 Before we start the proceedings, let me acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet in work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history. My name is Ian McAllister from the School of Politics, and I have two distinguished speakers to introduce who are going to address us shortly. Our first speaker is Penny Lee, who's a democratic political and communication strategist with over 20 years of political experience. She's currently a senior advisor at Venn Strategies, a public affairs and government relations firm in Washington, D.C., and prior to that she served as the top communications and political advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. Over a career, she served as the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, communications director for Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rindell, and as a member of the senior staff of the Democratic National Committee. Our second speaker is Noam Newsner, who's an experienced communications strategist, speech writer, journalist, and author, and he's the founding principal of a company called 30 Point Strategies, which focuses on strategic communications, speech writing, and media relations. And prior to starting his own firm, he was President George W. Bush's primary speech writer on domestic policy matters, including tax relief, Medicare reform, energy in the environment, and he's also served as Director of Communications and Strategic Planning at the Office of Management and Budget. So the format of the proceedings for the next hour is each speaker will have about 10 minutes to talk about the campaign from their own perspective, and that should leave us about 40 minutes for a Q&A, and then we'll finish at seven o'clock. So I'll hand over to Penny Lee to start. First, just let me say thank you, Professor, to the university for hosting us here tonight. We got here, Noam and I got here last Sunday, and we've spent the last couple of days in Sydney, and now we are moving across the country, and I will say the level of interest on U.S. politics has, and especially this potential presidential race, has been astounding, and it's actually quite humbling when we go back to realize that we have not been following Australian politics quite as much, but we'll now have a renewed sense to be able to follow and be a little bit more conversant than we were when we first got here. But so we appreciate tremendously the amount of attention that folks have gotten, but also we had a session in Sydney with some high school students that were probably some of the toughest questioners that we have found to date, much more than even our harshest of media. They were quite well informed, and I will say really challenged us on a lot of, not only our own thoughts, but kind of what was happening in the United States. So it was quite interesting. I will say Noam got a little bit more of their brunt of it with their fascination with Donald Trump than I did, but needless to say it was quite educational in our own right. So I will speak, I come from the Democratic Party, and so I will speak a little bit in just kind of scene set maybe for you. I'm sure you all, again, as watchers of the news and consumers of the news that you are probably know just as much as I do, or if not more sometimes, it just kind of maybe scene set a little bit of where the Democrats sit. As we've seen, we are in a protracted race where we have two candidates that are finishing out. We will end the race most likely on June 7th in California will be the last primary. Well, I would say that aside that Washington DC is actually the last primary, but there's only three votes, and so it doesn't really count. But California will be the last one in which we will really have a contested primary, and that will most likely be the end of that session. We are, the two that are on the forefront is Hillary Clinton, Secretary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. And when you started the race last year, it was kind of almost assumed, and it really was that the party thought it was going to, you know, that it was assumed that it would be Hillary Clinton. It was felt by the party and many of them that it was her time, it was her turn. She had paid her dues in 2008, had run an incredible campaign then, but lost and served with great applause as Secretary of State, and it was just a natural for her to then go and be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party. But it was also hoped upon that it would be contested, because what we didn't want and what the party does not want is just to feel that it's a fate of complete, that it was just going to be assumed, that there was going to be a coordination, that it was just automatically going to be one person. And so, you know, you did have, you saw Jim Webb from Virginia get into the race, you saw Martin O'Malley from Maryland get in the race, and then you saw a 74-year-old self-proclaimed socialist from a state of about five people that was starting to garner the support of this youth movement. No one saw it really coming to the extent in which it has and is. But it really has been a galvanizing and an energetic force within the party, both to not only bring rise to many of the issues in which she is championing, both on an income inequality or access to education, access to healthcare, the way in which we look at some of the economic imbalances. But it also, I would say, made both candidates better. Definitely it has made Mrs. Clinton a better campaigner. It has made her really sharpen her own positions, her own point of views. And I would say, you know, barring anything spectacular, Mrs. Clinton will be the nominee for the Democratic Party. It's mathematically almost impossible for Bernie Sanders to win the nomination. But everybody, you know, different people have asked whether or not he should get out or he should pull out first or he should go ahead because it's mathematically or statistically impossible. He has 11 million contributors to his campaign right now. He has garnered tremendous amount of energy, and I really hope that he stays until the end to make sure that anybody in the states that haven't voted yet get the chance to voice their support. That is what the Democratic process is about, and I'm wanting to make sure and ensure that everybody that wants to can and will participate in the election, especially in the primary setting. So, you know, Indiana saw a win for Bernie Sanders, and most likely the next three states, which are Nebraska, Oregon and Washington state, most likely also will go to Bernie Sanders. I think it's important to remember in 2008 Mrs. Clinton actually won seven out of the last nine contests as well. So it's a fully exhaustive system, and we hope that both mount. I think there's some concern that make sure that some of the animosity that might be being displayed as of recent days doesn't spill itself over and run negative a counter to either one of them. I think they've been able to keep through this primary session a level of discourse that has been healthy and has been based on the issues rather than personalities, unlike some others and another party that we have seen. But you know, so, you know, going into and then after the election or after the primary session, we will go into the general campaign. Republicans have secured their nominee a little bit quicker than we were all expecting. We also weren't quite maybe expecting who they decided upon, but I'll let names speak to his qualities or lack thereof, not quite sure which one you want them to say. But then we'll go into the general and I would say in seen setting the general election, there are some built advantages into for the Democratic Party or whoever is the Democratic nominee and in three distinct areas. One being in just the sheer math of the United States and where the votes come from. As you all most likely know, our system is not one in which whoever wins the most votes wins the presidency and we have an electoral college in which you have to, based on whatever states you win, you know, garner the amount of electoral college votes. The magic number is 270 for someone to win the presidency, you have to win 270 votes. If you look at the last several elections since 1992 and consistently look, Democrats have consistently won 19 of those states and out of those 19 states, it garners to about 242 electoral college votes. Republicans under that same time period since 1992 have consistently won 13 states. Their electoral college out of those 13 states is 102. Much different. You have Democrats that start out the race with 242, they need to pick up one more state such as Florida and it's over. They have their 270. Republicans start at a deficit of 102. So that is a built advantage in for the Democrats. A built advantage is the rising, what we call the rising American electorate. Our country has changed demographically. It has become less white. It has become more youthful and it also has, the women vote has also increased election after election. Those three categories, non-white meaning African American, Hispanic, Asian, women vote and now the youth have gone disproportionately for Democrats. If you take the 2012 race and you look at Mitt Romney and how he performed against Barack Obama, he lost the Asian vote by 42%. He lost the African American by over 50%. He lost the Hispanic vote by almost 48 points. He lost the unmarried women, which is a key demographic for Democrats, unmarried women by over 45%. He won married women, but only by 12. So that marriage gap in and of itself was over 30 points. So those demographic shifts and changes and then the youth vote was overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. Those demographic changes and are only increasing as far as those electorate bodies is only increasing. They're consistently going towards the Democrats. And if you have a nominee that looks like the Republicans are going to put forth, it really challenges that demographic math when you have the potential insults that are being hurled by the candidate of their choice. The third built advantage is traditionally Americans vote or how a large part of it is how they're feeling, how they're feeling about their current incumbent president and how they're feeling about the direction of the country economically in particular. Right now you're starting to see Barack Obama for the first time in several years has actually gone above 50% approval rating. This will bode well for the incumbent party. Also, you're starting to see trend lines in which they're feelings towards the economy. Right track, right wrong track of the country is also starting to be into a positive column. So those three things I would say in particular really set the stage well for a Democratic nominee. But as we've seen, this is not a usual election. There are differences. I mean, first of all, Democrats are most likely to nominate for the first time a credible woman candidate that has a factor. Republicans are potentially nominating someone that has, you know, you can say has never served office is a reality TV star. He has found his way onto the national stage with very colorful languages and 141 characters of insults on a daily basis or hourly basis. So he's a very different, he appeals to a different electorate. He is likely to challenge that map that I talked about in a very different and dynamic way. His appeal with blue collar workers is something that will put some certain states especially in our Middle West and our manufacturing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, those kind of states in a very different could potentially be in a very different realm. I would say we would have to counter that with our southern states, which are a little bit more diverse. So it's going to be an interesting race, nothing, even with all of the advantages that I say we have on the statistical and the scientific way going forward. We are in for six months of, I think, a discourse that we've never seen before. And we do not know how it's going to outcome. We have two candidates that are at the top with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump has right now a 68% unfavorability rating, but Mrs. Clinton has a 55% unfavorable rating. So these are not terribly popular people in our country. And those dynamics do come into play whether or not people show up and participate, whether or not there's just a disdain for the entire system, whether or not you're choosing the lesser of two evils as it might be and how that comes into play. So things look good, but we have still the art of the campaigning, which is personalities and elements that come into play that we aren't expecting, whether it be a issue on foreign soil or an economic crisis or other things like that. So with that, I'll turn it over to Noam, but I would just say we are positive about where we sit, but realize that there are still six more months. Unfortunately, I wish we had the 73 days. It looks like you guys are going to get, trust me, America wishes they had 73, only 73 days of this because I think right now they're about listening to Sesame Street and ESPN trying to get themselves out of the political discourse that is already taking place. Yes, thank you. For sure, especially seeing up close your political system, the speed with which you have your elections is a huge plus. I can say that if I could fast forward to the next six months myself, I would really gladly do it because it's really going to be a very difficult time for many Republicans, people who have made a home in the party, who have grown up within the party. I wore Reagan Bush pins in high school, just made me a bit of an outlier at the time, at least in high school. But now you're seeing, I think, within the Republican Party, a very significant civil war occurring and the first few battles have been won by one side of the party or people who have not traditionally been within the party. I want to step back a bit and observe that what you should expect out of the US in the next six months will be very emotional, very personal, very vindictive politics, politics that I think in any democracy you're going to have from time to time, this is going to be particularly a tough time. Whether or not you're with Hillary or with Mr. Trump or against both of them, you're going to be subject to a lot of verbal abuse from people with whom you disagree. It's interesting, the issues, we're not in the United States, we are always working on very important issues and being a great power, the leadership of that great power conveys significant responsibilities, but we're not having a selection at a time when there are particularly hot button issues that are really at work. So the outcome of the election may or may not be substantive, but the fact of the election is going to be substantive. It's going to really drive the country into a deep ravine, which I mention this because I think one thing we do get from Australians all the time is deep concern about whether America is paying attention to the world, whether we're observing what is happening, let's say, in the Pacific Rim or in Europe or in Africa, and we have responsibilities around the world and we seem to be kind of stuck in our own business right now. That's problematic. To understand the Republican Party, especially even if you're a close student of American politics, the Republican Party is often misunderstood, especially by people who don't really live within it. One of the great weaknesses of people who study American politics is if they don't really get to know the Republican Party and its many facets, they often misunderstand it and misconstrue it. So allow me to do a little bit of an anthropological introduction to the family of the Republican Party for your benefit. The best metaphor I can give for this is basically it's like a house with four rooms. Each room is populated by one major faction of the Republican Party, or as a friend of mine, a fellow named Henry Olson calls it one of the faces, the four faces of the Republican Party. So first room is, let's say it's the dining room, it's the evangelicals. These are social conservatives, people who are deeply faithful, often Christian. They are all over the country. They're not just in the deep south. They can compromise roughly 45 million Americans. They're a very significant base of political strength for the Republican Party. They roughly number about 25% of the Republican electorate. And they are very important in certain states, but they're important everywhere. And interestingly, you would have predicted that they would have gone with Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, but they did not. They actually went with Trump. Then you've got the fiscal conservatives. And the fiscal conservatives are, I feel most comfortable with that room. Let's say that's the study. And these are folks who are interested in tax issues, spending issues, whether we run deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars into the future or not, whether we make promises to our own citizenry that we can't meet or not. Those are our animating issues. We're about 15% of the party. Then there are the moderates. And moderates can be broadly defined as basically what it sounds like. And they're best represented by the views of people like Mitt Romney or John McCain most lately. And it's not that they're not conservative. It's just they're not conservative all the time. And they generally on social issues in particular are quite comfortable with a center centrist position. The moderates have very quickly welcomed the advent of gay marriage in the United States, for example. And opposition to abortion on demand is not something that animates them. But they do believe in governance, responsible governance. And generally, they're pretty comfortable with the Republican agenda. And the final fourth room is what they call somewhat conservatives. And I don't know why this somewhat is, they're conservative. But they tend to be very focused on national security, anti-terror. They generally affiliate with the social conservatives on social issues. But they're not uniformly there. And they're certainly, they're not motivated in the sense that you get from the evangelicals a sense that America is sort of God's nation. That's something that they wouldn't necessarily agree with. They I think they're more emotionally attached to America's great documents, the Constitution, its Declaration of Independence, its special place in American history and world history. Okay, so there's four rooms in this house. And we generally get along pretty well. We have for many years. And suddenly Mr. Trump has come along. And it's like he's like driving a mobile home. And he's pulled it right up into the backyard of this house. And all those people are in there. And they're just really excited to come on into the house and drink the wine and sit on the furniture and just kind of make themselves at home. And it's making the other people in the house a little uncomfortable. Not all of them, but some of them, the fiscal conservatives and the somewhat conservatives in particular. And so it's a very difficult situation if you're a Republican, lifelong Republican, because you're not seeing in Mr. Trump conservative views. This is something that I think it's important to know that if you're thinking of Mr. Trump existing on a right left axis in the traditional sense, you're making a huge mistake. Some of his views are pretty straightforward on the right side of the aisle. But some of them are actually much further to the left of Mrs. Clinton, Secretary Clinton, in terms of trade. He is pretty much a protectionist. He has been very clear about that. And if you think that Donald Trump is interested in free trade, you're wrong. America's engagement in the world, whether America should be involved militarily or in some kind of capacity of extending its strength, he has given a speech where he basically embraced a slogan that was the isolationist slogan between World War I and World War II, America first. I mean, you couldn't make that up if you were actually trying to bring America back to its position of isolationism in between World War I and World War II. Donald Trump is your man. These are not positions that are familiar to conservatives, for sure, nor to most Republicans. And so this is going to be kind of tricky. And there's going to be real battles within the Republican Party on this account. Now, one would say that normally the candidate coming out of the nomination process should have a full head of steam behind him and should have the full support of the party behind him. And that would make him a strong candidate. Donald Trump doesn't have those things. And so therefore you would think, and I think it's safe to say that you would think that he's coming out of the nomination process wounded, that there will be a number of Republicans who will not vote for him. And they've declared so. I haven't gone that far, but I'm not planning on voting for Donald Trump. And I don't stand alone. So the question is, does he have a chance of winning? First, the answer is yes, because he represents the candidate of one of two parties. So it's not quite a coin flip, but it could be a coin flip. I mean, it's a 50-50 country. And if enough people vote for him, he'll be the next president. But more critically, I think you have to remember that Donald Trump has beaten prediction and conventional thinking many, many times. I mean, nobody would have ever predicted that a guy who basically doesn't spend a whole lot of money on his campaign, doesn't do any micro-targeting, doesn't have professional campaign operatives running his campaign, doesn't really try to build an operation of any kind. Basically just gives a lot of interviews on cable news, does a lot of big rallies in stadiums and airport hangers. And he would just spend time just kind of tweeting. I mean, nobody would have thought that this guy had a chance to win this election. And there he is. He's the one who beat all the campaigns that had, trust me, I worked for Jeb Bush. I know, and we had a really professional campaign. It looked great. We had digital people, and I was a speechwriter, and we had a great policy shop, and we were organizing ourselves for the long haul, and we didn't even get out of South Carolina. So do not dismiss Mr. Trump just because the conventional approach is to dismiss somebody with his weaknesses. I think that if you are trying to predict what will happen next, I still think that Secretary Clinton, once she wraps up the nomination, she will be a prohibitive favorite. I think the odds-makers put her at an 80% likelihood of winning the election. Those are very high odds, considering we're six months out and a lot can happen. So I'm just going to give you the alternative theory about why Mr. Trump could actually win. So I already gave you one, which is that anything can happen. That's the kind of indefinite. So let me give you three or four more specific ways that Donald Trump can win. The first is, as Penny made reference, he's not a conventional Republican, and therefore he can draw from voters who have traditionally not voted for Republicans. That includes the poor or the working class, or people who have given up on American politics or who never really cared about American politics. But they kind of like something about him. There's something about him that they like. They like the fact that he's an outsider. They like the fact that he is quite comfortable speaking off the top of his head, that he doesn't observe the laws of political correctness in any way. He actually doesn't mind offending people deeply, personally, and say, hey, deal with it, buddy. And there's something that certain Americans just find refreshing about that. And that may bother you, it bothers me, but that's just the way it is. You've got to get used to that point. There are other things, too. He could benefit significantly if, let's say, there's a terror attack in the United States or elsewhere. Donald Trump rose significantly in the polls after the attacks in Paris. And I think it's worth noting that external events have a way of affecting American politics in a way that can't be predicted. The 2008 financial crisis was what really propelled Barack Obama to the lead in the polls. I mean, it was pretty close. He was mildly ahead of Mr. McCain. But then after that, it was all over. And that was partly because of the way Senator Obama dealt with it and the part of the way that Senator McCain dealt with it. The American people were not reassured by Senator McCain, whereas they were reassured by Senator Obama. External events could also include sudden economic downturn. And also importantly, that Secretary Clinton is still waiting to hear whether she's going to be indicted by the Department of Justice for the way she organized her and maintained her email in a private servers while she was Secretary of State. You know, that's a possibility. I don't know whether that's likely to happen. But either way, that event will play out. Either she will be indicted or she won't. And Trump supporters will actually take comfort in either outcome. You know, if she is indicted, it will be impossible for her to run for office. If she's not indicted, it will further confirm their view that the system is corrupt and it serves the right, you know, the interests of insiders entirely. It's one of those heads you win, heads I win, tails you lose situations. So, you know, I want to wrap just by saying, you know, that these are possibilities. And as somebody who thought confidently that Mr. Trump would be knocked out of the primary process, I probably said it aloud, you know, 15, 20 times to my democratic wife who was, you know, I mean, literally in tears in some of the moments during the game. I was like, no, it won't happen. It won't happen. Well, here it is. Here it is. And so I've learned to no longer trust my political instincts because they're so wrong. But I still feel that, you know, that there's, this is now a general election. This is no longer a primary. And Penny and I have, you know, we've looked at the numbers. I mean, the Republican primary and the Democratic primary are votes of a subsection of a subsection of the population. And it takes a lot to go to a caucus meeting in Iowa in January. It takes a certain committed individual. You here live in, you know, a fairly moderate environment. And, you know, the weather outside is beautiful and it's really terrific. I urge you to come to Iowa in the middle of wintertime and see whether you'd be so motivated to get out of your living room. You guys might, you're accustomed to it, but a lot of people don't. And a lot of people do not participate in the political process, which is a shame. But it's particularly a shame because it leaves the political process in the hands of highly motivated people with strong views. Highly motivated people with strong views often are terrific people to have dinner with. But then they sometimes hand you a candidate that you simply did not expect or want. And I fear that's what's happened in this election cycle. So I guess we're going to take some questions now, correct? Thank you, to both speakers. It's been really informative. So I think you've been both very frank that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are turning to the general election November now. I was interested to hear your insights on who do you think will be on the shortlist for running mate for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively. Thank you. Yours is more interesting. There's some better names. You know, it's interesting. You know, it's kind of one of those processes that you can overthink it. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to who the person likes, who they feel is going to be loyal, and who they feel can actually serve in the role in case anything was to happen. And they could actually step in and be President of the United States. You know, Mrs. Clinton is going, Secretary Clinton, I know, and I'm not sure, I'm not as close with Secretary Sanders, but I do know Secretary Clinton is going through the exercise right now, and they are meeting, and they are looking, and they are taking a wide, wide cast to see who might be the right fit. And you know, sometimes it's over-analyzed. Well, if I'm male, then I need a female. If I'm black, then I need somebody white. If I'm from the north, then I need somebody from the south. You know, all of these different issues come into play. Some of the names that are out there, you have Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia. He's a senator, a former governor, former mayor, former chairman of the party. He's more of a moderate, but he also has a strong focus and a strong point of view on foreign affairs matters. You have Sherrod Brown, a senator from Ohio, someone who came from the labor part, I would say, of the party. He's obviously in a key state of Ohio. Then you have Senator Cory Booker, an African American rising star, young, 40-year-old, former mayor from Newark, New Jersey. Again, a key state, critical, but also representing kind of the youth movement of the party or of the country. And then you also have the real darling of the Democratic Progressives, and that's Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard professor, current senator from Massachusetts. I would say she is a great and wonderful person. I'm not sure we need two historical candidates on this same election. I think it's going to be tough enough to elect one woman, let alone two. But I think what's going to be, what will also be key for the Democrats to unite, if it is Mrs. Clinton, is she is going to have to give rise and she is going to have to give to the progressive part of the party either the issues in the platform, bringing Bernie Sanders' people into her camp, potentially forecasting that the senator Elizabeth Warren could serve in her cabinet or something like that. So there is going to have to be some give and take, especially on the progressive side. But as far as, look, right now everybody's on the shortlist, and the greatest thing in Washington right now is to be rumored to be. In fact some even planted themselves, potentially having their own PR teams as to that they're on the shortlist. But as they often say, those who know don't say, and those who say don't know. So right now it's really in an exploratory side. Yeah, I mean the issue with trying to project this with Donald Trump is like anything else with Donald Trump. He is unpredictable and he'll probably announce it in a tweet. You know, there's really no serious shortlist right now. I think there are probably some people who would like to be considered. Chris Christie, who was briefly a candidate, Governor of New Jersey, he threw his weight behind Mr. Trump. Sorry for the, I'm there. I don't know whether he brings anything to, I mean look, here's the thing with Donald Trump. I mean he's somebody who is a singular figure. He has to be alone in the spotlight. He cannot, you know, it's kind of like Voldemort. I mean he and Harry Potter can't coexist in the same universe. He can't have somebody else sort of sealing his light. So he needs to, by the way, I love that the headline's going to be, Republican compares Trump to Voldemort. I should know better than that. Anyway, look, you know, Trump really needs somebody who could probably appeal to women. I mean, you know, if I'm giving him serious advice, which he probably wouldn't take, I would say, see if you can get somebody who appeals to Republican women. Not Democratic women, they're not going to do it for him, but at least Republican women, because if you don't get them to come to the polls. I just saw an article today about a senator named Joni Ernst from Iowa, which was actually an important state, that she would be a good candidate for him. I have no idea. I mean, I know people who know her. I could probably run that up the flagpole and have it shot down pretty fast. So we'll see. I wouldn't be surprised if he just chooses somebody who's never held elected office because he figures, you know, hey, work for me, work for somebody else. Hi. Thanks. That was a great presentation from both of you. Thank you both. A question going to Trump's campaigning style. Sorry, this is terrible. When we talked about the Democrats campaign machine, we saw it in the last election, this, you know, really tight use of data and advanced digital campaigning techniques and all that. And you've got Trump now with his freewheeling style of whatever that campaigning is, relying on big media coverage, which perhaps works with particular segments of the population, but in a general election where he's got to appeal to different segments of voters. And you've already alluded to his perhaps inability to take advice. So for the Republican campaign machine to be able to engage him, how do you think he's likely to run a campaign and what sort of impact in the Republican Party is that likely to have? I mean, you know, I think he's likely to stick with what has worked for him, which is big, broad, bold, relying, he's going to hope to rely on continued free media attention. I mean, his, the value of the free time that he got from cable news in the primary process has been put at $2 billion. It would have cost $2 billion to advertise in the time that he spent on air, which is an astronomical amount of money. Because when you see all the advertisements come September, October, November, you think that that's $2 billion to buy a lot more of that. I don't know. I mean, it depends whether it's interesting, whether the Republican Party invests in that kind of micro-targeting effort. I don't understand what the micro-targeting would be. I mean, Trump's appeal is not a micro-target appeal. He's not going to, like, fine-tune the message. That's actually part of his appeal is that he doesn't care how people hear his message. He's like, hey, look at what I'm saying. Deal with it. And so I suspect that he'll probably stick with his approach, which is big, broad, megaphone-type stuff. His advertising will probably have big themes that are largely in sort of not specific, non-specific. Yeah, he's not going to offer a big, specific policy agenda. Thanks for your talks. A few nights ago, the U.S. and Macedot highlighted that the future of America, which matters so much to us as Australians, hinges to quite a large extent on the compensation of the Supreme Court. And there was a recent death there. Yeah, and I understand that President Obama has nominated a replacement, correct? I don't know the status of that. It's going nowhere. And I wonder whether the speakers could comment on the significance of the role of Supreme Court in American society for us. Yeah, the investor is absolutely correct. Right now, we do have a vacancy on the court. So we are in essentially a 4-4. We have nine members that serve on the Supreme Court. We're essentially in a 4-4 tie for conservatives, for more liberal. If the cases that come forth end in a tie, the lower court is just stayed. So the decision is just left. There are tremendous amount of decisions that the court has before, and whether it be on access to health care and women's health care in particular, in particular the issue of a choice issue or abortion, immigration issue is also coming through. And also on the Republican side, they would say many of President Obama's executive orders are now being challenged as well through the court system, and they are going to be coming to rise to the Supreme Court. This is an issue, especially the balance of the court, especially for women in particular. This is a galvanizing voting issue for them, mainly because a lot of times of the health care and the reproductive rights issue is one that is always tenuous, depending on the nature of the court or the balance of the court. So right now there is an opening. It's seen as the conservative slot. President Obama has nominated in our system. The president nominates, and then the Senate advises and consents, meaning they vote yes or no. Before, I mean, almost to the death, I mean, within hours of Justice Scalia dying, the Republicans had already made it known that they will not entertain any nomination or any even vote. They will not even entertain a hearing. They will not entertain a meeting. They will not entertain anything until the election is over. In their own words, they continue to say that we want the voters to decide, irrespective of the fact that the voters have decided in electing President Barack Obama and they elected as their own senators. So the logic seems completely illogical to me, but the longest prior to this time that we've ever had a vacancy is 72 days. We are now looking at almost 11 months in which we are going to have a vacancy. And not only do we have a current vacancy, but we have two Supreme Court justices more on the left side that have both indicated that they would most likely retire during this next whoever serves next. So it is a paramount and it is something that will resonate more with single issue voters, mainly with women and certain either persuasion of an LBGT community because there are rights on civil rights and other issues voting rights. So how you slice and where it means in your status, I would say has more paramount, but it is definitely an issue that both sides will be raising. Yeah, the politics and the politicization of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court nomination process is now many decades old. It really dates back to the attempted nomination of Robert Bork under President Reagan in 1987. And in each successive nomination process the opposition party has tried to make it difficult for the president to name somebody, a jurist who is accomplished, but also clearly of a certain persuasion. And there have been many things that have been said and I think Penny has summarized it well from her point of view. But one thing that we know is that if you want to find somebody to support your point of view from a prior nomination process, you can, which is to say if I wanted to justify how the Republicans are handling this particular process, I could find a Democrat who said exactly what Republicans are saying right now under a previous administration. You mean the vice president? Yeah, exactly. I wasn't going to say, but there it is. So that is extremely troubling and it is a problem for an important part of our government. Here's the thing to think about and Penny already alluded to it. It is actually the issue that could generate a significant amount of turnout for either candidate. Typically, it's true that certain issues that could become before the Supreme Court generate a lot of interest and enthusiasm, political enthusiasm among affected groups, affected populations. That's interesting. Among conservatives who do not like Trump, the most compelling argument to get them to the polls will be, yeah, you don't like them, but if you don't vote for them, then those three, at least one and probably as many as three Supreme Court seats will be decided by Hillary Clinton and not by somebody who we hope will put up people that we like. So surprisingly, this actually might be, it might generate a lot of activity separate apart from feelings about the candidates themselves. I guess observing that certainly the approval rating for Congress, I think last time I checked it, crawled all the way up to 9% across the general... Seven, yeah, yeah. I was at seven, I saw it up to 9% the other day. Oh, wow. Brilliant, they're really going strong now. And out of the 535 members all, but I think two, one of them being Bernie Sanders, are Democratic or Republican. And there's other polling and evidence that both the Democratic and Republican brands are quite toxic. And you've seen candidates from McCain call himself the man breaking things, trying to distance themselves from those brands. Now, if it is a presumptive race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, you've got one who is not anointed by the party at all, and one who very much is. And how will that play out and how will the strategies and tactics of depicting one as a genuine independent, not really part of any of those parties, and one who is the image of a party player play out in the election? It's really, I mean, it's a brilliant question that you're asking. And, you know, it's... Well, the Democrat brand might be suffering. Mrs. Clinton is well liked within that brand. She probably enjoys right now probably about a 75% approval rating amongst Democrats. So she is beloved. And that is going to be the key is whether or not you can turn out the amount of Democrats needed to propel her. So, you know, she does suffer from an establishment brand being, you know, I don't think she can run away from her last name, nor will she. Her husband was President of the United States. She has been in this public arena for many, many years, unlike her counterpart, and he is going to use that as a weapon, you know, against her. It's one of the few times, you know, it's so interesting, especially going through this primary process where experience is actually a deficit. You know, you usually go in for a job interview and people want to know how much experience you have and are you qualified to serve. And in this one, now it's a liability. You know, oh my goodness, you know, they know too much or they have too much experience. They've been in Washington way too long and the system is now, you know, taken apart of them. So it's a very interesting, it will be a dynamic, but I have to believe because we do see it in the polling and the strength of her numbers is that experience is her number one reason to go for her on both sides and people do respect the fact that, look, the President of the United States, commander is the commander in chief and there are issues that are arising around the world and to jeopardize that or put that at risk for someone who is rogue, who says such crazy things that the Chinese are rapists and Mexicans just all are coming across our borders to kill our individuals and we're going to carpet bomb Iraq and, you know, we're going to turn over Syria to Putin and, you know, all those, you know, there is at some point, I have to believe the seriousness of the moment and the seriousness of the issues will really put the stark contrast and that point of experience will be actually a galvanizing reason to vote for Mrs. Clinton. Yeah, well, first of all, I love your t-shirt, by the way. He's got a t-shirt of Abraham Lincoln with a parakeet on his shoulder with an eyepatch. I guess it's Pirate Abraham, is that the deal? It's a nice way to freshen up the Republican brand. We should try that. No, but that's exactly, I think you're right. I think that, you know, analytically, if I were Donald Trump, I would be absolutely hammering away at Hillary Clinton for all the sins that are perceived to come along with having spent, you know, the last 25 years pretty much in Washington, D.C. And, you know, and she also sits at this sort of, this power center, you know, of foundations and corporations and Wall Street and, you know, Democratic elite and she has a lot of, you know, even Republican friends are, you know, like if Republican donors start donating to her, that money comes with huge strings attached from Trump's point of view. He's gonna hammer her on. So, you know, that could be a very effective and powerful message and I'm telling you, you know, so many people hate what goes on in Washington, Democratic and Republican, that Trump would be very smart to basically be spending a lot of time talking to the Sanders voters and saying, you've been had. You know, you've been had, you were shafted. You thought that you could cast your vote for a candidate who really represented your point of view. Ah, the Clintons had it all, the fix was in and he'll say that and the question is whether the Sanders people, you know, hear something and maybe they, I can't see it, but the question is whether they stay home. If they stay home, that's gonna be tough for her. Thank you for that. Just building off what you were just saying, we've seen Bernie Sanders recently making this argument that he is a better candidate against Donald Trump and some of the things that have been said tonight, you know, talking about some of the positions Donald Trump has on the left and Hillary's history is it possible that Bernie has a case here and Donald Trump hit her from the right and the left as an establishment figure while he's an outsider, whereas, you know, maybe Bernie, it's gonna be much harder to hit from the left, definitely. He has been railing against the establishment since the 1800s. Yes, exactly. Is that a realistic argument for Bernie to make or when it comes to, you know, the general election and the bulk of Americans is the argument that Hillary is the centrist candidate that most people will, you know, fall in behind a better perspective? It's a strong argument for Bernie to make. You know, as far as his position, but I think what he fails to also state in there, America, the writ large general, is not ready to have their taxes increased to such a level that would actually pay for free healthcare, free college tuition. I mean, we don't have the luxury that you all have here. We just, the mindset of America is not there. And so his policies and I just, we are not a socialistic society and what he is proposing, A, hasn't been thought out even when he was questioned, you know, time and time again, either through the editorial boards and the newspapers and others, he actually doesn't have a really good answer to some of the proposals in which he does. So it's more in the ideal and the ideal is really nice, but it won't stand through the task, especially in a general election scrutiny. It just won't. But he does have a point on the fact that yes, she is part of the establishment, you know, and she's going to have to broaden her appeal to make sure she does bring in those progressives. You know, right now, you know, it's difficult. I mean, her experience, like I said, is a little bit of a liability in that she knows, you know, we're not going to go to these grandiose plans. We don't have the Congress that's willing to like take it, you know, take them aboard. I mean, trust me, you know, if President Obama could have gotten through universal healthcare, free healthcare for all, trust me, he had 60, he had the majority, the super majority in the Congress to get it done and they couldn't even get it done. So when you have a divided Congress and someone who is outside the mainstream, it's really not going to get done. So she, you know, unfortunately, she has the experience to know the changes are going to come incrementally, but that doesn't sound really good on this top. That doesn't really sound inspirational and aspirational. And so she is kind of hampered by that own experience. She knows what it actually takes to govern. You know, Governor Cuomo from New York used to say, you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose, but she kind of campaigns in prose as well. And so, you know, that is a challenge to her and to her own candidacy and it will be a challenge going into the goal. You know, you raise an interesting point and it's a perceptive one, which is that the protest of the Democratic side is for Sanders and it's a meaningful size of the electorate and it's extremely to the left of where the Democratic Party, it's to the left of where the Democratic Party has been. Meanwhile, you've got, you're coming off of eight years of Barack Obama's administration, which, you know, if you're a liberal in the United States and you're dissatisfied with the amount of liberal policies about whom I think you're delusional. I mean, you know, I think it's, you know, I can tell you that as a conservative, I am chagrined and really upset really that, you know, some of the policies that he put into place, I think they're bad for the country. So I don't see any reason why liberals should be feeling like they have a lot of unfinished business. Well, evidently they do. And what's actually striking is that Because you keep blocking it. Exactly, trust me. That's a good reason for it. And the meanwhile, Mr. Trump has won the Republican nomination without, you know, without meaningful opposition to policies that, ideas that are truly from the left. I mean, protectionism, protectionism of not only of markets, but also of labor markets. I mean, an anti-immigration policy is in effect a protection of the labor market. And it's, you know, all the way, it's not surprising that unions have traditionally been anti-immigrant in the United States, and actually remain so in many respects, in fundamental respects. You know, Trump is running to the left of the Republican Party and has won the nomination. Bernie Sanders ran to the left of the Democratic Party and nearly won the nomination. This is after eight years of Barack Obama running, you know, running the country on the left side of the aisle. Looking at this as a conservative Republican, all I can say is, this is really a bad signal to me. I mean, this is really bad. It means that the ideas that I hold to be true and to be preferable are completely out of fashion in the country. And this is why Republicans have to get over the whole nostalgia over Reagan. This is really important. I mean, for what it's worth, you know, whether or not he was a very effective politician, very effective leader, he got a lot of stuff done. Yeah, but that was 1980 to 1988. Country has changed. Circumstances have changed. We can't keep rolling out the same ideas and expect the same kind of response. And this is a very, this is part of the civil war that's coming within the Republican Party. So we have to become a party of ideas again. We used to have a lot of ideas. We used to bring forward lots of ideas and a great deal of them were put into policy. Our reform was a Republican idea. Bill Clinton, you know, eventually got a board on it, and it worked. So we have to, you know, regenerate ourselves ideologically. And it's not just about, you know, whose camp is going to be politically empowering. My question is addressed to Mr. Noisner. Let me say, first of all, I think you're very brave admitting that you were a speech writer for Jack Bush. But my question is directed towards the future of the Republican Party. The remarkable thing about the election so far is that the Republican Party leadership was lost control completely over the most important decision that a political party in America makes, the choice of its leader. When this happened to the Democratic Party in 1972, when they elected a presidential candidate at the establishment, the Democratic Party establishment didn't want, the Democrats then eventually, a few years later, reformed the reforms, the party reforms, and created the super delegates to give a voice to the party leadership in the convention. Are there, is the Republican Party likely to do something similar after this train wreck? Or do they have any ideas about how in future years the Republican Party leadership will exert some control over the selection of its party candidate? All right. Yeah, I think there will be some there'll be some rethinking about the process. One thing the Democrats will tell you this too is you can write the rules any way you want, you can change the process any way you want, but something else happens and then you have to write the rules again differently. You're constantly sort of fighting the last war. It goes without saying that the process went in a direction that the Republican establishment, its elected leaders would not have expected or even wanted. I actually want to address your first comment though. Just because I think it's important for you to realize it's a great honor to work on Jeb's campaign. It was a great honor to work for George W. Bush. Those of us who labor in public service do so often at great pain, financially and socially. It's not easy. I mean it's a great honor but you don't see your family, it's difficult work. Take care with your thoughts about that kind of thing. Jeb's a great man. I think he would have been a great president. He obviously didn't catch on. George W. I thought it was a great, great want to work for. I think he was right on a lot of issues. I think history will prove him correct. You may disagree. That's okay. But I think one of the things that I've learned and I try to practice this as much as I can with my friends working in Obama administration is it's tough. It's hard. It's a big, giant country. We have a $4 trillion budget on a $16 trillion economy. 320 million people. It's never going to be easy. It always looks like you're making mistakes and always feels like you are. We try to get it right more than we don't. We do so with the hope that at least our intentions are taking well. I hope you'll consider that in the future. We've run out of time and I think you'll agree we've had a fascinating insight into what would appear to be an absolutely fascinating election. Thank you to the speakers. Thank you.