Q: You mentioned a couple times that 65,000 votes [01:11:00] flip in Ohio, and Kerry is President. But he would have been President with like 48% of the vote, and what I wonder is, going on Election Eve, is the hope that, we’ll get an electoral college majority, even though we’re probably not going to get a popular vote plurality?
LOCKHART: I don’t know anyone who cared anything about that. There may have been people who were working in the transition that cared about that. I can’t remember someone rubbing — you know, sort of hammering and saying, “Well, we’re going to win, but — you know, what are we going to do, we’ll have no mandate” — We just wanted to win. And that was enough. I mean, taking down an incumbent. You know, I think — I know where you’re coming from this, but I think — the model for these things, or conventional wisdom, is when you’re the incumbent, if you can’t get 50%, then lame duckness starts very soon, but if you’re a challenger, it doesn’t matter. You just need to get one more vote [01:12:00] more than — and people blow that up into, you know, something probably more than it means, but —
Q: I was wondering if maybe this was a consequence of 2000, because in 2000, you hadn’t had an election in which the winner got fewer popular votes than his opponent since 1888.
LOCKHART: Yeah.
Q: But 2000, that happens, and by 2004, I thinking maybe there’s no longer a stigma attached to that anymore.
LOCKHART: Yeah, and again, I don’t think there was a stigma, as far as the country goes, and that’s probably the most important, because remember, Bush was foundering in the summer of 2001. His ratings were dropping, but by the end of 2001 because of 9/11 and because of his response to it, he deserves credit for that, the country was more unified than it has been in a generation, and his poll ratings showed that, [01:13:00] so I don’t think there — I don’t think there was — in fact, I’d argue that there’s a lot — 2009, there was much more sense of illegitimacy of the president in this country than there was in 2001. In 2001, you had a president who didn’t get — who lost the popular vote, and by many smart people’s observation, that except for political reasons, would not have won the electoral — didn’t win the election, period, every which way, and was denied office. And the country accepted that, even liberal Democrats. Whereas in 2009, there’s still 20, 25% of the country who believe — mostly, I think, for — on racial lines, that he’s not a legitimate president. You go out and do a poll right now on whether he was actually born in the United States, you’ll still find 30% of the country who [01:14:00] think he’s illegitimate and shouldn’t be in office. And he got, what, 53% of the votes?
Q: Mm-hmm, 54 I think.
LOCKHART: Fifty-four, 65 million votes or something, some ridiculous number.
Q: Yeah.
LOCKHART: So no, I don’t think there’s any stigma. I don’t think there was — and the election was so close that no one was arguing for setting a number where, you know, we can govern at this number, and we can’t govern at that. It was, we’re either going to win, or we’re going to lose. And you know, the — one of the — you could make the argument that any campaign that has four pollsters retained is going to have a little bit of schizophrenia. But I remember going the night before the election and asking all four of them, are we going to win, or are we going to lose? And three of them said we’re going to lose, and one of the them said I think we’re going to lose.
Q: Was that Mark Mellman?
LOCKHART: That was. And [01:15:00] again, I don’t understand polling and modeling and all that, and it really was so close, that I don’t know that — they were all in the ballpark, this very easily could have — but I think there was a general sense of — there was a general sense of confidence going into the last week. We had a great Monday through Thursday; we had a terrible Friday, with the Bin Laden attack.
Q: Because of Bin Laden.
LOCKHART: And that was the hangover for the weekend, so I think that caused everyone to stop thinking about what my White House job is going to be, and more focused on doing everything we could. But I think the night before the election, people were optimistic. Again, the election polls were off the charts.
Q: Yeah, let’s turn to Election Day, which is really the last set of questions I have for you. What was Election Day like? You woke up optimistic.
LOCKHART: Woke up — you know again, I probably wasn’t the same as everyone who’d been [01:16:00] there for 16 months. You know, it was 10 weeks. I was tired, but I wasn’t exhausted.
Q: Yeah.
LOCKHART: You know, like every — the men and women who’d been in the trenches and just done everything, and should get all the credit for getting him there. I was — I think I was skeptical. It was one of the reasons why asking, you know, three of the pollsters — who are all very good pollsters, and all people who I’ve known, and trust, I went and kept asking — I don’t know why I was skeptical, but I was. When the exit polls came out, I thought, “You know what, I’m just being a skeptic. OK, this seems good.” And so for a few hours — not even for — maybe an hour, I thought, “OK, this looks very good.” And I’m trying to remember who it was. I think it was, there’s a guy by the name of Doug Sosnik who is the smartest guy I know when it comes to politics. And I had been going out and doing his briefings [01:17:00] every couple of hours, just to fill airspace, you know. We had various reasons (inaudible), there were places that there was some voter fraud, we thought, or some harassment, so we’d want to go out and put pressure, you know, and — and it’s interesting because I think — the one at about five o’clock, and I was just trying to be deadpan in all of these. And the one about five o’clock, I talked about, you know, things looking good and blah-blah-blah, and I remember Doug grabbing me, and saying, you know, come here, and he sort of showed me some of the exit polls, and he said, “These can’t be right.” And again, he’s way smarter than me. And I said, “Well, what do you mean?” And he said, “There’s too many women.” You know, totally over — this can’t be who voted. And I think he knew that looking at it. And so he said, “Just be careful. Don’t” — he said, “you haven’t made a mistake yet, but don’t lean into this, just” — and I remember going out for like the seven o’clock briefing, and same message (inaudible), [01:18:00] and I got a call from a guy I know really well who’s a very smart guy, who said — or sent me an email or some sort of messages saying, “We’re going to lose, aren’t we?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He goes, “I know you, we’re going to lose horribly.” (laughter) I said, “I’m not doing any more of these briefings.” I mean, I don’t know that anybody else figured that out. But, so, I think by seven, 7:30, you know, what Doug had said earlier, was starting to be reflected, I think they, in their model, they looked at it and said, they saw the same mistake.