Transcription – Joe Lockhart Interview

Q: One — I think probably my last question about your coming into the campaign, so to speak, what you’ve picked up from the past, but what was different about the presidential election process in ’04 than had been true in the eighties and nineties?

LOCKHART: Well, technology changes a lot of things, and you know, I always go back and look at campaigns by what piece of tech — you know, in 1980, someone put the first fax machine on my desk, and it literally was one of the first fax machines, there was a GSA program, testing for the government, do these things work, how do they work? They gave them to both campaigns, you know, see what you do with them.

Q: Who could send you a fax? (laughter)

LOCKHART: Well, you know, we could — we would send a machine to our field offices, and we would send faxes back and forth. That’s it. We never sent them to anybody else, because nobody else had one. But it was very useful for internal communication. You know, in 1984 [00:15:00] we used satellite technology so like on Super Tuesday campaigning, rather than having to go to 13 states, we’d sit in the studio. We really — maybe we could have done that in 1980, but we didn’t know we could.

And you know, it goes on and on, to cell phones, to — 2004 was the beginning of the kind of blogging internet culture, where you know, it was often — it was harder earlier to get some story going. And if you had some — you know, sort of negative meme or, about your opponent or really positive story about what you were doing, you know, you had to go through this very heavy mainstream media filter. And sometimes you’d get through, and sometimes you wouldn’t. 2004 was very much like, it was the beginning of, people would throw stuff up on a blog, and because it was out there [00:16:00] and everybody was reading it, it would become news. So it really — it’s — everything that — nothing particularly new happened, but things happened faster, and there was less — I felt like there was less institutional control; less of a referee. Which, it’s comical to look at it now. I mean, the difference between 2004 and 2014 is light-years. I mean we have — it has exploded. You know, there are no rules now. There are no referees. There’s no parental guidance in the process; it’s just a free-for-all. But, it did feel different. It felt — particularly for me, because I came into it late, and had not done a political campaign in four years. In fact, I had not done a campaign in eight years. And you know, in 1996, you know, I got [00:17:00] credit for being very aggressive by, you know, getting our campaign staffers around the country to follow Bob Dole around, and to put things under the reporter’s doors in the hotel room — in the hotel rooms, and that seemed like it was aggressive. Like, but literally, they had pieces of paper they Xeroxed and put them under the door. That’s laughable now. It’s like, you know, with email, texting, Twitter, you know, everything. But at that time, it seemed like, oh boy; that’s really aggressive; that’s really interesting.

Q: I’ve read comments you’ve made about the ’96 campaign, and you talked about its effectiveness in terms of — and the word I often saw you use was “efficient”; in other words, develop a strategy; implement that strategy is how I took that to mean. In the changed information environment of ’04, could you really run a campaign?

LOCKHART: Yeah, I mean, listen, there’s — I think there are things that are [00:18:00] constant in a campaign that change gradually, and then there are things that change — that fundamentally change. I don’t think that ’96 and 2004 were fundamentally different campaigns; I don’t. I think 2008 was a fundamentally different campaign than even 2004 with the way Obama ran with the influence of social media and the interne. But I think there was enough data and experience out there so that Kerry’s effort could have avoided some of the mistakes that were made, and been in a stronger position going into Election Day. Would they have won? I don’t know.

As opposed to, like looking at 2008 where it was clear that the Obama campaign had figured something out that the McCain campaign hadn’t [00:19:00] figured out, and there was a big advantage, technologically, and organizationally. They just couldn’t compete, because they were behind. They just hadn’t figured it out in time. But I don’t put 2004 in that category. There were — there were a lot of changes, but in fact, most of the changes worked, I think, to the advantage. You know, you look at a seminal moment in that campaign, which was, you know, an independent group coming out and running a bunch of really harsh, negative ads; that happened plenty of times before. My first campaign was in 1980, and with — what were they called, NCPAC?

Q: Yeah.

LOCKHART: With NCPAC, and you know, the —

Q: The National —

LOCKHART: — “slaughter in the Senate,” and you know, I think Democrats lost 18 seats because of these unresponded negative ads. Dukakis, 1988, don’t respond to Willie Horton. John Kerry, 2004. You can draw a line between those, you know. [00:20:00] Was it a mistake? Yes, I think it was a mistake. I think everyone has a right to their view, and the people who were there will defend the rationale behind doing it, and they may be right. But I don’t think it’s — it’s not the same as, they were –something fundamentally changed about campaigns that they hadn’t realized. That was old school, and I think 2004 was kind of the dividing line. It’s the end of a political era and the way campaigns are conducted, you know, 30-second ads being the single most important element of your campaign. Trying to get on network TV every night is an important thing, and I’d say 2008 starts a new era. So, it’s — in looking at these campaigns, I would want to look at 2004 and compare it backwards rather than compare it forward, because I don’t think the comparison works, [00:21:00] going forward.