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Smerconish

Presidential Debates Announced: Will The Candidates Show Up?; Poll: Voters See American Dream Slipping Out Of Reach; NYT: Israel Knew Hamas's Attack Plan More Than A Year Ago. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired December 02, 2023 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ARIEL DANNIELLE, PAINTER: There's a song by Tyler, the Creator, where he has a line where he says, it feels like glitter and he's talking about life feeling like glitter, like life feeling good like sparkling fine, like it -- I felt like that song was really like what my show was about, nothing depressing, nothing sad. I want people to just feel like really light and like happy, like to still seeing represented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll see you back here next Saturday at 08:00 a.m. Eastern. Smerconish starts now.

[09:00:41]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST: The politics of perception. I'm Michael Smerconish in Philadelphia.

If it were still the economy stupid, then Joe Biden's presidency would be in much better shape. Something else is at play here. Yes, inflation is souring Americans but by many measures, the economy is booming. The economy is clearly growing, the Gross Domestic Product is up 5.2 percent in the third quarter even faster than previously estimated. If GDP is rising, the economy is considered to be in solid shape and the nation moving forward.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rally this week to a new high for the year. Wages had been losing ground to inflation for two years but since May, wages have returned to outpacing inflation. And unemployment is at an historic low. The U.S. unemployment rate has been below 4 percent for 21 straight months, the longest stretch since the late 1960s.

How about gas prices? Gas prices have fallen or remain steady for 10 weeks. You barely read about that anywhere, but you can rest assured if they were headed in the other -- it'd be on a loop with videos of pump prices. The holiday season, that's another barometer it's looking promising for retailers. According to data from Adobe Analytics, lured by the deep discounts on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, U.S. shoppers spent a whopping $38 billion over Thanksgiving weekend. That's a jump of 7.8 percent over last year, outstripping the predicted 5.4 percent. But still, President Biden receiving no political dividends. As the "Washington Post" recently noted that disconnect between a booming economy and how Americans feel about it appears to be widening at a critical time ahead of next year's presidential election. It is also shaping up to be a key liability for the White House even as its policies are bolstering job creation and business investments. In a variety of national battleground polls, President Biden trails former President Donald Trump.

As politico recently pointed out, among the latest surveys this month from 13 different pollsters by disposition is worse than their previous polls in all the two of them. Might it be that perception has overtaken reality? Consider the case of the Big Mac. Allison Morrow here at CNN was among those who told the story of Topher Olive. A year ago olive went to a McDonald's in Post Falls Idaho and ordered a limited edition smoky double quarter pounder, BLT with fries and a sprite. Total cost for this novelty item was $16.10. He posted the receipt on TikTok.

It went viral and keeps being recirculated on TikTok, Reddit and YouTube. Then a recent YouTube video incorrectly reported that it was a Big Mac meal. And more than 1.7 million viewed that video containing false information as to the price. The narrative became that the cost of a fast food meal was upwards of $16. And by the way, the price of a Big Mac meal on Biden's watch, it has gone up but not like that.

The viral story reached the White House Office of Digital Strategy. But as one source told "The Washington Post," what are we supposed to do? Tell the President or Chuck Schumer to send a tweet saying hey, most Big Macs aren't that expensive? It would look ridiculous.

I felt obliged to do some field research this week. My Big Mac meal in the Philly burbs, it cost me $10.09 before tax. The White House has struggled to set the record straight and the perception is impacting even the President's base. And to "The New York Times" with this headline, Even most Biden voters don't see a thriving economy." "The Times" noted that a majority of those who backed President Biden in 2020 say today's economy is fair or poor.

Ordinarily a bad omen for incumbents seeking reelection. Part of the explanation might be due to the loss of COVID related relief. While inflation has subsided, prices are still high groceries for example of 25 percent since the pandemic. The resumption of evictions and student loan payments have led to less disposable income. And credit card debt is now at a record trillion dollars.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans say they don't have a spare $1,000 for an emergency. The resulting national funk has had an impact. It's not just that we think things are worse than the data suggests, we're also no longer confident in the American dream, where the dream is defined as getting ahead or doing better than your parents and grandparents generation.

[09:05:18] That's the findings from a Wall Street Journal NORC survey which included two questions, if people work hard, are they likely to get ahead in America? And will your generation do better than the generation before you? Well, the results as to one of those questions shocking. In 2012, 53 percent of Americans said the American dream still holds true. And just last year, when the journal asked a similar question, whether Americans who work hard were likely to get ahead, 68 percent said yes.

In the current poll, that numbers down to 36 percent. In other words, it's been cut nearly in half. So is it perception or is it reality? I want to know what you think. I want to compare results of ours to the Journal.

Go to smerconish.com, vote on today's poll question. Agree or disagree, if people work hard, they are likely to get ahead in America.

Aaron Zitner joins me now. He's covered this data for the Wall Street Journal where he's a writer and editor in the Washington bureau focusing on how politics are driven by demographic and economic change. He wrote the piece, "Voters see American Dream slipping out of reach."

Aaron, great to see you. People tend to think that our best days are behind us, right?

AARON ZITNER, REPORTER & EDITOR, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Yes. And that's what's so dour about this poll finding. For a while we've known that people just aren't feeling the good economic numbers as your, you know, a deputy described there. But when we get to the idea that the American dream is now slipping away or that our children's generation, this is an NBC finding, they found a record low 19 percent of Americans saying that our children's generation will have it better than our generation, that speaks to something more pervasive and possibly more durable. It's the sense that something structural has changed in the economy, and that were more fragile, and that this is a longer term problem than say, inflation, which tends to be transitory.

SMERCONISH: I was struck by the demographic differences in this poll, what am I making reference to?

ZITNER: Well, that's right. Look, I look at a lot of polls and I think about politics. And mostly, when we look at a poll, it's about Democrats versus Republicans. This is different. In this poll, young people, and those -- by young people, I mean, anyone under age 50, was much more pessimistic about the American dream than seniors, those over age 65.

The gap by age was much bigger than the gap by party. And the gap in gender was really striking. Women much more than men are pessimistic about the American dream. And again, that gap was about 20 points bigger than the gap by party, twice as big as the gap by party. So young people and women are feeling most fragile in this economy.

SMERCONISH: To your observation about the divide among the young and the old, I've got a social media montage of just less than a minute, I want to run it and have you react. Play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are we just going to pretend that were fine? Because the more people that I talked to, the more young couples in their like 20s and 30s, or even like singles, everyone seems to be having a hard time making ends meet right now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a teacher and I can barely afford to pay rent with my salary. My salary bi weekly is basically my rent minus $500. I realized every single month, I am transferring money out of savings into my checking. I'm actually going to go into debt if I continue being a teacher.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right, like you want to go get coffee somewhere is five or $6 with tip, drink at a bar is going to be 10 or $12. So you might as well go home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just got paid this past Friday, right? We paid the mortgage, bought some groceries, put some gas in the car, and we have like two or $300 to last us until next Friday.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One please explain to me, at what point did cereal become $10? What kind of world are we living in? That struggle meals are luxury now?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMERCONISH: I find those to be authentic and compelling. I mean, for those folks, it's not a perception, it's a reality, right?

ZITNER: Well, that's right. Gas, groceries and housing. Gas and groceries affect everybody. But if you're starting your career, and maybe you're not at the peak of your earning years yet, they could be the most corrosive. And let's talk about housing because having a home is part of the American dream for many people. And it's also foundational to a young person becoming an adult.

It goes with starting your family and establishing yourself, the kind of life that your parents might have had. And with mortgage rates so high and housing prices so high, that could be really weighing on younger people.

[09:10:00]

And I'll say one other thing, Michael, you may not know since you and I, I have a feeling our musical references end with Led Zeppelin, but the song on the radio now from Green Day is called the American Dream is Killing Me. And that also tells me that someone who's marketing to Americans through the radio thinks that message, the American Dream is killing me, is going to resonate with people right now.

SMERCONISH: Is it possible that we're everybody has a flat screen, and everybody has a cell phone, we've kind of peak like it couldn't always continue on the trajectory that it was posed the greatest generation? ZITNER: Well, look, I called people up on the phone who participated in our poll, and I heard some sincere and real and deep understanding of the economy and fears that something fundamental had changed. One, I heard about pensions. Hey, my father had a pension. Me, yes, I have a 401k, but now I'm at risk. I bear the risk of my retirement.

Before my father's company took on the risk of his retirement, I'm alone in this economy. I heard about labor unions, maybe because labor unions have been in the news with the strike in Hollywood and in the auto workers, but people said my uncle was a journeyman carpenter. One woman said my father died a few weeks ago, and the union gave my mother a funeral benefit. People are aware that there's less union representation. So maybe people are feeling real structural change that that's making them feel more fragile and alone.

SMERCONISH: Quick final thought, if I were a political strategist, and I were listening to Aaron Zitner from the Wall Street Journal analyzing this data that suggests a lot of Americans think our greatest days are behind us, oh, I just had a lightbulb moment. I know, here's a slogan, make America great again.

ZITNER: Yes, you know, and I got to believe that Joe Biden went into this here thinking, working class voters, huge in Nevada, huge in Michigan, huge in Wisconsin, he was going to speak to them. And these bills that Democrats passed, you hear Biden talking about them again and again as six figure jobs for people who don't even have a college degree. It was jobs, jobs, jobs for working class Americans.

But as your data showed, unemployment is low. Americans aren't so worried about jobs right now. Don't be surprised to see Biden shift to more than inflation message, maybe about drug prices and things like that.

SMERCONISH: I'd be derelict if I didn't quickly mentioned that your colleague is still imprisoned.

ZITNER: Thank you so much for that, Michael. Our colleague with Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, has been in a Russian prison now for about 250 days for committing journalism. We rely on journalists to tell us what's going on all around the world. Journalism is not a crime. The Russians have taken him while he was on a reporting trip and kept him in jail for about eight months now.

We hope that your audience helps us keep the pressure on the American government and the Russian government to free Evan Gershkovich and bring him home and help all reporters keep us informed about what's going on around the world.

SMERCONISH: Thank you, Aaron. That was excellent. I really appreciate it.

ZITNER: Hey, thank you for having me. And thank you for remembering Evan, Michael.

SMERCONISH: OK. Gang, I want to know what you think now. Go to smerconish.com, straight forward, agree or disagree. If people work hard, they are likely to get ahead in America. I can't wait to give you some of the result at the end of the hour.

Social media reaction. Katherine (ph), what do we have? Just one I think that we have time for. Folks want the economy better than the present, no matter its current state. Polls reflect that fact. In other words, Jay, your point is we always want it to be better than it is right now.

I agree with that. I mean, that seems like it's human intuition. But -- and I'm not here to sell you on the fact that everything's going great. I think and I had great support from our staff in preparing today's commentary, we gave you a nice balanced view. But on balance, you know, more favorable than unfavorable.

A lot of cherry picking goes on in this kind of a discussion. We didn't do any of that. And if it's the economy stupid, you think that Biden's numbers would be much higher than they are. I think perception has a lot to do with it. Keep voting.

Up ahead, if you hold a presidential debate, will they come? I'll ask Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair of the debate committee, which just released the 2024 schedule, what he thinks. And the New York Times broke the story that Israel had intelligence warnings of Hamas's October 7 attack more than a year before it took place. Was this a failure of imagination, intelligence, or something else? Richard Clarke, who tried in vain to warn the Bush administration about Al- Qaeda, including literally one week before 9/11 is here to discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:28]

SMERCONISH: Was Israel's failure to heed a warning about Hamas attack a failure of imagination, a failure of intelligence or something even worse? This week, the "New York Times" reported that more than a year before the Hamas brutal October 7 attack, Israeli officials obtained a 40 page document describing the terror group's battle plan. According to the "Times," Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan finding it, quote, "aspirational," assessing that it would be too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

Additionally, in the days right before the attack, the U.S. intelligence community produced at least two assessments, warning the Biden administration of an increased risk for Palestinian Israeli conflict based in part on intelligence from Israel. As soon as I read the report, I thought of Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism adviser for George W. Bush. He famously wrote a January 2001 memo warning National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about the threat posed by Al-Qaeda. And he reiterated his concerns just one week before the World Trade Center attack warning of the possibility of hundreds of American deaths. The 9/11 commission report made this point crystal clear.

Here's what they wrote, "The most important failure was one of the imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger from Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda was not a major topic for policy debate among the public, the media or even in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 presidential campaign. Al-Qaeda's new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U.S. governmental institutions that they were not well designed to meet.

[09:20:05]

Though top officials all told us that they understood the danger, we believe there was uncertainty among them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat the United States had lived with for decades or it was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond and yet experienced. As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer, long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the government had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question is Al-Qaeda a big deal? A week later came the answer."

Richard Clarke joins me now. He advised three U.S. presidents, spent 10 years as the chair of the Middle East Institute. He's the author of 10 books, including "The Fifth Domain, Defending Our Country, Our Companies and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats."

Richard Clarke, great to see you again. Who was Cassandra? And what does she have to do with any of this?

RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNTERTERRORISM ADVISER: So Michael, Cassandra, in Greek mythology, was the woman who was cursed by the gods to accurately see the future. But the curse was that no one would believe her. And these Israeli intelligence officers reported by the "New York Times," strike me as another, yet another set of Cassandras. My colleague, R.P. Eddy and I did an analysis of dozens of cases like this. And this happens all the time, not just in war and intelligence, it happens in the economy, happens in engineering.

In every field, there are Cassandras. Experts, recognized experts, data driven, who make accurate predictions, and are ignored.

SMERCONISH: In a case like this to a layperson like me, on the sidelines, I say, my God, a 40 page report that spelled it out. How in the world couldn't they have paid attention to it? Is the reality that there are so many threats of all kinds constantly coming in that it just makes it impossible to distinguish one from the other?

CLARKE: No, I don't think that's the case. I think the problem here is that the Israelis didn't have a system for dealing with warning. We proposed a system in the book warnings. We proposed a system for evaluating threats, and placing hedged bets. And as the threat grew closer, if the evidence grew stronger, you increase the hedge.

That wasn't done in Israel. And unfortunately, it wasn't done in the case of 9/11. It wasn't a failure of imagination, it was the failure of management.

SMERCONISH: Well, in the case of 9/11, and the Commission, as I referenced really like page one, after the executive summary said it was a failure of imagination. I don't know that you can say that in the Israeli case, it was a failure of imagination because the 40 page report was very real. It wasn't something that defied logic, they actually had data that suggested this might happen.

CLARKE: Yes, they did. And we did too, prior to 9/11. Not specifically the attacks that occurred. But a large, catastrophic terrorist attack in the United States was something that we anticipated. It wasn't a failure of imagination.

In the book, we looked at why this occurs, and we found a couple of biases. Actually, we found several biases. And two that are particularly relevant in the Israeli case are, one, the warning was outlandish. And two, and this is the most important, it was warning of something that had never happened before. We call it first occurrence syndrome.

If something has never happened before, even though all the evidence looks good, decision makers will routinely reject it. Because in the back of their mind, they're thinking, well, that's never happened. Terrorists flying over the wall in hang gliders to land and shoot up kibbutz had never happened. It sounded like something of a Hollywood movie. So a system for warning would have caught that and evaluated it, looked at the evidence and escalated the decision making and hedged by making preparations.

SMERCONISH: I'm so glad you brought this up. Because on the issue of, well, that's never happened before, we really need to think outside the box. I had heard about and then it was written about just a year ago, something that the Bush administration did in the immediate aftermath of September 11, the WRAP. I'm going to put on the screen something that I want to read from the WRAP because they broke this story.

Here it is, "20 years ago, just a few weeks after the 9/11 tragedy, a group of elite Hollywood figures and a handful of top U.S. Army brass met for a clandestine summit straight out of a Michael Creighton novel. A lot of what transpired that night is still top secret, but this much we do know, one evening in October of 2001, just weeks after Al-Qaeda terrorist took down the Twin Towers in Manhattan and maimed the Pentagon, a group of about 30 Hollywood top creatives, A-listers like oh like Oliver Stone, "Law and Order" producer Dick Wolf, "Seven" director David Fincher, "NYPD" David Milch and the late John Singleton to name a few, were quietly invited to mingle with high level members of the U.S. military."

[09:25:22]

The point was, Richard Clarke, to brainstorm about what heretofore would have been far out scenarios. For all I know you were involved in that endeavor, but what reaction do you have to it?

CLARKE: Hollywood usually gets it right in advance. If you look at the Hollywood thrillers of 10 and 20 years ago, what were they worried about? Artificial Intelligence taking over. Meteorites -- large meteorites striking the earth, a pandemic, wiping out 1000s of people in the United States. Gee, Michael, those are still the headlines, aren't they? And why were they --

SMERCONISH: Well, I remember -- Richard, I remember -- if I can throw this into the mix, I remember Admiral John Poindexter came up with this idea to have a futures trading market and like the media scowled, and they said, this is outrageous that there would actually be anticipatory wagering by academics and by think tank individuals to predict what might happen. I'm sorry, I interrupted you, but I -- that just popped into my head.

CLARKE: Well, that's one way, you know, it's worth trying. The key here is to have a system, to have someone in the United States government at the highest levels who has access to the highest levels, who is in charge of warning, who's scanning the horizon, looking for the threats, looking for the Cassandra's, who are being ignored, looking for the evidence, and then, this is key, following the evidence as it comes in. And when the evidence crosses a certain threshold, start getting prepared.

SMERCONISH: And I guess it remains to be seen whether this 40 page report or word of it got to the highest level of the Israeli government and military. Quick reaction from you on that.

CLARKE: I bet it didn't. It sounds from the "New York Times" reporting like it got stopped at mid-levels. That's why you need a system to find the Cassandra's before the disasters.

SMERCONISH: Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it as always.

CLARKE: Thank you, Michael.

SMERCONISH: Social media reaction. From the world of X, what do we have, Katherine? It can't be a failure of imagination if they saw details of the attack in black and white a year before it happened. Yes, Joe Abrams, I think you're -- and I said that to Richard Clarke. How about the idea that a month after September 11, there was word of this at the time, but what allowed the WRAP to finally write about it is that the individual who was responsible for it came forward and said, like, who -- hears who was in the room, Oliver Stone, you know, among others was in the room.

I kind of like the willingness. It also shows I think just how flat footed we were caught on September 11, that we were willing to engage that kind of thinking outside the box. OK. I want to remind you, go to smerconish.com, answer today's poll question. Agree or disagree, if people work hard, they are likely to get ahead in America.

Up next, the 2024 presidential debates are set at least in terms of dates and places. But when it comes to format, there's been some, well, debate about aspects including whether moderators take up too much time. I'm going to ask debate committee co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf about that and more. Also a reminder if you subscribe to my free daily newsletter, you get exclusive editorial cartoons from Legends every week like this commentary, check that out, from Rob Rogers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [09:33:06]

SMERCONISH: The 2024 presidential debates have been announced. But will the candidates show up?

This week 4.7 million viewers tuned in for the unusual debate on Fox News between California Governor Gavin Newsom, who isn't even running, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been losing ground in the polls to Nikki Haley. Newsom cheekily stated at the outset that neither of them will be the nominee for their party in 2024.

But what will happen debate wise when the actual nominees are determined? Per the Commission on Presidential Debates, whose co-chair you're about to hear from, the first debate will be next September 16 at Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas. The vice-presidential debate September 25, Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

The second presidential debate October 1st, Virginia State University, Petersburg, Virginia, that's, by the way, the first historically Black college or university to host a general election presidential debate. And the third and -- quote -- "likely final presidential debate" will be October 9 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

There's a 15 percent threshold polling minimum for candidates to get on the stage, which this year could get interesting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. currently polling above that and No Labels continuing to get on various state ballots. Although we have grown accustomed to the tradition, there's actually no requirement to hold these debates.

After Richard Nixon famously is said to have lost the 1960 election due to the televised debates against John F. Kennedy, he declined to participate in either of his future runs. And there wasn't another until 1976 when President Gerald Ford faced off against Jimmy Carter.

The Commission on Presidential Debates was established in 1987, has sponsored every debate since that year. It also provides technical assistance to emerging democracies and others interested in establishing debate traditions in their countries. I spoke with Commission co-chair and former chairman of the Republican National Committee Frank Fahrenkopf.

[09:35:06]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: Mr. Chairman, welcome back. Nice to have you here. As I understand it, neither party thus far has agreed to participate. So, I guess the first questions is if you build it, will they come?

FRANK FAHRENKOPF, CO-CHAIR, COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: Well, when you say party, we have nothing to do with the party. We have no connection with the RNC or the DNC or the Green Party or the libertarians. Those two parties, I just mentioned, will probably have ballot access if they decide to run candidates.

We deal with only those people who are nominees and who meet the constitutional requirements. Now, if we assume just for a moment -- just for a moment, because we got a long way to go, get a year yet, if President Biden was the Democratic nominee and Mr. Trump becomes -- or former President Trump becomes the nominee of the Republican Party, we won't have any contact with them until we're way down the road until we could see who meets the constitutional requirements. So, it's not unusual a year out to not have anyone agree they are going to participate on the Commission of Presidential Debates in the fall of 2024.

SMERCONISH: I think the citizenry has come to expect that, of course, there will be presidential debates. But correct me if I'm wrong in the modern era, we went, what, 16 years where there were no presidential debates.

FAHRENKOPF: That's correct. I mean, everyone thinks back to and remembers the Kennedy and Nixon debates which was in 1960, but then we went three cycles without ever having them again until we got to the general election between then President Ford and Jimmy Carter that time because you can't force -- there's no law saying that a presidential candidate has to debate with anybody. And it turned them down.

I think, you will remember, Michael, in 1980, we had a third-party candidate named John Anderson who was invited by the League of Women Voters to accept it --

SMERCONISH: Of course.

FAHRENKOPF: -- but President Carter would not go if he was involved in the debate.

SMERCONISH: In this age of polarization, where everybody seems to just suit up in a red or blue jersey, do the debates even matter?

FAHRENKOPF: I think -- I think they do. And what we have done year after year when we have gone through this, I think, I told you one time that we have completed 33 of these presidential and vice- presidential general election debates, starting in 1988. But we always go back after each cycle and ask voters what the effect was. Was the debate important to them? Was it a factor in how they voted?

And consistently, it's been about 60 to 65 percent of the public that says the debates are a factor in how they vote. It's not the only factor, it's not perhaps the most important factor, but it is something that's in the mix as to how they are going to decide to go to the polls or mail in their ballot under the modern world we live in today and who they're going to vote for.

So, yes, I think there are -- it's a significant contribution to what I feel is expanding democracy and trying to get people interested in the election and knowing where the candidates stand on the issues that are important to them.

SMERCONISH: I know that there's often a lot of discussion, some would say controversy about the moderators -- the moderators becoming too much of an influence. "The Wall Street Journal" editorial page recently gave you and your cohorts at the Commission on Presidential Debates some advice. I'm going to put it up on the screen and read it to the audience.

The unstable elements of 2024 pose a risk that the candidates might never meet on stage. But they also offer a chance to break the commission's Beltway formula to try something new. How about a debate with no moderators, only a time clock until each contender's microphone shuts off?

What does Frank Fahrenkopf, the co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, think about that?

FAHRENKOPF: Well, you know, we have examined after each cycle what we have done, how we have done it, whether we can improve it. We have made major, major changes over the years. It used to be that there was a moderator and three reporters who were there asking questions. But the deficiency there was there was no ability for any of them to dig down if the answers were not given to the questions that were asked.

We then changed -- it was at Michigan State, I believe, when Jim Lehrer -- we said, let's do this. Half of the debate with the regular panel, one-half of the debate with just a single moderator, Jim Lehrer. And it was so successful we decided that that's how we were going to continue in the future. There would only be one moderator.

Then we made significant changes in how we conducted it. At the University of Denver when Governor Romney was running against President Obama and what we did is we divided the 90 minutes into 15- minute segments, and the moderator would say about a week before what each of the six segments would cover.

[09:40:07]

We didn't give the questions but in other words would say, one section will be on education, one on taxation, one on defense. And then he would have -- or she, the moderators, would have the ability to drill down for 15 minutes to get more specific statements from the candidates other than just something they may be -- in their TV spots. And we think it worked. We think it has been more consistent.

Plus, we're not starting to see, when we made that change, there's actual debate, where they talk to each other. For years there was no interplay at all.

SMERCONISH: Mr. Chairman, finally, it's been a long time since there was a third-party candidate on that stage. There's a lot of activity this year.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thus far, seems to have a sufficient number to maybe get to the 15 percent. Who knows what No Labels will do. Ultimately, there are other candidates. I don't want to exclude anybody. But what is the requirement for a third-party candidate, or any candidate, to get on that stage?

FAHRENKOPF: Requirements are pretty simple to say but hard to accomplish. You have got to be born in the United States, be 35 years of age, but the problem that most people have with third-party is you got to be on enough state ballots to conceivably get to 270 electoral votes. That's the real difficult one.

Now, there's also the requirement that about a week before each debate, you must be at least 15 percent in the polls. Some people will make it, I think, this time. They have made it in the past. The problem is always the 270 electoral votes.

SMERCONISH: OK. So, you've got to have 15 percent and be on enough states to reach 270. One without the other doesn't cut it.

FAHRENKOPF: Doesn't do it, nope.

SMERCONISH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

FAHRENKOPF: Thank you, Michael.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: Checking in on your social media comments. This from the world of X, formerly known as Twitter. What do we have?

Ask yourself this, big Mike, would Biden be willing to do a one-on-one debate with Trump with someone like Sean Hannity being the moderator? Or is your side chicken?

First of all, Chris Conservative, it's not my side. I don't have a side. OK?

Here's the answer to your question. I really appreciated watching DeSantis and Newsom together this week. Yes, on Fox. And it reaffirms something that I believed since the 2016 cycle. I have got to say this quickly, but it's really important to me.

CNN asked me to go to the Reagan Library in the 2016 cycle just to be one of the, you know, commentators talking about that debate. It was the year that there were so many candidates that they had a junior varsity squad and two debates. Those debates with 10 people, eight people, even six people are ridiculous. There's no substance offered. You can't offer substance in 90 seconds.

We ought to imitate March madness. You know, the NCAA brackets? Let everybody go one-on-one. Not as an elimination round, per se, but you really get to see these individuals and learn.

Who doesn't want to see right now Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis? No disrespect, but without Vivek Ramaswamy or Chris Christie, because they are not going anywhere. Give us more of that and do it throughout the whole process.

You know who won't allow us to do that? The parties because they want to maintain control of it. But we ought to have more of what we just had the other night. That's my view and I've long believed it.

Still to come, more of your best and worst social media comments. And I want to remind you, please, answer today's poll question at Smerconish.com. Agree or disagree, if people work hard, they are likely to get ahead in America.

While you're voting, sign up for my free daily newsletter. You'll love it. And you'll get the work of Jack Ohman, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, who sketched this this week. Love it.

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[09:48:07]

SMERCONISH: Here's a quick look at social media reaction to today's program thus far. Little tongue tied but here it comes.

Many low-income people work two to three jobs just to make ends meet. Hard work is not enough. They need access to asset-building strategies that build and sustain wealth, says Martha.

Martha, I was having a conversation with a colleague earlier today on the poll question, which is if you work hard, are you going to get ahead necessarily? A younger me would have said, absolutely, anybody who works hard gets ahead in this country. And I largely still believe that. But the older I get, the more I also believe that luck has something to do with it.

I know some people who work awfully, awfully hard and don't seem to get ahead. And I know some others who frankly haven't worked hard and lightning seems to strike them. I probably also should have mentioned in the opening commentary, the $33 trillion debt that the country faces. The people at the Peterson Foundation will be thrilled that I mentioned it because that doesn't get enough conversation. And those, you know, younger Americans who don't feel so robust about our future probably aren't even thinking about the bill that will eventually have to be paid for the debt and for the deficit.

Another quick reaction if I have got time and I think that I do. What do we have?

People complain about the economy and then buy all kinds of expensive stuff. Well, CJ, I said to Aaron Zitner from the "Wall Street Journal" -- you may remember the question I said to him. If everybody -- and I don't mean literally everybody but damn near everybody seems to have a flat screen and, you know, an iPhone or some other cell phone of choice.

Like, do we ever reach a point in this country where you just can't keep going with all of that prosperity? I don't know. That's a question for the economists.

One more, I think I have got time. I like this. This is my favorite part of the show.

For debates, give each candidate 10 uninterrupted minutes to address determined topics. You know, former governor -- former Philly mayor, former head of the DNC Ed Rendell loves telling a story about a gubernatorial debate in which he participated that was very similar to that.

[09:50:06]

And he said it was really taxing because anybody -- I mean, I could answer a question here on any subject for 90 seconds. Ninety seconds is nothing but make them go deep and then you'll really separate the -- what do they say? Wheat from the chaff.

OK. Still to come, the final results of today's poll question at Smerconish.com. Please go and vote. Agree or disagree, if people work hard, they are likely to get ahead in America. Sign up for the free daily newsletter when you're there. You will get exclusive content from award-winning cartoonists. How about this from Steve Breen? That says a lot.

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[09:55:12]

SMERCONISH: OK. So, there's the result thus far of the poll question. Wow, 69 percent. Hey, you know what's interesting about that? Sixty- nine percent of those who have voted so far, with more than 30,000, if people work hard they're likely to get ahead in America, that is like exactly where "The Wall Street Journal" was two years ago. And the reason that this all caught my eye is because that number has been halved in their survey. So, we're more in line with what the "Journal" found two years ago.

Quickly, one more social media if I can react to it. What do we have?

Disagree. The American dream is a mirage. Working hard won't get you there. Luck, generational wealth, and good health are essential.

I think all of those things are true. You know what is interesting? There is a nostalgia among many for the way things were 50 years ago and this is, by the way, wherein the political ramifications come in. Among many, I will say Whites, there is a nostalgia for where the country was 50 years ago. Not so much among people of color. And according to the "Journal" survey not so much among women either.

Keep voting. Subscribe to the newsletter. See you.

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