1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
-
-
Email Event
-
-
Essential for understanding the 2010 elections and beyond, AEI's Election Watch series returns for its fifteenth season, bringing together AEI's nationally renowned team of political analysts and commentators. The series, which began in 1982, is the longest-running election program in Washington. On June 17, Michael Barone, Karlyn Bowman, John C.
Listen to Audio
play
pause
Download Audio as MP3
Fortier, Henry Olsen, and Norman J. Ornstein will look ahead to future contests, sort through the election results thus far, and peruse all the polls for what they reveal about the mood:
*How bad is it out there? Is Congress more unpopular than ever?
*Anti-incumbent or anti-Democrat? What primary results tell us
*Midterm losses: history, happenstance, and the Hill
*Barone and Ornstein mix it up on what is likely to happen
*How many governors are goners?
*Keeping tabs on the tea party
*What the polls on the oil spill, the economy, health care, and President Obama tell us about November
Help shape the discussion on June 17!
Submit your questions to the panelists in advance of the event. Your questions will steer the conversation as the Election Watch team tackles big issues surrounding this November. E-mail andrew.rugg@aei.org with your questions.
| 8:00 a.m. | Registration and Breakfast | |
| 8:30 | Panelists: | Michael Barone, AEI |
| John C. Fortier, AEI | ||
| Henry Olsen, AEI | ||
| Norman J. Ornstein, AEI | ||
| Moderator: | Karlyn Bowman, AEI | |
| 10:00 | Adjournment |
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-5917
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-5806
E-mail: hampton.foushee@aei.org
WASHINGTON, JUNE 17, 2010--AEI's Election Watch team of Karlyn Bowman, Michael Barone, John C. Fortier, Henry Olsen, and Norman J. Ornstein gathered to discuss emerging trends and issues for the 2010 elections. Bowman summarized the national mood, which is particularly sour. Citing polling data from major pollsters, she indicated that the current financial difficulties people feel are depressing attitudes on multiple issues. Fortier discussed significant races in the Senate and the potential impact the tea party movement will have on upcoming primaries. Olsen discussed what needs to go right, and what could go wrong, in the Republicans' attempt to take the majority in the House. Barone reviewed major trends in recent and upcoming races, including the expansion of government and the growing culture of dependency. Ornstein discussed the impact the election is likely to have on governing, arguing that a more partisan and gridlocked Capitol Hill is a likely result.
- "The Pew Research Center noted last week that more people think President Obama is having an effect on the economy than felt that way a year ago. The bad news is that more people think he is making it worse than better. Economic recovery is a long way off in the minds of most Americans."
--Karlyn Bowman, Senior Fellow, AEI - "It is a little harder to look at Senate and governors' races than to look at House races because [in the House] there are more races and trends are reflected more fully. You can come up with numbers about the average number of seats lost, but I think it's more useful to think about wave and nonwave elections. We've had some midterm elections with very big changes, and some with minor shifts. . . . I think we're likely to see something of a wave election. It won't be an insignificant shift, a pickup of five to seven seats in the Senate and four to seven in governors' races."
--John C. Fortier, Research Fellow, AEI - "The enormity of the Republicans' task should not be underestimated. Since 1920 there have only been two cases where a president lost a House majority in a first midterm election--[in the presidencies of] Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton. Even after the Great Depression started, Herbert Hoover's Republicans maintained a slim majority [in] the election in 1930."
--Henry Olsen, Vice President, AEI - "The biggest trend that we see in this election is the expansion of the scope and role of government by the Obama administration and the congressional Democrats. It has put into the shade the formerly defining cultural issues which were so important to the voters during the presidencies of our two baby-boom presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush."
--Michael Barone, Resident Fellow, AEI - "In this environment, deeply dysfunctional in many ways, harshly partisan, ideologically driven and rancorous, we have still had a remarkably productive Congress. The level of output and the range and scope is at least on a par now with the eighty-ninth Congress and the Great Society."
--Norman J. Ornstein, Resident Scholar, AEI
Speaker biographies
Michael Barone, a political analyst and journalist, studies politics, American government, and campaigns and elections. The principal coauthor of the annual Almanac of American Politics (National Journal Group), he has written many books on American politics and history. Mr. Barone is also a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.
Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at AEI. She compiles and analyzes American public opinion using available polling data on a variety of subjects, including the economy, taxes, the state of workers in America, the environment and global warming, attitudes about homosexuality and gay marriage, the North American Free Trade Agreement and free trade, the war in Iraq, and women's attitudes. In addition, Ms. Bowman has studied and spoken about the evolution of American politics because of key demographic and geographic changes. She has often lectured on the role of think tanks in the United States, has written the definitive history of AEI, and writes a weekly column for Forbes.com.
John C. Fortier is a research fellow at AEI. He studies American politics, the presidency, continuity of government, elections, the Electoral College, election reform, and presidential succession and disability. He is the senior counselor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, and a fortnightly columnist for Politico. Mr. Fortier's books include Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (AEI Press, 2006); After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (third edition, AEI Press, 2004); and Second-Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). He is also a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections.
Henry Olsen, a lawyer by training, is the director of AEI's National Research Initiative. In that capacity, he identifies leading academics and public intellectuals who work in an aspect of domestic public policy and recruits them to visit or write for AEI. Mr. Olsen studies and writes about the policy and political implications of long-term trends in social, economic, and political thought.
Norman J. Ornstein is a long-time observer of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election analyst for CBS News. He serves as codirector of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and as a senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission. Mr. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the law known as McCain-Feingold, which reformed the campaign financing system. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press, 2000); the coauthored The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006); and, most recently, Vital Statistics on Congress, 2008 (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), also coauthored.
