, so it’s the economy, and it’s the outlook for the economy isn’t very good. It’s as likely we’ll have a double dip recession that will have — than that we’ll have a speedy recovery.

Listen to Part 4:

John Sparks
Carl, people complain that our government is broken, needs fixing, but what about the presidential election process? It’s media-driven, and isn’t the problem that the process is more about headlines and controversy than finding an effective executive who’s right for the moment?

Carl Leubsdorf
To a considerable degree, yes, although I think that it’s interesting.  I mean the cover — the news coverage is certainly that way, and it’s focused on these things. I think the voters, and especially in some of these early states who are much maligned because Iowa and New Hampshire, which come first in the process, are not typical states. They’re much wider than the country as a whole. Iowa is much older than the country as a whole.  Still the people there, I’ve been in those states for a number of elections, and they take it very seriously. They listen to the candidates. They discuss issues.  The press may not be — on cable television may not be discussing the issues, but when they have town meetings with candidates, that’s what they want to know is where these candidates stand on the issues, and that in many cases determines how they vote.  One of the problems is — with the system is that that’s true in the early states, but when a bunch of all these other states compiled in afterwards, it’s sort of like a ping-pong effect, and what happens earlier has an enormous effect on what happens later. That’s why, for example, while Mitt Romney is certainly ahead in New Hampshire now, he has a home there and he’s campaigned there before, the day after the Iowa caucuses, those numbers in New Hampshire are all going to change. If he does well in Iowa, he ought to be able to hold that lead, but if he does very poorly there, and one of the other candidates, whether it’s Perry or Santorum or Cain, does very well, believe me, there will be a quick boom for that candidate in New Hampshire in the five or eight days between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

Listen to Part 5:

John Sparks
Carl, while the Republicans are posturing, what’s Obama’s strategy?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, for most of this year, President Obama tried — continued to try something that he talked about a lot during in the 2008 campaign and the debt-ceiling fight tried to — which was to try to be in the middle ground, to be, as the White House people used to call it, the adult in the room and to work our compromises with the Republicans in Congress on some of these economic issues and some of these budget issues.  Not only did the effort fail, but the result of it is that everyone’s — the voters’ attitude towards almost everyone in politics went down. And although you’ll find many polls that show that more people favor the Obama position versus the Congressional Republican position, it hasn’t helped Obama’s approval rating, which is — continued to hover in the low 40s.  Starting with Labor Day, the White House has switched course.  When the president presented his jobs program, which by the way included some things that many Republicans have supported before, they show no sign of interest in supporting now, basically what President Obama was proposing was a proposal that was not likely to be approved, but which he could take the country and use as an example to say, “This is what I’m trying to get and this what the Republicans are against.” It’s quite clear that the Republicans are not going to make any major deal in part because they can’t.  Even the leaders who are interested — were interested in dealing with him, such as Speaker Boehner, found themselves constrained by the more hawkish members of their constituency in the House of Representative, and even when they’ve — now both sides agreed on what the budget level should be for the year that just started, the House — some of these House Republicans still trying to cut them even more.  So, I think the White House recognizes there’s not going to be a deal on jobs program, and they’re going to use this politically as much as possible.  When the president was in Dallas recently, he pointed out — he sort of fingered Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, and said, “What kind of a jobs program is he for?  Why is he against everything I propose?” And it’s sort of the Harry Truman policy — procedure in 1948.  And Harry Truman in the 1948 election was in deep trouble, and at the time of the Democratic Convention, there was a lot of dissatisfaction, and they all thought they were going to lose, and he electrified that convention, and the way he did it was he made a speech at 1:30 in the morning in which he called Congress back into special session and said he was going to make them consider all the things that they had refused to do.  Well, they didn’t consider them anymore than they had before, but he had an issue, and he took the issue of the do nothing Congress to the country, and Obama is doing something of the same thing, and we’ll see how that works.

John Sparks
Harry Truman also surprised everyone on Election Day in 1948. Is Obama going to be a Harry Truman you think?

Carl Leubsdorf
Well, one reason they surprised him is because polling wasn’t as good as it is now.  With modern polling, it — you’re very rarely enormously surprised. Now the result can be slightly different from the polling. You could have one candidate ahead by two points and then the other one wins by three.  In presidential campaigns, the polling has been quite good lately, but it’s — a lot is going to happen between now and November of 2012, and the situation is going to be affected by external events, going to be affected by the course of the campaign. Obama said the other day that he’s the underdog in the election, and that’s probably true, but a lot of people in Washington would not be totally shocked if in the end he gets elected.  That generic Republican you talked about doesn’t exist, he’s going to have to beat a real live one, and each of them has his shortcomings.

9/9: College Football: The Legacy of the “Death Penalty”

It really doesn’t matter what college or university you may have attended, when it comes to football these days, your school’s color is green — green as in dollars, cash, filthy lucre.  It hasn’t been win one for The Gipper in forever.

The name of the game is money.  Today’s college football is about multi-million dollar television contracts, large stadiums, high dollar coaches and athletic directors, and don’t forget the huge gambling industry where, each season, billions are bet on the games.

College football is big business.  University presidents cannot ignore it.  Potential gifts from alumni are dependent upon a winning season and bowl game receipts.  The old saying about having a university the football team can be proud of is no longer a joke.  Our values and priorities have clearly gotten out of whack.

Is winning everything?  It’s one thing for Vince Lombardi to have said that about his professional Green Bay Packers, but we’re talking amateur athletics.  Or, are we?

Today’s sports pages are filled with stories about recruiting violations, overzealous alums, agents paying off Heisman Trophy winners, and coaches who must have their heads in the sand when it comes to knowledge of NCAA rules violations.

25 years ago the NCAA handed down its first (and only) Death Penalty against Southern Methodist University in Dallas largely because of a television news story produced by yours truly for the ABC affiliate in Dallas.  A disgruntled linebacker, David Stanley, told me in an interview that he received $25,000 to sign a letter of intent with SMU and that he and his parents were mailed monthly payments totaling $750 for the next two years until a cocaine habit got the best of him, and he was cut from the squad.  We confronted the SMU athletic director, head football coach, and recruiting coordinator with the evidence, and the NCAA reacted by banning intercollegiate football at SMU for one season.

True to its name, the Death Penalty, indeed, just about killed off the entire football program.

The university has never fully recovered.  The university president, athletic director, head football coach, and recruiting director all resigned in disgrace.  The bishops of the Methodist Church held their own investigation.  The governance of the entire university was restructured.  It turned out the governor of Texas, Bill Clements, knew about the cash payments, but when he was asked about it at his weekly news conference, he said, “It wasn’t like inauguration day when we had our hand on the Bible.”  Clements had been Chairman of the Board of Governors at SMU, and when he wasn’t wearing that hat, he served two terms as governor of the entire State of Texas.

Football is and has always been a huge deal in Texas.  It starts out at an early age.  In small west Texas towns, the high school football team often carries the reputation of the entire community on its shoulders.  The father of a good player who can run, pass, and catch has often been lured to another town where he’s been given a job so his son can help the local school to win a state football championship.  Many Texas high schools have stadiums that are nicer than some colleges.  The stakes get even higher when the lad is ready to go to college.

Over the years, money has corrupted football just as it has in just about every other aspect of life in these United States.  The big boys have swallowed up the little guys whether it’s food, automobiles, or even colleges and universities — you name it– big has become better, and only the large survive.

The most recent revelations in college football have concerned the University of Miami where a booster has been singing about getting hookers, cash, and a yacht for sex parties for players — all against the rules.  It seems Nevin Shapiro became righteously indignant when the kids he did these favors for did not return them and help him out with some cash when he was convicted on charges of running a Ponzi scheme.  Shapiro now receives his mail behind bars at a federal prison — his home for the next 20 years.

The stories Shapiro is telling were bound to happen.  After SMU was given the Death Penalty and the world saw what it could do to a football program, the conventional wisdom was that never again would the NCAA assess its Death Penalty…ever.  It was just too devastating.  And yet, when you think about it, what better environment for those who would push the envelope to operate in?

When it comes to sanctions, the NCAA has punished schools, coaches, and athletic department staffers.  It has banned boosters for life.  Now, some are saying let’s punish the players for accepting improper payments.  Really now?  Of all the folks who benefit from this multi-million dollar industry, the ones who carry the load and make it all possible are the players,  and they are allowed to be paid ZERO, zilch — absolutely nothing.  That doesn’t seem quite fair in our capitalistic society.  I was under the impression that those who do the work should reap the reward for their efforts.  I also thought Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1863.  Except for the lucky few who receive scholarships, college football players are provided room and board and little else other than long days of practice, classes, study halls, not to mention the time away from school on the road during the season.

Some believe college players deserve more and have suggested they unionize.  Former academic all-American Dick Devenzio proposed this in the mid 1980’s and urged players to strike the Rose Bowl.  It didn’t work.  No kid wanted to miss out on the opportunity to play in the granddaddy of all bowl games.

The purists (and, I count myself among them believe it or not) say wait a minute.  This is amateur sports.  You’re supposed to play for the fun of it.

Yeah?  They used to say the same thing about our Olympic teams.  I recall in the 1950‘s when we would talk about how the Soviet athletes were paid to compete — it was, after all, their full-time job to be an athlete.  On the other hand, American athletes were true amateurs.  That hypocrisy finally went out the window.

Yet, the hypocrisy still remains for the college football players.  We hold on to a fantasy, yet many will tell you that paying college players under the table goes on just about everywhere.

So what’s the answer?  Isn’t it time we quit fooling ourselves and just openly pay them.  A great many are really just majoring in football anyhow.

Well, what would that do to the NFL?  What if we didn’t limit players to 4 years eligibility since we’re paying them?  Would the popularity of college ball eat away at the profits of the NFL and put an end to what has amounted to a free farm system for NFL teams?

These are questions fans and those who make their living off of college football continue to wrestle with.  The solution isn’t easy, but it’s clear that something needs to be done if for no other reason than the fact that the NCAA doesn’t have the resources to hire enough gumshoes to effectively police and enforce all the infractions that are being committed.

At least it’s not the FBI trying to keep up with all the terrorist cells.

8/10: A.J. Burnett and the U.S. Economy

Unless you’ve been under a rock or on another planet, you know that despite folks saying that our economy couldn’t get any worse, it has.  Standard & Poors has removed the United States from its list of risk-free borrowers, and following the action, the stock market plummeted, demonstrating a lack of confidence in our country’s ability to deal with the national debt.

If you’re a die-hard New York Yankee fan, you know that the Bronx Bombers finally defeated the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.  They owned a short-lived one game lead atop the American League East and haven’t won since.

So in summary, that’s the good news and the bad.

But for those of us who constantly find ourselves consumed with the fortunes of the Pinstripers, there is the lingering problem of what to do about A.J. Burnett.

Burnett was acquired in 2008 from the Toronto Blue Jays, and at the time, many considered him to be the icing on the cake for the starting rotation.  His first season was respectable — 13 wins, 9 losses.  He had moments of brilliance, and he appeared to be one of the ingredients in bringing some levity to the clubhouse with his propensity to slam shaving cream pies into the faces of the game heroes following walk-off victories.

But then things changed, and quicker than you can say Chuck Knoblauch, he has become the big question mark in the starting rotation.  Thursday night he could not maintain a 13-1 lead, and Joe Girardi had no choice but to yank him before he completed the 5 innings necessary for him to secure the win.  A.J. didn’t win in July.  He didn’t win a single game in July and August of last season.

Let me suggest that his mechanics are good.  He has the ability to execute.  However, one can look into his eyes and see the self-doubt.  Chuck Knoblauch had the same look when he could no longer make a routine throw from second base to first to get the out.  Knoblauch was moved to the outfield.  What do you do with A.J?  The bullpen is crowded with great performances.  The starting rotation is overflowing with good arms.  What to do?

I’m wondering if a good hypnotist might do some magic and help Burnett convince himself that he can win again.

And, I’m hoping the same thing for the United States of America.  We need to reclaim the self-confidence that has made our nation great.

My father’s generation experienced the Great Depression.  Then the leader of the free world stepped up to the plate and told us that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  The message rings true for today.

Let us hope and pray that we don’t enter a war to help us find ourselves again.  The stakes are much more deadly today.

Yet, it’s not so simple as moving to left field or engaging a hypnotist.  But we do need sacrifice.  We need to become a manufacturing giant again.  We can no longer live in a world of smoke and mirrors in which we rationalize that the age of technology changes everything.  Truth is, we have become a nation of consumers, and that must change.  In order to have jobs, we need to be making something.  In order to make things, we need to depend on our natural resources.  And to compete with the world, we must bite the bullet and go to work for considerably less than the wages we expect to make.  When shirt makers in Hong Kong and China go to work for the lowest of wages, we need to take a hard long look and make the decision that in a global economy in order to compete, we must make sacrifices.  We must feel the pain.  In short we can’t have it all.  We must either work for considerably less or make a personal statement by buying only U.S. products.  Since one can rarely find the label “Made in USA,” that’s going to be no mean trick.

Regardless, instead of thinking about number one, we must think of the team.  The team is the United States of America.  All of us need to be team players.

Relief pitcher Rafael Soriano told Joe Girardi that he didn’t care where Girardi pitched him — he was there to make his contribution.  Jorge Posada didn’t like it when he was dropped in the lineup earlier this season.  For a brief 24-hour period his ego got the best of him, and rather uncharacteristically, he thought of himself and not his team.  It didn’t take him long to remember to practice what he had preached to others.

It’s teamwork and sacrifice that will get the job done for the Yankees and for our country’s economy.  But each of us must participate — lawmakers, businessmen, labor, even baseball players.  We must come up with solutions, and that includes doing with less, rolling our sleeves up, getting to work, and making sacrifices — together as a team.

Above all, we must take pride in our team.  We must regain our self-confidence.  By the way — I’m convinced that A.J. Burnett can do the same.

7/21: Baseball Thrown Out as America’s Pastime?

Has baseball lost its place as America’s pastime?  CBS Sports broadcaster Verne Lundquist, who admits he’s lost enthusiasm for baseball, talks to the Marist Poll’s John Sparks about why and shares his thoughts, both, on the proposed realignment of the American and National Leagues and this year’s pennant races.

Listen to or read the transcript of the interview below.

John Sparks
Verne, we just passed the halfway mark for the baseball season, and I do want to talk about this year’s pennant races, but first I’d like to talk a little bit about the fans.  For the second year in a row, a majority of Americans say they are not baseball fans.  In fact, 52% tell the Marist Poll they won’t watch a single game at all this year.  So, I’m wondering is baseball no longer the national pastime?

Listen to Part 1:

Verne Lundquist
I don’t think it is, John.  I think they yielded that title to the NFL and not recently. I think football in general, but specifically the National Football League, became America’s pastime, favorite pastime, oh my gosh, maybe 10, 12 years ago. I think that baseball kind of lost its way, and they’re having difficulty getting people back and caring about it.

John Sparks
I’m curious about the reasons for the decline, time zones, perhaps, after expansion?

Verne Lundquist
Well, I understand that if you’re… listen, I live in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. So I live in the time zone that the country forgot.  We always get irritated, if I can use that word, about the television networks for whom one of which — for whom I work.  That’s grammatically incorrect, but you get my drift. It’s always 9:00 Eastern and Pacific and 8:00 Central, and we sit here with our mountain goats and our mountains and say, “What about us?”  But, I do think that the West Coast teams, you know, it’s tough for East Coast fans to get truly involved in what’s going on.  You could even make the case, I guess, in Texas with Houston and the Astros and up through the middle part of the country, but especially with the teams beginning with the Colorado Rockies, and I don’t think that there’s a fan base that really is evident back East for teams from here in Colorado on out to the West Coast with L.A. and San Francisco and Seattle and San Diego.

John Sparks
You know, I always thought of baseball as a blue collar sport, but I’m wondering, it seems that today’s players are more part of an elite class that I’m wondering if fans can just no longer identify with.

Verne Lundquist
Well, I think economically they certainly are, and you know, it’s tough to be sympathetic to owners who keep paying these astronomical salaries. I don’t remember what the figure is now, but I got tickled in the divorce, the publication of the Frank McCourt divorce papers, when they sought legal help that I think the Dodgers owed, I’m going to say this, and I’ll be within 5 or 6 million, they owed Manny Ramírez $21-million in guaranteed salary, and there was a footnote to the whole thing that somewhere along the line, they owed Vin Scully $165,000.  Well, that tells me something about the relative merits that they place on one of the great broadcasters ever in this pay-for-play guy that was there you know, for a couple of years.  But that’s true.  You know, John, that’s true not only in baseball. The salaries are — and let’s face it, you know, the television networks and the cable networks keep paying these astronomical rights fees, and the salaries are just out of sight — baseball, basketball, and football — in my view.

John Sparks
Is there any way that the waning interest in baseball might be turned around?

Listen to Part 2:

Verne Lundquist
I don’t know.  I’m pausing a long time because I would count myself in all candor as one of those people who’s lost interest. I lost interest in the game because I just found — I found the game not…  I mean if you talk to a passionate baseball fan, and I know hundreds of them who just absolutely live and die with their teams, most of them involve the Red Sox, the Yankees, and the Mets, as you can imagine, because my work environment is primarily centered around the East Coast, but they — I mean they can do sermons on the benefits of being a baseball fan. The whole sport has kind of turned me off for a long time.  I find it way too slow paced. I find it difficult… The season is forever, and the single…  I get all the arguments about how it’s a whole 162 game season, but I don’t…  How do you instill a sense of excitement back into the game?  Well, they did one thing, didn’t they, in the ’90s?  They allowed steroid use, and the sport I think suffered for that and is suffering for that, and the ownership kind of looked the other way, and in my view most of the baseball fans, the hard core fans, looked the other way during the steroid era. They were much more excited by the Sammy Sosas and the Mark McGwires and the battle to surpass, you know Barry Bonds.  It was just you know forget what you’re putting in your body, it’s the end result.  So, fans bear some responsibility for that too.

John Sparks
You know, one recent remedy has been suggested.  It’s a new proposal for realignment.  They talk about doing away with divisions and balancing the league so that the American and National League would each have 15 teams, and then the top four teams in each league would be eligible for playoffs, but they would also do away with interleague play. I wonder what your thoughts are around that.

Verne Lundquist
Well. I don’t think…  and again, this is from a guy who does not pay fervent attention to the regular season.  I just don’t..  But I…  again, this is just a personal expression, I don’t think people have ever gotten all that excited about interleague play. I suppose they have in Chicago, and I’m sure they have in New York to a lesser degree probably because everything sports-related in California seems to be less emotional for the fans than it is in other parts of the country.  I suppose where you’ve got San Francisco, Oakland, or you’ve got the Dodgers and the Angels, there’s a certain amount of interest generated by interleague play.  But I think on a whole, it’s not a bell ringer with most folks, and I’d…  The idea of the wildcard, I love the idea of going to the four best teams qualify, and let’s go from there. And then after they do that, they can do away with the designated hitter and everything’s going to be perfect.

John Sparks
Let’s talk briefly about the pennant races.  I’d like to talk about the American League first.  The Yankees and Red Sox are on top in the Eastern Division. In fact, those two teams were the ones that fans that were polled by the Marist Institute mentioned most as being contenders for this year’s World Series.  In the American League Central, surprise, the Cleveland Indians all of sudden have come from nowhere, and they’re in a two-way race with the Tigers.  And then, of course, in the West, the Rangers having come off of a Cinderella season last season are battling with the Angels, but still, Verne, the leaders in the West and the Central as far as their percentage goes is way below that of the Yankees and the Red Sox.  Do you think that in the end it’ll be Yankees and Red Sox again?

Listen to Part 3:

Verne Lundquist
That would be my guess.  Boston has kind of owned New York this year, and the country — I think the country cares about those two teams to a much higher degree than they do most others. I don’t want to make that a patent statement. I think you would agree with me that ESPN would have no Sunday night program if the Red Sox and the Yankees didn’t play each other because that is a staple of what they do, but you know, they’ve excelled over the last several years, and my guess is that they will again.  And, I agree with you about the Rangers’ Cinderella season.  I just… as a person who lived in Dallas and Fort Worth for a long time, of course, that is where I have a still live rooting interest, and I’d love to see them come back and do what they did last year.

John Sparks
Very briefly, the National League, the Phillies have become a powerhouse…

Verne Lundquist
Yeah.

John Sparks
…in the East; and in the Central, the Pittsburgh Pirates for crying out loud are kind of like the Indians; they’re back after a number of lean years, and of course, you’ve got the Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Giants appear to be repeaters in the West.  Any thoughts about how the National League might turn out?

Verne Lundquist
Well, I’ve noticed the Lance Berkman contribution to the Cardinals and you know with Pujols hobbled, that’s really good to see. I’m surprised like you are at Cleveland. I think Philadelphia is the best team in the National League, and all they’ve done is in the off season they added Cliff Lee with a wonderfully adept starting pitching rotation. I think that over the long haul, I would be shocked if they were not back in — if they weren’t in the World Series when it was over.  They’ve got to be the overwhelming favorites I think.  Yes, I know San Francisco makes a lusty claim, but — and as one, as I mentioned, I live in Colorado, you can only imagine how excited people in Denver got at the start of the season, and now they’ve kind of settled down, and they’re mediocre. But the whole… The Giants are the best team in the West, and the Phillies are the best team in the East and let’s — as they say, let’s watch them play in the middle of the country.

John Sparks
Well, it’ll be interesting to watch and also to see as we approach the end of July, which is the trading deadline, to see if what kind of fine tuning some of these ball clubs do.  Verne, it’s always pleasure to talk with you.  I know you’ve been on vacation for the last month or so and out of the country. I’m just curious, back to work with CBS and what might be on the horizon for you professionally.

Verne Lundquist
Well, we have enjoyed this time off, and I got in touch with my roots.  Nancy and I spent a month in Norway.  We touched in Denmark and Sweden, but mostly in Norway, and we just had a wonderful time, and it was really invigorating.  I’m up next with the PGA Championship in Atlanta the second week in August and then a little bit of a hiatus, and then we go, Gary Danielson and I are back doing the SEC.  We open with what has become an annual right of autumn for us, Tennessee and Florida, and the game this year will be in Gainesville.  And just one more little plug, John, since you’ve given me a chance to do this, our prime time game, we only get to do one in prime time each year, but we’re doing Alabama at Florida the first Saturday night in October, and I think that could be a doozy.

John Sparks
We’ll look forward to seeing that as well as the other games with you. It’s always a pleasure talking to you.

Verne Lundquist
Thank you, John.

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