NJ: Joining us now is Paul Freedman, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, and one of the authors of the book Campaign Advertising and American Democracy. Paul Freedman, thank you for talking to us today.

Freedman: Good to be here.

NJ: So what challenges do Republicans face in selling their brand to American voters, you know, given what is clearly a difficult environment after this past election?

Freedman: Well, I think looking ahead, Republicans face some serious challenges, both nationally but also in specific states. They need a message, they need money and the ability to convey that message, and they need candidates to carry that message forward. And they were really outmatched on each of those counts in the most recent presidential election, and in a number of state-level elections as well.

NJ: Can they get the money?

Freedman: Well, that's a good question. It's obviously going to be harder than it would have been had John McCain been elected president. But of course, you know, the opposition party is still an opposition party, and there will be people who are not happy with the direction that things are moving under a Barack Obama administration. So it certainly, I think, would be a mistake to count out the Republicans' ability to regroup and to move forward, both electorally and specifically in terms of fundraising.

NJ: Virginia voted for Barack Obama this year. Can Obama keep Virginia a blue state, or was this year's result some special circumstance?

Freedman: Well, I think it's a little bit of both. What we saw this year in 2008 was, in some respects, a reflection of the specific circumstances in 2008, but it's also part of a trend that we've seen really over the last decade, with a very reliably Republican state -- and Republican both in terms of voting at the presidential level, but also at the gubernatorial level, for United States Senate, and even at the House level -- this red state has been turning increasingly purple and now blue, not just in the more liberal and moderate northern third of the state, but really statewide. And so Barack Obama did well, again, not just in the north, but in three of the four major regions of the state; he did far better than Democrats have done in the past.

NJ: Let's switch gears a bit and go to the topic of your book. We talked about money before. Given the vast gulf between the amount that Obama raised and the amount that McCain was able to raise, and spent, are we looking at the beginning of the end of the public financing system?

Freedman: Yeah, absolutely. It may, Dave, not just be the beginning; it may be the beginning of the middle of the end, or perhaps the middle of the beginning of the middle of the end (chuckle). Barack Obama outraised John McCain by just staggering amounts. Prior to 2008, the record for television advertising was $180 million; that was set by George W. Bush in 2004. John McCain, on his own, without help from the Republican Party, raised about $126 million from April through Election Day. Barack Obama raised $236 million, just a staggering amount, and this is why we saw Barack Obama at the end of his campaign in a position that few -- well, really no candidates are ever in, and that is not having to engage in the sort of political triage that most presidential campaigns have to take part in, in the sense of choosing where to spend money and where to pull out altogether; something John McCain did, obviously, and something that most presidential candidates have to do. Barack Obama could and did advertise everywhere, including, as we saw toward the end of the campaign, in cyberspace; the man was advertising in video games.

NJ: If this is indeed the end at some point of the public financing system, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Freedman: Well, I think it depends upon what the contours of the alternative look like, and right now we are trying to analyze and scrutinize the base of support for Barack Obama, who raised beyond what he spent on television advertising; you know, he raised, we now know, almost $740 million in his bid to become president. To the extent that this money is coming disproportionately from a few wealthy donors, or relatively few, small numbers of wealthy donors, I think the implications are far different when it comes to democracy and the implications for democratic governance than if this money is coming from a much broader base of smaller donors. And so really, the answer to the question "is it a good thing or a bad thing?" depends upon, you know, what the nature of the thing is.

NJ: Does an end to this system give a particular benefit to one party or the other?

Freedman: Well, I think the conventional wisdom prior to 2008 would have been yes, it gives a benefit to the Republican Party. But clearly that's no longer the case, and Obama has demonstrated that Democrats have the organization, have the strength, have the ability to raise these phenomenal amounts of money.

NJ: OK. We've been talking with Paul Freedman, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, and one of the authors of the book Campaign Advertising and American Democracy. Paul, thanks for your time.

Freedman: A pleasure.