what does it say about where the american policy is? this is a question i always ask for it how important is this tension between those that are comfortable with a larger government and those of a smaller government? this goes back to the beginning of the republic. it is something that i find a peculiar to the american political debate. these are the questions that are in my mind and i am sure they are in your mind. we have the experts at this table that have, hopefully, some of the answers. i will turn the event over to professor john christopher view of who has been dealing with this. he has kindly put this together. thank you so much, john. it is over to you. >> thank you for the opportunity. it is nice to be a professor even though i have just done it for eight months. i take that with great honor and great gratitude. i want to shout out to our leader in the german center. it is professor jeff anderson. he is not here with us today. he is here in mind and spirit. thanks to our gracious friends at c-span. you can watch the entire show from home where run who has survived the sonometer it passed the some money. -- the tsunami. we face the cold heart community -- reality. this is what we referred to. where do we go from here? where do we go from here as a country? despite the endless spend that you have heard, and you will not hear any of that today. we have no place in this fight. what do the voters want? what message were they saying? what message were the voters saying to the various operations, parties and people and elected officials. the republicans would tell you that it is a repudiation of the policies of barack obama and the democrats. some democrats would tell you that it is no such thing, but a failure to deliver a message. what the tea party might say is that their success, in a large sense, is because there is a large group of disaffected americans who were turned off by government and desperate to hear from anyone that has a common- sense approach to fix the problems of america from within. these are individuals that can address that and will speak amongst ourselves and we will then for this out to you and get you involved in the last portion of this event. i would like to introduce adam bolten, who is a colleague of mine. he is the sky news political editor and host of a a program. adam bolten is here during the first hundred days of barack obama is administration. -- barack obama's a administration. he has written a book called come together he has interviewed everyone from nelson mandela to george bush and barack obama and woody allen and jane fonda in between. he goes back a while. i will say one thing about adam boulton. when you are in an interview with adam, you will say that that is the last question that he will ask because he will not go any further with this interview. adam will pull out another question and i guarantee you that he will make news with the question you never would have thought that he could do. harold ickes has a heart of gold but is a political icon. he has a history, despite what you heard, he is probably the most tender man i know. he is a good friend. he has advised presidents and hillary clinton and was a senior adviser to the president as deputy chief of staff during bill clinton's administration. he has a history of human rights and advocacy that goes back to the civil-rights days and we are very honored to have herald with us today. harold ickes. what can i say, dennis this image is here. it is very good for his constituents -- dennis to cinch is here. he was the youngest elected mayor in his day. that was a little while ago. this is his ninth term as a member of the house of representatives. he is a member of the oversight and government reform and education look and labor committee. we are grateful that he could put that train back on the rail so we could -- so he could get here. if anybody could do that, he can. thank you for being with us. henry olson is the director of the american enterprise institute. he is going to tell us what happens and how the voters turned it and why they do what they do. he is an expert on voting behavior. a couple of days after, we need a bit of a reality check and find out what happened from a man of his stature. we are happy to have him here. there are two lines. all of you students that the not know these lines, i wanted to write them down because they are part of our history and the lexicon of our history and they come from an american master. i remember both of them. one is, i will to a little bit of my dan rather imitation. it was in 1968 when walter cronkite said at the convention in chicago, and a equally handsome dan rather with those old headphones on i believe it said to the police. i will not call them goons. it was a raucous time and i believe you said, "unless you are going to arrest me, take your hands off me. and i sort of there? >> dead accurate. >> thank you, sir. >> another line, and i want you students to look this up. "no sir, mr. president, are you? i think he was asking if he was running for something. dan rather is now the anchor and managing editor of dan rather report. he is one of the most authoritative voices. he served as anchor and managing editor of cbs from 1981 until 2005. that is the longest running tenure of any broadcast journalist. like i said, we are honored to have a true american master with us today. dan rather. and it is all true. >> lynn sweet is -- i do not want to tell you what she is. she is the chicago sun times bureau chief and columnist for politicsdaily.com. linh a sweet is probably the most powerful woman in that room. when i am with her, and there is no way that i will get a question if lynn's wait -- if lynn sweet is sitting next to me. she is appreciated. she is the washington bureau chief for the "chicago sun- times." she has a wonderful blogging and she is a regular guest. we are honored to have her. dr. james a saudi -- dr. james a zogby has a book that is extremely relevant at this time. his book is right here. he would love to sign them for you. we can also get an online if you go to his website which is aai.com which is currently posted in several countries. his out reach is massive and very important to all of us when we look at the politics of this country and these last couple of years. what i thought i would do was start the conversation on a few topics. i would like our distinguished guests to join in. oh, one more guest. who did i get? >> of john zogby. >> i just did john zogby. for anyone who did not hear this, we have an extra plug. do you have a deal? did i get everyone? adam keeps me straight. i hope i did not do anything wrong, but for give me if i did in advance. i want to throw this out. on tuesday, the republicans won 61 house seats and came very close to controlling the senate. this is the third change election in a row. 2006, 2008, 2010. i would like to open this up to our folks here and hear from you exactly what message the voters were sending on tuesday night. who would like to go first? go ahead. >> with the brains on this panel, i have to get in early or may not be able to say anything at all. >> or the egos, maybe. >> there is no ego like an anchor man's ego. believe me. it is clear that the electorate was saying to both parties, if you want to include the tea party movement, to everybody, economically, we are in trouble. when you look around the globe, iraq and afghanistan, we thank the globe is in trouble and we expect you to do what you can to make things better. that is one message. i think it is economic growth and jobs. i think that is basically what this election was about president obama had the case that he promised a lot and maybe he overpromise, but in our view, you have under delivered. i think there is a message for the republican party, although the republicans would probably disagree with this and i am often wrong about such things, but i don't care what your party is, we expect better than we expected to get better in a hurry. if it does not, come 2012, there will be another turnover. you used the phrase of a tsunami. from a historical perspective, i would disagree. not a tsunami, but maybe a hurricane two or hurricane four. unless all of you address that problem and address it directly and address it boldly and address it with some audacity, we will be turning people out from washington in the foreseeable future. >> i think that dan has done a terrific job of summarizing what i would have said. my sense is that there are people on the fringes that will talk about the size of government. i think that people are not as concerned about the size of government, whether large or small, but what they want is an effective government and what they have seen is not their view. having said that, against the backdrop of what has gone on, it is hard to have effective government instantaneously in the sense of creating the jobs with the economic engine that is going to be required to pull this country back to where it was. my sense is that there was a huge sweep of independent voters. one reckoning was a 28 point swing of independent voters. democrats had an 8 percent margin and republicans had a 18% margin. it is that group of voters that are saying that we are hurting. we are petrified tree we are frightened. we do not think that things are going well for us. we are tired of the bickering .ack in washington thi washington has a very short leash. if they lose, the republicans will try to figure out how to drive the rhetoric of their hard-line tea party people with trying to get something done because they are now in charge of at least one house and you can claim that they are in charge of both houses because with a 60 vote requirement, they can block whatever they want to block. it is effective government, and that is the message. >> jim? >> this was yet another of the post-katrina elections. the loss of confidence in the government to solve problems. katrina, in that context, is more significant than 9/11. 9/11 saw the country come together and katrina had us fall apart. look at this. i did town meetings all over the country in 2008. i experienced things that i have never seen before. this is the first generation of americans that no longer believes that their children -- the standard of living will not be had that they have themselves. there is this collapse of the dream. it is a shock to the system. it is the collapse of financial institutions. it is the collapse of the housing market. the overall collapse of the economy that has resulted in more people out of work or fearing that they will be out of work. it has caused a tremendous strain through there is a loss of confidence in the federal government to solve that and that has taken a toll. i have a ph.d. in religion and a post-doctoral in religion dealing with the religion under stress for it what happens when a culture suffers tremendous stress. i think that what happened in 2008 is just the reverse of what just happened that now. in some ways, 2008 surprised me. i do not recall a situation where an organism under the kind of stress that we were, to boris that were unwinnable, the economic collapse, the loss of confidence in government, people who voted for hope and it was unexpected and irrational. similarly, this was similarly irrational. out of the same kind of fear and the same kind of anxiety that made them believe that barack obama could bring a different order -- a different process to work in washington. i use this one last example. after 9/11, i got death threats in my office from people saying that i must die. we have police protection. it was so frightening that some people in my office building, not my staff, but other offices came to provide us with lunches and one day a woman came and knocked on the door and we have security at the door and she said that she made these brownies for us. i completely lost it when she did that. what i said was that her act was gratuitous. it was undeserved. i did not deserve her kindness in that way, nor did not deserve the threats. but the system was in shock. the people responded this way and then the people responded that way. it is the same way in the electorate. they responded with hope and then they responded with fear and anger. they looked for a target to direct their hope to and then they'd look for a target to direct their anchor. i think that republicans have got a short leash on life. this could just as quickly turn the other way. >> would you like to add to that? >> i am in agreement with what dan and john and harold said. this is where the incoming party is as unpopular as the outgoing party. in 1994, when republicans took congress for the first time in four years, voters had a positive opinion of the republican party. in 2006, when the democrats swept into power, boaters had a positive opinion of the democratic party. we should not interpret this as an endorsement of them. there is definitely an idea of working together for the common good. i would estimate that about one- third of the electorate are very numerous, but in the middle, this is that swing vote that affected government. it is very difficult to look at the election without saying, as far as the current results of repudiation of the policies has happened. since i study voting statistics, i will throw out a few members here. try and there with me with this. the group that i was looking at was the like working class. that is defined very broadly to me. if you take a look at the non- whites, they stuck with the democratic party with the exception of african-americans, who turned out in record high numbers for the president did they dropped back to their historic voting to about 10% of the electorate. other minorities turned out in the same percentage as they did for obama. whites without a college degree moved massively for republicans at a 10% margin and voted for mccain by an 18% margin. that is a record. it is not just southern whites that have been voting at the top of the ticket for republicans for years, but they have been voting them to congress. 17% democrats lost reelection in the south and that was once the dominant base of the party. there are more republicans in the house for new york and new england and then there are white democrats representing the south. it is also the north. throughout northern working- class areas that voted for dukakis and clinton and kerrey, many of these district return republicans to congress for the first time in decades. that is like jim oberstar's district. like the illinois 17 which is a working-class district. these are historic democratic voters have voted republican for the first time. when you look at the polls, is not hard to figure out why. president obama's approval rating among white working class men -- they have not released the data from the exit poll, but it was below 30% and white working-class women were above 30%. 's.rge bush ' s it is hard to see this in anything other than a repudiation. >> >> the->> let's listen from rep kucinich. >> one of the problems is that you keep it at the level of democrats and republicans, we have to look at the economic system and structure of it. it is structured to accelerate the will of the country upwards -- the wealth of the country upwards. people work their whole lives to achieve a home. they had either lost or on the verge of losing it and they do not know how or why this has come about. the party in power is charged with the responsibility for being able to create the jobs. there is a reason why there are 15 million americans unemployed. the private sector has chosen to consolidate well and improve its stock a performance. our trade laws accelerate jobs out of this country. there is tremendous downward pressure on wages. people expected the democrats to get america back to work. a few million jobs is insufficient. we have historic mandates in 2008 and the democratic party blew it. i sat on the risers looking at two million people during the inauguration. we had a moment where we could summon a new deal type of energy that could put millions of people back to work. we missed it. we would not have had to take this minimalist approach with health care and a minimalist approach in getting this economy moving again. we took care of wall street. we ended up with a health care system that still left people at the mercy of insurance companies. we ended up with energy policies that paid homage to oil. the economic system is set up so that if either democrats or republicans are in charge, we have trade lines that continue to take jobs out of this country. we have a monetary policy where the fed gave $600 billion to the banks that have been holding onto their cash. businesses cannot get money for capital and the jobs are not there. the war was based on lies. this is not a partisan statement. for the life of the, i do not understand what barack obama did not hold george bush accountable to why he took us into iraq and kept us there in the trillions of dollars that are being sucked out of our economy for those wars in the tax policies under the previous administration that accelerated the wealth to the top. how could she not have people in revolt? 50 million americans out of work, 6 million people lost their homes and another 6 million are in jeopardy of losing their homes. until the health care bill goes into effect, another 50 million are uninsured. while some might be doing well, it points to the fact that until we looked at structural reforms so the government can sufficiently rebuild the infrastructure and were the federal reserve is brought back into the control of the government, not an entity of its own, and were the banking system is thoroughly investigated, until we look at those kinds of things, we can talk about republicans until now of -- from now until kingdom come. by 2016, this country might be ready for an independent movement that defines the economic issues. >> lynn sweet, your thoughts on that? [laughter] [applause] your readers, are these the concerns that your readers have? your the washington bureau chief and the white house correspondent. what is your feeling about what exactly was the issue here? >> the issue was jobs and the economy. the obama white house did not move fast enough to solve the problem. dennis outlined this. i want to take a quick look forward to where we go from here. the message cell was a liver on tuesday dictates the next step. the white house knows it. the white house knows that they will have to deal with speaker boehner and they will have to restructure and go into a defensive mode where they have been in an offensive mode, bracing for this new arrangement. while that may be harder to govern, it may be easier, politically for obama after he gets through these next few weeks, i say that because the republicans have to be accountable. -- itboehnern banjohn believe this will be in chicago. you will have not only the tea party critics, the regular republican establishment critics, a new aggressive gop leadership, but you will have the republican presidential candidates traveling around the country opening up new fronts all over the place. you'll have the obama white house that will have to do with the reality. -- deal with the new reality. the republicans have to share in the miserable economy. if the job rate is still stuck high, if people's homes are still being foreclosed on and if mortgage modification as i get simpler and if people do not understand that there is no brightening spot in the economy, then the obama white house can use this contrast to argue over what the situation is now. the republican leadership will have to show something in this era of new government. we know that speaker mcconnell said that one of his goals is to make president obama a one-term president. both things cannot be true. you cannot have an era of