NJ: Ron Brownstein is Atlantic Media's political director, including the National Journal. Ron, welcome.

Brownstein: Hi, Tammy.

NJ: This week your piece is "The Bush GOP's Fatal Contraction."

Brownstein: Absolutely. I mean, the overwhelming story that links these last two elections, 2006 and 2008, is a narrowing of the field on which Republicans can compete even as Democrats are reaching further into areas that have previously been considered red.

You know, we look back to 2004: The story was, each party was in effect partitioning the county into competing spheres of influence. Republicans were dominating in the House and Senate seats in the states that had voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004, and Democrats had a preponderant advantage in the 18 states that had voted against Bush both times. Well, what's happened since then is that the Republican capacity to compete on terrain that leans towards the Democrats or is even swing terrain -- blue terrain, even light-blue terrain -- has dramatically eroded even as Democrats, as I said, are beginning to run better in, and made substantial gains in both 2006 and 2008, in areas that had been leaning toward the Republicans.

So what you have is one party that at the moment is effectively competing for a broad range of voters and a Republican Party that right now has seen its capacity to speak to anybody outside of its base severely diminish. And by the way -- and we can talk about this in a minute -- that is reflected at the presidential level, at the Senate level and at the House level. You see the same trends on all three levels, and I think that's what makes it so worrisome for the GOP right now.

NJ: Well, you say it is "less like a coalition than a clubhouse." When you say "clubhouse" I think "elite". Is that what you're saying?

Brownstein: Well, no, I mean just kind of a group of very like-minded voters. You know, right now, in this last election for example, you would expect the Republicans to get wiped out among liberals, but they also lost 60 percent of moderates, and when you are in that position -- as well as losing a majority of independents now in both 2008 and in the 2006 midterm election -- when you are in that position what it means is that you lose the capacity to compete in places that aren't strongly tilted in your direction.

Look at the Electoral College: By the end of this election, John McCain was competing seriously in only two of the 19 states that John Kerry carried four years ago. He was only putting Obama on defense potentially in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, and in the end he was routed in both of them. In fact, if you look at those 19 states plus the District of Columbia that Kerry carried, McCain was held to 42 percent or less in all but three of them. He collapsed in blue America, and as we were talking, even.... Look at California, how dramatic is this? In California, John McCain got a lower share of the vote than Barry Goldwater in 1964. So if you look across the board in blue America, he could not compete.

Conversely, Barack Obama was competing at the end seriously for at least 10 -- depending on how you define it -- 10 states that George Bush won last time. He ends up winning, Obama, nine states that Bush carried last time, including seven that Bush carried both times, and in that list are four states -- Colorado, Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina -- that between them had voted no more than once for the Democratic nominee since 1964.

So he was expanding his reach even as McCain's playing field was narrowing, leaving him with, you know, a very thin path to try to get to 270. Of those 19 states that John Kerry carried, Tammy, all of them except New Hampshire have now voted Democratic in the last five elections and have a combined 248 Electoral College votes that have voted Democratic now five straight times. If you can't dent that, you know, you're not leaving yourself very much margin for error as the Republican nominee.

NJ: Who should McCain blame?

Brownstein: Well, I mean, that's a really good question. I mean, I think the biggest factor here is the disillusionment with Bush. And I think -- the reason I say that is because you see the same trends at the congressional level as you do at the presidential level. This was less about Obama and McCain than it was about Bush.

But I do think the decisions McCain made, in terms of aligning himself so closely with Bush on the tax cut, health care, foreign policy -- and then I think the decision to pick Sarah Palin also compounded this, because I think she.... You know, we kind of think of her, the big issue around her, as being whether voters saw her as competent or not to be president, and most did not -- 60 percent in the exit poll -- but I think in many ways her impact was also to kind of reinforce the kind of culture-war -- she turns out to be very much a kind of Bush-era culture-war politician, who is very comfortable using cultural wedge issues to try to mobilize the Republican base. Well, that again had the effect of sharpening these lines and making it tougher for Republicans to talk outside their base.

But you know, if you look at the extent of these trends at the congressional level as well, it's larger than McCain or Palin. Real quickly, in 2004 John Kerry won 180 congressional districts -- he got most of the votes in 180 congressional districts. Again, that suggests those places are Democratic-leaning. After that election, Republican House members held 18 of those 180 seats; they are down to five today -- so that's about 3 percent? By comparison, Democrats have now won about one-third of the 255 districts that voted for Bush in 2004, which again says they are able to appeal across a broader terrain. Their party has a broader ideological reach and they're able to put more places in play.

You see the exact same thing in the Senate as well. Republicans are being pushed back at the end of the Bush years to the most culturally conservative parts of the country, and really have to figure out a way to rebuild their appeal and their competitiveness in places that are more culturally moderate to liberal.

NJ: So that's the reason that Obama's able to take out senators, take out Rahm Emanuel, other prominent Democrats, out of Congress because they are going to dominate at such a level. Correct?

Brownstein: Absolutely right. I mean, you know, you are looking at -- basically, the big question for Democrats after 2004 was whether they could restore their competitiveness in red places. There are 29 states that voted for Bush twice, Tammy. At the end of 2004 Republicans held 44 of the 58 Senate seats in those 29 states, which basically meant that Bush was helping them consolidate their control up and down the ballot -- why I talk about it as partitioning the country into a sphere of influence.

Well, since then, the Democrats recovered to the point where they now hold at least 22 of those 58 Senate seats and may get a 23rd if they win Georgia, and at the same time have gone from 42 of the seats that Bush carried in the House in '04 to 83 -- nearly doubling in two cycles. And their ability to compete in red terrain is what has allowed them to recapture the majority and now build these substantial majorities, because they were maxing out on what they could do in kind of blue America. They squeezed a little more advantage out of that in the last two elections, but the big breakthrough has been they have expanded further into red America even as the Republicans have eroded somewhat in these kind of swing and Democratic-leaning areas in Congress.

NJ: So when I hear you say that, I'm trying to figure out if President Bush and Karl Rove are geniuses, or if they misplayed things, or a combo of both, because what you are telling me is they held off the blue-state onslaught twice, not once, but twice.

Brownstein: No, I think they actually caused it. I mean, I would say that Karl Rove -- and as I said this in my book -- I think was a brilliant tactician in the service of a fundamentally flawed strategy. Basically, Bush's governing vision both legislatively and electorally revolved around maximizing unity among Republicans. He passed his legislation primarily by holding Republicans together in the House and the Senate. He won re-election in 2004 mostly by expanding turnout among Republicans, and again in 2002 when they gained seats in the House and Senate by expanding turnouts among Republicans, and he accepted as the price of that intense dissatisfaction among Democrats and gradual alienation among independents. He became the first Republican in 2004, by the way, ever to win the White House while losing independents.

And I think what you saw in his second term and what we see in these last two elections, is to me the somewhat inevitable result of that kind of governing strategy, which is that, again, you are speaking only to voters, and you are responding only to voters, in your coalition. The circle gets narrower and narrower of people that you are talking to, and bigger and bigger portions of the country feel excluded from your governing priorities.

And right now what we see is -- you know, in New England there is not a single Republican congressman; along the West Coast the Democrats now have all six Senate seats; from Maryland to Maine in the 11 states Democrats now have a bigger advantage net in the House than the Republicans do in the 11 states of the old Confederacy. Large portions of the country have moved sharply away from the Republicans; the Republican ability to compete in them have virtually vanished, I believe largely as a direct outgrowth of the Bush governing strategy.

And to me, the fact that even a candidate like John McCain -- who as you know, whose core advantage that he was supposed to offer the GOP was that he could reach out and recapture some of those voters -- even McCain could not overcome that, I think is a measure of the challenge they face, along with these facts like, no Republican congressman left in New England, no Republican senator left on the West Coast. They are being driven out of the culturally cosmopolitan parts of the country, because I think Bush defined the party in too narrowly a conservative way on many issues.

NJ: OK, so let's turn to Obama. Based on what you are saying, the Obama transition strategy so far makes complete sense, because what they are doing is trying to pat the whole world together: Democrats, they are bringing Joe Lieberman back in, they are bringing Republicans in. Is that what I am hearing?

Brownstein: Yeah, I think that is right. I mean, I think the opportunity here for Obama is that in the Bush years Republicans have ceded so much of the center both programmatically and in terms of voters, that if he is willing to cast a broad net and challenge his own base to accept a broad, inclusive governing strategy, he has a tremendous opportunity to build links to elements of society -- both voters and interest groups -- that previously had been part of the Republican coalition.

And you know, smart presidents have done this. I mean, you think about Ronald Reagan helping to cement the alienation of the neoconservative thinkers from the Democratic Party and the blue-collar Democrats from the Democratic Party, by appointing, you know, people like Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was a Democrat, as his U.S. ambassador, or John F. Kennedy trying to reach out to the business community by appointing Douglas Dillon, who was Eisenhower's undersecretary of State, as his Treasury secretary. So I think Obama here has a tremendous opportunity because of the contraction of the GOP appeal. You have a lot of people out there who are in play who were not in play 10 years ago, and if he's smart and he seems to be moving in this direction, he will very consciously reach out to them.

Of course these early steps are the easiest ones, Tammy. I mean, appointments are somewhat symbolic. The question will be, in governing is he willing to reach out to constituents beyond his comfort zone by offering them substantive concessions on energy, on health care, on different issues that might cause some, you know, turmoil among his own base. And that will be the decision.

One quick example: In 2008 Obama endorsed a compromise on energy policy that would have included some additional offshore drilling off the Atlantic Coast, in the southeast and the Gulf of Mexico. Now that they have 58 or 59 Democratic seats, is he going to walk away from that because he may not need that to pass his energy legislation, or is he still going to see that as a way to kind of reach out beyond his core base, even though it may, you know, inspire some yelps from the Sierra Club and other groups like that? Those kinds of things will be fascinating to watch, because the opportunity is there, but it doesn't come without the risk of some consternation among your core supporters.

NJ: Let's talk about how he operates and what we know about that. I mean, we are watching publicly; we see these announcements, names are mentioned. The great mentioner -- the "Today" show is the great flotation device. And then for example Hillary Clinton -- we mentioned there is a private meeting, more mentioning, more flotation devices; we'll find out after Thanksgiving if she is doing it or not. How is this process actually working? Is he the only guy making these decisions? Does he have a core group around him? Is it the troika like Reagan had?

Brownstein: I don't think I know exactly how he is making the decisions. I do know that -- I think, you know, the process is much more public than anything we've seen in the campaign, and I think that is probably a combination of -- in terms of the decision-making. You know, the decision-making in the campaign was very opaque; they did an incredibly good job of avoiding leaks and any sense of there being different factions even when to some extent there were. And you know, this has been much more kind of a public airing of this, especially on the Clinton front, which has I think been a little too much drama for both sides' long-term interests. I mean, she doesn't really want to look this much like Hamlet, and he doesn't want to look this much as though he is hanging on her decision, no matter which way they go in the end.

By any measure, the Obama decision-making and the transition is unfolding with a much greater degree of public exposure than it did during the campaign and the primary, and I think there is a certain amount of frustration over that, but there is an inevitability to it as well, because more people are involved, the circle is not as narrow. You have the potential appointees; you have vetters; you have people on the Hill. There are a lot more people with an eye at the keyhole. And really the ultimate example of this is the Hillary Clinton will-she-or-won't-she as secretary of State. You know, my sense is -- just my take -- is that this is unfolding in a way that really isn't doing any long-term good for either of them the way it turns out. I mean, she does not want to look quite as Hamlet-like as she has over the last week, and also I don't think Obama wants to be seen as, you know, just kind of hung out to wait for her decision.

You know, people that I talk to in the Obama camp say no formal offer has been made. On the other hand, you don't start down this road with someone like Hillary Clinton unless you are in fact prepared to take yes for an answer. And so if she does want the job it appears that he will offer her the job, but you know, we are kind of going -- we're in this complex process where there's ongoing vetting about Bill Clinton; I can't believe they could not resolve that if they want to. And then she is going through the question of whether she wants to do it, which I find an intriguing question from the other direction. I mean, it is not an obvious choice that you are better off being secretary of State for four or six years than you are staying in the Senate. Yes, it takes patience. Yes, there's frustration that she's not, you know, kind of on the top of the rostrum right now, but she certainly is in position, with her national base and her expertise, to be a major player in the Senate over time, and do you trade that for, you know, years of perhaps higher profile in the near-term as secretary of State?

NJ: How many people voted for her? Eighteen, 19 million?

Brownstein: Eighteen million people, yeah.

NJ: OK. So what does it send to those voters if she goes and flies around the world and tries to fix the world up for Obama?

Brownstein: Well, I think it's a very powerful statement, first of all not -- I think those voters are second -- I think the first thing it sends is, look, that these are serious times and we are bringing together the best that we have, and picking Hillary Clinton as secretary of State would certainly give that kind of all-hands-on-deck message -- that we are bringing in the A team in the Democratic Party, and beyond. I mean, I think, you know, it's entirely possible that someone like Chuck Hagel will find a spot somewhere in the administration. Or General Jim Jones, you know, who's not clearly identified with the Democrats, and in fact is now working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent, you know, a small fortune trying to beat Democrats. So I think a Clinton appointment sends a very powerful message in that regard. But it does also, I mean, clearly, you know, send a message of consolidating the party.

Although -- having said that, he ended up winning, you know, roughly 90 percent-plus of Democrats. I mean, Democrats held together; he did not have the big defection that, you know, some people feared early on. He did not do well with those, you know, working-class white voters that were the core of her message -- her campaign in the primary -- but at least those among them who were Democrats basically stuck with him.

NJ: OK. Let us be Gail Sheehy here. She goes around the country -- 18 million, 19 million people vote for her. They hug her. They love her. Let's talk about the fact she has this kind of incredible reinforcement. She didn't spend her entire life trying to be president. Right?

Brownstein: Right.

NJ: She's got all this. If she steps overseas, does she worry -- does she fear losing their love, therefore their votes, in 2012 or whenever?

Brownstein: Well, I think 2012 is not worth talking about. I think Barack Obama is in such a strong position in the Democratic Party that this idea that he needs to put her in the Cabinet to minimize the risk of her running against him in some way in 2012 is kind of absurd. I mean, Barack Obama is in a very strong position in the Democratic Party. He won more votes, I believe, than any Democratic presidential candidate ever -- only the second one since World War II to get past 50.1, plus he has 12 million names, roughly, in his e-mail list of people who are passionately committed to him.

I mean, the question -- I thought you were going in slightly a different direction in the question, which is, you know, after that kind of experience in the presidential campaign in which, you know, they divided the party almost exactly in half -- and as we've talked about, it was the smallest thumb on the scale that tipped it in his direction -- can you go back to being kind of a mid-level senator? I mean, that is -- you know, secretary of State, going around the world, she would certainly be a global celebrity. She would be an international figure. There is more immediate gratification in being secretary of State than going back and being in the Senate. I mean, Ted Kennedy has signaled that, you know, he is going to have his hand on the tiller for health care reform, not Hillary Clinton, although she certainly is going to have a role, and Max Baucus as well.

So you know, in the short term secretary of State certainly offers more high profile, more prominence and even more impact. Over time, though -- if you look at Ted Kennedy's career in the Senate -- she has the potential to I think fulfill many of the roles that he does today. I mean, she has a national base, she has a reputation among liberals and she is a dealmaker, and that gives her the ability to kind of craft agreements with Republicans that she can help sell to Democrats, and that's a very powerful position to be in the Senate. It will just take time for it to ripen. Does she want to wait? I don't know.

NJ: Thank you, Ron Brownstein.

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