Ken Rudin's Political Junkie

Less than a week to go before the first Republican debate, where Fox News, the debate host, has decided that only 10 of the 16 declared GOP candidates can participate.  That gives the hopefuls on the bottom rung of the ladder just days to boost their standing.  Steve Yaccino of Bloomberg Politics showcases the field and talks about what the candidates need to do, both in the lead up to the debate, and on the stage, plus where they hope to get a word in edgewise with Donald Trump expected to hog the two-hour program. Trump, of course, is rich, fearless and prone to say incendiary things.  The same can be said about Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who ran in 1992 as an independent and took 19 percent of the vote.  Ed Rollins, the longtime Republican strategist who briefly worked for the Perot campaign in '92, lays out the similarities -- and differences -- between the men with large wallets and large egos. And in our "this week in political history" feature, we go back 41 years, to July of 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee took the historic votes to impeach President Richard Nixon for crimes committed during the Watergate scandal.  Elizabeth Holtzman, who at the time was a freshman Democratic member of Congress from Brooklyn, talks about those days and about the scrupulously fair committee chairman, Peter Rodino. Photo via AFP/Getty Images This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

The more controversial he gets, the better he does in the surveys.  That's the scoop on Donald Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul who has jumped to the forefront of not only the polls but the conversation.  No political discussion in recent days has not included The Donald -- especially since his comments about John McCain last weekend went viral.  Frank Newport, the editor in chief of the Gallup organization, visits the Political Junkie this week to explain the meaning of Trump, what it says about the politics of today, and whether his numbers are sustainable. If Trump is leading the pack -- whatever that means with more than six months to go before Iowa and New Hampshire -- John Kasich is just entering it.  The Ohio governor declared his candidacy on Tuesday, becoming the 15th Republican to join the no-longer-select group.  Jessica Wehrman of the Columbus Dispatch examines Kasich's record and what he brings to the campaign. Republicans are not the only ones experiencing a family feud.  Two Democratic hopefuls attended the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix over the weekend, and both -- Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders -- were met with interruptions and protesters, the complaint being that neither candidate is vocal enough about police brutality and racial discrimination.  Dave Weigel of the Washington Post covered the conference and offers his observations. And in our "this week in political history" feature, we go back 27 years to the Democratic convention of 1988 -- the one that nominated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis for president.  Dukakis joins us to share his memories of that convention and campaign, cherishing the good ones and ruing the disappointing ones. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is in the presidential race, having made it official this week.  He's number 15, if you're keeping score as to how many Republicans are running.  And he's number one, if you're looking at the current polls in Iowa, home of the first contest in 2016.  Chuck Quirmbach of Wisconsin Public Radio notes that Walker joined the race only after he finished with the state budget, a process that caused him more difficulties than expected. Walker's battles with the unions and Democrats are mostly behind him.  But a battle over voting rights is in full bloom in North Carolina, site of a federal case that started this week over whether the Republican-run state legislature violated the rights of citizens by passing measures restricting certain voting opportunities.  Fifty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act -- and two years after the Supreme Court cut back on parts of that act -- the trial is the focus of voting rights proponents nationwide.  Doug Chapin, the director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration at the University of Minnesota, talks about the significance of the case. In our "this week in political history" feature, Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, a former Washington Post White House correspondent, goes back 35 years to the 1980 Republican National Convention and how Reagan used his solid acceptance speech and vice presidential pick in Detroit to bolster his chances against President Carter that year. And John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and White House chief of staff under the first President Bush, talks about his new biography of the 41st president and offers a candid assessment of the good and the bad of the brief Bush presidency. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

The Republican presidential field, currently at 14, will grow to 17 within the next month.  And in New Hampshire, site of the first-in-the-nation primary on February 9, no one is breaking out of the pack.  Fergus Cullen, the former chair of the state GOP, assesses the field.  And while there is so much uncertainty in the race so far, one thing he is certain of:  the candidacy of Donald Trump is not going to go anywhere, despite his standing in the recent polls. On the Democratic side, the field is also growing.  But their number is five.  Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb became the most recent Democrat in the race and, probably, the last one.  Andrew Cain, the politics editor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, assesses Webb's career and weighs the pros and cons of his presidential effort. It's much simpler in Nevada, which is holding a high profile Senate race next year to replace the retiring Harry Reid.  Congressman Joe Heck, a three-term Republican with good ties to both the tea party and establishment wings of the GOP, entered the race last week and is seen as the all-but-certain Republican nominee.  Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Reid and his machine are solidly behind former state attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto, who is the clear consensus for her party's nomination and if elected would be the nation's first Latina senator.  Jon Ralston, the premier expert of Nevada politics, talks about Heck's career and explains why, at this point anyway, it's a tossup of a race. And in our "this week in political history" feature, we go back 11 years to 2004, when John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in waiting, named his former rival, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, as his running mate.  Bob Shrum, the Democratic strategist who was a key player in the Kerry campaign, talks about why Edwards was chosen and what they hoped he would accomplish.  And why the campaign was ultimately disappointed. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Another day, another Republican in the race for president.  This week it's Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey.  Not long ago he was perceived as the GOP frontrunner.  His slashing attacks on liberals, union members and journalists won him high marks in the Garden State, and many saw him as the party's strongest candidate to take on Hillary Clinton.  But Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, says that the combination of political fallout over the so-called "Bridgegate" scandal and the economic problems in the state budget have led to Christie getting a 30% job approval back home and falling national numbers in his bid for the nomination. Another northeast Republican governor who has a flair for the dramatic (and controversy) is Paul LePage of Maine.  His outlandish behavior almost cost him a second term in last year's elections.  Mal Leary of Maine Public Broadcasting says that his antics have only become more noticeable this year, with the governor battling with the legislature over the budget, his threatening reporters and lawmakers with execution -- a joke, LePage insists -- and other shenanigans that some member of the legislature are seriously talking about impeachment. We still have to sit back and take a breath after last week's whirlwind of decisions coming from the Supreme Court.  Two in particular -- on the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage -- delighted liberals, upset conservatives and made history at the same time.  Robert Barnes of the Washington Post offers a review. And in our "This Week in Political History" feature, we go back to June of 1971, when Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel committed one of the biggest instances of political disobedience of the day when he read excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret and classified history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, with warts and lies and all.  Sen. Gravel joins us to talk about what led him to take that fateful step. Photo via Flickr user Michael Vadon This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

It was an incredibly sad week for the nation, having witnessed the senseless murders of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C. church by an apparent white racist who worshiped the Confederate flag and other remnants of the South. The response by many in political life was a series of attempts to remove the flag from public display -- a cause that has been debated for decades. President Obama's comments after the killings harkened back to the 1963 Birmingham church bombings that killed four little girls, and the memorably measured but emotional eulogy given at the time by Martin Luther King Jr. All eyes, including that of SCOTUS Blog editor Amy Howe, are on the Supreme Court, as it prepares to end its term with a historic civil rights case: whether same-sex couples are free to marry throughout the country. There are other cases on the Court's docket, including whether those millions of people who get subsidies to help pay for health care as part of the Affordable Care Act will continue to do so. The presidential campaign of Bobby Jindal is just beginning. But the Louisiana governor, who this week became the 13th Republican to enter the race, is beset by budget and other woes at home. Jeremy Alford, editor and publisher of LAPolitics.com, reviews his career. And it was 13 years ago this week that Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, officially launched his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Once a longshot who quickly catapulted to frontrunner's status. Dean is our special guest in our "this week in political history" feature. Photo via Blog for Iowa This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

The lines are drawn in the Democratic skirmish over the Pacific rim trade bill:  President Obama is for it.  House Democrats are not.  But where is the party's presidential frontrunner in all of this?  Jim Newell of Salon talks about the cautious role being played by Hillary Clinton. It was never scientific anyway, and it proved to be unnecessarily expensive for candidates who wanted to make an impression.  So Kathie Obradovich of the Des Moines Register is not exactly mourning the decision to end the Iowa Straw Poll, which Republicans have been utilizing in the summers before the caucuses since 1979 but is being canceled this year because candidates have been bypassing it.  But she does say it helped winnow the field and led to some interesting results. And in our "this week in political history feature," former Al Gore Chief of Staff Ron Klain talks about his former boss, who declared his presidential candidacy 16 years ago this week, and is reminded of all the "what ifs" associated with the 2000 election and the long recount in Florida. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

He has the most money and the highest name ID. Next up for Jeb Bush:  An official declaration of candidacy on June 15.  Jonathan Martin of the New York Times assesses Bush's strengths and weaknesses, eight months before the voters begin to have their say. After all, it's the right to vote that determines who our leaders are.  But in a growing number of states, the two major parties are not in agreement over the voting process.  Republicans have been pushing legislation that would insist people present a valid ID when they go to the polls and that would curtail early voting.  The GOP says it's to ward off voter fraud; Democrats say it's to discourage minority and young people from voting.  Doug Chapin, the director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration at the University of Minnesota, discusses the various points of disagreement between the Ds and the Rs, and whether any kind of voting legislation affects turnout. When we discuss media bias, it's often from the vantage point of whether reporters lean towards one party or the other.  Or if they have liberal or conservative inclinations.  But there is another kind of media bias that Erik Wemple, who covers the media for the Washington Post, discusses in this week's show.  The sympathetic coverage of Dennis Hastert's legal problems illustrates one kind of bias problem. Finally, in our "This Week in Political History" segment, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who was one of the most powerful members of Congress, discusses his rise and fall, nine years after he ended his congressional career. Photo via Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Question: What has four billion dollars and little chance of going anywhere? Answer: President Obama's budget, released this week along with the Democratic fanfare and the Republican "dead on arrival" diagnosis. Josh Gerstein of Politico breaks down what the president is looking for, who his real audience is, and the chances of any accommodation with Congress. Another issue vexing lawmakers on the state level is Medicaid expansion. Hoping to increase the number of poor people covered by health insurance, the Obama administration has offered non-participating states -- and they are mostly the ones with Republican governors -- to pay for an overwhelming percentage of the costs. Chris Kardish of Governing magazine notes that some GOP states, such as Texas and Florida, are dead set against accepting government funding. But other Republican governors like John Kasich in Ohio and Bill Haslam in Tennessee are welcoming it, albeit by adjusting the terms in a more conservative-friendly way. And Indiana political analyst Brian Howey focuses on Gov. Mike Pence, a potential 2016 Republican presidential hopeful. Pence was an unwavering opponent of Obamacare while a member of Congress. But now, as his state's chief executive, he is pushing a customized Hoosier Medicaid expansion. In Illinois, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is spending millions on re-election bid on Feb. 24. Some think there is a possibility he might fail to break 50 percent of the vote and be forced into an April runoff against one of four challengers. Lauren Chooljian of radio station WBEZ and Cheryl Corley, the Midwest correspondent for NPR based out of Chicago, join forces to forecast the election. And while there is a bit of fiction in all of politics, we focus on real fiction this week by talking to Beau Willimon, the showrunner for the Netflix series "House of Cards," which begins its third season later this month. Willimon insists the program is more about optimism than cynicism, and argues that it is less a picture of Congress and more about human nature and the quest for power. Photo via Flickr user David Erickson / CC-BY-NC 2.0 American Life (instrumental) (Silence Is Sexy) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Luxe (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

With the Iowa caucuses some 53 weeks away, the battle for the Republican nomination took its first major step last weekend in the Hawkeye State, where many presidential contenders and pretenders traveled to Des Moines for the Iowa Freedom Summit. Kathie Obradovich of the Des Moines Register reports on who got the most attention and who failed to show up. Steve Scheffler, Iowa's Republican National Committeeman and a renowned social conservative, says that, showing up or not, Jeb Bush has some work to do if he is going to win over right-leaning voters in the state. And mid-winter is a big time for TV -- House of Cards, The Americans, Parks and Recreation, and Scandal are all coming back. Ted Johnson of Variety magazine walks us through all the political shows to watch this month (and the best ones to catch up on). The White House has no time for TV. They're too busy hoping that Benjamin Netanyahu won't show up in March to give a speech to a joint session of Congress. Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution outlines the instances where Congress has a legitimate role in helping shape foreign policy, and what was behind John Boehner's invitation. Foreign policy is usually not what decides presidential elections. But in 2008, Rudy Giuliani -- crowned "America's Mayor" for his role in uniting New York City in the wake of the horrific attacks of 9/11 -- hoped a foreign policy that was tough on terrorism would get him the Republican presidential nomination this year. Chris Henick was a senior adviser to the Giuliani campaign, and he talks about how his candidate went from GOP frontrunner to "also-ran" in just a few short months. And Liz Benjamin of Time Warner Cable News tells us the latest disheartening news about New York politics: the arrest of longtime Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, one of the most powerful politicians in the state. Silver is accused of corruption, bribery and mail fraud. "Rumsfeld and Giuliani at Ground Zero" by Robert D. Ward - Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. American Life (instrumental) (Silence Is Sexy) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Playtime (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0 Catch Feelings (C. Scott) / CC BY 3.0 Back To Buxton (Alec's Band) / CC BY 4.0 Balcarabic Chicken (Quantum Jazz) / CC BY-SA 3.0

President Obama (and his party) may have suffered an overwhelming defeat in the 2014 midterm elections, but you'd never know it by the performance he put on Tuesday evening in his State of the Union message to Congress. It was a confident, self-assured Obama who read off a laundry list of things he wanted Congress to take care of, while at the same time warning Republicans not to pass something that would force him to bring out his veto pen. Three guests -- David Jackson of USA Today, Lisa Desjardins of The PBS Newshour and Paul Glastris of The Washington Monthly join the program to analyze and dissect Obama's speech. Many of us are still stunned over the announcement that Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential hopeful in 2008 and his party's unsuccessful nominee in 2012, is thinking about running once more. Cathleen Decker, the political editor for the Los Angeles Times, recently attended an RNC meeting where the former Massachusetts governor spoke, and offers her thoughts about a potential third Mitt candidacy. Lots of discussion around #SOTU centered on the president's legacy. One president whose legacy is now being widely discussed is Lyndon Johnson. His character's portrayal in the movie "Selma," pits him against Dr. Martin Luther King and the grassroots movement for voting rights. Two historians, Professor Julian Zelizer of Princeton University, an expert on Johnson, and Dr. Clayborne Carson of Stanford, an expert on King, discuss what America was going through in 1965 and how the two men connected in real life.

It looks like the relationship between President Obama and the 114th Congress is starting exactly where it left off with the 113th -- battles with Republicans, little compromise in sight. Let's start with the Keystone XL Pipeline. The House has overwhelmingly passed -- and the Senate is expected to follow -- legislation that authorizes the building of the controversial pipeline. Republicans claim this will lower gas prices and create more jobs. Democrats say gas prices won't be affected and that the environment will be adversely affected. Elana Schor, an energy reporter with Politico, lays out likely action from both sides, and how it'll affect 2016. Another dispute: immigration. The House has passed two amendments -- and attached them to the funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The amendments effectively gut President Obama's protections for millions of immigrants, including so-called Dreamers. Daniel Newhauser of the National Journal talks about what Republicans hope to accomplish, and what might happen in the Senate. While things may not be getting accomplished in Washington, there is legislative activity going on in the states. Reid Wilson of the Washington Post brings us up to speed on some of the governors we should be watching in 2015 and beyond. And this week in 2007, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama broke from two years of presidential denials with his announcement that he had formed an exploratory committee. Steve Hildebrand, the Democratic strategist who ran Al Gore's successful 2000 Iowa caucus campaign, was an early Obama supporter. He remembers what the early days were like in Obama's path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Big political news out of California: Sen. Barbara Boxer, a four-term California Democrat, announced she will not seek re-election next year. John Myers of KQED in San Francisco handicaps the race to succeed her, who's already in the mix and who may wait it out until 2018. And with news that Boxer's out, we asked Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report which senators up in 2016 might also be considering calling it quits. Photo via flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Accessible as Gravity (Orthotonics) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Soixante-8 (Obsibilo) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 stefsax / CC BY 2.5 Evidence Song (The Good Lawdz) / CC BY-SA 3.0

The 114th Congress is here, where Republicans control both houses for the first time since 2006.  Paul Kane of the Washington Post joins us to talk about the attempted rebellion against Speaker John Boehner, and the GOP's hopes of going from the "party of no" to the "party that governs." One of the things the new Senate will take up in the next month is the nomination of Ashton Carter as secretary of defense.  Charlie Stevenson, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and author of "SecDef: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense," joins us to talk about the history of the job and how difficult it is to be a success while trying to satisfy the president, Congress, the military and the national security team. We also go back to the week of January 2004, when NPR hosted a radio-only presidential debate involving Democratic candidates.  We talk with the guy who hosted that debate -- former "Talk of the Nation" host Neal Conan -- and remember some of the fun moments. Finally, Mario Cuomo died last week.  The former three-term governor of New York, he is best remembered for giving a remarkably passionate keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic national convention.  But he's also remembered for hemming and hawing over running for president, a decision he never could quite say yes to.  In 1991, he was all set to fly to New Hampshire to file for that state's presidential primary. That is, until 90 minutes before the deadline, when he said he couldn't do it.  Joe Grandmaison was the Democratic state chair in New Hampshire at the time, and was waiting for Cuomo to arrive at the airport to bring him to the secretary of state's office to file his candidacy papers.  He joins us to remember his disappointment of that day, and assess the legacy of the former governor. And we remember Bess Myerson and Edward Brooke - two history-makers who passed away recently. Image via Speaker John Boehner Flicker CC BY-NC 2.0 Scattered Knowledge (Revolution Void) / CC BY 3.0 Here Comes The Wave (instrumental) (Silence Is Sexy) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Some Things Happen (Cosmic Analog Ensemble) / CC BY 4.0 Tree Tenants (Revolution Void) / CC BY 3.0

You'll have to decide on your own whether 2014 was a good year or not.  We're assuming that if you're a Republican, you're probably leaning yes, and if you're a Democrat, you're trending no. But no matter how you rate it, it was a remarkable year -- both here at home and overseas.  And thus, this week the Political Junkie presents its first Year in Review. We start with a sit-down discussion with Frank James, the former political blogger for NPR and the Chicago Tribune. We recall this year in politics, from the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov to the liberal mutiny over the CRomnibus spending bill, and the future of possible 2016 candidates like Gov. Jeb Bush and Elizabeth Warren. And then we hear some "great moments" from the year in Political Junkie segments ... as determined by many of you who wrote in.  We hear Republican consultant Mike Murphy, talking about Chris Christie and what effect if any the "Bridgegate" scandal might have on his chances for 2016... Politico reporter Josh Gerstein, on President Obama and the NSA, surveillance and wiretaps ... Vin Weber (R) and Anna Greenberg (D) setting up the 2014 midterm elections ... and Robert Barnes of the Washington Post on the tenacity (and future) of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Finally, we also pull some great moments from our "This Week in Political History" segments.  John Dean on the Nixon tapes... Bob Mann on the classic "Daisy" TV ad from 1964 ... and Illinois Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon on her late father, Sen. Paul Simon. It's the last program of the year.  We'll see you bright and early in 2015.  Happy Holidays and a safe and Happy New Year! By Official White House Photo by Pete Souza [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It's the time of year when, upon reflecting over the politics of 2014, we also remember those in the political world who passed from the scene. Janet Hook of the Wall Street Journal and Alan Ehrenhalt of Governing magazine sit down with us for our 2014 Political Junkie Remembrances Special, where we listed some of the more memorable politicians, journalists, staffers and historical figures who died in 2014. From giants, like former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, Florida Gov. Reubin Askew, Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry and Tom Menino of Boston, to headline-makers like Ohio Congressman James Traficant, White House press secretary James Brady, Vermont Senator James Jeffords, and Mayor Jane Byrne of Chicago, and many more, we hear about their legacies from those who knew them best. By a3_nm on fr.wikipedia (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons