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CNN Live At Daybreak
September 11th Is a Huge Factor in Today's Elections
Aired November 06, 2001 - 08:38 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The political landscape of course is very different from this time last year. There is no talk yet of dimpled chads and punch card ballots. Instead, the talk is about terrorism and anthrax. But there are some races worth watching, and Jeff Greenfield is the author of the "Waiter, One Order of Crow," he also happens to be CNN's Senior Political Analyst and host of CNN At Large. Thanks for getting up early for us this morning.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: So many people out this time of the morning, you know, we do our show at 11 at night, and it's always a shock, you know, when you get the other end of the day, and you go, "oh yeah, lots of people around."
ZAHN: Some really nice people around, too, Jeff.
GREENFIELD: Yes.
ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about the New Jersey governor's race within the context of the president's polling numbers. He has an approval rating in the latest CNN-USAToday Gallup poll of 87 percent and yet, the Democratic candidates are leading.
GREENFIELD: They're leading leading in New Jersey, and they're leading in Virginia, and here in New York City, which is very close, the Republican candidate was, until about 8 months ago, a Democrat.
ZAHN: So what does this mean? Is there any -- is there any relationship between the presidential polling in these or not?
GREENFIELD: In these races, I think absolutely not. Every once in a while an off year election gives you a clue that something's up, like 8 years ago when the Democratic governor of New Jersey lost, the tax revolt issue among the middle class was alive and well. It proved to really hurt the Democrats a year later.
I don't think -- you would strain a muscle trying to find a link between these off year elections and the national political scene, with one exception. In New York, the enormous popularity of Giuliani. Mayor Giuliani has made his endorsement of Republican candidate Mark Bloomberg, much more important that it would have otherwise been.
ZAHN: But that endorsement thing came so late into the process.
GREENFIELD: Yes, but you know -- ZAHN: But it came.
GREENFIELD: When you have $50,000,000 to spend on advertising as Mike Bloomberg, who is a media billionaire, does, that endorsement made an enormous difference. And if I could focus on it for one second, that endorsement, which was done by David Garth, a media consultant, whom I worked with about 30 years ago, is a classic endorsement in that it looks like a re-election bid.
When you look at the commercial that Giuliani has done for Bloomberg, it's a 60 second commercial which, in this day and age looks like a telethon. And until the last minute, it almost sounds like Giuliani is saying, "vote for me again." And that's one of the rare times, you're quite right, endorsements usually don't mean much, but this one, in the context of September 11th, has meant a lot.
ZAHN: All right. Let's talk about you've seen dozens of pictures of the former president Bill Clinton sitting and eating. They ate a lot. Mr. Green, a Democratic opponent --
GREENFIELD: Its a New York election. If you can't eat 50 different kinds of ethnic food, you're doomed. It's one of the great tests of being a New York candidate, because we have so many different ethnic groups here, and you've got to eat all of their food. You generally go in for some kind of gastro-intestinal emergency surgery after an election in New York.
ZAHN: So does the Clinton allegiance mean anything at all? Particularly with the vast amount of undecided vote, what are they saying, 20 percent of the vote, now, is undecided?
GREENFIELD: About 15 to 20 percent. I really don't think it does because -- because in this context, I mean the September 11th context has to be kept in mind. The rush of affection for Giuliani, who emerged as this figure, made him so much more important as a hands on endorser than the former president of the United States. I mean I do think it made a difference. And just very -- well, I want to mention something about New Jersey.
ZAHN: We'll give you as much time as you want.
GREENFIELD: No, no --
ZAHN: No, this is very important stuff. We haven't had a chance to address it yet this morning.
GREENFIELD: Well, I think -- I think the thing about New Jersey is and I don't know why, it's one of the few states where conservative Republicans have never won, at least in our lifetimes, a statewide election. New York elected Al DiAmato, Pennsylvania has Rick Santorum, and you think of these northeastern states, but New Jersey, whenever the Republicans nominate a conservative, that conservative loses.
And it's one of the few states left where you can assert that. I don't know what it is about the state, but that's why Bret Schundler, the Republican who was a huge conservative hero, he was elected mayor of Jersey City, Republican conservative, winning votes in a Democratic town, pro-school choice, anti-abortion, skeptical about gun control, conservatives saw him as a potential vote getter in unusual areas. If the polls are right, that's not going to happen.
ZAHN: I want you now to take us back to the the very painful time on election night, what was it, about 12 hours from now, where we all, you were working here, I was working someplace else. Let's quickly remind our viewers of what happened that night.
Well, there's actually a piece of tape --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: I'm so sorry to interrupt you, Florida goes for Al Gore.
ZAHN: A big call to make. CNN announces that we called Florida in the Al Gore column --
TOM BROKAW, NBC ANCHOR: We've got that blue in Florida, Mr. Gore has won in Florida.
RATHER: Now we're pulling it back into the undecided column because some bad data came from certain precincts in Florida, quite honestly, we now don't know.
ZAHN: Ouch, ouch, ouch. Explain to us this morning how September 11th has forever changed our focus on exactly what happened a year ago?
GREENFIELD: I think that the most important impact is that it has rendered almost political irrelevant the lingering doubts about who really won. It isn't that people think -- thought that George W. Bush was an illegitimate president, most Americans said, "ok, whatever happens, he's the president," but as late as last August, when pollsters asked the country how would you vote now, it was split dead even between Bush and Gore. Again, the latest numbers, and we all know to be skeptical about polls, God knows --
ZAHN: Yeah, oh yeah.
GREENFIELD: -- showed that Bush would beat Gore 60 to 36. Now what that really is about is that the need, I think, of citizens to have trust in their government after September 11th has just increased dramatically. That number, by the way, do you trust your government, shot up enormously just in the couple of weeks after September 11th. People want to believe in the government, they want to believe in the president, because it's now, literally, for us a matter of life and death. Not to be dramatic about it.
ZAHN: Unfortunately the number that also shot up was the public's distrust in the media. What is the most powerful lesson we learned that night?
GREENFIELD: You mean from Florida? ZAHN: From Florida.
GREENFIELD: Well, in these --
ZAHN: And we all were using the same information that night.
GREENFIELD: Well, you know what, I mean -- this is an odd phrase to use about the media, but if it taught us a little humility, that's not a bad thing. We got so used to a system that knew how to call races, that had only been wrong once over the past 15 years, in one senate race, and to watch the thing blow up not once, but twice in front, literally, of a couple hundred million people, maybe we'll be a little bit quieter tonight and a year from now, and say we are not quite sure. So it's a ill-wind that blows nobody any good, and I got a book out of it.
ZAHN: All right. Jeff Greenfield, congratulations on the book. Thanks again for dropping by and working this very long shift for us today.
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