By Gennifer Delman
Monroe Lecture Hall was filled with students, faculty and distinguished guests on Thursday, March 5, for the University’s annual Donald J. Sutherland lecture. Thanks to the suggestion of political science Professor Richard Himelfarb, this year’s speaker was Michael Barone, Senior Writer and Columnist for U.S News and World Report. He is also well known for his co-authorship of “The Almanac of American Politics,” and his work with Fox News.
Keeping with the theme of Define ’09: New Challenges, New Solutions, Barone’s address to the University focused on his presentation on the 2008 election. He shared statistics, as well as his own personal insight, on the future of the Obama administration and the country. Barone also discussed what he called “open field politics,” when voters and politicians begin moving around and changing their minds, which is clearly evident in the 2008 election.
With unusual issues arising such as energy, gas prices, the War in Iraq and the collapse of the economy in September, Barone said that Americans demonstrated a serious change of heart when it came time to vote. He revealed that eleven previous “Bush states” voted for Obama, and that overall one in seven voters had changed their minds.
Barone also discussed the interesting characteristics of Obama’s win, such as the high support of the youth, the black and minority vote, as well as the vote from affluent members of society.
Considering his naturally Conservative views, Barone said that Obama’s goal was to target the “middle class family,” yet found himself attracting the top and bottom parts of the scale as well. He also exposed the startling statistic that only nine states had youth in favor of McCain.
Barone said the U.S. has been voting for Republican commander-in-chiefs consistently, Reagan and the Bushes, and we are now seeing a drastic change. He added that, clearly, Americans appear to be moving to the left side of the political spectrum and that this could mean an eventual extinction of the Republicans.
He also looked to the future and discussed Obama’s current 68 percent job approval rating. He also drew comparisons to the late John F. Kennedy, citing that both men had “youthfulness, physical grace and eloquence.”
However, Barone said that Obama’s policies have not been received nearly as well. He called Obama a “President more popular than his policies.” Such policies include his $700 billion stimulus plan, nineteen more months in Iraq as opposed to his promised sixteen, $600 billion for health insurance and cap-and-trade.
Cap-and-trade is a governmental approach to control pollution by offering economic incentives. Obama is also planning on taxing the “wealthy,” according to Barone, and has a plan to tax citizens by their electricity use.
To end his lecture, Barone mentioned the youth once more, obviously reaching out to the University’s student demographic. He observed the youth’s high confidence in government, as well as their strong belief in choice. He then showed personal disapproval of the wealthy taxation policy.
“It didn’t work for Hoover,” Barone said. He also discussed the difficulty of Obama’s universal health care idea, which he said has proved to be quite the challenge in Britain.
March 5th also marked 76 years since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, and Barone was sure to reference the state of America at the time, such as the Depression and World War II. He also explained that although dealing with the crisis of the War assisted with the Depression, America is most certainly not the same country as it once was.