It got people understanding what ,t means to be a Police Officer and how unique our role is in society and how important our role is in society. Officer, theylice a lot of them say to enforce the law. The reality is that they narrow slice of what we do. Its also a reality in this country that when you take a look of the history of Law Enforcement in the u. S. , we have not always stood on the right side of justice here as we would define justice today. Think about equal rights movement, all the things that happened in this country how we have evolved and continue to evolve. There is baggage here. We have not always lived up to the open of office that we take. Oval office that we take. We decided we would start a Leadership Development program, there is nolicing Leadership Program that develops the future leaders and our profession. It reminds me of a quotation i true leaders dont develop followers, they create other leaders. I think we all have to have that attitude and go about doing just that. The first person i called his david. I wanted the museum and adl to be a part of that. , 10 have arctic achieves in this country. Its a pretty good track record. [applause] they will lead departments in a way unlike people have in the past, because they will have a deeper understanding of what it really means to be a Police Officer and what it means to lead a police organization. In todays climate, it is more important than ever. I humbly accept this award, i share with you, david, because you started the whole thing and without you it never would have gotten off of the ground. I want to thank you and the United StatesHolocaust Museum for their efforts come everyone that played a role. You are making a huge difference. You made a difference in my life. God bless you and thank you very much. [applause] the Antidefamation League took a look at the 2016 president ial race with Washington Post columnist ruth marcus and Peter Madigan who was part of the Transition Team for president george w. Bush. He discussed the president ial candidates and the role of the media. Thank you. Thank you everyone. That was a great morning. We have a wonderful afternoon for you. First i would like to tell my adl story. I imagine a World Without hate. [applause] advocates, we know sometimes it is not enough to be smart or even correct. Our success depends on solid brass of the Political Landscape so that we can craft the best strategy to succeed. For this deep dive into policy of politics we have enlisted to thought leaders to smart, moxie and deep understanding of the commission will form the conversation about where we are and what should we look for in the next phase of this election campaign. , i must read Washington Post columnist gives voice to just what is on our mind, including a number on the adl agenda. Your appearances on sundays political shills like meet the press and face the nation are a staple for political junkies. Peter madigan is one of washingtons most respected republican strategist. His rich experience working at the intersection of policy and politics has been honed over many years whipping votes for the House Republican leadership strategistgislative for james baker the third and as an advisor to president reagan and both president bush, 41 and 43. Today, anyone who wants to bring republicans and democrats together in a right Left Coalition for social justice and other policy issues this is the first and best cause. We are pleased to have our talented Vice President for government relations. Applause] advocacy and Community Engagement moderate the session. This has been such a high energy day. We are going to continue to die issues. Capital i want to remind everyone that you can send your questions to texting with my husband. I am looking for questions to come in. Nonpartisan organization. We are uninvolved whatsoever in campaign politics. Advocates and we are partisans but only of the adl mission and our policy. Sometimes in an election season our issues are propelled to the floor of the debate. Hasntmpaign season exactly been an exception. As weve heard our voice were calling out bigotry and stereotyping as part of the debate. We are a movement intent on making an impact. We are so happy to have our panelists here to help us wrap our heads around this moment. We started our Conference Group with a session on the art of perception. To how difficult it can be see things that are hiding in plain sight. Our expectations were out of sync with what happened in this primary. What did we miss . All start with you. Thank you for having me and andk you all for the great important work that you do. Retrospect, in some sense it is blinding obvious what we missed and sometimes i think we will be trying to figure out what exactly we missed for some months if not years to come. On those on the republican and democratic side in the primary process was the deepseated sense of i think anger is the wrong word for it. I dont think that the voters that i talked to are angry as much as anxious. They are anxious about their futures and their childrens futures. They are anxious about americans place in the world. They are anxious, many of them up that about the world is changing that they find it is democratic demographically changing and socially changing. They find it uncomfortable. Trump on ih donald guess the right. And Bernie Sanders for sure on the left have tapped into different forms of that anxiety and layer a really big dollop of icing on top of the anxiety. This is where the anger comes in of frustration with politics as usual in washington and the inability of various ways for things to get done what folders in america think needs to be done. How the parts that we dont understand. Ofis sort of a combination how far this anxiety anger frustration goes and where it gets channeled in the future. Thank you. I know you miss a Little Something also. Thank you for reminding a. If ruth festa do it, equal opportunity. I read ruths column and i want to say i read it every day, so that i remember how i should think. After all, i am an ethnic, irish secondgeneration Roman Catholic from maine so i have no business thinking any other way than the way ruth thinks. If you look at the situation, its a question everybody is asking right now. I look at it from experience. I have been on president ial campaigns, i spent most of my time in New Hampshire during those times. You see the way the campaign develops and the number of candidates the republicans fielded. You see and i had a candidate, and it was and is marking a rubio. Both with regard to what we missed, i think most of us thought that this primary was on the level. Sense that there was a hostile takeover of the Republican Party starting sometime in october. Based on what was happening on the campaign trail. When i say hostile takeover of the Republican Party, i mean what i am saying. Were mr. Trump has gotten himself to in terms of being the presumptive nominee means that effectively the whole ground game has been changed with regard to the kinds of issues and policies that republicans have for somebody to be their nominee. I dont think we have seen anything like it before. Tiredind of sick and that hearing about 1860, youe or 19, guess what cannot look back on history and say it is the same. The phenomenon of the media and the ability constantly in a way marcustrigues us, ruth has written six columns in the last two weeks and five have been on donald trump. She is a progressive columnist writing about a republican nominee because the readership wants to know what is going on. Did we miss it . We missed it. If you support mr. Trump is my bother who is a radiologist in maine and went to holy cross college, nice, sweet guy and donald trump is great. You delve into the mind and you say theyre frustrated. I didnt know america wasnt a great. [applause] from your perspective on the Campaign Strategist and them we will hear from ruth, how about the role of the media . Ruth wrote that donald trump has been the most constantly available candidate to the press and has managed to still invade the questions. Person, how have you seen the change in the role of the media and its impact on the campaign and which candidates are elevated . Tough question to break down in 60 seconds. Let me give an example of the following things that are new to this cycle. Trump as a candidate was able to push everybody else out of the news cycle on any given day because of the things he said or the things that re going on. Cnnad coverage last week on , i dont usually watch, because fox is what i watch. I need to be indoctrinated into the world. They are covering him coming out of the rnc. This is like oj again. What happened is this. Campaignare a operative and working on the campaign as many of you in this room know, you are doing you know to get ruth marcus to write about you or to get on a Television Program or to get mentioned on a sunday show or get on a sunday shoe show. Mostly what you do is try to get your message out through grassroots door to door the oldfashioned way of doing things. To give that much Media Exposure is way too expensive. And you have a phenomenon there is celebrity in president ial politics before. There has not been the availability of the outlet that is now available to candidates. The one thing about media that is different about how we would have canceled a candidate, john mccain is different on the campaign. He invited us on the campaign bus. He was very comfortable with the media. Donald trump does not have anybody handling him. We can come back to the Editorial Board meeting and what ruth and i talked about before the transcript, i highly recommend for the Washington Post. You never let a candidate going blind. These are the issues you want to hit up your this guy is going to say whatever is on his mind when he goes out. Therefore, he can do all of the media as he has no set up. You said that i had written, i wrote a column a few weeks ago the litteredt landscape that we will be and howat in november institutions will need to come to a reckoning with their role in this and where they go from here. One was the Democratic Party among was the Republican Party. Jewish audience i can say even before november, i think we in the media are going to have some atoning to do. Because i think to sort of put it in framework and clear, we went running to their tales and to do idle gossip and we really failed the paradox of donald trump. It wasnt that he was so good at well he is constantly available, but the paradox is he was both constantly available and we failed to adequate we come question him. There was a bright shiny objects of his latest outrage. Whatever he dangled in front of us, whether it was intentional or unintentional, we went chasing after that. The main thing about megyn kelly, were looking at that. March 21 he came to the editorial page of the Washington Post and i was part of that meeting. We had a very clear strategy, which was not to ask him gossip questions, not to ask him nasty questions, just basic questions peopley reader, i think really do want to see substance in their diet of cat videos. I have clicked on the occasional video myself to we wanted to ask him basic questions that as voters and readers would think would be legitimate questions. Said they were softballs. He was right. What do think about nato . And the answers to those were eliminating, but the problem isnt that we did such a good job of picking up those questions, it was march 21 for goodness sakes. Where was that kind of questioning before hand . There is a lot of things to be said about the role of the press, but the grade that we get is not one that my father would have approved of bringing home from college. Asking talking about the anxiety a main issue for all of us in the room is this rhetorical frame of us versus them. Real americans versus the other. I want to ask you to tease that a little bit more about where it comes from. Who are the people who this appeals to and also what is the responsibility of a candidate in a campaign to tap it down. It is a question we are asking every day and we hope we get the answer right. That is asking a lot of candidates in the context of a hardfought campaign because the campaigns job is to in part to find where the mood and energy of the filters is to glom onto that. I distinguish between the candidates, some of whom say things but i find so repulsive and upsetting, which explains the reason i feel compelled to write about some of them constantly. It is not just that people are interested in it, but i feel like a moral obligation to speak out and speak up again. Something, on saying because if you do it i do, you have to believe that has some impact or at least you can sleep better at night. There are certainly supporters of individual candidates who have terrible things to say and horrible abuse. I think trump voters and other voters are not bad people. They are people who have anxieties and who are hurting. Natural human instinct when youre feeling beings and unsure and economically stressed. A very powerful cover story in atlantic,t months the author of this piece is a fellow wellknown writer who could not scrape together 400 on the spur of the moment. About 40 of people are in that state of real extreme financial insecurity. When you have Something Like your it is like having immune system low. Your immunity is low, your instinct is to blame it on others, blame it on immigrants. We are anxious about terrorism. We know who we can blame for that. Blame it on others. When a candidate comes along who has been taking advantage of that reduced immune system, you get what you get. The candidates fail to cash or let it flourish . Again, i think the dynamics have changed. Like aan to sound prude, this is a country that has fulllength Motion Picture called whiskey, tango, foxtrot. During the military you know what that means. Apparently my 22yearold son knows what it means. The bar has been lowered. What bar with regard to declare corner,maybe thats if public side of politics, you look at the landscape of republicans that ran for the nomination of our party this year, you had a lot of very good candidates. Good people with diverse views and a lot of different choice. Whether or not any of them were going to be the ones that would be the best leader is a question that gets worked out through the process. I mention hostile takeover, the process was also hijacked. Something i said before, it did not matter who had the best answers to real policy questions in the debates. It did not matter at the end. Even on nights when some of the candidates other than mr. Trump did well, donald trump still scored ok to matter what he said or did and it attempts back into what you said. About wayeople inside dont understand certain things and people outside the beltway understand them better. I think the bottom line is that what people outside the beltway dont understand is the system is not set up barack obama in the white house, Republican House and senate is designed to do nothing. Because the country is equally divided. It can only do things that it is closely aligned on. I argue to my friends who say that congress did nothing that wanted certain issues that the administration was moving forward. The Republican Congress did good and it slowed things down. Or it stopped things that people were worried about. Today in our political system, no one is a legislator anymore. They are advocates. All they have to do is come back and advocate to you in this room that im working hard for this issue. Iworking at sentencing am working hard to keep peace in the middle east. I am these things and that is enough. Nobody holds me accountable to what pieces of legislation i am getting done and therefore the judgment of washington and who should be the commander and chief or the executor does not favor the person to get it done. Marco rubio said this. He said if this election is about a resume, we might as well pack it in your because secretary clinton has a resume that people would say has her head and shoulders above everyone else. However, the problem is it is about electability, likability and communicating that fact to the public. She has had her own problems getting her message out. Can make tamp it down . Should they is a different issue. And should a Political Party ,mbrace a candidate in the end not just two wins the popular vote, but if you want the support of the party, should there be a certain set of standards that you hold yourself to. I think that is a reasonable question. This is really important. Big problem with the current president president for a lot of reasons. But this one thing i have never had a problem, i have never once at thehamed or cringed way he has conducted himself as a human being, as a father and as a husband. Never. [applause] im probably going to get kicked out of the party for that. You always have a home with us, peter. Can you can we looked at the impact down ballot. How is something going to come out in the end, we will look at what is going to happen in next few months. How do the dynamics in the president ial primaries impact state and local candidates . Thise really puzzled by uncharted water, of rankandfile republicans struggling with what to do with their nominee. We have pcs, one potential pickup in the senate it and that is harry reids seat in nevada. We have some friends from nevada here. Nevada. There you go. I am trying to keep my main accent out of it. If you look at the other states come up the you line and you look at the situation