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Our Lunch Guests react and say enough of this negative campaigning. We don’t know if people will say, ‘You know what, this economy is bad enough.’ It wiped out all the income gains for the middle class for the entire decade. For 12 years we haven’t had growth of 4 percent in this economy, going back over two administrations, both parties. Susan Arbetter: So, people have real problems. There are real issues that this country faces and it’s going to take some serious political will and courage to push through but, Bruce Miroff, you’ve said that the politicians almost have a disdain for any sort of big idea. Bruce Miroff: No, they don’t have a disdain. It’s just that when they go for it they usually lose and they know that. I am not at all a fan of Rasmussen — a notorious Republican polling operation — but one of their poll findings recently was quite stunning, which was that only 32 percent of the public thought it made a difference who won in terms of how the economy was going to do in the next four years. Susan Arbetter: We’re skeptical also about our institutions. There’s pessimism and disengagement among the electorate. How do you get people reengaged? Are people getting lazier? Sally Friedman: That’s a huge debate in the civic engagement literature. My own bias is I don’t think people are getting lazier. People are more likely to get involved when people around them are getting involved. Anne Hildreth: The rules also make people less engaged. You may think it’s that they’re lazy or disinterested but it could just be much harder to participate in many places, or much more perilous, or participation requires an extra step or two. Patty Strach: People are making choices about what they want to do. Do I want to go vote or do I want to spend 10 more minutes with my kids? It’s clear that they’re not seeing a huge payoff from voting. Are they mistaken or are Susan Arbetter is Capitol correspondent and news and public affairs director for WCNY, Syracuse. Weekdays, you can find Susan in the Legislative Correspondents Association press room on the 3 rd floor of the New York State Capitol, where she produces and hosts The Capitol Pressroom, a daily public radio program about New York State politics and policy. Susan is the recipient of over 30 awards for electronic journalism, including awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association (Edward R. Murrow Award), Scripps-Howard, Associated Press, Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, and the New York State Broadcasters Association. 56 Rockefeller College News Magazine | Fall 2012 (Left to right) Capitol Correspondent Susan Arbetter and Rockefeller Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Anne Hildreth we mistaken for thinking more people should be turning out to vote? I think there’s a real difference, if you participate, in how the political system treats you. No one’s cutting Social Security because seniors turn out to vote. People are making real choices about what they want to spend their time on and voting or participating in politics isn’t the choice that they’re making. Bruce Gyory: On the other hand, the rate of voting has gone up in two successive presidential elections. The vote was greater in 2008 than in 2004, which in turn was greater than the participation rate in 2000. We made an effort to make voting easier four years ago. We had early voting, increased absentee and write-in voting. Now there’s been a retrenchment of that as the Republicans became afraid of the higher rates, particularly among minorities and younger voters. Where Republicans have controlled the state legislature and the governor, they have tried to put in provisions for voter ID and other such measures. People in the polling data tend to support that because they think everybody should have a voter ID and everybody has a license. We’ll see whether that will withstand either court scrutiny or the scrutiny of public opinion when it dawns on people that there are large numbers of Americans who live their life in a way that they do not need a driver’s license. Susan Arbetter: So in Pennsylvania it turns out they didn’t really have any reason for voter suppression? Bruce Miroff: Well, they had a political reason. Susan Arbetter: What happened in Pennsylvania? Anne Hildreth: And Texas, and Ohio and… Bruce Miroff: In Pennsylvania, the Republicans won the governor and entire state legislature and then passed a voter ID law. It didn’t exist until after the 2010 election. The Pennsylvania House majority leader boasted that this law would give the state to Romney. I’d like to say in defense of the voter that a huge part of the problem is whether there is a stimulus to vote or not. We know from political science Sally Friedman is an associate professor of political science. Professor Friedman teaches a variety of courses in American politics and methodology, and is particularly interested in aspects of political representation and the processes associated with a representative democracy. She is the author of Dilemmas of Representation: Local Politics, National Factors, and the Home Styles of Modern U.S. Congress Members. Professor Friedman earned her PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. Bruce N. Gyory is an adjunct professor of political science at Rockefeller College. Gyory, a political and strategic consultant with Corning Place Consulting in Albany, NY, has over 28 years’ experience as a lawyer and lobbyist, and has served three governors of New York, two as senior advisor. He received his BA in political science from Columbia University and JD from NYU. Anne Hildreth, an associate professor in the political science department, is associate dean for undergraduate education at Rockefeller College. Professor Hildreth’s
literature that the single most effective thing that can turn people out is personal contact. We also know in the debate on the Electoral College that the Electoral College basically makes the presidential election uninteresting and without advertising in roughly three-quarters of the states. If we had a national popular vote, we’d have a different kind of election and a higher turnout because everybody’s vote would count. Everybody would see ads and have people knocking on their doors. Bruce Gyory: I’ll tell you what will drive the contest to a state like New York. The battle for control of the House of Representatives is going to be more and more of a central issue. We have at least eight truly competitive elections for the House. That will drive resources to New York. It’s going to be a very important factor in Long Island, Westchester, the Mid-Hudson, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and potentially the Southern Tier. Anne Hildreth: That’s a great point. Bruce Gyory: Here’s the real problem. Two things happen in January that could turn the next president’s term into very bitter ashes from which he could not recover — the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the sequestration cuts that came out of the debacle of the 2011 debt limit crisis. If we have paralysis between the president and the Congress over those, all the tax cuts ending and the immediate cuts could trigger that double-dip recession that nobody wants. At some point it might dawn on one of the candidates that he needs a mandate from the voters to vault over this paralysis with the Congress. That’s when Obama’s going to start to say if I don’t win the House and I don’t have a net pick-up of three or four seats from New York, or if I’m Romney and I don’t do something to pick up some seats in Illinois or California, even though I’m not going to win those states in the Electoral College, I may face either a House that has Democratic control or teaching areas and research reflect an abiding interest in the engagement of the American public and the forms and quality of opportunities for public discourse on important political events and policies. She earned her doctor of philosophy in political science from the University of Iowa. Bruce Miroff is a professor and Collins Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Rockefeller College. Professor Miroff teaches and writes on the American presidency, American political development, American political theory, and political leadership. He is the author and co-author of numerous books, including Pragmatic Illusions: The Presidential Politics of John F. Kennedy; Icons of Democracy: American Leaders as Heroes, Aristocrats, Dissenters, and Democrats; The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party; Debating Democracy: A Reader in American Politics; and The Democratic Debate: American Politics in an Age of Change. Professor Miroff received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. (From left) Bruce Gyory, Susan Arbetter, and Bruce Miroff functionally no control. We could have a situation where there is functionally no control in the House of Representatives. Anne Hildreth: Bruce, you said that the polls suggested people support photo IDs for voting. They think voting is a right and a privilege. They think about it from an individual perspective. It’s the reason why we’re not going to have mass movements about voter suppression or campaign finance. Bruce Gyory: If 90 percent of the American people have driver’s licenses, it doesn’t shock me that in a state like Florida, 57 percent would say they support voter ID. They don’t stop and think how this will affect others. There’s a countervailing duty for people who are worried about this — groups like the NAACP and the Democratic Party — to say, ‘Hey, look how this affects this woman sitting here in Altoona, Pennsylvania who has done nothing wrong, who has voted her entire life, and doesn’t have a government photo ID and it’s wrong to deny her right to vote.’ I think if it’s posed in that way, people will react to that. Anne Hildreth: If we weren’t in this economy, you might have the luxury of engaging more people around those types of issues. Susan Arbetter: Isn’t that what Occupy Wall Street was all about — disenfranchisement? Anne Hildreth: Why doesn’t anybody make a good case for government? Bruce Miroff: Look what just happened to Obama. Obama just made this argument and the Romney campaign spliced and diced and twisted it into something else. If you talk about government you’re attacking free enterprise. Patty Strach: What is important is what they are not saying. They are not emphasizing Romney’s background at Bain. They won’t say that Romney did for Bain Capital what he can Patricia Strach is an associate professor in the departments of political science and public administration and policy. Professor Strach’s research examines the relationship between social and political institutions in American public policy. She is the author of All in the Family: The Private Roots of American Public Policy. From 2008 to 2010 she was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at Harvard University. Professor Strach received her doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. www.albany.edu/rockefeller albany.edu/rock- 67
Page 1 and 2: Rockefeller College of Public Affai
Page 3 and 4: Contents A Message from the Dean. .
Page 5: money. When political scientists lo
Page 9 and 10: Our roundtable participants share a
Page 11 and 12: For more than a quarter-century, Br
Page 13 and 14: 14 Much of the advanced technology
Page 15 and 16: 14 in Milne Hall and trying to imag
Page 17 and 18: Political advertising is pervasive.
Page 19 and 20: NEW PROGRAMS Training Homeland Secu
Page 21 and 22: Enhancing Government Capacity in Ke
Page 23 and 24: Faculty Publications September 2011
Page 25 and 26: Alumni Scholarships Awarded Five Ro
Page 27 and 28: Thank You for Answering the Double

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