Campaign Managers Convene for Conference

The chief strategists of Election 2000 were reunited, if not reconciled, at the ARCO Forum Friday as the campaign managers for President George W. Bush, Al Gore '69, Sen. John S. McCain (R-Ariz.), Bill Bradley and Ralph Nader shared their experience and wisdom from the campaign trail in a 90-minute panel.

Continuing a tradition begun in 1972, the Institute of Politics hosted its eighth Campaign Decision Makers Conference this weekend for campaign staff, press and observers to conduct a postmortem on the tumultuous political process that produced the recently elected president.

The conference's proceedings will remain confidential until this summer, when a book compiling the fruits of the discussion will be published--but the managers of the five largest presidential campaigns of 2000 offered the public a glimpse into the discussions in the only open press event on Friday.

The panel began with a partisan tone, as Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile took several thinly-veiled jabs at the legitimacy of the Bush presidency and the good faith of the Republican Party in the 36-day Florida litigation conflict.

By the end of the panel, however, the combatants were more complimentary and expressed a greater mutual respect for one another.

One of the most remarkable elements in the 2000 campaign, panelists said, was that three of the five campaigns were managed by women.

Brazile noted that she was also the first-ever black woman manager of a presidential campaign.

"I can get down with the boys," she said in response to the question of how easy it was for her as a woman to do her job in a field largely dominated by men. "I'm scrappy. I know how to pick a target and aim. I like to take Republicans out as often as I can."

Gina Glantz and Rick Davis, the campaign managers for Bradley and McCain, respectively, touched on the difficulties in their respective campaigns of challenging the perceived inevitability of Bush's and Gore's nominations.

Their remarks were lighthearted, despite their clear disappointment at the outcome of the election.

The lost-cause nostalgia was almost palpable as the panelists played to the audience's Democratic leanings, while Bush chief strategist Karl Rove remained silent during the first few minutes of the panel.

Although Rove's introduction and initial comments were greeted with hissing and boos from several audience members, he received hearty applause at several points, particularly when he spoke about the Republicans' need to expand beyond its traditional WASP constituency.

Although there were some bitter jokes about counting all votes and letting everyone vote, all of the managers agreed on the need to reinvigorate the political process and expand the electorate.

"We modeled this campaign on McKinley's 1896 campaign," Rove said. "America was out of the 'vote as you fought' era, and the two parties were exhausted. He tried to reach out to new groups like Catholics and immigrants, and believed the Republican Party should not be just a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant party. He established a new Republican Party that would last until the '30s, and that's what we wanted to do."

Theresa A. Amato '86, Nader's campaign manager, called for a more open election system that excites more voters and includes third parties.

The four Democrat and Republican managers, however, vociferously opposed the creation of a third party to compete with the existing two. Rove insisted that America was designed to work best with a two-party system that adapted to changing concerns.

When Amato said that third-party candidates have introduced most of the major reforms and policy changes throughout history, Davis observed that the "new ideas are incorporated into the two major parties and the third party is consumed."

All of the managers lamented the press's disproportionate influence on voter's perceptions of the election and emphasis on the horserace over the substance of their campaigns.

"The press is the biggest player in the political drama," Rove said. "You've got about 20 people in the country you've got to please--those on the campaign plane."

They also expressed frustration that while young people were some of the hardest workers constituting the majority of their campaign staff, young people nationwide still voted at disappointingly low rates.

"This is when I take my 'party hat' off, and that's not often," Brazile said to the audience. "You should get involved and vote."

Encouraging young people to engage in political activism, Davis said that the "message is lost on you because you have so many opportunities in this fine institution that just aren't available to the rest of the country."

Returning to McCain's goal of "inspiring a generation of young people to do things not in their self-interest," Davis told the audience that is was "incumbent upon you to take this message out to others."

--Staff writer Benjamin D. Grizzle can be reached at grizzle@fas.harvard.edu.