Q: You also were involved, and you mentioned this in passing, in two challengers’ campaigns. I mean, the ’84 Mondale campaign, and then in effect the Dukakis campaign running against Vice President Bush. And I wonder, sort of same questions, did those experiences give you any insight into the advantages and disadvantages facing Kerry in ’04 as the challenger?

LOCKHART: Yeah, I think — not so much in the — and I don’t know that I’d put it in that vein. I think the — you know, the first Mondale [00:08:00] debate I think the strategy was very similar, even though the country was (inaudible), the strategy was the same as Kerry, which was, take it to him at every chance. Don’t back down to anything. You don’t have to defer to the President. You know, it’s about something, you know, more important. I think the lesson in 1988 was how — you know, we learned it painfully, these debates are about moments. And you need to create positive moments, and avoid these seminal negative moments, and Dukakis fell a couple of times.

You know, I still believe if you were grading the way that you grade debates in debate clubs and things, you know the Los Angeles debate with Dukakis, Dukakis won on points. You know, like if you took every answer and all that. But there were a couple of moments where, you know, he showed weakness, or it was perceived as weakness, [00:09:00] and that was it. And the — I mean, this is a side point, but it’s really why it’s important as much as people make fun of it, to be out there talking about how your guy did, because people tend to look for cues on who won and who lost. And, it was — I remember, I think the first time I actively used, you know, dial testing during the debate to shape the spin afterwards was with Kerry, and it was — you know, so it wasn’t like, you know, me saying — me telling everyone to go out and say, he did really well in this, we knew what scored well, that would reinforce people’s thoughts, and while you wouldn’t say it in an interview with a camera rolling, but you could say to a reporter, look at the numbers, like 70% of the people thought that was the best answer in the debate, [00:10:00] and you know, and thought Bush’s answer was incomplete, or not compelling, or — so, those sorts of things are important.

Q: Debates aside, anything else that you sort of had derived from your early experience with a challenger running against an incumbent that gave you insight into the situation — the challenge facing Kerry?

LOCKHART: Yeah, I mean I think looking at — you know, this is a very broad statement, but looking at all of the campaigns that I’ve worked in, and some that I’ve watched, they — each side has a strategy. The incumbent is always arguing that stability is the most important thing, continuity. Building on what we’ve got done, where it’s incomplete, and even if it’s bad news, but we’re fixing it. The challenger is always arguing change. [00:11:00] And it comes down to who makes that argument most effectively.

Most campaigns, I think, develop a sense early whether they’re a change or stability campaign. 1984 is the classic example of a stability campaign. You know, I spent two years working for Walter Mondale; there’s no one in the world I respect more. We didn’t run a great campaign. We could have run the best campaign in the history of the world, and we still would have lost. It’s not — the country wanted continuity. And the Reagan people ran a good campaign. They executed very well against their strategy.

Ninety-two is an example of, you know, classic change, which is, I think the public said, Bill Clinton’s a young guy. We don’t know where he’s from. We’ve never been to Arkansas. It’s a little state. But boy, you know, he’s got to be better than the guy who’s in there now, [00:12:00] because things aren’t going well.

Two thousand four was a campaign that never settled on it. It settled at the very end, and I think it was determinative in the race, but it was one of those campaigns that for a lot of it felt like a change campaign, but at the end of the day it wasn’t. And that’s — we were driving hard though, this idea that, you know, it’s — this has to — the country needs change.

Q: I imagine it’s tougher to sell that in wartime.

LOCKHART: Oh yeah, and that was a big — I’ll get ahead of myself here, and we can talk about this, but I think both from instinct and talking to the pollsters at the time, the electorate was swinging. I mean, it moved a good bit. It oftentimes doesn’t post-Labor Day. It kind of gets set. But in this one it moved, and it moved [00:13:00] after the first debate in Kerry’s favor, because people were convinced when they saw him standing head-to-head with the president, this guy can do it. And then things happened in the world. There was a terrorist attack, Chechnya terrorist attack, and then —

Q: Beslan.

LOCKHART: — secondly, the Bin Laden tape [for the weekend?] and it just reminded people that, boy this is a dangerous world, and you know what, the economy stinks. I don’t think this — you know, this President Bush guy, I don’t think he’s that smart, but boy, he hasn’t let any terrorists shoot us or attack us again, and I think that was something we — I don’t have data to back this up, but I believe that without the Bin Laden tape, the election would have been different. I mean, it only came down to, what, 65,000 votes in Ohio. And — but, I think that crystallized this with a lot of the electorate of, let’s just go with the guy we know. This isn’t the time [00:14:00] for change.