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Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics - Episode 96: Frank Luntz: The World's Most Prolific Pollster
Episode Overview In this episode, hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart engage with Frank Luntz, a renowned pollster and political consultant in the U.S. The discussion covers Luntz's unique approach to polling, political messaging, and the current state of American politics, particularly focusing on the upcoming elections featuring Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Key Themes and Discussions
Frank Luntz's Background
- Career Overview: Luntz is recognized for his broad polling experience across political spectrums, having worked with both Democrats and Republicans.
- Political Views: Initially identified as a Republican, Luntz's views have evolved, leading to a more centrist perspective over time.
The Role of Polling
- Polling vs. Messaging: Luntz emphasizes that effective political communication hinges more on language and messaging than on polling numbers alone. He believes language should connect with people's emotions.
- Examples of Messaging:
- “Death Tax” vs. “Estate Tax”: Luntz notes that framing issues in a relatable way can significantly impact public perception and policy acceptance.
- “Sparkling” vs. “Carbonation”: He illustrates how the choice of words can alter the perception of products, likening it to political messaging.
Current Political Landscape
- Critique of Kamala Harris: Luntz expresses skepticism about Harris's effectiveness as Vice President, particularly regarding issues like immigration. He suggests that she must acknowledge problems to gain voters’ trust.
- Trump's Appeal: Luntz highlights that Trump’s straightforward communication resonates with many voters, despite his controversial persona. He argues that Trump's rally-style speaks to a demographic that feels ignored by traditional politicians.
Comparison of Political Campaign Strategies
- Keir Starmer vs. Tony Blair: Luntz contrasts Starmer's campaign style with Blair’s, suggesting that Starmer’s less assertive strategy lacks the vision and boldness of Blair's successful campaigns.
- No Mistake Strategy: He critiques Starmer's cautious approach during his lead in polls, suggesting that he missed an opportunity to present a strong vision for the future.
The Future of American Politics
- Independent Voters: Luntz stresses the importance of addressing the concerns of independent voters, who feel disillusioned by both parties. To win them over, candidates must communicate on economic issues that resonate with everyday Americans.
- Oprah Winfrey's Influence: Luntz mentions Oprah as a powerful communicator who connects with audiences on a deeper emotional level, suggesting that political figures could learn from her approach.
Luntz's Personal Insights
- Reflection on Health: Throughout the conversation, Luntz shares personal reflections on health challenges and how they have shaped his understanding of life and politics. His experiences have instilled a sense of urgency in his work to bridge divides in society.
Key Takeaways
- Language Matters: The choice of words and how they are framed can significantly influence political perception and public opinion.
- Understanding Voter Sentiment: Engaging with voters through focus groups provides valuable insights into their feelings and motivations.
- Need for Authentic Communication: Politicians who authentically connect with voters on issues that matter to them are more likely to earn their support.
- Evolving Political Ideologies: Luntz’s journey reflects the shifting landscape of American politics, with an increasing emphasis on centrist approaches amidst extreme polarization.
Conclusion This episode delves deep into the intricacies of political messaging, the importance of understanding voter psychology, and the current climate in American politics. Frank Luntz’s experiences and insights provide a compelling narrative on how communication shapes political success and public trust.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. Sign up to The Rest is Politics. Plus, to enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chatroom and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.
0:20Welcome to The Rest Is Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we're with a gentleman by the name of Frank Luntz. and lots of Americans will know Frank Luntz, lots of Brits will, because there are a lot of pollsters in the world, but there aren't quite as many pollsters who don't just do polling, but they talk about polling an awful lot as well. And Frank is somebody that I've known for quite a few years. And what also makes him interesting is that he kind of pretty much will poll for anybody. This is a guy who's worked for Labour politicians, for Tory politicians, he's worked for Democrats, he's worked for Republicans.
0:54But they're all decent people. And that's because my past, I was more of a Republican. I know. But the people that I want to help, such as your previous employer, these are people who are visionary, people who have integrity. Yeah. And to me, the character of the individual is actually just as important. Right. Well, you jumped in there, Frank, just as I was about to say that you also worked at one point for President Donald J. Trump. Never. Never. Never worked for him? Never worked for him. He doesn't like me. I don't like him. That's what you advised them at one point. We've been in the same place.
1:27Well, that's because you read this stuff in the press. Okay. And this is one of the greatest challenges that both you and I have, is that the things that we sometimes recommend is not what the press reports. Even when they're in the room, even when we see actually what's happening, we then read it and it doesn't have any semblance to reality, which is so frustrating. Frank, can I come in and just take us back to the young Frank Luntz? So you grew up in Connecticut, not very far from where I teach at Yale. You went to university in the States. You then went to Oxford. I hated every minute of it.
2:00And this is what is so strange is that I'm the biggest Anglophile you will ever meet. I'm the strongest with a special relationship. I love the British people. I love Great Britain. I appreciate what you all have done for democracy and economic freedom. And I hated Oxford every day. Oh, why? And the people who are now running or were running your country until a few months ago were awful to me. And Boris Johnson was okay. But everyone else - You're not really allowed to say that on this podcast. I'll forgive you. Yes. But why I wanted to do this podcast, Alistair, quite frankly, is because of you.
2:37I wanted to sit next to you. I wanted to engage you because you are so effing amazing. You had the best campaign in modern Western history. You had the best team. And I know that you guys take shots at each other in private. I know that you guys aren't necessarily allies, but you were the best there was and you work for the best candidate. And I am jealous that I never got the chance to do that. Ronald Reagan was amazing. Margaret Thatcher was awesome. But the single best campaign was Tony Blair in 1997. And you got to do it and you did it so well. And then you did it again in 2001. You did it again in 2005.
3:19And the BBC, thank God for the BBC, they brought me in to see this. That's how I got to meet Tony for the first time. And I'm in awe of your language and your communication. I'm in awe of your willingness to listen and learn from the voters and reach them on their level while still not compromising your principles. I know that sometimes you are on the left, sometimes you're on the right, but it didn't really matter you and Philip Gould, who's no longer with us, and Peter Mandelson, of course, Jonathan Powell, and the greatest individual of them all, Tony Blair. What you did as a group is awesome.
3:57It's wonderful, wonderful to hear this bromance going on. Frank, tell me a little bit about what you think honestly about Keir Starmer's campaign and whether you think it measures up to the way that Blair ran a political campaign? Not in the least. Starmer was a functionary. He was an apparatchik. He's perfectly fine. I have nothing negative to say about him. You just did. But I have nothing particularly positive to say about him either. Blair came in with a mission. He came in with a purpose. I've got all the headlines of the newspapers from the day after and the day after that. And it was, we're going to change the UK.
4:35And he did it. He actually followed through in it. And I apologize if I'm talking too loud or too emotional, but it was exactly a casebook study in telling people what you're for, winning the election based on what you're for, and then following through based on what you're for. He did all of it. And the truth is, I don't see him as being left wing. And this is the thing that I don't understand because Blair today keeps talking about labor. He keeps talking about the left. I know you want to jump in, but I want to emphasize that the things that Blair has stood for and what he has said are perfectly centrist that moderate Tories can support.
5:16And the problem in American politics and British politics is that we've gone to the extremes and that we've lost the center. We've lost the confidence. Let's take as Red your immense admiration for Tony Blair and Alistair. Can we just come back again to Keir Starmer? So Keir Starmer didn't run that kind of campaign. He ran a campaign which Alistair and I would call a Ming-Va's strategy. He tried to say as little as possible about what his policies would be. He was 20 points in the lead. He made it across the line, 33 % of the vote, but one of the biggest parliamentary majorities ever because he positioned his vote exactly where it needed to be.
5:50But I've really struggled in the last few weeks to see any headlines, to see any vision. But that's the point. He ran a campaign of no mistakes. That would be the language that I would use. And he did not use that lead because he should have given some of that up. He should have accepted that I'm going to be more specific. I'm going to lose a few seats, but I'm going to make fundamental change in the UK and return it to whatever values he wants to focus on. Clearly, the conservatives had failed. Clearly, the conservatives had been given, what, 14 years to get it right, and they didn't. And this was his chance to say, this is what I'm going to do with education.
6:25This is what I'm going to do with taxes. This is what I'm going to do with regulations. This is what I'm going to do with British society. And if you like it, vote for us. If you don't, don't. He had such a lead that he could have been explicit, and that would have given him more momentum to make more change. But he chose not to. And this no mistake strategy, you can't do it when the public is so angry, dismissive, they don't trust, there's no credibility on either side of the Atlantic. And this is why what you do, Alistair, and what I do is so difficult, because the public on both sides believe that we don't say what we mean, we don't mean what we say, and then we don't do what we say.
7:05What's the role of polling in modern campaigning? So Rory was here in Chicago earlier in the convention. I've been here for a bit longer. And you do meet an awful lot of people who just talk about polling all the time. Do you think that is one of the reasons why people have become cynical about politics? Who cares what the horse race is? What matters is what the horses are saying. I don't talk polling, even though I'm a pollster. I talk language and messaging. Is that the right word, the right phrase to connect to people? I'll give you a corporate example. Instead of carbonation, we realize that sparkling was a much more positive way to sell a soda.
7:43Carbonation is about chemicals. Sparkling is about how it makes you feel. The difference between gambling and gaming. Gambling is an addiction. Gaming is having fun. In politics, the estate tax is for rich people. The death tax is for dying. Give us some more examples of things that you've done in politics. four or five of the phrases that you've crafted and how they've worked. A couple other examples are the government takeover of healthcare, because that suggests something direct and something ominous versus government control. Government control is a negative. Government takeover is destroying healthcare, something that you want, need, and deserve.
8:23I had to figure out how you can get multiple bites at the same issue, expanding the communication, but ensuring that the quote still gets used. So I'll give you an example with healthcare. The choice and control you want, the affordability you need, the quality you deserve, delivered by the doctors and hospitals you trust. Even though that's incredibly long, that's what, 30, 35 words? It still makes it into every article because every point is essential. Choice and control are about policy. Affordability is about policy. Want, need, and deserve, and trust are attributes that we so strongly want.
8:59So I've tried to do this and I've tried in some ways to mirror what you did, Alistair, by focusing on the policies much less than the politics. If you focus on the policies, then it's substantial, then it's real, and the politics will take care of itself. And Frank, I guess the controversial point about this is that some of these campaigns that you're talking about, some of the language you're talking about, were Republican campaigns crushing Democratic initiatives. So, for example, inheritance tax in the UK is very central to the way in which we operate and fund things. And by branding it a death tax, you contributed to killing the possibility of serious estate duties in the United States.
9:42So, presumably, you also have to be confident personally that you agree politically with the policy because this language crafting is sort of weaponization of a particular ideology, isn't it? No, I think of it as the explanation of an ideology, which is what Tony Blair was so good at. And David Cameron as well. Because in the end, it's not just about policy. It's even how the message is delivered. I did not know who David, he went to Oxford when I was there. I did not know him. Okay, I'm going to admit something that I've never admitted publicly before. The BBC is going to go batshit crazy when they hear me say this.
10:16I was doing focus groups for the BBC since about 1990. and it was 2005 or 2006. It was after Blair had won the third time and the conservatives needed a new leader. And I had not watched my videos. I've been given videos of David Davis. I've been given videos of Ken Clark, of a whole bunch of different politicians, Liam Fox. These are all people seeking the leadership. I didn't watch them. Oh my God. No, actually, I know you're making fun of me, but this is serious. I'm supposed to have looked at the videos so I would know what to ask of my focus group. But I was flying over from the States. My flight was four and a half hours late.
10:59I get to the facility. I haven't seen anything. And the reporters are standing right in front of me. So I can't watch the videos to acknowledge that I haven't done my homework. So we start the focus groups. We're running them. And of course, Cameron delivers a, and I only showed about five minutes of it, a speech with no notes, no teleprompter, just completely off the cuff, taking Tony Blair's easy style and making it even easier. And I'm watching him as the group is, and I'm in awe. And the group is in awe. Were they really with that? Just because he stood up and spoke my head? Because he could complete a sentence without having to read anything.
11:38Yeah, but we all do that every day when we're doing it now. Yes. Well, unfortunately, a lot of politicians cannot do that. And he excelled at it. And he did it without ever criticizing Tony Blair. And so our group is mixed of labor voters who had supported the conservatives, conservative voters who would consider voting labor, and then hardcore conservative voters. and Cameron was the only one who impressed everyone. And I'm being impressed because I'm not used to this in American politics. So we're all having this incredible reaction at the same time and the Cameron campaign. So it goes out on the air on Newsnight and I feel really sheepish about this because I should know what I'm talking about.
12:22And I'd never met him before. I did not know what he looked like. I knew nothing about him until I saw the video and they put it out and his people were watching it, copied it, got it into a DVD and slipped it under the doors of every single delegate to the party conference. That is what changed history. He at the time was polling second. So many people saw the news night segment, which they should have, and that's all legitimate, that they said, this is the guy we want to face the Labor Party at the next election. We interviewed David Davis recently. Who I like, by the way. I didn't know him then either.
13:00And Liam Fox never forgave me for that. I don't know if you know this, but he was angry at me for years, thinking it was a setup. David Davis knew what I had done, but he never held it against me because he knew that I didn't know who these people were. He made the point when Rory and I chatted to him that he does believe that there were lots of reasons why he didn't win, but that that speech by Cameron was genuinely a moment where a single speech had a massive impact upon the outcome. You talk a lot about language and if you like the crafting of words. One of the reasons I thought you had worked for Donald Trump is because I read a story, and again, it may just be complete nonsense, that you had been trying to advise him not to talk about building a wall.
13:40Is that not true? Yes, that is true. He invited me to fly an Air Force One. So I'd seen him, let's say, eight times. He knew who I was. I was on a first-name basis with him. I'm the one who asked him the question about John McCain. I'm the one who he blamed for that whole thing about John McCain. He's not a war hero. I like the guys who weren't captured. McCain was captured. The most offensive thing that any presidential candidate has ever said. And that's my interview. And he blamed me for that. He claimed that I was seeking to get a job with him, which wasn't true. Why is he asking you on the plane?
14:13Because he knew that I knew politics. He knew that I knew messaging. So I figured. You also know that you're a strategist and a pollster and an advisor. I mean, if he'd have phoned me and said, would you come and have a chat about his stuff? I'd have said, well, I'm not going to come and help you. That's for sure. I had a chat with Tony Blair. Does that make me a Tony Blair advisor? Well, it kind of does. I've had chats with Tony Blair. It does. I had, yeah, come on. No, but you have worked with Tony Blair. After he was prime minister. Yeah. After he was prime minister. Okay, okay. For his foundation.
14:41Do you see yourself as being an apolitical figure? A pollster has to be objective, and a pollster has to be accurate. Both of them are essential to our success. But Philip Gould did that, but he was utterly partisan for us. Yes, has not. That's not you. That's not been my role. My role is to explain the American people to the American people. So I work for Fox News for 10 years. I work for ABC for five years, CBS for four years. I'm doing a lot of stuff now with CNBC, Squawk Box, and with CNN. In Britain, we're taping this in the morning. I'm going to be on Newsnight tonight explaining America to British audiences.
15:20I've kept my relationship with them. You're talking to more people here than you will there, by the way, Frank. I absolutely love it. Go ahead. The anti-the greatest institution. No, I love the BBC. I'm a defender of the BBC. I am a defender of the BBC. I am. British Airways is an institution. The BBC is an institution. These are things that I completely respect. And it makes me so sad and so pained that someone of significance like yourself would be casting stones at the British Broadcasting Company. I'm not. I'm just telling you, as a matter of fact, more people this year. My father got his news.
15:54Hold on. Hold on. I got to pay respect to my dad. My dad was in World War II in the Korean War, and he used to listen to the BBC. I get hired by them to do work when Mark Thompson was in charge. And my father was horrified that his son would actually have any impact on this great global institution that when he went over to Britain, he actually said to them, don't hire him. He doesn't take you guys seriously enough. I'm like, dad, help me get the job. Don't get me fired. But no, I'm a big, I'm still a big fan. Yeah, so am I. So you worked for Newt Gingrich. You worked with Rudy Giuliani. Would I be right to saying at least in the 90s, you were broadly speaking a Republican?
16:35Your sympathies were pretty conservative. Your roommate was a Republican. Tell us a little bit about that and what was the nature of your Republican beliefs and sympathies in the 90s? It was absolutely that was the case. And in 1992, I worked for Ross Perot. So Republicans thought I was a traitor. In 1993, I worked for Rudy Giuliani when he was normal, when he was arguably one of the greatest mayors of all time. And I stay with him through 2001 through September 11th. In 94, I did the contract with America, which is my claim to fame. That's the document that I believe every party should do because it was a commitment.
17:12It wasn't just a platform or an agenda. It was an actual commitment to get this stuff up for a vote. And if we don't deliver it, we won't run again. We want you to hold us accountable. And the problem is we don't do that stuff anymore. Our manifestos, our agendas have no real meaning, no integrity. I see that Labour's talking about tax increases, which they promised not to do, at least on the certain items. And the contract, it's just politics has not been the same. So in the 1990s, I absolutely was partisan. I went to work for Fox News. Sorry, to explain to British listeners, that was very much associated with Newt Gingrich at the time.
17:50Yes, but the issue is Newt Gingrich has a certain image. And I want to emphasize that this was an effort beyond him, signed by all but three candidates running on the Republican Party for Congress. All but three signed that document. That is unheard of in modern political history. And it made a difference. Republicans won the majority for the first time in 40 years. So I still think that what you all did for Blair was more significant, Alistair. But the contract with America, and I know it's been demonized. They call it the contract on America. The idea that every point had legislation. Every point was articulated, the good and the bad, and that they kept to it and they got it up for a vote in every case.
18:40Clinton signed some of them into law. That's the kind of campaign that labor, that Starmer should have run this time. He had the support. He knew he was going to win by a wide margin. and the fact that he wasn't so overt and so explicit is very disappointing. Frank, still trying to get to the sense, as you said, through the 90s, you were broadly speaking Republican in your sympathies. And tell us a little bit about that and how you arrived at that worldview and what it meant to you to be more on the right than the left in the 90s. And also, I'd like to know where you are now. One of you is taking me backward, which I know the public doesn't want to do.
19:16one of you is having me comment on what's going on now which the public does want i don't like talking about myself i don't like going back to that stuff because that's not helpful to the viewer to understand where politics are right now well it's because it shows people change we are damaged we are broken and i'm afraid that this election is going to cause even more pain over the next what is it 75 days and yes i have changed my mind has been open because of the focus groups not the quantitative polling. I sit down, I do sessions twice a week now, every week, talking to everyone. I've probably done more focus groups than any living human being moderated them.
19:56And I have the scars to prove it. I used to yell in these focus groups because I'd say to me, answer, tell me the truth. You're telling me what you want Americans to hear. I want to know what you really think. I'm trying not to slam the table because that'll cause you all to have a headache. But that's what I used to do. I believe that politics is a participatory sport and you have to engage people to understand how they think and how they feel. So what is it that they have been saying that has changed your view about your politics? I became a mentor and I started to mentor African-Americans, people who don't have the same opportunities that I've had.
20:32And I suddenly realized that you can't ask someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they don't have boots, that you can't expect people to succeed even in this great open American society if they don't have the building blocks to get there. I'm fortunate that I had two parents that love me and two parents that educated me and two parents that stayed involved in my life, and not everyone has that. And so it made me suddenly understand that maybe we had to do more to help. Maybe we had to do more to teach. And it's why education is my number one issue. I just yesterday spoke at the Democratic National Convention at an outside meeting with the leader of the American Federation of Teachers.
21:14She's the top union official. I've never been pro-union. I'll give you another example. I have been helping out the firefighters union because I think they represent the most incredible individuals. I have worked with the steel manufacturers, both the union membership and the corporations. So I'm doing things I never expected to do. Is it fair to say that you've moved from right to somewhere in the center? I moved from right to just right of center. Yes, that is fair. And it's why I idolize and you keep pulling me away from it. And I'll keep plugging him again and again and again, because I think Tony Blair has moved.
21:49I don't think he's the same guy that he was in 1997. And I am so sorry that I never got the chance to be a part of your team. And you're a maestro when it comes to language. But I still believe that what you offered and what you provided, and those were 10 awesome years. And that's why I wanted to do this podcast, because I know how many people listen to it. And I know that it is so British to downgrade the people around you. It's so British to attack your leaders with the exception of the queen. I'm a monarchist, so I don't know what that makes me in terms of right wing. Do you think you'd been a monarchist a few centuries ago?
22:29I would have been killed a few centuries ago. I would have been the person they would have put up on some cross somewhere and just nailed me. And I'm lucky that I live in this time right now, because I would have been the first person they would have killed. Given what you just said about how you can't put yourself up by your bootstraps, unless you have boots. You've said that immediately after you said how proud you were about the contract with America, which is a 1994 document, partly crafted by the Heritage Foundation, partly coming out of one of Ronald Reagan's speeches. That's not true. The Heritage Foundation, just to correct you, because I was there, the Heritage Foundation had nothing to do with it.
23:06And that was a very different Heritage Foundation back then. That was the same heritage that crafted strategies and policies for Ronald Reagan. That is not the Heritage Foundation. Okay, well, let's not go down to Project 2025. Yes. Carry on, Rory. Which included significant cuts to welfare. So, do you have anxieties about what you did then? That's also not true. It had a work requirement to welfare. That's what it did. And in fact, more people found jobs after the welfare to work that, guess what? President Bill Clinton supported that legislation, put it, signed it into law. The act was vetoed by Clinton.
23:41He brought in a different act. Yes, the initial, and then Clinton took credit for it at the 1996 convention. He vetoed the initial legislation, made a few changes to it, welfare to work. Americans believe that you can be helped, but they want you to work for those benefits. It's actually one of the cases where the Democrats are weakest right now. They talk about assistance. They talk about programs. What the public wants is to make sure that no one goes hungry, that no one is homeless, that the people have a safety net, but they want them to work for that safety net. So the point Rory's getting at and I'm getting at is your politics has changed.
24:20There's no point in getting an argument about you know what you thought then vis-a-way what you thought now but it's we have a sense as Brits looking in from the outside that as you said earlier a lot of people have moved to the extremes and the extreme that we see most volubly and most visibly is the one that Trump represents but you've moved away from anywhere near that to a position now where you sound to me like a centrist, which is, by the way, not a bad thing to be. I don't want to be that guy that yells. I don't want to be the guy that finds division. I don't want to do negative ads and just attack people.
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24:55I want people to be held accountable. I want responsibility. I want integrity. But most importantly, I'm trying to promote the truth, not going back. And this is something that I realized in the Arab-Israeli conflict, that if you just talk about grievances, you will get nowhere. And that's one of the challenges that we face today. Israel focuses on October 7th, and they have every right to do so. The Palestinians focus on the consequences of Gaza. If we continue to look backward, we will never find agreement, and people will continue to die. Can I ask you very directly, what will you vote on November the 5th?
25:32I don't know. This only happened to me once before, which is 1992 when Ross Perot pulled out. And my mother asked me, I'm on the phone. I'm in Dallas. I've been working for parole. I'm heading home. I'm actually calling her to say, mom, it's okay. Can I come home for a couple of weeks? I have nowhere to go. I don't know where I'm going to live. And she says, who are you going to vote for? And I'm standing there and I can put myself in the same emotion right now. I'm standing at the phone booth and I got all choked up. And I said, mom, I got to call you back. I got to get my plane. And the reason was I was starting to cry because I had no one to vote for.
26:02This was such a big, I was such a geek. I was such a loser as a kid. I love politics. I love democracy. And I was really pathetic. And I couldn't wait to fight with people over it. And at that moment, I realized, oh my God, who the hell am I going to vote for? Bush broke his promise, unknown your taxes. And I didn't think that Clinton was appropriately serious about the issues. And he was left of where I was at the time. And now it's 32 years later, and I have the same challenge. Okay, let's go for our break. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other.
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28:00Because I have issues with both of them. I have issues where her positions are on the economy that are significant. Her whole slogan at this convention, what's the one word that she's been promoting? Freedom. It's the first time I've ever seen it. This is your kind of strategy, Alistair. Take language from the other side and make it your own. Redefine it, re-articulate it, and take their strongest point and then make it your own. Brilliant. But I'm not convinced that her definition of freedom is my definition. Are you persuadable? Could you find yourself in any circumstance when you voted for Trump?
28:34But it doesn't matter. Again, as a pollster, his tone, his demeanor is exactly what I hate in politics. You can't vote for him. I don't know how to, I don't know what to do here. I really don't. And the way that I get around that is to try to show how other Americans are feeling and thinking. And I'm really devoted to that. And I'm devoted to getting this right. Help us understand then that let's move off you onto other Americans. So there's a key group, I guess, of independent voters or swing voters who are going to be critical in determining whether Trump wins or Vice President Harris wins. What is it that at the moment is making them hesitate?
29:13When you talk to them, why are they not immediately coming in behind Kamala Harris? And what would she need to do to convince them? She was not a success as vice president. She did little of nothing. She was given one responsibility. And they're arguing over exactly how much she got of that. But Biden did put her at least nominally in charge of immigration. And that's not been a success. So these are the doubts. But Rory's question was, what can she do to win these people over? To acknowledge the doubts and then give the answer. To acknowledge that the border is not a success. If you tell people that the border is safe, they're going to say, I'm not voting for you because I know that it isn't.
29:50If you tell people that the border is secure and then every night on TV you see thousands of people running across, they're going to think that you're dishonest and you're a typical politician. Would you argue that they're wasting their breath even saying that they have got the numbers down from where they were? That you need to acknowledge what the American people see every day. You can't sell them a lie. They will not buy it. But they buy lies off Trump all the time but they don't actually these these he won in 2016 but he got less popular votes than hillary clinton she just ran a shitty campaign to be blunt and she doesn't want to take responsibility for it but she needs to she got two point was it more than two million votes more than donald trump and yet he still won because he got the votes in the right states because of the electoral college that tells me that her campaign stunk 2020 joe biden understood this and joe biden actually was lucky that he could stay in the basement.
30:45He didn't have to communicate. He didn't have to engage in the same kind of politics. Now we're up to 2024. I mean, go back to the first debate, the Biden debate, how awful Joe Biden was. I respect him. I've known Joe Biden personally for 30 years. I taught his son, Beau. Beau introduced me to his dad because I liked his dad. This is a great example. I don't agree with his father on much. I love being around him. He reminded me of Bobby Kennedy at the same kind of earnestness and passion. And I appreciate that. It's one of the reasons why I'm a Blairite and not a Brownite. Because Blair, I see it.
31:20I see the emotion. I see it at the surface. And it appeals to me. Gordon Brown is a functionary. Stick with Biden for now. So Biden, I really like him as a person. And he's a good man. I don't buy any of the stuff that they're talking about the investigations of him. but he wasn't ready to be president for another four years. So now she's stepped in as the candidate. So she steps in. Have you been surprised, as a lot of people at the convention seem to have been, at how well she seems to have stepped up? Or do you think that's just not enough? It's not seems. She has. Right. But it's still not enough to conquer these doubts.
31:57It's enough to take a four-point Trump lead and now make it a three-point Harris lead. It's enough to put all those swing states back into play. And in three of them, the most important ones, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, it's enough to take a very narrow Trump lead and make it a very narrow Harris lead. Yes, she's doing what she needs to do. This does not guarantee her the election. And she's got issues of inflation, which by the way, don't call them blue collar voters. Don't call them working class voters. To them, that's insulting. Call them paycheck to paycheck voters. and watch when they say, that's me.
32:35That's who I am. I am living paycheck to paycheck every week or every month. Similarly, it's not inflation. It's what you and I call it. It's affordability. Can I buy the food I want? Can I get the fuel I need? My housing, my healthcare, you got the same challenges in the UK. That humanizes and personalizes the issue of inflation. She hasn't addressed that yet and she needs to. These are fundamental, highest priority issues and she's not done it yet. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know the debate. So let's see what's going to happen in the coming days. But she has to answer those two issues, inflation and immigration.
33:13And Frank, what are the issues that the Trump campaign needs to answer in order to win? What would your focus groups like to hear from the Trump campaign if they were going to be convinced those independent voters to vote for Trump? They don't want to hear his attacks. They don't want to hear his mistreatment. They don't want to hear his rude commentary and his insults. If Donald Trump were just to go away, Jersey, the Channel Isles, places that I don't know in Scotland that I'd have no idea how to get to, if you could stick them in Belfast and just keep them there for three months, two and a half months, he'd be elected.
33:48Is that, come on, let's just challenge that. No, no, it's true, actually. If he said nothing. If Trump says less, he wins. She's got to say more about where she stands. Trump needs to say less about who he is. And I'm not joking. Let's assume they both did well in a debate by their own standards. Who gets the most out of doing well in the debate if they both do well by their own lights? She gets the most because she gets to explain herself and she is really energized women 18 to 29. So it's completely changed our electoral equation. They were not voting for Biden. They were not voting for Trump.
34:21They were staying home. Now they're voting and that's going to help Democrats up and down the ticket. And that's not going to change. I'm watching what seniors do. Who's the one who's going to protect Social Security? Who's the one who's going to tax Social Security? That's why Trump jumped on that. Trump, on a policy basis, is doing quite well. On a personal basis, Harris is doing quite well. Just develop that a little bit more. Why do you think that if Trump said nothing, he was likely to win? What is it that means that he's likely to win if he shuts up? The best example is the difference in administration success.
34:5339 % think that Joe Biden has run a good presidency. 55 think donald trump has when you have that kind of success or i should say that kind of failure trump should be up by so much why isn't he 34 felony convictions he should not even be in this race based on what happened in new york i agree and but yes and the democrats should not be in the race based on the difference between how people perceive trump's administration versus Biden's administration. But what does it say about America, that he is still so much in the race? It says that there are millions and tens of millions of people that feel ignored, forgotten, and most importantly, betrayed.
35:35But why does he represent something for them when he actually represents a lot of things that they don't like? Because he speaks to them. He talks to them. He holds these rallies and his language reaches them and touches them. What's your favorite wine? If you have the perfect glass of wine, roughly how much does it cost? Be honest. Eight pound? I don't know. I do not believe. Oh, give me a break. You got to tell the truth now. I know you. I may not have met you, but I know your history. Fancy glass of wine. I might spend 20 pounds on a very fancy glass of wine. 20, right. You've got to, I'm not a big drinker, Frank.
36:10Okay. Okay. So that's the case. Donald Trump's voters don't drink wine. They would not understand that. They drink beer. And they appreciate how he communicates to them because he's so straightforward. I don't like it. Y 'all don't like it. The elites don't like it. But listen, he famously doesn't drink at all. Right. He doesn't represent them. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. That is a Paul Simon line from the brilliant song The Boxer. Trump's people hear what they want to hear and don't hear anything else. Is that a form of genius that he's been able to do that? It's a skill.
36:44When you correctly said that I was telling him, don't call it a wall. Build the wall. three syllables, three words, really clear. You can see the crowds cheering that. I said to him, you will never get that passed because Democrats will not build Donald Trump's wall. If you call this security barrier, they can vote for it because it's about national security. It's about making America safer and more secure. It wasn't a slogan and he made fun of me for that. What's it like having Donald Trump make fun of you? I hated it because I'm actually trying to give him some serious advice here and he's dismissing me.
37:15These people that you're talking about who are appealing, they don't like bullies. They don't like liars. They don't like cowards. They see him as a truth teller and you need to see it from their perspective. And here's the thing what made you so damn good in 1997 was it wasn't your perspective. You spoke to the hopes and dreams of the British people that allowed you to win conservatives, that allowed you to win Lib Dems, that allowed you to be when they were two parties. So why am I struggling so much to see what he does? Because you hate him so much that you got trump derangement syndrome yes you do and i've got medication for it in my bag if you want it frank as we coming towards the end for me i just wanted to return to this very interesting kind of paradox or contradiction on the one hand you're saying trump needs to speak by the way difference you just did this you called it a paradox and a contradiction if it's a paradox I'm smart and intellectual, and I know my shit.
38:13If it's a contradiction, I'm a politician, I'm a scumbag, and you just did exactly what I've been talking about for the last, I don't know, 45 minutes. So go ahead. But I choose paradox rather than contradiction. Very good. Lovely. Go ahead, Rory. Rephrase. On the one hand, he should shut up and retreat to Belfast. On the other hand, And he speaks to people. He is a genius with phrases. He understands America's anger. His voice and his rallies are part of his superpower. How on earth do you balance those two observations? Because Americans have never been necessarily consistent. They can hate the sin, but love the sinner.
38:53And this is something that's existed in American life now for many, many decades. That we can believe that we're being mistreated and still love the country. We can believe that people tell us the truth, but we don't like the truth. In the end, you have to put yourselves in their shoes, which is what I try to do in every focus group. And I really do it. Last night, when I came back from the convention, I'm here with two friends. I took them out for dinner. I was processing everything that I saw, and I did not want to go to sleep. And I was tired as hell, but I needed to continue to talk about this.
39:25When I step into a focus group, actually try to understand the motivation, and then I craft the language behind it. or then I can explain why that phenomenon exists. I would be nothing without my polling. I would be nothing without my focus groups. I'm really not a strategist, but I'm a damn good listener. And I take it all in and then I process it. And before the groups are over, I put it back out to them. And if I only had a linguist better than me when I do what I do, my career would have been so awesome. Do you see anybody coming up in American politics that, I mean, I think Roy and I have both been struck by how many really, really good speakers there have been.
40:04I think some of the speeches have been phenomenally good. You have Hakeem Jeffries, who will be Speaker of the House if the Democrats win a majority. And he got into it yesterday. And what I'm looking for is not applause. I'm not even looking for cheering. I'm watching, are you going to stand up and scream? And Hakeem, the first half of his speech was good, solid. the back half of his speech they're on their feet yelling and it is that and this is something the single best communicator in america today is still oprah winfrey even though she's become more partisan and more political i'm watching and she touches the nerve it's not just a provocation she actually knows what needs to be said and she knows how to deliver it in such a way that it becomes almost primal do you think she would test message i tested her messages and i I was embarrassed.
40:55No, you've tested it. But do you think she would get her messaging tested? I had the chance to do a couple of focus groups for her with 60 Minutes. I would get them started and then she would take it. And it was so cool because I knew how to provoke the fight. I didn't know how to provoke the coming together. She knew how to stop the anger and get people to respect each other, hear each other, and appreciate each other. I can't do that. That is her superpower. It's something that is so rare in politics. Neither presidential candidate has it, but it's why I believe her speech will be the most impactful of them all.
41:28From the Democrat convention? From the Democrat convention, yes. I thought it was going to be Michelle Obama. I think it'll be Oprah. That's significant. Would you go out from something like the two conventions with speeches or with packages of speeches and go and ask voters what they think specifically of them? That's exactly what I do. I use the dial technology. I think I brought it to the UK back in 1990. In Australia, they call it the worm. I call it instant response because it tells you exactly what people are thinking at the moment. And I tested speeches in the UK up until COVID. I've tested speeches in the US.
42:02I've actually started doing campaign ads. You have people sitting in your room and they literally have their hand on a dial and they're responding instantly to what they like and what they don't like. And here's the cool thing. I can now do it nationwide online. I couldn't do it before. I now have the technology I need to be able to understand what the national impact is. And I may do it. I may do it just to understand. This is something that I made a decision maybe four or five years ago. I've been sick. I want to talk about it. Had a couple of issues. And I think that's had an impact. I'm in such a rush to do as much good as I can in this short a time because I'm very pessimistic about the country and about myself.
42:39And I've started to do stuff for free just to understand how people think and to understand how to connect them together again. my single best presentation the one i'm so proud of was the one i did earlier this year to democratic and republican governors about how to disagree better how to still stand up for your principles how to still promote your policies but not by demonizing the other side but by disagreeing better by finding ways to give people their dignity and their respect and that's going to be what i do for as long as i have the chance to do that's also the motto of our podcast disagree agreeably.
43:14Can I ask a final question and then hand back to Rory? When I first saw you in Chicago, I could sense there was a little bit different, not dramatic, but just a little bit different speech, physicality, and so forth. So just tell me about these strokes that you had, because you're still unbelievably busy and energetic, but also whether that has changed your outlook on politics at all. I think of what I do every single day, every hour of every day and I schedule myself so ridiculously now because I don't want to waste a single day I don't want to think I've blew that morning and I only have so much strength so what it has really done to me is in this room that we're recording this I have an echo that's going on in my right ear it's why I took the earpiece out so I have trouble hearing so when I'm around and the ceilings are low and there are a lot of people, I'm struggling to hear them.
44:11Second is I have no balance. So yesterday when I was on the convention floor, I was knocking into people. When I did that at the Republican convention, they knew me and they're not going to turn around and say, what the hell is your problem? Less people here know me because I've only been on so-called democratic media for the last year or two. And I will bump into someone. And I do not mean to do it. I just don't have balance. Third issue is at the end of the day, I get very weak. So trying to go upstairs is a nightmare for me. Y 'all don't know this, but there's a stairwell to get into where we are recording this right now.
44:44And my first reaction is, damn it, I got to go up those. So I can't predict it. I don't know what's going to happen at the end of the day, any day. And no matter how much I sleep, no matter what medication I take, it's still unpredictable. Therefore, I'm teaching because I want to teach. I am at West Point because they're the best students I've ever taught in my life. I would go back to Oxford, but they're all woke. And I had a problem there. They're all woke. A whole lot of them are. Come on. And I want people who want to learn. And I want to be there to show them. So I've got a student with me now at the convention who I'm taking to all these various events so that he can make up his mind.
45:21I took them to the primaries in New Hampshire. They've been with me to Washington half a dozen times to show them the inside. and the coolest thing of all, and I should not say this on your podcast, so this is me blowing up my own career. We are having dinner in Paris, France, in the 80th anniversary of Normandy. All these senators are around. All these congressmen are around. They know me. And they're like, wow, running into you in Paris. I say, I got something even better. I got West Point cadets. Would you talk to them? The lead Democrat on armed services gave them an hour and 15 minutes. One of the lead Republicans in messaging gave them an hour.
45:59A bunch of congressmen came who were enjoying themselves too much. And one of them kept insulting the senator. The students got to see the shit that happens behind closed doors. And then the coolest thing of all, the Democratic leader of one of the key committees and the Republican leader, both arm in arm, come out and talk to the guests for 15 minutes. And instead of this ugliness, they got to see two people who generally respect each other, who generally work together. Their heads were spinning seeing how America really works. So I say to you, I'm very negative, but there is some sunlight. There is some hope.
46:36And if people like the three of us, rather than finding the ways to provoke, if we use our skills for good, as a student once said to me, if we use them to bring people together side by side, sleeves rolled up. And by the way, that is the actual language because I want people to visualize it. Standing together, side by side, roll up your sleeves and do something. You hear some Republican words in there, some Democrat words in there. Everyone hears what they want to hear and it'll make our country, make our society and make the world a better place. Roy, I'll give you the last question. Well, I think Frank, there's no last question.
47:10I think you came to your CODA, but thank you very much indeed for joining us. It's been great to have you on. Yeah, it's been really good. Really enjoyed it. Well, I do want to sit down with you both. I know how many people watch this or listen to this podcast. I know how much it matters. I know that you've created a phenomenon here and I would like to know more about it. But this is a joy for me because you sound, Alistair, like the conservative and Rory. Oh, fuck off. You sound like the more left person. So I'm literally having whiplash between the two of you. Sorry, that is just a total windup.
47:44Wow. Boy, I've never seen anyone get so upset over. Ever call me a conservative. Oh, yes. I can see that clearly I triggered you. And just remember that sometimes trigger language can be positive. Sometimes you trigger people to pay attention and to think different thoughts. So it's not always a negative. Okay. Well, listen, it's been great talking to you. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Frank. So, Rory, what do you think of Frank? I thought it was fascinating. I mean, I think there was a lot revealed. Maybe I'm getting too psychological, but I thought at the end when he talked about his health.
48:19So he's had these series of strokes. He clearly feels frail, feels that he might die at some point. And that sort of invested it with a sort of slightly terrifying kind of earnestness. He really clearly wanted to tell you how much he admired Tony Blair and how sad he was not to have worked on Tony Blair's campaign. And that clearly was the thing that I think we had that four times. Yeah, I actually said to him, I know others who love us, but don't keep banging on about it. When we bumped into him in Chicago, he was like, you know, he said, I love your podcast. I love you guys. I'd love to, you know.
48:51So I think his take on politics is really, really interesting. And as you know, I've always been somebody who is much more interested in focus groups and concerted polling. I think he does have a genuine belief that if you go out and listen to people, you will learn things that politicians need to know and need to hear. So he's famously very angry with Donald Trump. And he's given a lot of interviews in the past where he's blamed Trump for his stroke and just finds him completely disgusting and horrifying. And yet it was very, very interesting that his conclusion from that is not the obvious one, which I guess many British listeners would think, which is, well, I've got to go and vote for Kamala Harris.
49:32And that's because he's much more right wing than he really wants to acknowledge. I mean, he was right in the heart of the Republican Party through the 90s. And that language that he was talking about crafting, those were Republican attack lines. So when he changed the state duty to the death tax, that was the Republicans killing a state duty. When he worked to change global warming to climate change, that was a Republican strategy to downplay the threat of global warming. So it's interesting. And it's interesting that although clearly he feels that he's moved on an enormous amount and was talking this very radical line about you can't pull yourself out by your bootstraps unless you have boots, which seemed to be a sort of attack on that whole Newt Gingrich universe that he came out of in the early 90s.
50:15He doesn't really want to talk about it in terms of change. You could argue, he was saying to me about me that, you know, sometimes you're a bit right wing, sometimes you're a bit left wing. And he was also saying that Tony Blair has kind of moved substantially. I know people say Tony has kind of moved to the right, maybe over the course of his lifetime and his career, but I actually think the center of gravity of Tony's politics hasn't really move but I think Frank maybe wants to say that and feel that but I think he was interested he said you know yeah I've moved like Tony's moved you know it's like we all we all kind of move around no I was surprised I thought he would have been straight out as a never-Trumper and there which I think he is and therefore somebody who feels he has to vote you have a kind of duty to vote and therefore he would have said I'll obviously vote for Harris but no he's not but that's very interesting because I suspect what he'll do now it'd be very interesting to keep in touch with him to see when he goes out and does the focus groups in between now and November 5th.
51:06He will test whether Vice President Harris and Tim Walsh are bringing people over. What I found really interesting during the convention, particularly after you left and I was just kind of wandering around talking more randomly to people, was how much there is this view that obviously everybody who was at the convention was kind of completely falling in love with Kamala and Walz and like, it was an amazing, I hate the word, but amazing vibe. But there was also a recognition that there was still a massive job to be done to reassure people that they were going to be kind of, you know, for them. And I guess that's where he was, that's where he was reflecting as well.
51:50There's also a really interesting question here about about whether Donald Trump is just a sort of massive aberration from a very kind of perfectly responsible center-right Republican Party, which is what people like Frank, I'm not quite sure whether he says that, but that's sort of the emotional sense of Republicans like Frank who are against Trump. But of course, there would be many people who would say that the foundations for Trump were laid a very long time ago, that the Republican Party was on a journey through Reagan, that Newt Gingrich was a huge part of the new populism, that the contract for America, the way the Congress people behaved, was the beginning of the collapse of bipartisan consensus, the really divisive politics within the United States.
52:32And the Tea Party, he was right in the middle of the Tea Party stuff in the 1990s. So yeah, I'd be interested what American listeners think about him producing such a positive vision of Republican politics in the 90s, and then laying that up against, you know, I'm against division, I'm against divisiveness. He was really trying to struggle his way. You should have helped him towards the phraseology. He needed the phrase disagreeing agreeably. He was almost there. I mean, let's be frank, Rory. If he was a really close list to the podcast, he would have known that. You did talk yesterday about some specifics that we'd be talking about recently.
53:11Anyway, thank you for that. I mean, Frank Lutz is an amazing sort of symbol and a really important figure in the history of American politics. And I also thought, I'm pleased you brought us back to the personal at the end. The only thing that irritated me in the interview was he did that thing, which there's nothing more infuriating for an interviewer than to be told, that's not what the audience wants to hear, what the audience really wants to hear. This other guy keeps taking me back to the past, but the public doesn't want to hear about my past. They want to hear about the future. And that's the paradox and the contradiction of public debate, Rory.
53:48He's a smart guy, though. He's a very, very smart guy. And the thing he said about, I think he is one of the, I mean, I'm quite obsessive, as you know, but I think that is a guy who lives, sleeps 24 hours a day. Yeah. Don't think he really sleeps very much, which may contribute to the fact that he's under a lot of stress. And there doesn't seem to be much of a life outside So I could see a little bit of you in him. I thought maybe there was a bit of an overdeveloped competitiveness, possibly going on somewhere in the background there. I think he's somebody who likes to be on the right side of history.
54:18Would you agree that the 1997 New Labour campaign was the best campaign of all time? And do you wish like him that you'd have been part of that, Rory? It was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful that you managed to get someone on who could provide such profound praise. I promise you, I promise you that was not the goal. I promise you that was not the goal. I wanted him to talk about America, the American elections. The only thing we missed, where you also I think would have had a lot in common, is I think he probably hated Oxford as much as you hated Cambridge. But maybe it was just as well that we didn't get into the depths of why you both hated those universities so much.
54:54Probably the same reason. Anyway, that was great. See you soon. See you soon. Bye-bye.
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