♪♪♪
male announcer: Funding for the Hinckley Report is made
possible in part by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles
Foundation and the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to the Hinckley Report.
I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.
Covering the week we have Michelle Quist,
columnist with the Salt Lake Tribune.
Michael Mower, deputy chief of staff to Governor Gary Herbert,
and Benjamin Wood, political report
with the Salt Lake Tribune.
So, glad to have you all with us today.
Let's jump right in.
Michelle, we're going to start with you, okay?
Mitt Romney, two days before he is officially sworn in,
did something sort of unusual.
He wrote an op-ed to the Washington Post going straight
after President Trump on policy and on character.
Talk for a second about what he said in this op-ed piece.
Michelle Quist: Well, you know, it was actually exactly
what I think Utahans wanted to hear.
He talked about the fact that Trump, his moral code is
kind of off, and that he doesn't necessarily represent Utahans,
and he doesn't necessarily represent, you know,
the average general citizen.
It was bold, it was unique or surprising because it,
you know, came out two days before he was going to be sworn
in, in the national media piece, but I think
Utahans were thrilled to see it.
Jason: Mike, you've been a strategist
for so many candidates.
Explain your thoughts on the timing of this.
Michael Mower: You know, I'll have to leave that to Mitt.
I'll say I'm a big Mitt fan.
Was I surprised when it came out?
Yes, but, you know, as a strategist,
I'm going to have to say he has a good team around him.
I really like the team he's put together.
One of the things I'm most excited about for Utahans from
top to bottom, Adam Gardner for example,
his new state director, and Kelsey Birch back in D.C.
He's got a good Utah team.
Mitt was elected in a landslide.
He can kind of make his own decisions on these things.
Jason: Okay, so, Ben, I want to pull these two things
together because what Michelle said is interesting.
Are Utahans wanting this from him?
Now, this is pretty sharp,
right, he went after the president.
Is this where Utahans are primarily?
Do they feel good about it based on all of your conversations?
Benjamin: Yeah, we see reactions from outside Utah were
more mixed than they were in Utah.
Like Mike said, he won with a landslide vote, with more
share the vote than Donald Trump did in Utah in 2016.
Mitt Romney's a very popular guy.
He tends to do things that Utahans like to see him do.
I didn't see a lot of pushback locally to be honest.
Jason: But as a reporter, I'm now
seeing you covering Mitt Romney.
Also, this is the question I've noticed everyone gets.
It's a question I get when people are interviewing me about
Mitt Romney, is: is he going to be the one
that goes after Trump?
Do you feel like that's what he just set the stage for?
Benjamin: To a certain degree, I mean, he said he wanted
to clarify his position before he takes on this new job, and
there's always been this looming question of how much
and to what degree will he push back on the president?
He reminded the nation that he is willing to do this when he
feels the need and right before he got sworn in,
he made sure he put that shot across the bow.
Jason: So, the nation is interesting.
Michelle, can we talk about that because this was a national
publication he sent this to; what do you make of that?
Michelle: You know, the national,
you know, response was curious.
They weren't, like Ben said, they weren't as positive as,
you know, they were more questionable.
They were like, "Why is this coming out?
And you know, you kind of are going back and forth again,
Mitt, is this, you know, is this what you're doing?"
Jason: But even our own congressman Chaffetz,
former congressman Chaffetz went after Mitt on this one.
Michelle: Well, yes, Chaffetz is very conservative, and you
know, this didn't go along with the conservative script,
at least not the far right.
Jason: So, Ben, because I want to get Mike on some other
things on the Mitt Romney commentary about what he thinks
the country should be doing.
But when Mitt Romney is setting the stage,
is this him helping to position the Republican party?
Is he reclaiming that post, you think?
Because we had some high profile people leave as of late.
Is this him helping the party?
Ben: I would imagine he thinks he's helping the party.
I wouldn't━I don't think he would've done this
if he thinks it hurts the party.
And there's been a lot of speculation about what
this means for his future?
You know, he's been adamant that he does not want to run for
president again, but there's also this idea of what if
someone else runs against Donald Trump?
Will Mitt Romney back a primary challenge?
He is in saying on that point, but it's hard to not read into
this op-ed the potential for him to be offering
support for hypothetical challenger.
Michelle: You know, I thought it was interesting that just a
week before Senator Lee had come out saying,
"I support President Trump."
And so, to me part of, you know, Senator Romney's response here
maybe was differentiating himself,
you know, between the two senators.
I'm sure it's very uncomfortable for him to be the junior
senator, you know, under Mike, but he is,
and I think maybe he wanted to put himself out there and say,
"I'm not really that junior."
Michael: Our focus and concern coming from the
governor's office is getting beyond personalities,
getting beyond kind of the 2020 concerns on both the Democratic
and Republican side and solving the problems that
congress was created to solve.
We don't have a budget.
We have a government shutdown taking place.
That's where our focus is on.
What are we doing to make sure that people are getting━federal
workers are getting paid, that we're getting the
parks reopened, I mean, so it's, you know, it's certainly been
something that's been discussed, but our concern
as a state is, all right, let's get past
the in-fighting in Washington.
Let's do things in the Utah way, bring people together,
solve issues, and move forward for the good of the nation.
Jason: I want to get to the government shut down in just a
moment, but a couple of pieces I felt like we
should address in this op-ed.
One, I want to show you a graphic, and Mike,
maybe you talk about this for just a second.
Let me read it, this is part of the speech in
the op-ed from Senator Romney.
He says, "To a greet degree, a presidency shapes the
public character of the nation.
A president should unite us and inspire us
to follow our 'better angels'...
And it is in this province where the incumbent's
shortfall has been most glaring."
Interesting part going to the character.
What is the role of the president in your mind,
based on this, to shape the character of the nation?
Michael: Well, let me bring it down to the state level where
I'm most familiar, and that is by saying,
you know, Mitt's statement can speak to itself and he can tell
us all what it means, but at the Utah level,
I've been fortunate to work for two governors,
Governor John Huntsman and now Governor Gary Herbert,
both of whom took the mantle of leadership very seriously,
and the mantle of inclusiveness, and the mantle
of setting the tone for the state.
Again, I'm not pointing fingers in any direction outside of our
state; but within our state, we've been very fortunate to
have leaders who try to bring people together,
who try to unite people.
I think Governor Huntsman and Governor Herbert have both
worked very hard that way.
It's difficult to do, but at the Utah level it's working,
and again, we like to think of Utah as
kind of an example to the nation.
We balance our budget every year,
we're collegial to one another.
We try to be friends and try not to
demonize each other in politics.
I think that's an example that Washington cane take from Utah,
kind of the example that our leaders here in the state
have set for several years.
Michelle: Well, and the presidency is one person,
you know, it's a coequal branch of government but the other two
branches are made up of, you know,
made up of a group of people.
The presidency is our focus point.
You know, we've got Washington and Lincoln
and Kennedy and Reagan.
You know, these are people that, men, men,
I hope there's a woman soon, but you know,
these are men that have led with honor and respect,
and you know, something that we can point to
and look up to, and this is what America is,
and Trump has not been that man.
Jason: One of the other points, Ben,
in this op-ed was about American leadership.
He spent a lot of time on this where the administration needs
to provide the leadership in the world,
and the world is looking for that kind of leadership which he
thinks maybe we've lost some of that.
Tell us where Utahans are that you're interviewing
them on that key principle.
Benjamin: I think there's certainly some concern,
I mean, you see in Mitt Romney's op-ed that he's cited the
resignation of top administration officials,
the abrupt decision to withdraw from Syria.
You know, I think locally there are people who,
even despite supporting the president,
supporting the Republican party, are concerned about perhaps the
speed these decisions are made, the amount of
input going into these decisions.
So, I definitely don't think Mitt Romney is alone in
wondering how steady the hands are at the wheel?
Jason: Okay, so, why do we
keep you, Ben, for a second on this.
So, the Trump from━the response from Trump was pretty
quick, all right, what was it?
Benjamin: I mean, from my memory he questioned whether
Trump━Romney would be a new flake and wishes he would be
more of a team player, and then in private comments,
you know, he talked about he had endorsed Romney
and Romney had accepted his endorsement,
and what a shame he's not playing for the team.
Jason: Yeah, Michelle, what do you make of that flake comment?
'Cause that was the question, right?
Is he another flake, I hope not. That's what he said, right?
Michelle: Right, right, you know, he doesn't like people
who speak out against him or that are able to stand up
against him, and you know, I think he needed to put it
out there as kind of a warning, you know,
"Is this going to happen again?
'Cause if you're not going to play my game,
we're going to have some problems."
I think that's what his message is.
Jason: Uh-huh, so, the last part of his tweet called on Mitt
Romney to be a team player.
Is that what━what does that mean, you think?
Michelle: Well, I think to Romney it doesn't mean much,
you know, Romney does what he thinks is right.
He has the character, and the experience to do what's right,
whether it's you know, whether it's popular or not,
and I think that scares Trump.
Jason: Okay, so, let's get back to the point that you
brought up first, Mike, because this is all happening in the
middle of a government shutdown.
Fourteen days as the time of filming, which is,
you know, getting up there in terms of the longest
government shutdown we've had.
Michael: Well, I think it's really disappointing how that,
you know, we've seen it's kind of the politics of brinkmanship,
that time and again,
we're having another government shutdown.
It's interesting, the state got very prepared this year.
Kris Cox and her team, legislative leadership who
oversees finances, and said, "All right, if we have another
shutdown, what steps do we need
to be taking to prepare for it?"
And they took those steps, and for example,
this time we kept the parks open, but it's become kind of an
embarrassment, and we're a state looking at--look when our
legislature convenes, one of the first things they do is adopt a
base budget, so that if everything else falls apart at
the end of the year we have a budget that we're operating on,
and then throughout the session they add to that budget,
and then finally do a final budget.
Why can't congress do some of these things?
You know, why is everything so poisoned politically back there
that it's, you know, the entire operating funds of the nation
are coming down, you know, to one key point?
So, it's disappointing for us as a state because we're the ones
that often have to live with the consequences.
We're okay for the next few weeks here in Utah, but come the
end of the month, we're worried about women,
infant, and children who rely on some federal assistance.
We're worried about, you know, the national parks that we've
kept 'em going for a couple of weeks, but that
probably can't last indefinitely.
So, we have some concerns and we prepared for it.
We just plead with the folks in Washington,
get together and make it work.
Jason: Ben, how impacted are Utahans
feeling with this closure?
Do you Utahans seem to care very much that this has happened?
Benjamin: Well, government shutdown's interesting in that
they start small and then they get bigger as they go.
So, in the early stages, yeah, you have maybe some decreased
services at the parks, maybe the post office.
As time goes on, you get the school lunch program,
you get other, you know, medical services.
So, the longer this goes, Utahans will start to notice the
government shutdown and they'll start to feel it.
Jason: Uh-huh, Mike, let's come back to you for a second.
What did the state do to mitigate some
of the impacts of the parks?
Michael: Well, one of the big ones we had with parks was just
coming up with money to help keep the doors open,
and to help keep the gates.
We had a problem several years ago where we realized we've run
a big ad campaign worldwide to bring people to our parks,
and it's worked extremely well.
Well, there's nothing more disappointing if you're a couple
from China or a family from Belgium that have saved up your
money to visit rural Utah and the national parks,
and you get there and the gates are shut.
And we saw that last time, and so Governor Herbert and
Secretary Jewell came up with a compromise.
We're still waiting to get paid back by the feds for that money
But most importantly, we kept the local industries going.
We kept the tourism industry going, and we let
a lot of people into our parks who otherwise would
have been locked out of our parks.
And so, this year, realizing this might happen again,
we came up with the initial funding not,
you know, hoping that it would have been resolved by now.
But it's kind of a, you know, take it day by day,
park by park, on what we'll be able to do to mitigate the
effects, but Ben highlights it really well.
The bigger effects long-term will be the school lunch program
and other federal programs that Utahans rely on that often they
don't understand are being paid for by the feds.
Another thing is we're really concerned about federal workers
who aren't getting a paycheck.
There aren't a lot of Americans, there aren't a lot of us who
could have a paycheck delayed for two weeks or a month or a
month and a half, and not have it impact you
in a meaningful and negative way.
Michelle: Yeah, you know, a lot of Utahans think the federal
government is too big anyway.
So, a shutdown starts, and they don't feel as nervous about it.
They're like, "Oh, good, you know, our government is, you
know, too big, and if it needs to--if it's shut down now,
and we're not noticing, then maybe we don't need it at all."
You know, that's kind of the initial--and honestly,
this is shock and awe for Trump.
He loves this stuff; I mean, this is his bread and butter.
He'll put his foot down and stay there for, you
know, for months and months, which is nervous.
This isn't--this is a republican failure, you know, and the
people who, like Mike said, depend on federal monies
for paychecks, they budgeted for this, and they relied
on it, and it's not fair just because you think government
is too big to be okay with the fact that
they're not now getting paid.
Jason: How effective is it to you, sort of,
the government shutdown as the bargaining chip?
Michelle: It's not effective at all, I don't think, because
people, you know, again, once two or three weeks starts
to pass, they get uncomfortable with it because
it's affecting them personally.
And yes, they want the wall, and this was great for Trump
at the beginning, but wait.
Now, "I'm not getting paid and I have to go to the doctor," and,
you know, "What am I gonna do?"
Jason: Ben, let's talk about this wall, right?
So, this is where he put his foot down, right?
So, the president is saying he wants the wall.
And the House seems to be coming along with a bill,
but the Senate certainly is not at all, right?
Nancy Pelosi was talking about this this whole week,
"I'm not gonna give with the wall," right?
So where do you see this going based on all your sources
and interviews you're doing?
Benjamin: That's a hard question.
I mean, compounding this is that we just had a change of power in
the House, so what was true a week ago is no longer true.
I mean, it doesn't look like the Democrats in the House or the
Senate, for that matter, are looking to budge
on the wall any time soon.
You know, they now control a chamber of Congress.
They can filibuster a vote in the other chamber.
Their ability to press the president on this issue has
increased dramatically since yesterday.
Michelle: Well, and that's why it was a Republican failure
because when we--when Republicans controlled
government, they couldn't get it done.
And now, a week later, now Democrats control, you know,
one of the houses and, oh, they've already passed
a bill that fixes, you know, that passes a budget or,
you know, passes some of the spending bills.
You have two senators, at least, that are going to side with,
you know, getting over this shutdown because
they're in election years.
You know, two years, they're close enough, and if they fix it
now, which obviously we're going to, the storyline will
be because Democrats came in and saved it in a bipartisan
way, and we, Republicans, couldn't do that.
Jason: Interesting.
Michael: And I--but I think that's part of the challenge,
is it becomes winners and losers.
I mean, the Republicans have a legitimate
issue with border security.
It isn't just a wall, it's too many people who fly in
here and overstay their visas.
So, there's a very legitimate concern on border security;
that needs to be addressed.
But unfortunately, it becomes so toxic, it's, you know,
did this, you know, did Senator Romney win or did
President Trump win in this exchange?
Did the Democrats win? Did the Republicans win?
It becomes--again, it becomes about the horse race rather than
the results for the country.
Michelle: Which Trump loves.
Benjamin: And to Mike's point, I mean, border security is
not going to be solved in a short-term spending plan.
'Cause when they do re-open the government,
it won't be with a full budget.
We'd love to see that, but it's not gonna happen.
It'll be another month, maybe two months,
et cetera, and then we'll just be right back here.
And so, these issues that need to be solved,
if you're using the shutdown as a bargaining chip,
you're not actually getting to the meat of the problem.
Jason: Let's talk about these winners and losers for a second
'cause I had this very interesting graphic from Senator
Mike Lee when he was on national publications this week.
This is what he said about the Democrats and what
their causing to happen here.
He says, "Democrats are being categorically unreasonable.
We already have 650 miles of border fence.
Are they saying there is something inherently evil about
what would be the 651st mile?"
I mean, when you start seeing that, Ben, all right, so, I
mean, is this a position for winners or losers?
Or is this just sort of the Republican failure that Michelle
was kinda talkin' about?
Benjamin: This is politics; I mean, this is the purest
encapsulation politics we've seen in a long time.
I mean, the Senate passed a bill before the Christmas break that
would have re-opened the government, and that they
thought they had in the arrangement and the president
tore that arrangement to pieces, and here we are.
So, it's all politics.
I don't think you can pick any one as the
righteous party in this case.
Michelle: I mean, if you google "Mike Lee" and
"shutdown," you're gonna get articles from January 2018.
And then it's gonna be, "Oh, wait, no--
did they get the year wrong?"
No, they didn't; this was happening last January, 2018.
It's, you know, it's a--it's not a publicity stunt because it's
way more serious than that, but people end up using it as a
place to step up and it's not.
Jason: Okay, so let's take one of the threads
that you mentioned a moment ago.
We do have a brand new Congress.
We have lots of new members; over 100, right?
One-fifth, I think, are all brand new people,
and that's a new makeup.
You wrote--you did some--a great column on this.
Talk to us about the new makeup of our Congress and
talk about what's happened locally too.
Michelle: Yes, there are more women, ever.
It's a record-breaking, and there's more diversity ever.
You know, record-breaking in both areas.
And they're all on the Democratic side.
I mean, Republicans didn't, you know,
improve much in those areas.
But as a whole, Congress now is more diverse,
and it's more female, and I think the excitement across the
nation is, you know, what's gonna happen?
How is it gonna result in what kind of policy changes.
I think it'll be interesting. I'm excited to see it.
Jason: Mike, what do you think about the more--this
more diverse Congress.
Michael: You know, I think it'll be very interesting to see
it play out on the national level.
It's received a lot of attention.
What's interesting though is here in Utah,
we've had a 24% turnover in our legislature.
And we talk about it, one of the, you know, I'm doing
a lot of cheerleading for Utah here and
it's--we're Team Utah and it's wonderful to tout or successes.
We really do have a citizen legislature.
We have a natural turnover.
We don't have term limits, which I think is a good thing because
you need some institutional knowledge,
but we have 24% of our legislature turning over.
We're adding more women, and it's a good thing in Utah.
It's healthy.
Anytime you have a democratically elected body,
you like to have it represent the
demographic that it's leading.
Jason: That's for sure; Ben, 25 women now
in our state legislature: 19 to the House, 6 in the Senate.
As you're looking at legislation coming forward in this next
legislative session, are we seeing more participation
in all parts of the state because we're having
more, broader representation?
Benjamin: It certainly seems to be
kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario.
We had record voter turnout and that produced
a more diverse legislature.
You know, and it's interesting though, in both the Utah
legislature and the national legislature, a lot of these
gains in representation, more women, more people of color,
are largely on the Democratic side.
Here in Utah and nationally, the Republican Party
is still largely white men.
Jason: Okay, let's just spend one more moment
on some of our new members.
Mitt Romney, sworn in as senator.
Ben McAdams, now sworn in as the newest member
of Congress in the House.
Michelle, one of his first votes this week
was against the speaker.
Michelle: Right, he voted against Nancy
Pelosi as a speaker.
I think he kind of had to, you know?
His whole campaign, the campaign against him was
you know, Ben equals Pelosi.
And so, he kind of had to come out of the box
and say, "No, I'm not," you know?
And I don't know how long it'll last, but, you know, and he
knew it was a symbolic vote, and it was interesting to see.
Jason: You think there are any ramifications
for him going forward?
Michelle: No.
Jason: It was just one of those campaign things and
Nancy Pelosi will see it as that.
Michelle: Yeah, I mean, there were some, you know, upset among
the Utah Democrats, but memories are short.
Jason: Okay, that's good.
Mike, let's talk about a law that just went into
effect in the state of Utah.
We now have the strictest DUI law in the country.
Michael: We do, we're now .05.
There were several states last year that were considering it.
Representative Norm Thurston from Provo kinda led the charge
on it, and it came down to a matter of: do we want to be the
safest state in the country when it comes to DUIs?
Hawaii's looking at it. Washington's looking at it.
The interesting thing is this is what's already
done in Australia, in Europe.
And so, what we're telling people is,
"Don't drink and drive."
It's interesting when the debate was heating up,
the pro-.05 folks released a TV commercial that had been
produced by Anheuser-Busch.
What was Anheuser-Busch's message?
Don't drink and drive.
And so, that's kind of the message we're getting out.
We have seen in the state already,
drop in the number of DUI arrests.
And a lot of it came about because this law was
adopted a couple years ago.
People assumed it was kind of already there.
And so, what we found is a lot more people taking Uber,
a lot more people being responsible, we have very few
arrests at the .05 to .08 level, but if anything, we're trying
to show we wanna be safe and we want people who--tourists
here to be safe, our families here to be safe.
If you drink, drink responsibly.
And better yet, if you drink too much,
heaven forbid, don't drive.
Jason: Michelle, people in this state, particularly those
impacted by tourism, are worried that this is going
to have a negative impact on our economy in some way.
Michelle: And there have been a few, you know,
advertisements by national associations,
you know, saying, "Utah is an unfriendly place now," and there
was an article about the ski, you know,
people coming here to ski and, "Oh,
well, I'm not gonna come back."
I don't think that will pan out.
I think, you know, our snow is better than the .05 and worth
it, and I think they'll just come and they'll stay closer to
where they, you know, where they intend to drink,
and I think they'll take ride-sharing and, yeah.
Jason: Okay, Ben, what about the image issue?
Does this further, you know, make people concerned about
drinking laws and the state, or in the end is this kinda what
Michelle was talking about, this is overridden by other aspects?
Benjamin: Short term, I think it does probably play into this
image of Utah as, you know, prudish on alcohol laws.
Long term, we have no idea exactly what will come of this.
But yeah, I mean, we have a history in this state of making
it difficult for people to have a drink with their meal and this
probably does play into that image.
Jason: Okay, very good.
Before we go, let's talk about the speech that Ben McAdams gave
before he left, touting a few of his successes, 'cause I wanna
get into what's going to happen in Salt Lake County.
He talked in his resignation letter about the bond rating,
about his work on homelessness, criminal justice,
more greater local control for counties.
Ben, tell us what these candidates who are vying
for this particular position are saying right now.
How are these campaigns going?
"Campaigns" as such.
Benjamin: These campaigns are interesting because it's
not an open vote; I mean, it'll be the--the party will choose
the replacement for Mayor Ben McAdams.
So, they're angling to a particular base of voters.
They're angling to party people.
So, they are, you know, they're touting their record in some
cases, they're touting their fresh approach in other cases.
But this is really kind of a contained election to a very
particular group of people.
Michelle: I mean, if it were bigger, if it were to the
regular electorate, I mean, Jenny Wilson would be an
obvious, you know, the moderate Democrat who can,
you know, who has experience doing it.
But because it is to, you know, party insiders, I think Arlyn
Bradshaw has, you know, gotten a little momentum because,
you know, he's more liberal.
Jason: Well, Mike, so Jenny Wilson's
coming off a campaign, right?
So, tell us about her machine and how she's going forward on
this, and true, when she starts seeing people
like Arlyn Bradshaw start to--
Michael: Yeah, I really thought, again, this is speculation
'cause we--our office doesn't get too involved in it, but part
of it is I thought Jenny would build up a lot of good
will for taking on Mitt.
That was a tough task, and we'll just have to
see with the Democratic delegates.
Again, central committees are
hugely important parts of the party.
The Democrats have theirs; it skews left.
Ours tends to kind of skew a little right.
You're playing to a different audience.
You're playing to the party activists.
People who are Democrats for a reason.
Or in our case, Republicans for a reason.
And so, I think it does change the dynamic as Ben talked about,
and I, you know, I don't know of any
polling that's going on right now.
So, it'll be a really interesting race to watch to
kind of see how do Democrats want to position themselves with
their candidates moving forward in Utah?
Jason: Michelle, why has Shireen done so well?
Michelle: She did a great campaign against Chris Stewart.
I mean, she was out there knocking doors every single day.
Her--I mean, she had over--I don't know if it was in the high
70s, you know, in Salt Lake County.
She's shown that she's the real deal.
Jason: Okay, can't wait to watch this particular race.
Sorry, that's where we're gonna have to end it today.
Thank you for your comments and your insights.
Well, that's it for "The Hinckley Report."
For more on the issues of the week,
please visit us online at KUED.org/HinckleyReport.
Thank you and good night.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét