Interview With Michael Murphy: Masters in Business (Audio)

He has been the campaign manager for people as diverse as uh Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts, and presidential campaign candidate Jeb Bush who ran for the nomination of the Republican Party uh in and and did not make it. The timing of this is perfect. He is not only a conservative and a very successful political and pain consultant and adviser, but he is a person who has been watching elections for a long time.

Full disclosure, he is a member of the Never Trump group who think that um Donald Trump is not the ideal candidate to be president of the United States. I found this whole conversation to be quite fascinating for two reasons. First, we booked it six months ago having no idea, UM what would happen in the campaign. Because I thought we were booking Michael Murphy, the technology newsletter writer and I thought this was going to be an opportunity to geek

out about all things technology, software, telecommunication, etcetera. Instead, we got lucky and we got the guy who is really an extremely influential person, uh in the Republican Party. So that's number one and number two. The time we booked this, we had no idea who the nominee was going to be. We had no idea, um about anything that was taking

place on the political side. Uh. It's a pleasure to speak with somebody who is incredibly skilled about political communication, about the way elections run, about the way successful campaigns do certain things or don't do certain things. All told, the timing of this could not be better. This will broadcast before the first debate, the first presidential debate, and um, it was really absolutely fascinating conversation about the state of politics in modern America. So, with no further ado, here

is my conversation with campaign consultant Michael Murphy. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Mike Murphy. He is a Republican political consultant. He advised Florida Governor Jeb Bush in the current election. He previously has advised such luminaries as Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, U S Senator John McCain, California Governor

Arnold Schwarzenegger. John McCain privately called him Murphy stapils, so that should give you some sense of his ability to foretell the political future. He is a commentator on NBC's Meet the Press and The Today's Show. Used to write a column for Time magazine, and served as a fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Governments Institute of Politics and as I think I could fit safely say, you're you're pretty much recognized as one of the GOP's most

successful consultants and innovators that affair statement. Yeah, I own that until we lost the retro Rice superPAC for Jeb. Now now I'm going to be a retired uh formerly one of the great concils. But I had about twenty nine winning statewide races and that got me pretty established. Mike Murphy, welcome to Bloomberg. So let's let's jump right into your background, because I find it absolutely fascinating. You're

not even out of college. You and you decide, Hey, I could at age twenty launched my own political consulting company. How did that help? Luckily it's an unregulated business. So I was going to Georgetown, was in the Foreign Service school. I grown up in Detroit, and I thought, wow, am I gonna wind up in the auto industry, which was kind of appealing. But I was really interested in international relations and politics, so Georgetown was the place to be.

I was involved in the College Republicans. I was all about politics, and I got this internship at the old Nickpack, the National Conservative play Clashing Committee, which had invented the independent expenditure where a third group could run ads. And so one day they fired the ad agency and they said, anybody here and anything about advertising? And I had been like around a radio station a little bit in like high school, so I of course said me, I'm an expert.

And one thing led to another, and they said, because it was low production budget stuff, all right, kid, make an ad. And I didn't know what to do. So I called up this ACE producer who had turned out later had made one ad in his career, named Alex Costellanos, and out of that came Murphy and Castellanos. We started making ads for these horrible, low budget campaigns because nobody else would hire us, but some pack work and we got lucky on a thing or two. And so I

took a leave of absence my senior year. I gave up being yelled at in Russian every morning by Colonel Piragoff, the defector, who was trying to teach us Department of Defense Russian you know which way to the tractor factory? Would you like some nylons for a picture of that factory? And uh kind of ran away to join the circus of campaign consultant. So what was the lucky ad that? That was the big launch, which was the first one

that you you said, hey, we got something here. Well, we we had we did some kind of fun stuff for these independent expenditure cam pains in the early eighties. But then it was the eighties six campaign when Alex and I really officially, you know, got together. We're working for this, Uh Senator Steve Sims on Idaho. Everybody thought was gonna lose. This is a by election between between

presidential elections, right right, an off election. But still they had the Senate races and six was a top tier for the Republicans were these young guys and sims won and some congressional races people thought would lose. We did pretty well in and eight, six and eighty eight. That put us on the map, and Alex and I went off and we had a great run. We did a bunch of stuff, and then in the mid nineties we had probably the only amicable split up of a political

consulting partnership. Were still very close. He went off to do a lot. You see him on CNN. He's a big time probably consultant. And I had a good run, particularly with governors blue state governors. I worked for John Angler in my home state of Michigan, three term win there. I worked for Terry Branstead in Iowa about his forty of term. We got a re election there, the Jeb Bush race. And I did those statewidse Christine Todd Witman in Jersey. I just you know, had a great run

of I'm picking up the theme here. These are all pretty moderate GOP governors. Is that a coincidence or well? I people keep calling me a squish, which is the Republican word for moderate, But I'm a pretty right wing guy. How I worked for Ali North, I mean I had plenty of Alex came out of the helms machine down in North Carolina. But I believe in the kind of conservatism that can win a swing state, which is something

that's kind of been lost in our party now. So I, um, I consider myself pretty conservative, but I'm not at what we like to call a paleocon. I'm not a cannon Republican. No, no, that that's that's really interesting. So let's talk a little bit about your pack. Right to Rise. This was looked at as a juggernaut, a huge money making machine. Who is the typical Right to Rise? Don't or describe them. I don't mean, I'm not looking for a list of names, but what what sort of person is this? Give us?

Some Democrats? Well, the way it kind of works in the system now is you have a campaign for president, but you're limited under law to take a limited amount of money only from people, not from business entities. So you can take your twenty you know, seven hundred dollars or whatever from an individual. All the campaigns there, for at least most of them, would create a superpack which

can raise essentially unlimited money. So often your donors who might give you the what we call the maxed out federal check to your campaign, which is relatively small would also give to the superpack. So we were very successful. And the one campaign we won, and really Jeb one, was the donor campaign, where you travel around the country, meet people and convince them the back you not somebody else. I mean the people who gave to us. Many of them also met with Governor Walker when he was in

the race with Senator Rubio, Senator Cruz. You know, they were it was a competition, and Jeb had the most compelling vision. So the typical person, Uh, some were longtime party fundraisers who might write us a check for a hundred thousand dollars. We had, you know, a lot of those, or fifty thousand dollars. You had a few of the real kind of super donors of the party who could write I think our largest owner was over two million dollars.

Mike Fernandez, a healthcare executive down in Florida's big check. Yeah, it's a big check. And these are successful people. Sometimes it's private, family owned businesses. Uh. Sometimes they're they're folks

who just have always had an interest in politics. And some were new and there were people generally who knew the governor, many from when Jeb was governor of Florida was very successful or liked his vision that we weren't going to run a grievance campaign about who we're mad at, and we're going to run a campaign in the primary that we knew would be rocky, but we do it in a way where we thought we could win a

general election. The primary voters wanted something else. So now we've got a candidate who was very strong in the primary, but is in real trouble I believe in the general election. I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My guest today is Michael Murphy. He is the founder of Rights A Rise. Is that right? I think my title? And you know we folded the pack down.

We returned about eighteen of the money or excuse me, about twelves a different No, no, no no, we we returned our capital. But let's for this way. Nobody else has ever returned to Diamond Rio takes. And we gave back millions of dollars. And what was your title with the and with the of the right to rize pack which has now been wound down except as a legal entity because we get all the FBC audits after the gods, you have to keep that around. And then in the

Bush campaign, what was your title? Uh, well, I was Jeb's kind of senior strategist when he was running for governor. Under the law, when in the presidential when you're doing the superpack, you cannot legally talk to the campaign or it's one or the other you can do. That's really interesting. So so let's talk a little bit about this the primary season, which was really kind of wacky. So really it kicked off of me summer with the Fox News hosted gop Um debate, and it was shocking. They came

right at at Trump right out of the gate. In hindsight, it looks like that that approach backfired quite a bit. Well, Trump had a constituency that was to put up with a lot of heresy from Trump. In other words, he could do things that were considered impolite or rude or offensive, like attack and John McCain. Most people thought, under the typical political rules, and I did too, that that would hurt him. It didn't among the third of the vote

that really liked him. The other two thirds not so sure. Even today, Trump, by no means has all the Republicans lined up. But in a multi wait, you know, campaign with fifteen sixteen candidates, if you can hold down to a third, that's a ticket to the end. That's who happened. And everybody doubted him far far far into the the process, and in my mind's eye when he went on Jimmy Fallon and did that mirror bit when the two of them are, you know, it's Fallon pretended and he was so.

I know of him as a New Yorker full disclosure, I think he's an amusing guy, but not presidential timber. But at that moment I turned to my wife and said, this guy can win. This guy can win the primary.

It was just and ever at the time, I don't think a lot of people really felt what most people thought, and I think the people running just about all the campaigns is that Trump would be an interesting side show, but he'd fizzle out because there was another candidate who would get what we call the grievance vote, which was very large this year, to blow it all up, hate everything,

mad who who's the enemy? And that was Cruise. So most of us thought the real threat to the nomination, who we were very worried about winning was Ted Cruz. But Trump managed to kind of out muscle cruise with

that big persona. Trump was also with the Hollywood people, and that business would call a pre aware title, which is when you're making a movie, now you go spend four hundred million dollars in the marketing department comes up to you and says, well, we could make you know, Flowers of Ralph and spend four million explaining what the movies about when we make iron Man eleven, and you don't have to have the same marketing iron Man eleven.

That's why they're making movies called battleship or you know these known titles. One title, you know exactly what it is. Yeah, and Trump was a known title. Now, even if all he was doing was teaching Gary Busey how to work a snow cone machine. He was on primetime TV every week forever in a set which, by the way, is now the location of the campaign headquarters set. It's all this new kind of politics where pop cultures crossed over. But that created the identity where he was this super

business guy on television. Can do fire him? That persona. He was ratings. It is the news business, so he got more attention than anybody and that grievance formula, which Jeff Bush would never go to do because one that he believes in, and Jeb knew that Trump's gonna lose the general election. You know, the worst thing you want is to have a primary which is a drunken vendor. We wake up the next morning, you're blown a presidential election. And that's what I believe we've done. So the parallels

between sixteen are are similar. Nobody really gave Trump a shot in He went not all the not not that very deep into the process, got a lot of brand recognition, capitalized it, and by some analyzes, the bulk of his fortune came about post People will argue about that. But what made this primary so different? And to be to be blunt, I thought the run of folks other than Mitt Romney was far crazier than this run of folks.

I mean, you had just that was not me, but other people have called it a clown car, and it was apparent, at least to some observers that Mitt Romney was going to come out of that ahead. We didn't quite have the same dynamic happen this. No, by the traditional yardstick of folks who have done stuff, we had a very heavy field. We had some big governors as opposed to last time. We I think Romney is a very serious guy did as governor's race, but there were

also some sideshow acts running. This time. It was the candidates weren't as crazy, but the voters decided in the Republican primary to be crazier. And you can see it on the Democratic side too with Bernie. There is such a populace football going on in the country. The middle class hasn't gotten a raise in real wages in a long long time, and people have been mad at the political system. Now for a decade. They're fed up. They

want to blow the whole thing up. I did Schwarzeninger's campaign for governor of California, and I remember Sacramento in that race for governor, when the voters of a Democratic state reached in and yanked out the guy they just elected and threw him out the window in a recall election. Was the same kind of anger. The difference is Arnold took the job really seriously. He got the best policy people he could, starting with Warren Buffett, to work on a big plan for what to do when he was governor.

That that's not Trump, He's pure seat of the pants, you know. But people's the same. People look at Donald as if he's just a big dumb actor, but he's not. He's a smart guy. He's a savvy businessman. He owns a ton of real estate. I'm not surprised that he did exactly what you said in in California. In trude, he's a planner. Arnold's always thinking out what's around the

corn a few steps ahead. Now, it's not a surprise that in the midst of the financial crisis, um the public didn't have much of an appetite for a private equity guy. But what do we think about in you have a career politician on one hand, and then you have kind of a renegade on the other. Which way

is the public going to break? Well? The force that pushes Trump forward is what we political types called the wrong track, which is two thirds or more of the people think the country is off on the wrong track. That means the election is going to be about new change, blow up the system, and that is the win that Trump can harness. Hillary is stuck being politics for forty years. She's a pre aware title to everybody knows who Hillary Clinton has, They have for decades, but she represents, oh

my god, the old politics now the countervailing force. Though. One is Trump's weaknesses. Trump's got a lot of Trump driven problems. He ran a campaign designed to offend swing voters that he needs to win the general election. It's like he was building a lab to lose the like they had strategy. The other problem Trump has his demography, the election scale in the general election, those million people is increasingly a much more democratic group than it used

to be. Of the voters will be minority voters and black, Latino, Asian or mixed race among that group, Trump right now is losing by essentially infinity. So he's written off almost thirty percent of the vote, percent of which will probably go to Hillary, maybe more so. Let me ask you this question on that exact topic. So if you had to come up with a percentage that we start with the electoral college map and we look at everybody who

went out and voted for Romney. What percentage of Mitt Romney voters are just gonna say, I'm not gonna pull the leave of Hillary, but I can't go vote for this guy. What percentage of Romney voters stay at home? Well, I don't know about stay at home because there are other places they can go. We got the Libertarians. They vote, but they don't vote in the presidential They vote down ballot center races or house. But let me put it

this way. I think Trump will lose at least ten percent of the people who pulled the lever for Romney. And that's that's something like fifty million. Yeah, it's a couple of million people put it that way, less than what Romney's fifty But he may bring in some people Romney didn't have to, you know. So there are two

numbers there. But fundamentally, if you look at this polling, and there's constantly panic about polling because the media business has to cover for eyeballs every day of the election, like it's the Hannenburg explosion. No matter what happens, it's the biggest thing in the world. We only hear about that one outlier poll, not day sirens go off because they need the daily heat. That's where the clicks and

eyeballs come from. So they're in business too. So, But if you look at the last thirty days of the polling, give or take a day, and you average it all together, which real clear Politics dot Com will do. The Trump number has basically been forty two, forty one, forty two, forty two, forty three, forty two, forty three times five. He's been stuck down there because he's in this demographic called to sack, where he's not getting what he ought to.

If college get white people, which Republicans normally win, Ronnie won him by fourteen points, Democrat has not the Democrat in a presidential election has not one white college educated males. And I don't know how many decades, right, And so he's in trouble there, particularly I white college educated women, who really are the most powerful swing vote. He's doing great with blue collar white guys, he's increasingly write a shrinking pool, and he's getting murdered by the thirty percent

that's minority. So Trump is stuck in this low forties called the sack of demography. The reason the race looks close is one the media only covers horse race forty two forty two, Well forty two forty two is the voters saying, we hate both these guys because a bag of cement can get forty with a D on it, and a bag of some with an hour on it will get thirty nine So the question is the difference between hillary is forty two and forty nine or Trump's

forty two and forty nine or fifty. Who are those people? Well, they look a lot more like democratle in voters than Republican. So the real action of this race has been Hillary going from the high forties and oh she's way ahead, to Hillary doing something stupid or having a bad when they when they keep it a stage secret, the moment is suddenly the new nuclear code. You can't tell anybody for seven hours after you face planting to the Scooby

do van there on television Country. It's insane. But they get in trouble and the polls are basically a noise meter what was on cable TV forties, So they ticked down. So there's kind of a vix of polling going on. It's mostly Hillary moving around. Trump's creeped up from forty one to forty three, but he's running out of voters, and give him time, he'll find a way to he'll offend him again, like again today in the news cycle, he's out, you know, attacking more people and the birth thing.

I can't believe that I thought that was behind us. I'm astonished that came up again. Is I think working on something today where he's going to try to get out of it, but you know, he gets out of it, then he gets back in it, so he can't help himself. Yeah. The question is can Hillary fix herself just to get to her generic number and that's enough for her to win? She would win because the generic number for them is bigger than ours. Now. I'm Barry rid Hilts. You're listening

to Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is GOP campaign strategist extraordinaire Michael Murphy. He has advised pretty much everyone on the GOP side, from Jeb Bush to the Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, uh to Mitt Romney to uh Um McCain. You were big with McCain in two thousand. I did the two thousand campaign. I didn't do two thousand and eight, and fermid I did the governor's race. People always hear my bio and say, so,

you're the idiot. No. No, I did the Straight Talk Express, which did lose. But boy do we have fun. Let me ask you a so. So, I'm an odd political duck growing up in New York Jacob Javits Republican, socially progressive, fiscally conservative. I loved the two thousand John McCain holy unimpressed with George W. Bush. Here's a guy telling the truth, the straight shooter he was. And then in oh eight

that guy disappeared. What what happened? Well, I think he was the same guy, but he made the tough decision that everybody in politics eventually has to make because it's a tough bracket and it is boy, I'd actually like to win the election so I can do some of this good stuff I believe in because he's the same guy. And now I've got to be the standard bearer of the party. Last time I got to run against the party and we had fun, met girls, drove around the

country and a bus. It was fantastic and we almost stole the election. You know, we had it. We were halfway out of the bank and there were just a few too many cops. The second time, we tried the robbery. Maybe we actually try to get out with the cash. And so when John ran the second time, he ran a little bit more of a traditional Republican campaign, and guess what, he won the nomination. But it was not

enough to win general election. And I think one thing that hurt him a bit in the general was he'd lost a little of that appeal. He had to cross over voters so much a part of what we didn't he lost that The financial crisis tied him up. That was really there was the lets us suspend our campaign and rethink this and that that. That was the point where it's pretty much and he was up against history of Barack Obama. The fact is the media love McCain.

I used to joke the media was our base. But what the media really wants is a Republican murder boy. He gave it to him and then they beheaded him. So who's the Democrat we're gonna be for? My personal thesis, isn't The Iraq War was going bad. The financial crisis was a disaster. As long as as the Democrats put somebody up who could form go here in sentences, it was their race to lose. That was a really uphill

battle and the phenomena I'll never forget. You know, I'm still close to Mccainny's a great America and suppressive people I ever met, and I went and visited him. You like, it's okay that he was captured. You were write with that, Yeah, I'm and I know, I know a lot of details. I met some of the guys who were in the Annoy Hilton with them, or I stayed in a hotel ones where they don't leave a mint on the pillow. Well, Donald Trump, you know, I mean the deferments a lot.

I could go on for It's just discussed me. So let me ask you. Let me take off my independent hat and put on a Democrat had for a second, Hey, how much of this is just karma coming back from the swift boat debacle? Is this? Can you really complain about that? And I remember McCain defending Kerry, to his credit, was not a fan of the swift boat stuff. But the party apparatus that approved the swift boat is it a surprise that it devolved into this? Well, I don't know.

I'm never a big believer in pulling the sweater thread of one pain thing because then I got to go back to LBJ using an H bomb to terrify the country about Verry Goldwater. So I do think the political culture has gotten courser, but Trump is an outlier. Trump is breaking rules a sec civility let alone the truth. He is the fact check meters in the in the press have exploded. He broke the machine. How do you fact check the person who is an outlier? And everything's

a pivot. He's a Republican one day he's a conservative, than he's a liberal. He goes. I mean, he doesn't believe in anything, Like a good con man, he's just trying to get the room. Are you suggesting that he's a grifter? Is that? Is that what I'm hearing from. I can't say he's a grifter, but I think he has griffish tendencies. Griffish tendencies. All right, we'll see if that that makes it into the campaign. So let's talk

a little bit about the Jeb campaign. How surprising, I mean, it looked like this was battle of the dynasty's, it was gonna be Hillary versus Jeb. How much of this was just the forces you talked about earlier, that it was the anti incumbent, and how much of this was he just was rusting and off his game. Well, the voters are always more important than the campaigns because they decide what they want and they go find it, and

often what they find takes a while. So they can land on somebody, and then of course everybody's shocked and amazed at what happened. But it was clear it was going to be a grievance primary. And one of the great secrets of the Jeb political operation is we were bluffing a little bit in terms of what we knew how hard the Republican primary would be. Positive candidate like Jeb. Yeah, but you don't run a campaign saying, hey, guess what

we think it's really gonna be uphill. You run a campaign saying we've raised the most money, we have the most qualified guy be for what's gonna happen. We're trying to muscle Rubio out k sake others. That was the strategy, because you don't leave off your weaknesses. But internally, I'll never forget. I had dinner with Jeb and Sally Bradshaw, who's Jeb's other longtime political person, a dear friend of mine, and his son and I will go into a private conversation,

but we all did the odds of winning. Early on when we're thinking about this, and the guy who had the lowest number at the table and none of us were over fifty percent Jet and we said well, then I have an idea. Why don't we order another round of drinks and not run for president? And Jeff said, I I don't do it if I don't try to run the kind of modern conservatism that can win the general election, get power to change the country with our policies,

to lift everybody up. That's why we called it right to rise. Who will? I know, it's a long chatter. Who will fight the good fight. We're gonna get cruise otherwise, or you know, we'll get another grievance. Candidate Trump wasn't around at that, so no one really was thinking, Oh, Trump is the guy that's gonna Trump wasn't on the radar. Then. We were much more worried about We're worried about the kind of forces in the party that picked Trump in

the end. But we thought they'd grab on the cruise and we'd run a grievance campaign the Republican Party and we'd blow the general election. We'd hand the White House to Hillary Clinton, who's eminently beautiful, and we set the party way back at a time when we needed the opposite and the country needed our ideas, at least our Bush conservative ideas, which is about fixing a lot of things that don't work in the country with free markets

and other things we believe in. So we always knew it was more of a crazy long shot and anybody thought, but we can never say that publicly because it would undermine our attempt to muscle our way through. Now that's ad Jeb, if he were here, would be the first to say I was rusty out of the box. He was. I was not in perfect candidate shape, not at all. But I mean people say, well, would you have done

anything different? Because I can think of a hundred things we would have done different and we would have lost differently. You know, it's weird. I'm in a business where you live by winning and losing, and I've been spoiled. I want a ton of campaigns over here. Had some losses. Like everybody, you learn a lot in your losses. You actually learn more than you're doing. We're the same is true in the world investing you and you you walk into a casino, you win, Hey, you're a genius. When

you walk out, you lose. It requires a very different bit of self reflection. But I can tell you the Jeb folks, even though we had the resources, thank God for that Jeb worked very hard. The finance people did. We had a great team, many of them here in New York, so we had the dollars to make our case, but they were not buying what we were selling. So weirdly enough, even though we all hate losing, believe me so pathologically, we sleep pretty well because there's nothing Jeb

Bush did in that campaign we have to apologize. He ran an honorable campaign. He out out at the appropriate moment, even overstay. Uh, there's not a lot of things you can really We weren't other than Mexican rapists. We weren't lying to people. Trump's tried to steal our immigration plan on days when he's four immigration reform, which is about one out of three. Um, you know, so fought our corner, fought it hard, worked like dogs, Jeb in particular, and

guess what we lost. Life will go on. But if, as I think the numbers are gonna show that Hillary Clinton will be sworn in as the next president, you know, am I gonna be saying I told you saw a little damn right. So let me ask you three questions about Jeb that really stood out. The first was very surprised that he was seemingly unprepared for a question about

his brother's administration the Iraq War. That that kind of surprised me that that wasn't off the tip of his um head, the top of his head, tip of his fingers. Did did you? I know you weren't working directly with the kids around them. That was before I went to the super That was a situation where we all knew from minute one what the answer the press wanted to hear to say. He's quote answered it right, you know,

because the press it was the worst thing ever. And you know the problem is, like a lot of governors, Jeb had written a lot of letters, made a lot of phone call the people that their loved ones killed in action fighting for our country. And he wasn't in a big hurry to say yeah, it didn't mean anything. And so he again what would make him a great president but did not always make him the perfect machine

tool candidate. Was he pushed back for a few days that he didn't want to like run to Berry the sacrifice of people by trying to separate that from just the policy mistakes that were made. And he did say policy mistakes were made, but he didn't leap to it with glee the way the media narrative would like. So what does that mean? It means you get scored his bumbling idiot for four days by the process press, the same people who are hyper ventilating today about polling data

as Trump becomes the president of September eighteen. You know, so again I draw analogy to the business world. There is a lot like value investing and the daily panic, the daily herd is something you have to resist strategically, but it rules the press. So it's a voting machine short term and a wing machine long term. Yeah, and if you can figure out the net asset value of an electorate, you're going to do well. So second question

related to the Jib primary. Donald Trump comes out and Jeb says, well, you know, my brother kept the country safe. And then Donald Trump comes out with what is not just a democratic talking point, but a far left talking point. September eleventh happened on your brother's watch. You your brothern keep the country safe. I'm in New York and three thousand people died. That's unheard of amongst Republicans. And what

was the reaction to that. Well, in the room where it happened, he was roundly boot Trump was you know, he was in the debate. Yeah, yeah, and we you know, a contributions surged, all the normal stuff. Really, but again Trump Trump was the creature at the beginning of about the primary electorate, and then it grew to the mid thirties and they were ready. I mean, we tested all this stuff. We do polls and focus groups of Trump voters and they were locked in. They were like, what

he said. I mean, the GOP candidate has never said anything like that. Yeah, but he was not. And this was the big surprise to those of us because the last thousand times you've done a campaign, the ideological primary voters vote ideology, and you know, Trump could be wearing a Carl Marks suit and the pent that he really had. They wouldn't go anywhere. They're like, look, he's my guy. He gets the issue, and then you feel the race

in the room. They would not quite say it, but the whole thing was he knows what the problem is, if you know what I mean, wink wink. So I don't care what you fancy pants college jerk say about him with your whatever you said n. Eighty nine. He's my guy. Screw you. And you know, maybe some of you guys will get thrown in the camps. I mean it was rough. There's some rough voters out there in Trump. Now.

He came out and said I could shoot someone a fifth Avenue and my people are still gonna support me. That that's you're saying, that's true, and that was the core of the core. I want to be fair to most Trump voters here. I don't. I blame the con man, not the marks. I think there are a lot of people who are for Trump. The vast majority love the country and really think he is a way to change

it for the better. But back in those primary days, at the beginning, there was some rough elements in that world, and they were ready to take almost any rhetoric from Trump, and some of them really loved the roughest rhetoric about the Mexican rapist coming in and all that that was.

That's yeah. So the last Trump related question with Jeb um he has a aside from the fact that he's a talented television presence and personality, he has a way of crazy Bernie Crooked Hillary, little little Marco lion ted and he came at Jeb with low energy. What was the reaction to that, because Jeb stands up there and you're not supposed to be doing a dance at the podium. You're supposed to be articulating intelligent policy positions. What was a code word? You know? I was screaming at the TV.

I couldn't talk to the campaign. But how about needy Donald, you know, because there's no needy or political life the low energy Jeb one. People who know Jeb all went nuts because he's He's not a low energy guy. If Trump was on Jeb schedule for two days during the primary, Trump would be in the hospital. Um the But he's the healthiest presidential candidate ever, and he's the energizer bunny. He used to the year old staff couldn't keep up with him the workload when he was governor. But it

wasn't about low energy. That was a code word for smarty pants talking with the big words. When I'm going to tell you what's really going on, Mexican rapists are coming over the border. What Jeb's talking about, Well, it's an act of love, frankly, when they come into the country to try to get their families a life as an American. Jeb. Jeb was civil and polite, and that was a code for low energy with with Spanish members of his families. Of course he's going to push back.

So that that was that was Trump's code for other jeb uses big words, and you know he's not he doesn't have my grievance anger, and so it really meant polite and thoughtful, which was frankly not what fort pent of the primary wanted this year. I jokeer was like selling opera records that attractor poll. They just weren't buying it. And it's too bad because of jebb or nominee right now, or I'll say, in fairness case sake, we'd be up three or four in Hillary on our way to win

the election and probably get the center reelected. I'm Barry rid Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Michael Murphy. He is a Republican political consultant, most recently known for the Right to Rise Superpack. He has advised Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, and now runs the fabulous podcasts called Radio

Free GP. Radio Free GP. You can find that on iTunes and pretty much all the usual places so so let's jump right in to the to the general election. What what does the Trump campaign mean for future elections and non politicians. Well, we have It's interesting because we have this crossover now pop culture into politics. We had a little bit of Arnold back into that shore in California, but this is a whole new level. I'm terrified at Kardashian right now is looking at a map of New Hampshire.

But then we have We've had Sonny Bono, We've had athletes, we've had the guy from George back when Ronald Reagan was an actor originally, so oh, of course that's the ultimate pop crossover, right exactly. Actually did the campaign in the primary against Fred Grandy, who was from The Love Body, ran for governor and I'll never get poor Fred. We ran a radio campaign when we found out he'd been a liberal Democrat in Hollywood. Fred Grandy, he may be

a better actor, and we think so. The actor thing actually became an issue in that primary where we have to beat him of Governor Brandstead, but he was a pretty distinguished Republican congressman for a long time. I do think we're going to see more crossover and there will be kind of Trump imitators, but it's hard to imitate Trump one he is so preaware and so famous and to his blustering style, which both helps him by attracting attention and hurts him by offending voters he desperately needs

to win a general election. Is a hard thing to replicate. But he has put his claw print on this, no doubt about it, and it will be felt in the future. So you've worked with with the media and through the media. What is the media circus of a presidential campaign? Like, what what does the average listener at home not know about this? This mayhem um that it's a big mob that watches itself. So there's a huge herd mentality, and it's running against a clock of now now now, because

with digital media has changed. Is the old days where he had the deadline at night and then the payper and now the new cycle is instantaneous Twitter, you know the various social media platforms. It never ends. So they they are like a herd of buffalo running looking one ft ahead, just just watching each other, thundering towards anything.

The old joke I used to tell, which is kind of unfair to my friends in the media, is They're kind of like the Jurassic Park dinosaur there, forty ft tall, five ft teeth and a brain about the size of a grapefruit. And when they see movement, they want to go sniff it and eat it. So when something happens in the campaign, they see his movement, you know, this herd of Jurassic Park dinosaurs, they thunder over and probably

destroy whatever it is with investigation. So whatever the movement of the day is, be at the candidate falling in an orchestra pit, or Trump trade, some phony trip to Mexico. Uh, they thunder and cover the hell out of it, because every day has to be a big day to go now. To give them some credit, there are stronger, more important themes and analysis that does happen that kind of floats above.

But I would say they've been a bit flummixed by Trump because the old media weapon of the raised eye brow that's really not quite true, sir, That used to send most people in public life to like, well I I I, you know, and back off. Trump's oblivious to it. He just doubles down on whatever misstatement he just made up. And they haven't quite found a way to push back because the mural book is they can't say that's a bald faced lie. You can, man, have you noticed trained

not to do that. I've noticed that CNN, of all stations, is running on the crawl like a real time fact check. Know what he said is that that's unthinkable with any other candidate. Yeah, well, it's kind of like it's the World heavyweight boxing Championship and one of the boxers walks in with a chainsaw and starts slicing at the other guy, and the refs are saying no, and he slices the

ref and the crowd screaming and then stop. Yeah, it's like, but wait a minute, you've just broken the rules of there are no rules, and then the ratings go through the roof, and maybe there are no rules. So let me flip the question on you, Um, what does the media get right? What sort of coverage have you seen that you've said to yourself, Hey, this is really insightful. They do two things really well. One, even though it isn't insane heard and a lot of the analysis I

see on television drives me crazy against silly. They cover it around the clock, wall to wall. So if you want to know what kind of tie Donald Trump is wearing today and the words he said just clip on table TV, cable TV, or the internet. So it's you're there and they use the technology and the resources they

have to put you in the campaign. You can actually cover the campaign now without traveling really even as a journalist, because it is so accessible electronically, so you have an unfiltered view of the whole thing that you've got to sort out. The problem is there's a lot of bad, dumb analysis, but we get a level of kind of transparency to what happened that day that is unheard of fifteen years ago in politics even ten Who is doing the sort of deep dive research that the impresses you,

what have you seen that? I would say that's the second thing. There are some people who are old pros who are writing smart political coverage with context or what's really going on, not the daily trivia chase. I'm saying the Prince side. Jonathan Martin at the New York Times does a great job. There are others are Maggie Haberman a bunch of their they do it's a left wing newspaper. But the news folks covering the analysis of the campaign. I think there's some strong people there the Post. There's

a great beat reporter who covers the charity issue. Yeah, I remember his name. He's called like four How brilliant is this? This guy has called like thirty charities a day. Have you received any money from Donald Trump? The Post? He's found one five thousand dollar donation out of a great job on that. Bob Costa is a good shoe leather campaign gossip. Who's fighting who in the elevator? What's

really going on? He's one of the few guys deep sources in these the Banana Republic of the Trump campaign. There's no campaign. It's a Banana Republican. A lot of things they say about what's happening are not that true, and he's well sourced there. I think Dan Balls has always been the thoughtful, big picture slowdown. I've seen a

lot of elections and he's at the Post. Ron Brownstein at the National Journal is probably the best guy in demography, which is always the motor of what's really going on. If you want to kind of read the balance sheet of the candidates with the reality of who really they're probably gonna have in the end, if you know the use of investing analogy Bronstein is very good at that.

And you know there are others. I mean, what about the new media like um, Politico, Vox, BuzzFeed, Vice, any of that stuff thrush at the Politico I think breaks some stuff. I'm generally not a political fan because they're in the often in the trivia and gossip business. They're kind of the Hollywood reporter, the old Hollywood reporter of politics. Uh, and so they'd really like to know who's fighting over

the Cafeterian menu in the campaign. And they're they're quick to blast stuff out that's weekly sourced some sometimes, so let's sometimes they get it right. So I don't want to be too unfair to him, So let's talk about the about the campaign nitty gritty, because you just you just dropped something I want to follow up on that

there isn't a whole lot of campaign there. I keep reading that Hillary has this massive machinery and they have fifty offices in each of these of the fifty states, and the get out the vote and all that sort of stuff. They run like a finally tuned machine. And he seems to be spending money in Virginia, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But all the conventional rules of this. Hillary has the big, complicated campaign of the massive staff doing all the traditional things.

She's like the dog food company with the best satellite aim trucks, jingles, you know, sung by Lassie. She's got everything. The only problem is your crack open the dog food. The dogs sniffet and they wine and run the other direction. So but she has all the machinery and distribution, and that is worth something. Trump has no campaign. He has a couple of yes men who circle him yes women,

but it's all Trump. And the mechanics of the campaign are an advanced operation because what Trump really wants is somewhere to land the plane, somewhere to have a hall full of an adoring throng to cheer, and he'll do his routine. He kind of does his like stand up Don Rickles meats whatever he is um Juan Perrone and and you know that's the whole Trump campaign. So when Trump has a big idea like hey, I'm gonna go to an African American church and take on Hillary, great

media chump. You know, oh boy cat bites dog Republican an African American community, Let's they're cover the hell out of it. But you need a real campaign operation to go find an African American church where pastors willing to let you do a political speech, which by the way, actually happens all the time in churches. But need depth of field. And to figure that out. With Trump, the advanced guys come in and say, all right, this will be his whold room. Here's the special meat loaf, here's

the coffee, here's the signs. And they find out they pick a pastor who shut him down because the thing was not they couldn't execute it well. And so any question of execution, be it policy, be it a digital campaign that means anything for you know, the mobile devices that are increasingly the front window on so much in communication, including campaigns, all that stuff. They've got nothing. They they're

doing a few poles. They got people trying to talk him in being just saying they got like one and a half speech writers who can put him on a prompter that he'll ignore half the time. But it's like a bad congressional campaign level of technical competence. How important is so he has this huge Twitter following, and I will admit his tweets are amusing. Sometimes they're um I want to figure out who writes them. Well, you could

tell there was it was. BuzzFeed said, when it's at the bottom of each tweet, you could see was just tweeted on an iPhone or an Android device. It turns out that when it's on the Android device, it's his staff, and when it's on the iPhone him and you could see one one is very clearly angrier and and a little more bullying, and the other one is a little

more circumspecting, a little more. I think he probably the hoope picks who kind of his press valet, uh and send out a Twitter, you know, and he barks out something and maybe she tries to clean it up a little. So, but how significant is Twitter to the national campaign? Is this something that uh, the inside baseball people like and are really impressed but the public doesn't care about. Or

is Twitter affecting the election? Twitter is a very fast electronic bulletin board that all the reporters used to kind of watch stuff. I'm at Murphy Mike and I do it all the time. I've got over fifty thou followers and I've never said my Twitter handle on television. It's kind of weird. It just organically grows. Sure, but you also get a lot of people who are just they think they're digital warriors, and so they're barking at other people and that sort of kind of graffiti on Twitter.

That's what the mute button is for, right, No, exactly. My favorite thing on the Twitter feed. Um, I love throwing people off the island. I figured they don't pay to follow me. I get to fire people who are annoying, get muted people who are intellectually dishonest. I block and leave it at that. I kill people who do I can't kill, block or mute them when they do bad puns. I'm I'm tired of stupid and funny puns. That's a

real bush league move, you know. It's like really yeah, yeah that, you know, work a little harder on the jokes. So Twitter is a good way to get a message out quickly. But in the mass voter world, the other social media is much more powerful. Facebook, Facebook, and increasingly Snapchat and some of the even pin est because what Facebook does and all the social media does is they take credible information and they move it sideways. In other words,

we have a thing now called the virtual precinct. And the old days you have a precinct captain going door to door, and you'd know the guy two doors over. Oh yeah, he's a veterinarian, and come over, look, I know your wife's big into animals. This candidate. Now, the virtual precinct is your best friend from college, who's the teacher in Columbus, Ohio. Is everybody as much in contact

with you as your friend two blocks over? So the precinct on social media, those swing voters in Columbus may not be getting their information from the Columbus regular Republican or Democratic organization, but from their friend from high school who actually lives in Riverside, California, who made take an article that really persuaded her that Hillary is bad, click a share, and then the person in Columbus will read and trust their friend who sent him the clip, and

then information will go sideways and have a huge impact in a precinct two thousand miles away from the person have the social connection with, and it's really changed political organization. So that raises an interesting question. In the O eight election, it was clear that the Obama campaign had a much more technologically sophisticated approach than either Hillary did Um or McCain did. He seemed to really have that core group of Google geeks that he brought along and became his

secret weapon. And what I've been hearing and especially in the post Mornum after, was that, Hey, the GOP really has to capture catch up to the Democrats on this um and it doesn't seem to have happened this cycle. How important is technology relative to what it used to be? And is this lag between the Democrats and the GOP as sizeable as it was? And when does the gap close? It is sizeable, and it is a huge problem. But

one caveat. We always obsess on the gadgets, you know in the campaign, Oh, the new mind reading pulling device or this or that I ran a guy, a long shot guy for president. We announced the campaign on compuser. We hold the record for presidential campaign launched down the web. But you can overdo the technology. The truth is in ninety excuse me, in two thousand eight, when Obama had much better analytics and digital than the mccaye campaign, which

was stone Age, you know, just the Keystone cops. The Obama campaign would have won without the Internet because the big narrative storytelling of the campaign and the demography the most powerful forces were all lined up with Obama. What about is the same true? I think the same. Let's put this way, it is a huge. Campaigns are amplifiers, and all media, be at radio, paid television, direct mail, telephone calls, and of course everything digital, particularly mobile devices

which are eating everything, is a powerful amplifier. And the analytics you can get by knowing what people are interested in helps you learn so much more about the voters and be so much better and even doing the television, it's all true. In the Democrats are way ahead, but some of that is not by choice. It is driven by the audience. The Republican primary, our core tribe is old.

So guess what the dominant media is AM radio, which, with all due respect to Bloomberg Radio, you know, I know, you know, ten years from now you'll probably be streaming. We're not sure AM radio will be carrying. This is streaming already. So not only is this so here's the technology,

it's uh, definitely the Internet because they're younger. So so this broadcast, this will go out on radio, it will be streamed on Bloomberg dot com, it will be rebroadcast on Sirius x M. It'll show up on iTunes, it'll show up on SoundCloud, It'll be in a dozen places. But you're saying the core GOP voter is a little older there watching Fox News, they're listening to AM radio. They're probably reading a physical paper, not not something online. So those demographics, how big of an issue is that?

And when that because our center of gravity, our audiences, our core audience that picks our nominee, they tend to gravitate towards yesterday's media because of age. So we're really good at AM radio, which is probably the least important thing to be really good at if you plan the next ten years of American politics. It's been listen, Rush Limbon, there's a full crow. They've been really really affect right. And they're on the web too. I mean they they're

branching out. But my point is it's kind of an illustrative joke. Our activist grab it tate to AM radio, their activate Their activists gravitate to the internet. So guess what, they're much better at the internet organically. But we we look we our problem is not technology. After that report came out, which I agreed with, I would have loved to have been a big iron salesman sound computers to the R and C because everybody wants to buy the gadget.

Our problems are more fundamental than the gadget. Our problems are modernizing conservatism to appeal to the demography of the modern America so we can actually win a presidential election. We have lost. You know, we're the market party. We believe the market smart. We've lost the voter market in five of the last six presidential elections. That's twenty years of our product being rejected by the consumers of a

presidential election. The only group I know with a longer than twenty year losing streak like that this is true is the Washington generals who are paid to lose to the problem globe drivers. They're losing streak is twenty four years long. So when Trump blows it, we can turn

pro where be able to join the Washington generals. So we've been speaking to Michael Murphy of the Rights Arise pack and political consultant to Jeff Bush, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other and host of Radio Free g OP which you can find that iTunes and everywhere else you find podcasts have been have been found. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and stick around for a podcast extras where we keep the tape rolling and continue chatting

all things political. You can read my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com or follow me on Twitter at Riholts. I'm Barry Rihults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Mike Murphy, Thank you so much for doing this. I have to share a hilarious story with you about how this interview came about. So I have a booker, Taylor. She does a fabulous job.

Um and we're always you know, there's always three dozen people in the process of either of them reaching out to us or us reaching out to them. I'm not going to be in New York until November whatever it is, and it's a process. Your namesake, Michael Murphy was on Bloomberg TV the same day you were on either UM by Al due respect or one of the shows. So I send an email to Taylor saying, oh, Mike Murphy was really good. You should we should get him on.

She goes, Okay, not a problem. He's back in New York and September fantastic. So I go about my day and I don't think about it. We prep for these about a week in advance. I start doing research and I asked somebody, I don't know if it was you or or the the press person, Hey, send me buy a Well, we'll start our research. And back comes Mike Murphy, right to rise, etcetera, etcetera. But you thought it was a Silicon Valley guy right four months ago? I thought

it was the tech guy. So I tell Taylor this and she goes, what do you want to do? I go, this is fantastic. The elections a month and a half away. I have a million questions for Mike Murphy. Yes, why all means? So this was a for tour right now, the tech guys, I meet the press, right. I wonder how often that happens? So thank you so much for doing this. I'm very excited. Um, And most of my work is working for business by the way, you know, yeah,

I don't really do campaigns anymore. I do corporate problem solving and so is it crisis consulting or specific crisis And also you know, messaging with politics teaches you how to bunch a message through and a product on a specific both services I do work for HP Enterprise. I've done work in the past with Facebook and you know, a whole bunch of HP um So Carli Fiorina, what what was that about? Well, she's you know, great presentation, ambitious, and she's now looking at running for chair of the

Republican National Committee. Really think she has a shot. I think she'll lose. Of Ryan's previous runs for re election, He's got a pretty good grip on it. But maybe. Yeah, she's got a lot of fans in the party. What what happened to her campaign? Well, I think she never really had the base to run for presis it's hard to run for president when you're bad stories you you've got Claubert in you know, really a very hard state

to win. She ran courageously in California, like Meg Women did and not Meg Whitman has a great reputation from from eBay and uh, I forgot the products company she was at before, was at Colgate palum Olive or something like. I think she was at PG and P and But so she's got Meg Woman has wonderful corporate resume. The compact HP merger people aren't as excited about, and I think Carly has less of a of the business cred. California business community did not really fall behind Carly the

way they did behind Meg when they both ran. But I give them both credit for running in an incredibly hard state to win as a Republican. And now if you're not Arnold, double yeah. But Arnold was like a hybrid. He could you know, he had that big identity so you can kind of bring everybody together. And it was a recall ellection, no Republican primery, so unlike both that Megan Meggie had an anti immigration guy running in the primary,

which really hurt her in the general election. That's a that's an issue in California much more so than New York. I'm surprised homelessness isn't as big an issue in California as a New Yorker going to California. You go to l A, San Francisco, or straight up the coast, Portland, Seattle. As a New Yorker, I'm shocked at the amount of homelessness San Diego. It's shocking. It's it's an issue that comes up on polling, but California politicians don't talk about it.

Is that well. I think we're one party state and nobody wants to kind of get into the identity politics arguments with the interest groups that say more money to the homeless versus kind of the groups that are more of a tough love approach and so they don't see a political win and jumping in the middle of that. Utah did an analysis and they said we could take these people, put them in public housing so they get

their meds, so they It's interesting. I was in Utah two days ago and a couple of mayors straightened me out about that because I asked him about it. So and the media got it wrong. We did a thing for veterans. We could take care of the veterans that way, but the whole community now homeless are coming to Utah from around the country believing that there's a part. Yeah, so this was for homeless vets, not for the general. That was the initiative and I had and it's been

very successful. The city councilman from Salt Lake kind of explained to me and said, my theory is were we have a growing homeless problem because we became famous as the place where it come to you, there's an apartment for you, and that's not quite accurate. Well, sure, the homeless get online. They read this on the internet. Are

people really traveling across country to go to Utah? I'm not the fact checker on it, but I had a credible Utah's municipal official tell me he thought that that story had attracted more homeless but but the fact that it was homeless vets that that's what that was the program. Yeah, okay, thought that was a distinction that should be made. That makes a lot of sense. So so let's let's talk a little bit about about the general election and things

people don't understand. If if you were to share with the public, here's something you but you don't understand about the entire campaign process, what would that be? I would say, One, it is a human endeavor, So all the eccentricities and wonderful things that make humans unpredictable are proud of the campaign. It's less of a machine than people think, and eccentrics have a role in it. Second, people way overestimate the

importance of daily polling data. I often joked that if I woke up one day and they said, hey, welcome to China. You have a new job. You're head of the Chinese spy agency, I would say Okay, I guess I gotta do this. Give me the budget, and I'd immediately take about twenty million dollars and I would start buying off polsters in the US because the pundits you see on television, the experts quote unquote, who notice have to be an expert about everything, so often they're an

expert about nothing. They look at the average of all the polls every morning, and then the engineer opinions to fit that, and so we're in this kind of silly feedback loop. The truth is it's a lot more like

value investing. You want to identify the balance sheet of each campaign, the real assets that are there, get through the accounting blur, and not worry about the daily visitudes of polling, which you have a lot to do with what was on the news two days ago, and see who's getting what assets from the electorate, who's doing well with women and women are gonna like and land with who are college educated versus high school educated men going

for where are minorities going? And then you can pretty well know the reversion the mean that will happen on election day. That's so funny, say that literally my column that that September six, is about we over emphasize the most recent data and ignore the long term trends. These daily things are so noisy, they're so subject to revision.

You were mentioning you could have a hundred polls at forty one, but the one poll that comes out and says forty six, and when it's against the overwhelming way of the evidence, the assumption is, Hey, that's the poll that has something wrong with it. That's the one everybody

runs with. It's the one that makes the news. I have a friend who was an old retired journalist who says, if a Martian landed and watched only television, they would think that Gerbils can water ski because the only time you've seen a Gerbil on TV, it's on water ski. So therefore Gerbils must the outlier gets the attention. Yes, and that and that creates the very much um. I'll defend a little bit. They are right when they overreacted.

These polls at the racist tightened a little bit. But they assume that it's kind of like the psychology of the stock market. People assume the current direction will always continue, It'll keep going up or it'll keep going down. So trees don't grow to the sky. You can't exactly. And so when I look at the election, they've seen the new Zarcher pole. Here's everything I know. Polls are hard

to take because people don't answer their phone anymore. For sure that the methodology is harder, which means to do it right is more expensive and takes more time in the field. The average media publisher doesn't always say, when I'm buying a pole, can I get the most expensive, really good one that takes a week to do. They're like, I need an instant pulled them out to have candy, have something to talk about on the morning news flash.

So you know, the pressure to provide cheap, junkie polling, to consume, to feed the trivial discussion every day with the sirens going off, we have a new action poll and now it's a closer horse race because you were using medioc pulse. Well, not always me to. I don't want to have too broad of a brush, but let me put it this way. The election is more complicated than daily polls, and the big trends that you want to figure out don't always reveal themselves in the poll.

And finally, everybody covers the horse race of the two numbers. One guy's at forty five, ones at forty four. It's at one point race. I'm saying, well, who's not yet at forty nine? And what does the next five points look like to get there? Because the people are undecided are not going to leave the planet. Almost all of them will vote if the poll is correctly done and

registered voters, and they're gonna land on somebody. So even though it might be a two point race now at four, there's another, you know, easy ten percent of the vote that's going to show up and be for somebody. And that's a much better understanding those voters and where they're gonna land or likely to land tells you a lot more than three. Are there really undecided voters at this point in this election? So let me push back on this. This show and it has been a reality show. This

has been going on for well over a year. The Brits have an election, it's six weeks and they're done. And I think the Canadians of thirty days, this is a year of this. Is there anyone out there who really doesn't have a firm opinion on I like Hillary, I don't like Hillary. I like Donald Trump, I don't

like Donald Trump. I mean, at this point, what is the big reveal that's gonna affect them or are they just being a little coy there being a low COI um, because we in the old days, you know, like the gallop pole Harris, when the polling phone call came, you'd stand up. It was like the president calling. It's you know, it's a big deal. Now we have a pull every

two seconds. So there's some political science thinking that says people use polls to kind of slap the system around a little bit, because everybody knows they get to change their minds. So when if you were to like the electorate, people who say there for Hillary might for a week say I'm thinking about Trump. I'm back to Hillary. It's kind of like we asked somebody what kind of car they're gonna buy. Well, I'm thinking this is the year

for the Mercedes. You know, if you ask them six months before their leases up, and they're gonna float around a couple of car brands. Half of them will stay like base voters, They're not going anywhere. I'm a Chevy guy, always better. But others will float based on what they're seeing out there. But if you pull the same people three days before they buying the car. They're down to a price offer and the Mercedes is now off the list because they found out that always gonna be three

more month than I thought. And they're heading for that Ford fusion or whatever. So you know, just because they say it on September seventeen doesn't mean it's what's going to happen in the election. It tells you what would happen at the election were held yesterday. So so we've seen poles in the past that um famously Carter was ahead, was it nine months? Eight months before the election, and going into the primaries early on it looked like Obama had no chance. In two thousand and eight, when do

the poles really begin to firm up. It's mid September. We have what seven weeks left. I don't know any serious practitioner, which means people who spent twenty or thirty years running races, living in crap hotels and campaign headquarters for senators, governors, congressman and occasionally presidents who pays too much attention to the horse race ballot until after the

first debate. And that means which is the end of this month, yea, so early October and until then, it's like me handing you an apple, some sugar and some butter, some flour, and say, what do you think of my apple pie? You know, not ready yet. You have to cook the thing. And so do we follow polling? Now? Of course we do, but you don't really look at the horse race. You look at the internal numbers. What do they think of Trump? What do they think of Hillary?

What do they not know about Trumpery Hillary? That you know as a consultant is true because the main thing we do in a campaign has introduced new information and that is a powerful thing. So that's a really interesting set of questions. And let's let's unpack that a little bit. First, in a stage with twelve people. Trump was a tremendous debate.

Presents that worked out really well. Pre word title, and remember the electorate and relican primary is only maybe twenty nine million people, which is one hundred million fewer than the general election electorates. So one of the things is happening now is people are saying, well, nobody thought Trump could win the primary, and he won the primary. So what streets caused rain? Which means Trump can win the general? They're two totally different electorates. You know, it's so heading

into the general debates for the general election. Um, what what you read on how he's gonna behave and how he's gonna do in a one on one debate versus what he did in the in the debate. You know, it is impossible to protict Trump. It's just you know, the only thing I'll say is, you know Trump will be Trump, which means he'll crean around, he'll vamp everything. He'll one minute he'll try to be thoughtful and quiet, the next minute he'll be talking about Vince Foster. What

the mixes of that? You don't know? I mean, the joke I tell about Trump is the Trump advisors are kind of like Charlie Manson's Fox Trot instructors Charlie Today's foxtrot lesson great step step tap step steps. He does it and he doesn't have any thinking, Wow, he's making real progress. Then he stabs you in the ip A pencil. So you can't predict Trump other than he will be unpredictable. That's the prediction. And we will see versions of what

we've seen before because people don't change. So whether it's a mix of the more subdued Trump they occasionally get because they've got the thorizin out or whatever they do, or it's Trump totally unhinged or both during a debate, when when kind of crazy Trump breaks out of the thorazine Trump after thirty minutes, when you know you can't put another pill in? Who knows? Now, Hillary? We do know because her personality is so transparent, she'll try to win the spelling be calling me, call on me. I

wrote a paper on that. She's a policy wonk, and and she'll be wonky in the debates. So the real question will be when Trump kind of tries to bully and muscle in on her, how she handles that without doing a bad Trump imitation, which would not help her. But she can't be too passive either. So it's a tougher debate for her because she got she's got to navigate the crazy will still showing strength because he has got to be strong and likable and experienced. And I

don't love her, but I could live with her. That is that what she's going for. I would say from her point of view, I would be thinking about how do I move the needle on the number one? The kind of thorn in the voters toe about me Hillary, which is nobody trust me because they think I'm an ultimate political calculating machine. So how can I break through all the political crack and get people who think I'm a real person. I have stuff I believe in, which is why I'm in this, and here's what I'll do

for you. How does she get that connection done? And how does she appear strong enough that Trump sitting his hair on fire, you know, six ft away um does not affect her in a way where people say, you know what, She's just not strong enough. Trump, meanwhile, if he's smart, has to note to win the election. He's got to take one of two groups and dramatically change what they think about him, which is the hardest thing to do in politics. Get people to totally change what

they think. Is there to gonna get minority voters to change what they think? Or he's got to get college educated white women to go from not liking him to loving him. And it is a lift I've never seen anybody else do. And Trump is not the kind of guy who does discipline lifts. He just shows up and he still thinks it's the Republican primary. And so I think he'll do his act and he'll hurt her a little.

And because I don't know how good she'll be, I'm very worried she'll be overprepared and all that from again, very worried. I'm not voting for I'm not a Hillary Clinton fan, but are you kind of in the never Trump came, I never vote for Trump. If it came down to just my vote, I would probably jump in the lake. But I'd leave with my suicide note, a absentee ballot for Hillary Clinton, because if I had to pick her, mediocrity is so much better than Trump's anality.

I mean, within the range of acceptable politicians. She may not be your cup of tea, but you know that she's a serious candidate. She won't try to get out of NATO. She'll she be ten better than Obama on foreign policy. Now, and that's on the economy. What's your view of her on the economy? How far has Bernie

dragged her to the left dangerously far? The the the hijack team of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are a threat, and they're a tragic one because the policies they're wishing her into, and she has plenty of her own bad instincts here are going to hurt the people they want to help the most. It's gonna be murder on the working poor because what's gonna happen. Growth's gonna drop, and with that there will be no upward pressure on wages, and the people who are barely getting by right now,

they're gonna get a worse deal. Now we've had let me push back on you a little bit. The most recent data on wages came out. It was the best numbers we've seen in a while. We're still below the highs, but the gains over the past twelve months have fallen mostly to the middle class and the poor. That's very

different than the past ten twenty years. Some of it is the reduction and poverty, some of it is um the lowered number of people with without health care or healthcare insurance, and some of it is just, hey, we're the cycle has now gone far enough that McDonald's, when with Donald's and Walmart, have to raise their bottom wages to attract employees. Hey, we're sty close to full employment at this point. So the pushback is this is working, and we want to continue letting it to work. So

go with me. Hillary who will continue these policies as opposed to Donalds, who's going to do who knows what? How do you respond to something like what We are starting to see some wage growth and we're you know, the economy is showing some strength. I agree with that, But her plan appears to be more re redistribution, you know, because she doesn't want to face the hard question the next president has to face, which is, we can't we

can't afford the entitlement state we have. So her plan as well, We're gonna make the rich pay more their fair share so I can have my cake and eat it too. I don't have to touch entitlements, which are ticking fiscal time bomb. I can tax more money, which will have a chilling effect on the economy, and I'll keep having growth that way. I think the only real kind of knsie and growth plan she's got that's different

than Obama. She's talking about infrastructure spending. I'm actually for infrastructure spending because I don't hate the idea of borrowing money from the Chinese at you know, zero zero into maybe negative industrated. We really skunk them and build things that enhance American productivity. But if we don't give you, for instance, on infrastructure, where would you spend I totally agree with you, but preach to the choir, where should

we be spending more money on infrastruct um. There're two baskets. One is the basket of stuff we have to do. But the water supply system is terrible, vulnerable, insecure and falling apart. And if we we have water means throughout the country that are literally a hundred and fifty years old and have never built for fifty years, never been replaced, and unless we don't like the idea of drinking fresh water, there's massive things to be done there. On the other

safety one is bridges. A civil engineers society thinks why not to four bridges that are unsafe? Bridges and tunnels terrible totally. And then on the productivity increasing sign our ports um on the West coast where I'm from, and you preach into the right are our ports are going

to be under real competitive attack from Chinese finance. Mexican ports tied into the high speed rail system in Texas, and it is incredibly hard to get a can from the Port of Los Angeles into the intermodal system now because we haven't really invested any money the other thing we have to do. I'm a right wing nut, but I also know the facts, and I live in Los Angeles. We lead the country in childhood asthma in the bowl around l A and the heavy sulfur we burn in

the port is a big problem there. So my left wing Bernie friends would say shut down the port. I would say, give free electric hook uffs, you know, so they can turn off the heavy diesel there and switch to natural gas shuttle trucks. But that's dollars. But all in all, the healthcare off that cost of having kids with asthma, not the humanitarian side is even more persuasive. I would love to see a port revamp, and we could really use a natural gas ternament on the West coast.

Let me see more American made nuclear power plan. Let me let me add that I want to see more exploration of the thorium um plans, which is supposed to be uh, the new technology not much cleaner. But let

me give two little caveats to what you said. You know, we really haven't shored up our plants are our ports as much From a security stand I mean, we inspect with Geiger counters and other um checks for nuclear devices something like one in twenty is one thing, and then the other thing is you didn't mention our electrical grid is very much antiquated. It's a patchwork, it's it's vulnerable. That's something else that from both a infrastructure perspective and

from a security perspective, we're not doing it. I couldn't. I couldn't agree more. The problem is, though, we need Davis Bacon reform because right now to build public works is about a billion dollars a foot. And uh, that's how we've rebuilt. California. Governor Pete Wilson after the earthquake had freeway overpasses that have fallen down, and I got to suspend some as bacon stuff. So everything, it's the

labor rule. I had a mayor in a in a western state of a growing community, tell me I can build a highway for half of what the FEDS will spend because of some of the labor rules they have. So we meet it halfway. I think the Republican votes for infrastructure where the time now, low interest rates. I'm for borrowing money to make our physical plant. The best fifty year bonded you could. You could refinance a national

day everything, totally agree. The other thing, though, is that we don't get entitled in spending under control the other half of the equation. It's going to eat the entire budget, so it's Medicare, Medicaid, social security, particularly Medicare Medicaid. I know I only have you for a few more minutes. Let me jump to some of my favorite questions I asked everybody, um, and I'll keep it really short because I know times of wasting. First thing, favorite books? What

what sort of books do you like? Uh? I read a lot of history. I'm kind of a history nerd. I read a lot of everything. I'm a bibliophile. Give me, give me a few names. I like the Earnest May stuff. Um. Ernest Ernest May is a professor at Harvard adviser to the Pentagon. Give me a name of one book, well, Strange Victory, where he does all the war games of how the Germans beat the French from the French had the bigger army and nobody thought even when they runned

at West Point the French World War Two, the French win. Uh. He also wrote a great book, I don't know the exact title, about how people argue with historical anecdote evidence Napoleon never attacked in June, that kind of stuff, and how it affected bad policy making in Vietnam. Huh, how people missuse history and arguments. Ernest May he passed away, but he was a giant in that field, so there's

no such thing as a bad Ernest May book. Um. In business strategy, I'm a Drucker guyck such of excellence and absolutely just about anything you read. I'm a real fanatic search of excellence. Tops. I'm a value investing nut. My two favorites I think would be well both the Graham stuff and I like Monger's stuff too. And Steph clam and his friend of mine actually have a copy of Margin of I have a PDF of it, but I don't have the physical copy, which now go for

like three thousand dollars. Yeah. Luckily he was a friend and I cornered him in his office, found the drawer and he sent me once. But anyway, yeah, yeah, so I I uh, I like that. I I'm a big student of Cold War history because that's, you know, originally what I studied. So yeah, a lot of historical stuff. And um, let me ask you my two favorite questions to wrap us up. So a millennial comes up to you, someone who just graduates college, and said, hey, I want

to get into the political consulting game. What sort of advice do you give them? I say, start out trying to run a campaign locally to learn politics. Don't go to d c Uh. It's not where you're gonna learn anything other than build a network to get a job. But then you become a guy with a job and no knowledge, which is we have enough of you can get called congress. Get there later. When in doubt you want to learn politics, go work in the state capital.

Oh really, that's very interesting. And our last question, what is it that you know about politics and campaigning today that you wish you knew thirty years ago? Pulling his were rated digital was not only going to become big, but it was gonna eat everything. To quote Mark andreson Um and that this bite the flashy technology, including digital, Never forget it's narrative storytelling and win in doubt. Trust that more than anything else, Mike, this is being middle

and end of story. This has been really fascinating. The timing couldn't be better. If people want to find your your writings or your radio show, they go to. Sure, I got a couple of things. I'm on Twitter at Murphy Mike Radio. Free Gop is my weekly podcast, which is a lot of fun. We're doing pretty well with it. And I've got a website that is needs to be updated a little, but I stuck all my commentary writing

there and it's called Mike Murphy Commentary dot com. So for those of you who have enjoyed this conversation, you can look Up an Inch or Down an Inch on iTunes and see any of our other hundred and nine or so UH podcasts. I would be remiss if I did not think Michael Batnick, my head of research, Taylor Riggs are booker. H Charlie Vohmer our engineer. We love your feedback and comments. You can send us email at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I'm Barry Ritults.

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