Day on the Hill 2006 – Newsweek’s Chief Political Correspondent Discusses the 2008 Election

WASHINGTON, D.C. – With the next election cycle underway and presidential campaigns soon to start, the nation’s current issues are on the minds of many landscape contractors and their clients. At the Professional Landcare Network’s Day on the Hill, Howard Fineman, Newsweek’s chief political correspondent, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief, was able to shed some light on what the green industry can expect for the 2008 election and how both parties will use the immigration issue “to score points” and votes.
 

Newsweek’s Howard Fineman. Photo: carlcoxphoto.com

Fineman, who has interviewed and written about every major presidential candidate since 1984, most recently focusing on the roots, rise and presidency of George W. Bush, kicked off his presentation with some background on the current president. “He’s loyal,” Fineman said. “He learns by listening and reading people. He’s not distracted by extraneous things. He cuts to the chase, but he doesn’t always know enough to stop while he’s ahead. He’s a clean desk man and a born again Christian, who believes in this strongly.”
 
Fineman went on to describe the current state of the country. Though many Americans feel their personal situations are OK, 60 percent report that they are fearful of the country’s future, he said. “Because of the ongoing war, they are getting a sense that maybe things aren’t as under control as they thought,” Fineman explained, adding that Bush’s approval rating has been dropping to the low 30-percent range as a result.
 
In the meantime, Fineman said the 2008 election will be all about the issues, and “today’s big troublesome issues are global,” he shared, pointing to immigration and the war as examples.
 
While Fineman believes Bush has done a decent job, he said he is judged harshly because of the current wartime situation, and that this will continue to be an issue into the next presidency. “The war will be the big issue – it’s the biggest decision any president has to make. And people judge Bush on if they feel safer now than they did or if they are better off now than they were four years ago. Both 2008 candidates will continue to face this same challenge.”
 
Fineman describes the 2008 election as one that “is going to be one of the most important, tough elections. It’s not going to be fun. Politics are too serious to be fun right now. Participation for presidential elections has continually gone up and I think that will continue to be the case in 2008.”
 
Specifically concerning an industry hot-button issue – comprehensive immigration reform – Fineman said this solution “will only come after the election with an expanded guest worker program with higher caps and strict enforcement of illegal immigrants.”
 
Fineman was asked numerous questions about the election and the current state of the country, including one about his thoughts on whether one state will push the vote either way in 2008, similar to Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004. “I think it will be close again,” Fineman says. Richard Nixon used to say, ‘It’s always about Ohio.’ And certain states can be pivotal like this in many ways.”
 
The last question was posed, “What would the founders of the United States think if they saw what state we were in currently?” Fineman answered with a history lesson on other periods that he said “were much nastier than this one. What was said by the federalists about Thomas Jefferson was an all-out war. And in World War I in the midst of the depression, Adolf Hitler was building armaments that the world had never seen. We may think we’re facing challenges unrivaled in our history, but that is just not true.”