Post Politics Hour
washingtonpost.com's Daily Politics Discussion

Michael D. Shear
Washington Post National Political Reporter
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 11:00 AM

Don't want to miss out on the latest in politics? Start each day with The Post Politics Hour. Join in each weekday morning at 11 a.m. as a member of The Washington Post's team of White House and Congressional reporters answers questions about the latest in buzz in Washington and The Post's coverage of political news.

Washington Post national political reporter Michael D. Shear was online Wednesday, August 13 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the latest in political news.

The transcript follows.

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Michael D. Shear: Good morning everyone.

Veep buzz is in the air, as usual. So I'm sure we can talk about that. Mark Warner is going to keynote Tuesday night at the convention, so all you Virginians out there, get your questions ready. (And what does that mean for Kaine's chances?) On the GOP side, McCain's in Michigan today, and continues to audition his potential running mates.

Let's get to it.

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Arlington, Va.: How do you think the democrats came around to selecting Mark Warner as the keynote speaker? Was it a decision by Obama's campaign? What factors went into selecting Mark Warner?

Michael D. Shear: Aha! A Virginia question, right off the bat.

Warner is an interesting pick for a keynote speaker. He's not known for his dynamism behind a podium, but he did have a kind of charisma that was hard to place when he began his later-aborted run for the presidency.

The main criteria is likely to have been his connection to Virginia, which has become one of the hottest new battleground states. Its 13 electoral votes could be crucial to Obama, especially if he ends up losing Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania.

Highlighting Warner probably is a signal that they are going to go all-out to win the Old Dominion.

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St. Paul, Minn.: Hi Michael -- thank you for taking questions today. How big a boost is the current Russia situation for Sen. McCain? I caught a snippet of him talking about it this morning and he was clearly trying to invoke a presidential tone (speaking slowly and evenly, mostly), though in substance it didn't sound that much different that what is being said by Sen. Obama (who is also good at speaking slowly and evenly). Does Sen. McCain automatically get the edge because of his much-vaunted foreign policy experience? Does Obama pretty much have to cede that and hope to score points on something else (namely the economy, which probably is more relevant to U.S. voters at the moment)?

Michael D. Shear: The Russia situation is interesting. Both candidates have pretty much come around to the same position -- aggressively condemning Russia for its actions. But McCain clearly got their faster and is still using stronger language to describe the situation.

McCain's people clearly believe this advantages them. It highlights an area that he is familiar with. It demonstrates his personal relationships with people on the world stage. (He rode a Jet Ski once with the president of Georgia on the Black Sea). And it shifts the subject away from the economy, where he may not be as competitive.

At the same time, Obama's camp may be hoping that McCain overplays his hand, and ends up looking too aggressive. Let's face it, one of the essential questions in the campaign is whether Americans want a prowar (Iraq) or an antiwar (Iraq) president. If the Russia situation ends up making it easier for Obama to characterize him as a warmonger, maybe it backfires.

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Randy Scheunemann: Near the top of your story today you quote McCain's top foreign policy adviser, but you don't note that his company is -- and he was -- Georgia's top lobbyist. When I know the quote is coming from someone who earns his daily bread from one of the two parties in discussion, I know exactly what to make of what he says.

washingtonpost.com: On Georgia Crisis, McCain's Tone Grows Sharper (Post, Aug. 13)

Michael D. Shear: My story was right next to a companion piece about Scheunemann's lobbying. That may not have come across on the Internet.

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washingtonpost.com: While Aide Advised McCain, His Firm Lobbied for Georgia (Post, Aug. 13)

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Waterville, Maine: Michael, I can't quite understand the strategy of McCain and Obama in announcing their vice presidential picks so late in the summer. It would seem to me that if vice presidential candidates were announced earlier, McCain and Obama could use them to cover some ground in swing states, allowing the presidential candidates more flexibility, and much-needed rest. For example, if Obama already had picked his vice presidential candidate, that person actively could be campaigning for the ticket while Obama is in Hawaii. Makes sense to me. Your thoughts?

Michael D. Shear: I believe the thinking in both camps has to do with when the American people are paying attention and making up their minds. If you announce your vice presidential candidate early in the summer, they can travel the country, but no one is paying attention.

By contrast, if you announce right before the convention, the thinking is that you might get a flurry of positive news just when you need it most -- in the home stretch.

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Vienna, Va.: Michael, regarding this comment about the Democrats trying to win Virginia: "Its 13 electoral votes could be crucial to Obama, especially if he ends up losing Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania." I know you're just stating the conventional wisdom, but at what point does the ongoing polling change that thinking? If you look at the various polls out there, Obama has a real lead in Pennsylvania and a slender one in Michigan and Ohio. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, Pennsylvania should be labeled as "likely Democratic" and the other two "leaning Democratic," yet they're not. Will the thinking on this change before Election Day?

Michael D. Shear: Good question. The campaigns are certainly watching such numbers and making day-to-day decisions about how they spend their money in those states.

But their judgments are based, as is that of the media, on history as much as current polls. Those three states have been close in the past, and there's reason to believe they will be again despite the differences that both candidates bring to this particular contest.

Also, most pollsters are wary of numbers from the summer. It's just too far out. I would suspect that if the numbers hold when we get polling in September, you may see a shift in some of those labels.

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Arlington, Va.: Having Mark Warner as the Keynote addressee takes Kaine out of the running for vice president. The only reason he'd pick Kaine is to bolster his chances in Virginia, and giving Warner such a high profile position makes that unnecessary. I'm thinking Evan Bayh. He's Midwestern and has a good family name. May help in the Rust Belt.

Michael D. Shear: I think I agree on your first premise, Arlington. It would surprise me now if Obama picked Kaine.

As for the Bayh guess? We'll see.

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Concord, N.H.: What position does the vice-president-to-be play at the convention? Do they hold a standard time slot as a speaker? As more and more speakers are identified, I'm wondering where the veep fits in.

Michael D. Shear: As I understand it, the vice presidential candidate speaks on Wednesday night. Then the candidate speaks the next, and final, day of the convention.

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Today's Story: Michael, I'm sure I'm not the only one with critical questions regarding your story today. You took the "horse-race" approach: Who does this help, who looks better, who sounds better/tougher? You reported without question one key fact in the story: "On the ground in Iowa, advance men raced to erect a podium on the tarmac, just feet from McCain's plane. The Republican nominee strode to the microphone for the first of several blistering statements condemning Russia's moves, delivering his comments well before President Bush spoke publicly about the incident."

It's hard to give McCain credit for foreign policy experience without also noting he was wrong about Iraq. After seeing Obama attacked (by your own paper, no less) for being presumptuous, why not find someone outside of the Obama camp who would criticize McCain's presumptuousness? One other thing that's missing in all coverage of this is a sense of what the American people want. McCain's getting credit for being tougher, but nobody knows if Americans want to be that tough toward Russia. Also, you buried perhaps the key point in all of this at the end of the story: The candidates can't do anything about Russia -- all of this is just posturing. So why try to determine who "won" the battle of dueling statements?

Michael D. Shear: There have been a few questions about the Russia story I wrote today. Here's one.

For the record, my job with the story was to assess the political implications of the Russia-Georgia situation on the presidential campaign. We have written a number of stories every day about the substance of the conflict. My purpose was different.

And on the charge that I reported "without question" the scene about the advance men racing to erect a podium: I did so because I was there. I watched it happen.

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Arlington, Va.: How about some more coverage on the other parties? How about some more information on Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root. The Post, like most other mainstream media outlets, lead us to believe there are only two people to vote for in 2008. It is no wonder that only about half the population comes out to vote.

washingtonpost.com: Maryland Moment: Libertarian Weighs In On Raid (washingtonpost.com, Aug. 12)

Michael D. Shear: This sentiment has been there in every election I've ever covered. For the press, which has an increasingly dwindling amount of resources, it comes down to a question of making a judgment about what to spend money and time on. Do we focus on the candidates who are all but certain to win, or on the fringe candidates who have little chance? The retort -- that they have little chance because we don't focus on them -- ultimately becomes a chicken-or-the-egg question, but really is a red herring. Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root have little chance and it would divert resources away from the real choice that voters have to make.

Having said that, the media has spent time and money covering third-party candidates in the past: Ross Perot and Ralph Nader are good examples.

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Northern Virginia: I am struck by the number of women at the convention on Monday night (Michelle Obama, Obama's sister Maya, Claire McCaskill, Nancy Pelosi). I think it's great. Did Hillary Clinton's performance in the primaries shape this lineup, or would the Democrats have showcased the ground-breaking, first woman Speaker of the House anyway?

Michael D. Shear: I was struck by this too. I suspect that Sen. Clinton's run for the presidency did, in fact, do a lot in this regard. On the other hand, I also agree that Pelosi would likely have been featured in any event.

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Chicago: Hey Michael, you had a great story today. Given the military, economic and diplomatic support we give Georgia, would Georgia launch the invasion of South Ossetia without getting some sort of green light from Bush/Cheney? Has any reporting shed any light on why the Georgians felt so emboldened as to attack South Ossetia?

Michael D. Shear: This gets beyond my reporting area. Clearly the Georgians feel like they have a friend in some of the American politicians. But whether that sense of support emboldened them is something I can't say.

Keep in mind, though, that President Bush was seen as a backer of Russian President Vladimir Putin. So if the Georgians were seeing support from the U.S. by reading the tea leaves, it likely wasn't coming from Bush himself.

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Fairfax County, Va.: Gee, I guess the only bias in your story is that he "strode," but that sounds like straight reporting to me. If he had walked hesitantly, with several pauses and stumbles, I imagine you would have said that as well. To me, the word "strode" conveys his naval-aviator fly-guy arrogance, which is exactly what I want in command of a fighter jet when split-second decisions are necessary, and exactly what I never ever want to see in the White House. The larger question is this. If you said he "went" or "walked" to the podium, it would be a far more neutral phrasing and thus safer, but it would also be boring, colorless writing that readers would be less interested in. Here it jumps out as a lively detail. Is "bias" sometimes just the attempt to convey the feel and interest of a scene and what sets it apart from the endless number of similar occasions (guy at podium)?

Michael D. Shear: One of the reason I love writing for The Post is that our readers have such an intensity to them, parsing every word we write. What other publication would have people hanging on my every verb choice?

In this case, McCain actually "strode." He's not an ambler, usually, anyway. But in this case, he seemed to express a determination that was more than usual. He really wanted to make that statement, and make it first, which was the point of the anecdote.

So, I stand by "strode."

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New York: Mark Penn's firm, Burston-Marsteller is like a fortress on 19th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan -- how could Penn et al have been so careless about confidential e-mails dealing with the Clinton campaign?

Michael D. Shear: I have no idea how Penn's documents and emails got leaked. (Had I been the leakee I might have a better idea.) I suspect, though, that there were lots of people out there in Hillary Clinton land that had access to those documents and might have felt the need to make them public.

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Gainesville, Va.: Michael, this election originally promised two candidates who wanted to be known as straight-shooters, and it was hoped there would be a new type of politics. At times -- especially in his longer speeches, such as the one on race -- Obama has exemplified this, but by and large both campaigns have been misleading, and have failed to discuss in any kind of depth the issues facing us. This is particularly true on the economy and on energy. If we can't have a thoughtful, truthful presidential campaign in 2008, we never will have one. I think all voters will be turned off in the end.

Michael D. Shear: My colleague, Dan Balz, wrote a very good piece about this very topic recently. I will link to it below in a moment.

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washingtonpost.com: McCain-Obama So Far: Positively Negative (Post, June 26)

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Washington: I saw someone say yesterday that Obama ran 9,700 unanswered television and radio ads in Florida, and nothing changed. Why can't Obama make progress in Florida? If the answer is resistance to his race, why does he believe that Virginia will respond differently? Remember that Doug Wilder saw a 12-point lead in the polls evaporate overnight when he narrowly won the governorship of Virginia (1989).

Michael D. Shear: Yes, Sen. Obama has spent a lot of money in Florida. The lack of movement in the polls may suggest a strength there for McCain that will be tough for Obama to crack. Or it may suggest that people are not yet tuned in to the race. The conventional thinking is that Obama will have a particularly hard time in the Jewish community in Florida, but folks in his campaign dismiss that. We will have to wait until the battle is truly joined in the Sunshine State.

As for Virginia, you are quite right. Wilder seemed to have a compelling lead, but ended up winning by just a few votes. Could that happen nationally? We'll see.

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Raleigh, N.C.: I know that reporters don't have any control over headlines, but I'm sure you've written an article over which there was a misleading headline. Sometimes, the Intertubes go nuts over a headline, and I think with some justification -- it's the headline that sets the "frame" for the article. If you get a ton of angry e-mails because of a headline, to whom, if anyone, do you complain?

Michael D. Shear: We can, and do, complain to the copy desk, which is where the headlines are written. Sometimes, in the haste to get a headline that fits the space, the meaning of the story gets lost.

But I've also seen good headlines attacked by partisans (often on, as you say, the Intertubes) when they accurately convey the sense of the story -- just because the activists don't agree with it.

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Re: Warner to Keynote: Why hand the keynote to a guy who already widely is expected to win in a blowout? Or is this more about enhancing the Obama post-partisan message?

washingtonpost.com: Mark Warner to Keynote Democratic Convention (Post, Aug. 13)

Michael D. Shear: I think the selection as a keynote speaker has less to do with his Senate race, which as you not does not seem that competitive at the moment, and more to do with Obama's desire to send a message about his seriousness in Virginia.

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More on the Veep: I think Stephen Pearlstein should be the vice president for either candidate -- he is prescient and outspoken about the state of the economy and just outlaid a nice analysis of the Russian/Georgian conflict in his chat. He suggested interesting ways to send a message to Russia that doesn't involve aggressive military action we can't afford to engage in.

washingtonpost.com: Discussion: Pearlstein on Georgia Conflict (washingtonpost.com, Live NOW)

Michael D. Shear: I'll pass on your nomination.

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Atlanta: I got a call from the Obama campaign yesterday looking for volunteers. In my conversation with the gentleman, he told me that Obama has 150 campaign offices in the state. Is the Obama campaign forcing the McCain campaign to spend resources in states that are normally (last 20 years) Republican-leaning?

Michael D. Shear:150 offices seems like a bit much. But I do get the sense that the Obama campaign appears to be making a play for southern states that Democrats had largely written off.

The proof, though, will come in the next month or so, as Obama has to make decisions about where to focus his resources and time. If he's still spending millions in Georgia in late September, we'll know its real. If not, then it was probably just a feint to make McCain think he's going to try and win there.

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Brigantine, N.J.: Gainesville has hit on precisely what has been bothering me about this campaign. I somehow had missed Dan Balz's article, but Dan further underscores the problem. I don't think either Obama or McCain are looking very good right now. I wonder how much "change" either one is capable of.

Michael D. Shear: Here's another thought about the ongoing negativity in the race.

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A Research Scientist: Have you heard either major candidate address the huge drop in federal research funding during the past seven years?

Michael D. Shear: As I travel with Sen. McCain, he does quite often talk about the need to increase funding in basic research. It's usually in the context of the environment and the need to invent better electric cars, etc. I can't remember if he has ever talked specifically about a drop in funding during the Bush Administration.

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"No progress in Florida"?!: Yeah ... please inform Washington that the most recent polling out of Florida has the state a dead heat, where two months ago, McCain was up comfortably. If this is no progress, my poker game should show no progress.

Michael D. Shear: The thing about a poker tournament is that it's better to be ahead at the end than at the beginning. As I said before, the polls that are taken in September should reflect much better the actual situation on the ground in Florida. It will be interesting to see whether Obama's spending is reflected.

And as we all know, Florida can be close.

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Michael D. Shear: That's about all we have time for today. Watch this space for more chats this week and next.

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washingtonpost.com: Discussion: Post Columnist David Broder (washingtonpost.com, Live NOW)

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