Author of No Excuses: Confessions of a Serial Campaigner Bob Shrum and Marylouise Oates, prominent journalist and novelist (Making Peace), joined Geoffrey Cowan, director of the Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, for a discussion on Wednesday April 4 about the current presidential primary race.
Oates brought up the discussion of the importance of the Catholic vote and how the topic of contraception has been such a popular one in this election season so far.
“I think it’s interesting that Santorum has lost the Catholic vote in every single state so far,” Oates said. “It’s because 98% of practicing Catholics uses contraception.”
The panel expressed their view that they think Romney has locked down this Republican nomination. According to Shrum, Romney will start to focus on the race against Obama going forward.
“You’re going to see a lot more of Ann Romney who, unlike her husband, does seem like a real person and is very warm,” Shrum said.
The panel suggested that Romney’s biggest weakness is his inability to bond with his voters.
“I think he has a real difficulty moving to the middle because it will emphasize his weakness: that he will say anything to get there,” Shrum said. “He is stiff. He comes off stiff because who says the word marvelous? No one. But when he is being spontaneous, you have no way of predicting what he is going to say.”
Connecting the primaries back to the overall presidential election, the panel agrees that running against Romney will give Obama an advantage.
“You are going to have a very effective guy in Obama who is going to deplore rhetoric very effectively,” Shrum said. “It is to his advantage that he is running against Romney who so far, has a trouble connecting to real people.”
See Daily Trojan coverage here.
See video of the discussion here.
This blog was contributed by Sammi Wong, BA Print and Digital Journalism ’14.